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Nikolai Yezhov's time in charge is sometimes known as the 'Yezhovshchina' ('the Yezhov era'), a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became a victim of it himself. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940.<br/><br/> By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political non-person. Among art historians, he has the nickname 'The Vanishing Commissar' because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favor 'disappear'.
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev (September 23 1883 – August 25, 1936), born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, known also under the name Hirsch Apfelbaum, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician.<br/><br/> Zinoviev is best remembered as the longtime head of the Communist International and the architect of several failed attempts to transform Germany into a communist country during the early 1920s. He was in competition against Joseph Stalin who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership. He was the chief defendant in a 1936 show trial, the Trial of the Sixteen, that marked the start of the so-called Great Terror in the USSR and resulted in his execution the day after his conviction in August 1936.
Nikolai Yezhov's time in charge is sometimes known as the 'Yezhovshchina' ('the Yezhov era'), a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became a victim of it himself. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940.<br/><br/> By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political non-person. Among art historians, he has the nickname 'The Vanishing Commissar' because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favor 'disappear'.
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the NKVD field units responsible for anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front during World War II.<br/><br/> Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labor camps and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret defense institutions known as <i>sharashkas</i>, critical to the war effort. He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as 'our Himmler'.<br/><br/> Beria was promoted to First Deputy Premier, where he carried out a campaign of liberalization. He was briefly a part of the ruling 'troika' with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. Beria's overconfidence in his position after Stalin's death led him to misjudge other Politburo members. During the coup d'état led by Nikita Khrushchev and assisted by the military forces of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Beria was arrested on charges of treason during a meeting in which the full Politburo condemned him. The compliance of the NKVD was ensured by Zhukov's troops, and after interrogation Beria was taken to the basement of the Lubyanka and shot.
Nikolai Yezhov's time in charge is sometimes known as the 'Yezhovshchina' ('the Yezhov era'), a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became a victim of it himself. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940.<br/><br/> By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political non-person. Among art historians, he has the nickname 'The Vanishing Commissar' because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favor 'disappear'.
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the NKVD field units responsible for anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front during World War II.<br/><br/> Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labor camps and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret defense institutions known as <i>sharashkas</i>, critical to the war effort. He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as 'our Himmler'.<br/><br/> Beria was promoted to First Deputy Premier, where he carried out a campaign of liberalization. He was briefly a part of the ruling 'troika' with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. Beria's overconfidence in his position after Stalin's death led him to misjudge other Politburo members. During the coup d'état led by Nikita Khrushchev and assisted by the military forces of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Beria was arrested on charges of treason during a meeting in which the full Politburo condemned him. The compliance of the NKVD was ensured by Zhukov's troops, and after interrogation Beria was taken to the basement of the Lubyanka and shot.
Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, was arrested and executed in 1938 as an 'enemy of the people'. In 1940 Yezhov was shot in an execution chamber with a sloping floor, which was for hosing and had been built according to Yezhov's own specifications near the Lubyanka.<br/><br/> After his execution, Yezhov was painstakingly removed from this image, earning him the posthumous nickname 'the Vanishing Commissar'.
Nikolai Yezhov's time in charge is sometimes known as the 'Yezhovshchina' ('the Yezhov era'), a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became a victim of it himself. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940.<br/><br/> By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political non-person. Among art historians, he has the nickname 'The Vanishing Commissar' because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favor 'disappear'.