The Soviets said: There is a kind of civil right that only the Soviet Union has, that is, every citizen has the inalienable right to be rehabilitated after death. Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria are a few exceptions, because it is their evil deeds that have created countless wronged souls.
No two KGB leaders would be as highly similar as Yagoda and Yezhov. Their origins, personalities, images, career trajectories, sins, and even dramatic fates are like a mold. The Soviets had the impression that both men were tyrannical and lawless figures, yet those who had been in close contact with them did not think so.
Trotsky said of Jagoda, who had frightened the Soviets: "He is very serious, respectful, and has no personality at all. He was thin, earth-colored (he had suffered from tuberculosis), had a short beard, and was dressed in a French-style military tunic, giving the impression of a hard-working little man. ”
Yagoda, who had a secondary education and joined the revolution at the age of 16, loved literature and met and became lifelong friends with Gorky in his youth, a friendship that later became a disaster because one of his reasons for the death penalty was to be accused of murdering Gorky.
(Yagoda and Gorky are together.) ）
Yagoda was constantly promoted by his diligence and keen grasp of the essence of the case, and at the age of 30 he entered the 13-member leadership of Lenin's selected purge committee, and a few years later became Dzerzhinsky's most important assistant.
(Millions of people were thrown into the Gulag's labor camps in Siberia during the Great Purge.) ）
His most outstanding work talent was to use millions of unpaid manpower in labor camps to develop frontiers. At the age of 40 he became a member of the Central Committee, and next he became Akihito's successor, the NKVD. A year later, he received the rank of National Security Councilor equivalent to a marshal.
On December 1, 1934, Stalin's closest brother Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad, and a grieving Stalin heard the news and went straight to Leningrad that night. The case was more bizarre than any other major case in the Soviet Union, and all those in the know soon died in mystery.
Stalin wanted to avenge Kirov. Two weeks later, Stalin's opponents Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others were arrested for "murdering Kirov." But Yagoda actually made this case a criminal case, was quickly shot, expelled, exiled, and sentenced to many people, while Zinoviev, Kamenev and other dignitaries were not shot.
The consequences are severe.
On September 25, 1936, Stalin sent a telegram to the comrades of the Politburo: "We believe that the appointment of Comrade Yezhov as NKVD is a matter of absolute necessity and urgency. Yagoda apparently failed to do well in exposing Trotsky's work in the Noviev Group. The State Political Security Directorate has delayed this work for 4 years..."
Politburo commissioner Kaganovich said: "This decision of our father is undoubtedly remarkable and wise. ”
A day later, Yagoda's position became People's Commissar of Posts and Telecommunications, and four months later he became a reservist, and 2 months later, Yagoda's successor, Yezhov, declared that "Yagoda is a detective, a liar and embezzler of the Tsar's Secret Agent." ”
In the end, Yagoda confessed to the following crimes: participating in the Trotsky clique, German spies, killing Gorky, Gubyshev, and Akirchensky, murdering Yezhov, and murdering Kirov.
On March 15, 1938, Yagoda was shot.
The father of Yagoda, the enemy of the people, wrote a letter of confession to Stalin, in which he concluded: "We two old men beg you to spend the rest of our lives in peace in the happy Soviet state under such difficult mental and material conditions, without any means of subsistence. ”
The Yagoda family contributed two children to the Revolution during the Civil War, and in the end, Yagoda's parents, wife, and other relatives died because of him, as did a large number of his colleagues.
During his tenure from 1934 to 1935, Yagoda arrested 260,000 people and personally signed orders to arrest his own niece, but when he heard that his men punished female prisoners naked in the snow and ice, he would indignantly order an investigation into "where did such villains get mixed in!" "And he can occasionally release innocent people, which his predecessors and successors can't do."
Yezhov, 4 years younger than Yagorda, had the nickname "Bloody Dwarf." He is less than 1.6 meters tall, his face is emaciated and pale, even slightly shy, quite a condensed version of Putin. When he was young, a superior who admired him very much often invited him to dinner, and the housewife who had always cared for him liked to affectionately call Yezhov a "little sparrow". This kind couple probably did not expect that within 10 years, the old boss's case file would reach the hands of the "little sparrow", and after he signed the "execution of arrest", he added "his wife will also be arrested". Both couples were shot, and the housewife's confession was that she had been assigned by British intelligence in a vain attempt to poison Yezhov.
