S3E1: Nikolai Yezhov

A man variously known as the “Iron Hedgehog” and a “malignant Dwarf”, but also as charming, courteous, and, most importantly “a good party man,” a man who held the position of the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs - the head of the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge - Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov.

SOURCES:

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940. London: Verso, 2003.

"Gay in the Gulag." Libcom. https://libcom.org/history/gay-gulag

Getty, J. Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Getty, John Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

Lewin, Moshe. The Soviet Century. London: Verso, 2005.

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Hachette UK, 2010. 

Weston, Fred. "From Emancipation to Criminalization: Stalinist Persecution of Homosexuals from 1934." https://www.marxist.com/from-emancipation-to-criminalisation-stalinist-persecution-of-homosexuals-from-1934.htm

Whyte, Harry. Letter to Joseph Stalin, May 1934. https://www.marxist.com/letter-to-stalin-can-a-homosexual-be-in-the-communist-party.htm

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Image via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ezhov_NI.jpg