Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

After Evgenia’s funeral—which he did not attend—Ezhov brought a letter of resignation with him to a four-hour meeting with Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. Accused of doing too much, Ezhov blindly flagellated himself for having done too little, for “lack of Bolshevik vigilance” in leaving so many spies and conspirators untouched, in letting Liushkov and Uspensky escape arrest, in failing to consult the party. By December Ezhov had only three posts left: secretary of the Central Committee, chairman of the Party Control Commission, and commissar for water transport. He never entered Stalin’s office again. He appeared at some public occasions, but Stalin did not shake his hand. Ezhov went on another binge with Vladimir Konstantinov and others.

He should have spent the new year handing over the Lubianka to its new master but was too drunk to turn up and left behind the dossiers he had compiled on Politburo figures. Beria gathered the evidence to destroy him. In Ezhov’s office were found hidden behind books six vodka bottles, three full, two empty, and one half empty, and the four used revolver bullets wrapped in paper inscribed “Kamenev,” “Zinoviev,” and “Smirnov” (shot twice). Ezhov owned more handguns than Iagoda, but his library contained only 115 books. Even water transport was now beyond Ezhov; he was formally reprimanded for incompetence by Molotov. On January 21, 1939, Ezhov’s picture appeared for the final time in Pravda and he attended his last Politburo meeting eight days later. He was not elected to, and not allowed to speak at, the eighteenth party congress in March; a penciled plea to Stalin for a talk was ignored. His arrest on April 10 went unreported. Those following the announcement of appointments merely saw new commissars of sea and river transport. Ezhov and his commissariat vanished. The citizens of Ezhovsk-Cherkessk woke up on April 11, 1939, to find their town renamed Cherkessk.

Ezhov was taken to the secret prison of Sukhanovka outside Moscow, which he himself had had converted from a monastery and in which the church had been converted to an execution chamber with an oil-fired crematorium where the altar had been. Ezhov had hysterics; he was beaten. He was interrogated by Beria’s deputy Bogdan Kobulov, then by Kobulov’s assistant, the sullen and vicious Boris Rodos.⁴⁹ Rodos had crippled other detainees and was warned not to kill this frail, tubercular alcoholic. Ezhov was charged with spying, conspiring to overthrow the government, murder, and, worse in Stalin’s eyes, sodomy. Ezhov penciled an appeal to Beria: “Lavrenti! Despite all the harshness of the conclusions that I have deserved and which party duty compels me to accept, I assure you in all conscience that I remain devoted to the party, to Comrade Stalin, to the end. Yours, Ezhov.”

Mentally and physically painful interrogations went on throughout June; Ezhov admitted virtually everything. In July questioning shifted from treason to degeneracy. None of this—unlike Iagoda’s sins—was made public, although because of Beria’s prurience and desire to disillusion Stalin with his “little blackberry,” Ezhov was forced to write his sexual autobiography. After that, the accusations of sabotage seemed banal.

In autumn 1939 Ezhov was handed over to a quieter interrogator, Esaulov, a man who neither hit prisoners nor drank before interrogating them. Ezhov now retracted his confessions to spying. In January 1940 he nearly died of pneumonia and kidney disease and had to be rushed to the hospital. Back at Sukhanovka, Ezhov was handed over to Military Procurator N. P. Afanasiev, who would oversee both trial and execution. On February 1, 1940, Ezhov was charged with five capital crimes. He threatened to retract his confession in court unless he could talk to a member of the Politburo. Ezhov was taken to Beria’s office in the prison. Beria gave Ezhov the first glass of vodka he had tasted in nine months and promised that his relatives would live—Ezhov’s brother Ivan and at least one nephew had in fact been shot two weeks previously. As for Beria’s reassurance, “Don’t think you will inevitably be shot. If you confess and tell everything honestly, your life will be preserved,” Ezhov knew its value; he had often given such promises.

The next day, February 3, Ezhov was tried by Ulrikh, who had a year ago brought him brandy and flowers. Ezhov admitted everything except terrorism and espionage—sodomy had been dropped from the charges. He was allowed an unusually long last word of twenty minutes. He complained of Rodos’s beatings; he admitted only neglect, in purging too few—14,000—in the NKVD. If he had been a terrorist, he could have easily killed members of the government with his own “technology.” His moral degeneracy, he argued, was irrelevant; he had worked like an ox. He ended: