Nikolai yezhov biography of george

Primary Sources

(1) Nadezhda Khazina, the wife of Osip Mandelstam, who died while in a NKVD labour camp, wrote about Nikolai Yezhov in her book, Hope Against Hope ()

In the period of the Yezhov terror - the mass arrests came in waves of varying intensity - there must sometimes have been no more room in the jails, and to those of us still free it looked as though the highest wave had passed and the terror was abating.

After each show trial, people sighed, "Well, it's all over at last." What they meant was: "Thank God, it looks as though I've escaped. But then there would be a new wave, and the same people would rush to heap abuse on the "enemies of the people."

We first met Yezhov in the s when Mandelstam and I were staying in a Government villa in Sukhumi.

It is hard to credit that we sat at the same table, eating, drinking and exchanging small talk with this man who was to be one of the great killers of our time, and who totall