("Political prisoners" who were hanged during the Great Purge.) ）
But Yezhov's early acquaintances did not think that he was of bad character and fierce, people said that although he had only received a few years of education, he was talented and particularly diligent, he liked to sing, write poetry, be humble, peaceful, and was very democratic after being promoted. This is a compassionate, benevolent, gentle, measured man."
(Nicknamed "The Bloody Dwarf," Yezhov was shrewd and capable in his youth.) ）
Yezhov was highly appreciated by his superiors for his organizational skills and ability to complete tasks. His path of promotion began as a small bureaucrat in his early 30s into the Central Organization And Distribution Office, and over the next 5 years he soared upwards at an incredible pace, becoming a member of the Central Committee with Yagoda at the age of 17. Two years later, in 1935, when Yezhov became secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and chairman of the Control Commission, Stalin demanded that Yezhov intervene moderately in the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - "our father" had been paying attention to the "little sparrow" for a long time.
Yagoda smashed the assassination of Kirov, and Yezhov did not fail to live up to Stalin's expectations, and within half a year he purged 5,000 of the 25,000 members of the state security apparatus, which now has no backbone left over from the Dzerzhinsky era.
After Yezhov took the helm, the Great Purge really began. From the end of 1936 to 1937, Yezhov and his comrades arrested 1.5 million people in one fell swoop, shooting half of them. Thanks to Yezhov's efforts, Stalin became the most wanted assassination in history.
As long as Comrade Stalin smiles and marks a comrade with a red cross in his heart, Yezhov can quickly ask this person to confess to a series of appalling capital crimes. Stalin's prestige was unprecedentedly high, and every time the leaders of the Party and the army were called to a meeting, they found that many new seats were vacant.
Is Yezhov really the most vicious and despicable of the KGB bosses? When describing the results of the arrests, Yezhov listed: "In recent months, some of those who have been convicted ... There are 141 people in the People's Commissariat of Light Industry and 228 in the People's Commissariat of Education..." The delegates at the meeting said indignantly: Obviously, the people of the People's Commissariat of Light Industry have been arrested less!
For his outstanding performance, Yezhov was awarded the title of "favorite of the Soviet people", and a small town was renamed after him. Comrade Mikoyan began to toast: "Learn from Comrade Yezhov the Stalinist style of work, just as he learned from Comrade Stalin in the past and now..."
Now, Yezhov's head was hit by Stalin with a red cross.
On 9 January 1938, the Central Committee of the Party issued the Decision on the Fact of Wrongful dismissal of the Families of Those Arrested for Counter-Revolutionary Crimes, followed by a unanimous call for "no accusations without sufficient reason, and to distinguish the wrongdoers from the saboteurs". The wise man knows that this means that the benevolent and just Stalin has sensed how many bad things Yezhov has done and is ready to break the chaos.
The great search was transferred to the Ministry of internal affairs system, and Yezhov's newly replaced people were all purged.
In April, Yezhov was also appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport, and Beria assisted his Ministry of internal affairs. In November, Yezhov wrote a long confession to Stalin, and half a year later, Yezhov confessed to his crimes: German spies, members of the Trotsky cabal, and the murder of Stalin.
Yezhov has a unique and creepy collection: the bullets of Zinoviev and Kamenev, two of the great men of the year. On February 4, 1940, the world had one more bullet to shoot Yezhov.
(After Yezhov was "cleansed," his images were all cleaned.) ）
Yezhov was left with a 6-year-old daughter.
58 years later, his daughter demanded that Yezhov be rehabilitated, but the Russian Supreme Military Tribunal failed to grant former Soviet citizen Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov the right to be rehabilitated after his death.
(After the purging of Yezhov, the successor to the Great Purge, the third "butcher" Beria, was with Stalin, and Beria was also executed on December 23, 1953, and her mother, mother-in-law, wives, children, relatives and friends were all exiled to Siberia.) ）