Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell from Stalin's favour and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.
Yezhov in 1938
Yezhov's wife Yevgenia with their adopted daughter Natalia
The Gulag newspaper, Perekovka ("Reforging"), front page announcing the replacement of Genrikh Yagoda by Nikolai Yezhov
Yezhov was posthumously removed from pictures, such as here where he stood next to Joseph Stalin.
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, abbreviated NKVD, was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
Early NKVD leaders, Genrikh Yagoda, then (1924) 1st deputy head of SOU OGPU Vyacheslav Menzhinsky then head of SOU OGPU and deputy head OGPU, and Felix Dzerzhinsky chief of OGPU, 1924
NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda (middle) inspecting construction of what was then called the Moskva-Volga Canal, 1935. Behind him is Nikita Khrushchev
Lavrentiy Beria with Stalin (in background) and Stalin's daughter Svetlana
