Nikolaï Iejov

Nikolaï Ivanovitch Iejov [[Cyrillic] НиколайИвановичЕжов] was a Policier and Soviet politician born in 1895 with Saint-Pétersbourg in Russia, and dead shot on order of Stalin and Lavrenti Beria on February 3rd, 1940 with Moscow.

Supreme leader of NKVD in 1936-1938, he is the principal craftsman of the implementation of the Grandes Stalinist Purgings.

Biography

Resulting from a poor family, Iejov starts to work as working as from 14 years, in particular engaged at Poutilov with Saint-Pétersbourg like apprentice furrier. It adheres to the Bolchévik party after 1917.

Until the end of the Twenties, it is permanent Party in the Kazakhstan. Its rise begins in 1929, it climbs the levels quickly: vice-police chief of the people to agriculture, it is charged the following year with the internal organization of the party. He indeed manages the sections of the executives and the assignments of the Central committee, function which gives him capacity and especially influence on the apparatus.

Accomplished type of the apparatchik unconditionally faithful to Stalin, Iejov is member of the Central committee in 1934. It directs then the section of the central committee in charge of industry before being elected at the executive commission of the Komintern.

Appointed vice-president of the central Commission of control, it supervises at this station the activity of NKVD (Police station of the People to the Interior matters). In 1936, it replaces inside Guenrikh Iagoda at the post of police chief of the people where it continues and accentuates the purgings undertaken by his predecessor, from where the name Iejovtchina which one gives to this repression which gains in intensity.

Indeed, supreme leader of the political police during two years - September 25th 1936 with the November 24th 1938 - it is for this reason the principal one carrying out Grandes purgings decided by Joseph Stalin. Thus, on order of GenSek, it assembles in 1937 a file of charge against the chief of the Red Army , Toukhatchevski. Instrumentalisé, consciously or not, by the services of Heydrich, chief of RSHA, it is convinced that the staff is dependant with the Nazi Germany, which leads the NKVD to liquidate the 3/4 of the Soviet general officers in a few months. In addition, he does not hesitate to shoot his predecessor Iagoda in 1938 after having stopped it in April of the previous year.

Undoubtedly too implied in these eliminations, Iejov is in its dislocated turn of its functions in December 1938. It is replaced by Lavrenti Beria which temporarily puts it at the variation police medium. Appointed Police chief of the People to the Maritime transport and river, it does not benefit a long time from its new functions. Stopped in 1939, at the time of its lawsuit, Iejov admits having “ purged some: 14000 tchékistes ”, which is worth to him to be quickly shot, in February 1940, in its prison.

Called “ the dwarf sanguinaire ” (it measured 1,54 perhaps m), Iejov was liquidated to endorse the responsibility for the purgings to the eyes of the opinion. Rehabilitations having been marked following its arrest, the message then delivered was that of the right punishment falling on the executant who would have, from his own boss but to his risks and dangers, exceeded the orders given by Stalin.

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