A Traitor, A Spy and Gay!

In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov accepted the mantle of People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, or head of the NKVD, the Russian secret police. He was fawning Stalinist and eager to prove his loyalty, which he did by arresting and executing about half of the military and political establishment during the Great Terror. As war approached he cleaned house, effectively swelling the population of the already over-stuffed GULAG system. In a stunningly stupid attempt to stamp out those he considered anti-Stalinist traitors, he called home most of Russia's impressive espionage agency and had them executed for...wait for it...espionage. Although the numbers have been skewed by anybody who has an interest in Russian history, the generally accepted total of deaths attributed to Yezhov runs somewhere around 20 million.

As sometimes happens in places where a veil of secrecy and obfuscation of facts can serve as a tool against insurgents, it took the rest of the world a long time before anyone started caring. Long before the Western world sat up and took notice, Yezhov was dead and forgotten. He asked to be relieved of duty in 1939 probably because of Stalin's growing embarrassment over the pile of bodies, although he was no slouch himself when it came to murdering his own people, and shortly afterwards was arrested and accused of being a traitor, a spy and a homosexual. He was executed by the system he so effectively ran for four years in 1940. I'm pretty sure he was given sufficient time to mull over the irony of his situation before they hauled him out and shot him.

The machine roared on, however, reducing the numbers of fatalities somewhat, until Stalin died in 1953. When the GULAG system was finally disassembled in 1962 the stunning details of the penal system in Russia started to become public. Not surprisingly Yezhov's reputation suffered in both camps, so to speak. He didn't start the fire but he fanned the flames of a conflagration that still haunts the dreams of thousands of survivors, their families and descendents. Most of us dream of fame and some of us achieve it.