Encyclopedia of Russian History

Yevtushenko soon began travelling abroad, a proclivity that has eventually taken him by his own count to ninety-five different countries. More than any other aspect of his activities, his freedom and frequency of travel led others to question the fundamental nature of his relationship with the Soviet authorities. His own protestations about how he was continually censored, rebuked, and restricted, and how he persistently used his position to plead for others in more parlous situations, have increasingly been interpreted as part and parcel of his conniving in being used as a licensed dissident

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YEZHOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH

whose fundamental adherence to the Soviet system and willingness to accommodate himself to it never wavered. His outstanding poetic mastery has never been in doubt, but beginning in the 1970s, the rise of poets who rejected Yevtushenko’s flamboyant style, public posturing, and acceptance of privilege led to a growing view of him as a figure of the hopelessly compromised past. Partly in response, Yevtushenko branched out into other areas of creativity. During the later 1980s he demonstratively led the way in publishing Russian poetry that had been censored during the Soviet period. Since the collapse of the USSR he has lived mainly in the United States, regularly traveling back to Russia for public appearances, and has continued to publish prolifically in a variety of genres and argue his case in media interviews. See also: MAYAKOVSKY, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH; OKUDZHAVA, BULAT SHALOVICH; THAW, THE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. (1991). The Collected Poems, 1952-1990, ed. Albert C. Todd. New York: Holt. Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. (1995). Don’t Die Before You’re Dead. New York: Random House.

GERALD SMITH

YEZHOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH

(1895-1940), USSR State Security chief (1936-1938); organizer of the Great Terror of 1937-1938.

Of humble origins and scant education, Nikolai Yezhov rose from tailor to industrial worker, soldier, and Red Army and Communist Party functionary. Since the early 1920s he was a provincial party secretary in Krasnokokshaisk (Mari province), Semipalatinsk, Orenburg, and Kzyl-Orda (Kazakh republic). In 1927 he was transferred to Moscow to become involved in personnel policy for the party Central Committee and the USSR People’s Commissariat of Agriculture. In 1930 he was promoted to chief of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee. In 1934 he was included in the Central Committee and appointed chief of the party Control Commission.

From 1935 on, as Secretary of the Central Committee, he was in the top echelon of the party. He was charged with supervising the USSR People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), or state

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security service, and its investigation of Leningrad party chief Sergei Kirov’s murder, as well as with organizing major purge operations in the party in order to curb the party apparatus, which Josef Stalin deemed too independent. From 1936 on he organized major show trials against Stalin’s rivals in the party. On September 25, 1936, Stalin appointed him People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs. This was followed by a large purge operation in the NKVD involving the liquidation of his predecessor Genrikh Yagoda and his supporters, as well as mass arrests within the party.

On July 30, 1937, by order of Stalin and the Party Politburo, Yezhov issued NKVD Order 00447, “Concerning the Operation Aimed at the Subjecting to Repression of Former Kulaks, Criminals, and Other Anti-Soviet Elements.” The operation was to involve the arrest of almost 270,000 people, some 76,000 of whom were immediately to be shot. Their cases were to be considered by “troikas,” or bodies of the party chief, NKVD chief, and procurator of each USSR province, who were given quotas of arrests and executions. In return, the regional authorities requested even higher quotas, with the encouragement of the central leadership.

Another mass operation was directed against foreigners living in the USSR, especially those belonging to the nationalities of neighboring countries (e.g., Poles, Germans, Finns). The Great Terror was intended to liquidate elements thought insufficiently loyal, as well as alleged “spies.” All in all, from August 1937 through November 1938, more than 1.5 million people were arrested for counterrevolutionary and other crimes against the state, and nearly 700,000 of them were shot; the rest were sent to Gulag concentration camps. By order of Yezhov, and with Yezhov personally participating, the prisoners were tortured in order to make them “confess” to crimes they had not committed; the use of torture had the approval of Stalin and the Politburo.