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Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist" (Portraits of Revolution Series) Hardcover – June 17, 2008

by J. Arch Getty (Author), Oleg V. Naumov (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 20 ratings
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The definitive study of Nikolai Yezhov’s rise to become the chief of Stalin’s secret police—and the dictator’s “iron fist”—during the Great Terror

Head of the secret police from 1937 to 1938, N. I. Yezhov was a foremost Soviet leader during these years, second in power only to Stalin himself. Under Yezhov’s orders, millions of arrests, imprisonments, deportations, and executions were carried out. This book, based upon unprecedented access to Communist Party archives and Yezhov’s personal archives, looks into the life and career of the enigmatic man who administered Stalin’s Great Terror.

J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov seek to answer a series of troubling questions. What kind of person calmly and efficiently sends thousands of innocent people to their deaths? What could prepare a man for such a role? How could a person whom acquaintances describe as friendly, pleasant, and even gallant carry out one of history’s most horrifying campaigns of terror? The authors uncover the full details of Yezhov’s rise to power and conclude that he was not merely Stalin’s tool but a skillful maneuverer in his own right. The historical documents provide a thorough portrait of Yezhov and reveal a man of fanatical dedication to his leader and his party—a man who became a willing murderer. Readers will find his story chilling, the more so in our own times, when the impulse to terror that engulfed Yezhov seems neither surprising nor unfamiliar.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  4. Publication date
    June 17, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    6.13 x 0.94 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0300092059
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0300092059
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Until this book by Getty and Naumov, no scholar has treated Yezhov as a human being and sought to understand why he did inhuman things. . . . It is a disturbing tale, an all too common tale in modern history.”―William Chase, author of Enemies Within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939



-- William Chase

“Yezhov is based on very thorough research, bringing to light many new and dramatic sources from the archives. The historiographical originality and verve of the work will make it an instant classic.”―Lynn Viola, author of The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements

-- Lynn Viola

"Thanks to Getty's diligent researches, Yezhov's career before the Great Purges finally comes into focus. Stalin's instrument he undoubtedly was, but not without agency and ambitions of his own."―Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago -- Sheila Fitzpatrick

"Meticulously sourced. . . . [An] absorbing read, and useful as a reminder of how cruel humans can be in the name of a cause."―James Critchlow, The New Leader -- James Critchlow ― The New Leader Published On: 2008-05-01

About the Author

J. Arch Getty is professor of history, UCLA. He is a foremost expert of the Stalin period and the history of the Soviet Communist Party. He lives in Los Angeles. Oleg V. Naumov is deputy director of the Moscow archive of the former Soviet Communist Party, RGASPI. Getty and Naumov are coauthors of The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939, published by Yale University Press.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (June 17, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300092059
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300092059
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 0.94 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 20 ratings

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J. Arch Getty

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3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
20 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Peter Moisan
5.0 out of 5 stars Peter Moisan's review
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2013
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Historically very accurate. I am very familiar with this time in history and the detail is well-researched and properly referenced. A good piece of history for this time.
3 people found this helpful
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Dmitry Jr
4.0 out of 5 stars Good research with some great information, but it's missing some details about the man himself
Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2022
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In this fascinating work, J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov discuss the NKVD secret police chief who presided over and how such a figure rose to such a position of cruel and bloody terror. Using the Soviet archives, the authors reveal that Yezhov was not “Stalin’s Loyal Executioner” but a human being who had his own ambitions in the emerging Soviet society, albeit cruel and efficient ambitions.
What stands Getty & Naumov’s study of Yezhov from other ones (notably Jansen & Petrov’s study) is the ready access of primary sources and the heavy reliance of it. The study does largely rely on primary sources to craft the life of Yezhov, memoirs are used sparingly, if at all. This can potentially move away from the “psychohistory” angle that is disturbingly prevalent in Soviet history (in case you do not know, this genre of history speculates on the personality of historical figures, as if you can guess the personality and mental capacity of someone who dies centuries ago) and ground it more into historical methodology. On the other hand, there can be little to say about our historical figures, as Getty & Naumov admit throughout the book. This does turn Yezhov’s biography less about the secret police chief and more about how Soviet bureaucrats functioned, adapted, and rose in the socialist meritocracy.
While this can potentially make the book dry and not entirely “scandalous,” it does make it a well-researched work of scholarship on how someone like Yezhov rose through the ranks and became the most dreaded figure in Soviet history. As a biography though, some speculation on Yezhov can be provided (but with great skepticism), such as whether or not Yezhov was a closeted homosexual. Indeed, he was charged with the crime of being gay after he was deposed from his position as NKVD chief and arrested and some memoirs speculate on his sexuality. It would have been interesting to include it in the biography (and maybe draw parallels to the FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover) and let the reader wonder if such cruelty of the Terror was the result of pent-up frustrations. Alas, Getty & Naumov put professionalism first and solely rely on documentable evidence instead of memoirs only briefly discussing Yezhov’s personality. Nor does Getty & Naumov discuss if Yezhov truly did plot to overthrow Stalin and the Communist Party. Thanks to research provided by Grover Furr in his Yezhov vs. Stalin, we can conclude that Yezhov did have plans to arrest Stalin and his close associates. Sadly, Getty & Naumov’s study does not go into that (rather focusing on Yezhov’s rise to prominence), giving the impression that Yezhov got drunk with extraordinary powers as secret police chief and panicked that his powers were about to be taken away. The information that Yezhov provides outside of the man himself is, on the other hand, truly enlightening despite the authors trying to not admit that the accusations in the Terror were actually true (and academic institutions cannot admit that socialists and communists were right all along right?!).
Yezhov should not be dismissed as a dry biography, for it provides many useful information on how Soviet bureaucrats worked in the country. The reliance on primary sources does make the study crucially reliable and worth sourcing. As a biography, some speculation on Yezhov’s character should be necessary in order to attempt to craft the man himself. The study does humanize Yezhov, which is a good thing, but there are some missing details that can benefit Getty & Naumov’s study.
2 people found this helpful
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BGH Kindle
4.0 out of 5 stars Smart, well thought through book.
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2010
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Biographies of people who performed monstrous deeds are often obsessed with the monstrosity at the exclusion of everything else; luckily, this book is not one of those.

