Nikolai Yezhov: Soviet Secret Police Chief Behind Stalin’s Great Purge Executed in 1940

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · May 12, 2026 · 17m

Nikolai Yezhov was the Soviet secret police chief who oversaw Stalin’s Great Purge before becoming a victim of the same terror system he helped create. Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was the small, soft-spoken man who became the face of the Soviet Union’s greatest nightmare—the Great Purge. Born in 1895 in St. Petersburg to a poor family, he grew up with little education, drifting through factory jobs before joining the Bolsheviks in 1917. He fought in the Russian Civil War and later rose through the Communist Party bureaucracy, earning a reputation for relentless discipline. Barely 151 centimeters…