Nikolai Yezhov
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Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, 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
Yezhov in 1938
The Gulag newspaper, Perekovka ("Reforging"), front page announcing the replacement of Genrikh Yagoda by Nikolai Yezhov
Yezhov's wife Yevgenia with their adopted daughter Natalia
Lavrentiy Beria
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Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the NKVD from 1938 to 1945 during the
Nikolai Yezhov
…worried Yezhov, who had earlier protected Lyushkov from the purges and now feared that he would be blamed for disloyalty. On 22 August 1938, NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. Beria had managed to survive the Great Purge and the "Yezhovshchina" during the years 1936–1938, even though he had almost…
Official portrait, c. 1938–1940
Young Svetlana Stalina sitting on Beria's lap, with Stalin (in the background) and Nestor Lakoba in 1931.
Beria in 1934
Nestor Lakoba, Nikita Khrushchev, Beria and Aghasi Khanjian during the opening of the Moscow Metro in 1936, the same year that Lakoba and Khanjian were killed by Beria.