The author paints a picture of a political system and a very ambitious and very capable man who fits this system perfectly. The book describes the daily mechanics of life of "nomenclatura" which makes it possible for all participants to feel proud of what they do and even how they do it. The details of the fabric of life of the aspiring communists and the process of becoming an ideal communist are described with clarity and dispassion that only the passage of time can permit. The author has the patience to keep the description of the horrible human toll of this process separate from the main narrative. He gives the reader a chance to be horrified by the thought that one does not have to be born a monster to become one. It is also an indictment of a system that creates monsters like Yezhov as a matter of course.

The book is both well-written biography and a well-painted portrait of the time.
8 people found this helpful
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Michael J. Mangan
1.0 out of 5 stars A PEDESTRIAN EFFORT
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2009
This is a poor effort at scholarship and a story so dull in the telling that it challenges the reader's ability to stay awake. The authors apparently set out to avoid everything in Yezhov's life that has any interest in today's world. He was the head of the NKVD, the Soviet equivalent of the Gestapo, for 26 months from 1936 to 1938. This was the period of the Great Terror when Yezhov supervised the arrest, torture, and murder of thousands. But the authors tell us that that story has been told elsewhere and they need not cover old ground.

What they do cover are the dry and uninteresting details of Yezhov's rise to power through the Communist party bureaucracy. They extol his virtues of hard work, attention to detail, administrative capability. They go on and on about his duties in the personnel cadres of the party and how he kept detailed records of personnel assignments in the Soviet government. But they tell us nothing about the kind of person he was. His personal life was apparently taboo for these authors. They give us the name of his first wife, for example, but the only way that one knows that he even had a second wife is from a picture caption "Yezhov's second wife."

The most troubling aspect of the book is that it leaves one with the impression that in order to obtain access to the Soviet archives on which the book is based, the authors had to pull their punches about Yezhov and the Soviet atrocities. The last chapter titled "Conclusion" is a very disturbing apologia for Yezhov's specialty of torture and mass murder. Consider the following in reference to people like Yezhov and Eichmann:

"They did not think that what they were doing was evil; they thought they were fighting evil. They thought that what they were doing was a nasty job that had to be done to ensure a happy future. To dismiss that as simple evil and to probe no further is to project particular values onto them and to explain their actions by our standards of morality." (p. 221)

Oh, really! The authors don't think that torturing and murdering other human beings is "simple evil." They think that to condemn the people who do such things is an imposition of our subjective "standards of morality" on the misunderstood Yezhov? Apparently, the authors have other standards of morality in mind - clearly the basic tenet of the Communist ideology, namely, that any means to achieve their utopian socialist ends is proper.

Perhaps this review is a bit too harsh on the authors. On the same page as the quote above, they acknowledge that the "Stalin terror was unbelievably cruel and horrible" and that "millions of lives were snuffed out or needlessly destroyed." But to even venture a rationale to explain such conduct is intellectually bankrupt. Didn't we learn anything from the Holocaust?
19 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Pierre-Paul Larochelle
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on December 5, 2014
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THE book to understand Yezhov and the brutal NKVD.
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Chris Remington
5.0 out of 5 stars Yezhov - The rise of Stalin's 'Iron Fist'
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2012
Verified Purchase
Once again J Arch Getty and O Naumov are going to rattle cages about the great purges and the misrepresentation of Stalin and the Bolsheviks during the period of 1930-1939. Once more the archives demonstrate that Stalin was correct and the anti-communist elements and fifth column - from Trotsky to Khrushchev - were wrong. Interesting that the man - Yezhov - portrayed as some manic blood sucking monster never was denounced as an 'enemy of the people' and his family survived to old age without reference to a camp or threat. Suggest you read 'Khrushchev Lied' by Grover Furr as accompanying document.
One person found this helpful
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yves verreydt
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2018
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With correct investigation on historic facts !
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Not enough info
Reviewed in Canada on January 27, 2017
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This book was well written but almost in a pro Yezhov way. They didn't go into the purge years and write about his behaviour during the lates 1930s. Kind of a disappointment.
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Mr. John R. Finch
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2015
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Adequate, but a fuller picture is now needed.
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