January 3, 1895 - Nikolai Yezhov
As head of the NKVD during the bloodiest years of Stalin's Great Purge, Yezhov oversaw a machinery of mass detention, coerced confession, and execution that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives — a period so defined by his methods that it came to be called the Yezhovshchina. His administrative efficiency in directing the terror made him both indispensable and, ultimately, expendable; Stalin dissolved the apparatus around him and had him arrested on the same grounds used against countless victims before him.
From Wikipedia
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favor with Joseph Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Great Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Great Purge.
- Last updated on .