Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

that such murders have taken place, assert that opposition forces are responsible for such
casualties, or argue that they resulted from battles with government forces. AI defines
extrajudicial killings (also frequently referred to as “political killings”) as: “unlawful and
deliberate killings of persons by reason of their real or imputed political beliefs or activities,
religion, other conscientiously held beliefs, ethnic origin, sex, colour or language, and
carried out by order of a government or with its complicity” (Amnesty International,
1983, p. 5).
Ezhov, Nikolai (1895–1940). Nikolai Ezhov was the head of the main Soviet state
security agency, the NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, or People’s Commissariat
for Internal Affairs), between September 1936 and November 1938, and thus the
chief of Josef Stalin’s (1879–1953) system of repression throughout the most intensive years
of the period known as the “Great Terror.” Ezhov became a member of the Bolshevik Party
in April 1917, and, during the Russian Civil War of 1919–1921 was a political commissar
in the Red Army. Elevated to the position of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs
(and hence, commander of the NKVD) by Stalin, Ezhov was seen by Stalin every day in
a constant briefing about the state of the purges then taking place under Ezhov’s direction.
During the period of what became known as the Ezhovshchina (colloquially, the “Ezhov
era”), perhaps up to seven hundred thousand extrajudicial state murders took place, the
result of 1.5 million arrests on NKVD orders. For some time afterward, discussion ranged
over the extent to which Ezhov operated independently or as Stalin’s puppet, but an issue
such as this was as much a victim of Cold War considerations as of any serious quest for
the truth. The fact is that in the summer of 1938, Ezhov fell from Stalin’s favor, and a new
favorite, Lavrenti Beria (1899–1953), was appointed by Stalin as Ezhov’s assistant. By
November 1938 Ezhov had been dismissed as head of the NKVD, and Beria had taken
over as People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs. On Beria’s order, Ezhov was arrested on
April 10, 1939, tortured, tried secretly, and executed on February 4, 1940. At the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October 1956, in
which the crimes of the Stalin period were condemned, Party Chairman Nikita
Khrushchev (1894–1971) denounced Ezhov as a criminal and drug addict who deserved
his fate. It was only after 1987 that a full state investigation of the Ezhovshchina was
made, and several more years before scholars began working on Soviet files sufficiently to
bring to public attention the record of Ezhov’s crimes.
EZHOV, NIKOLAI
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