Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts

Over the course of Lavrenti Beria's investigations into abuses of power by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs during the Yezhovshchina a number of responsible officials were subjected to interrogation (sometimes including torture), one of which was Nikolai Yezhov, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.

A collection of all publically available transcripts of his interrogations has been compiled by Grover Furr.

Interpretive Synopses

Recommended Formatting

(Summaries of the transcripts contents are to be added here. A note to anyone who's : With primary sources like these there should be multiple Synopses in blocks sorted by author to avoid muddling responsibilties for interpretation. To make a coherent case against the liberal narrative on the Yezhovshchina there needs to be explicit compartmentalisation of primary evidence, their interpretations and the ideological extrapolations thereof.)

Synopses by Author

(To be added)

Full Transcripts

Introduction by Grover Furr

We do not know how many interrogations of Ezhov are in existence. All the prosecution materials concerning virtually all the important matters of the later 1930s in the USSR are still top-secret, kept in the Presidential Archives of the Russian Federation. I have simply translated those texts that have been published as of this date (July 2010).

I have compiled and translated these confessions from the following "semi-official" sources:

• Briukhanov, Boris Borisovich, and Shoshkov, Evgenii Nikolaevich. Opravdaniiu ne podlezhit. Ezhov i Ezhovshchina 1936-1938 gg. Sankt-Peterburg: OOO "Petrovskii Fond" 1998.
• Polianskii, Aleksei. Ezhov. Istoriia «zheleznogo» stalinskogo narkoma. Moscow: «Veche», «Aria-AiF», 2001.
• Pavliukov, Aleksei. Ezhov. Biografiia. Moscow: Zakharov, 2007.

I term these sources "semi-official" since they are quoted unproblematically by all the anticommunist scholars. These scholars ignore them almost completely, and ignore their implications completely, but they do not consider the documents false.

In addition I have used these sources, which are more or less "official":

• Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD – NKGB – GUKR «SMERSH». 1939 – mart 1946. Moscow: «Materik», 2006.
• Petrov, Nikita, and Iansen [Jansen], Mark. «Stalinskii pitomets» -- Nikolai Ezhov. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008.

A few remarks have been taken from other sources, mainly Vassilii Soima, Zapreshchennyi Stalin, Chast' 1. Moscow: OLMA-PRESS, 2001. Where possible I have checked the text with the versions online at http://perpetrator2004.narod.ru/ , "Documents of Soviet Power and of Soviet-Communist Terror", which has used the sources above.

Here I only present them in English translation for interested students. Naturally they must be studied. I’m doing that but I do not present my results here.

NOTE: We have one very important confession by Mikhail Frinovskii, Ezhov's Assistant Commissar -- that of April 11, 1939. Also published in the Lubianka volume cited above, I have put a translation of it online here.

It should be read in connection with Ezhov's confessions.

- Grover Furr / 2010-7-31

Ezhov interrogation 04.18 – 04.20.39

519-520

"Question: You have been arrested as a traitor to the party and an enemy of the people. The investigation possesses sufficient facts to expose you completely at the first attempt to conceal your crimes. We propose that you not wait to be exposed but proceed to confessions of your black traitorous work against the party and Soviet power.

Answer: It is hard for one such as I, who only lately enjoyed the party’s trust, to confess to betrayal and treason. But now that I am faced with answering before the investigation for my crimes, I wish to be thoroughly frank and truthful.

I am not the person the party took me for. Hiding behind a mask of party loyalty, for many years I have deceived and been two-faced while conducting a ferocious hidden struggle against the party and the Soviet State."

Summary of other parts of Ezhov’s statement.

"Ezhov started the history of his ‘fall into sin’ in 1921, when he worked in Tartaria and under the influence of anarcho-syndicalist ideas supposedly joined the local group of the ‘Workers’ Opposition.’ In the following years, the period of inner-party discussions of the 1930s, he also supposedly expressed differences in his political views with the general line of the party. However, the investigators showed no interest in digging so deeply into the garbage-heap of history, and they did not permit Ezhov to deviate long from the basic theme."

Quotation:

"Question: What is the point of this expansive story about these or those ‘political waverings’ of yours? As a long-time agent of foreign intelligence services you must confess about your direct espionage work. Talk about that! Answer: All right, I will go directly to the moment when my espionage ties were formed."

Summary continues:

"Ezhov related that he was drawn into espionage work by his friend F.M. Konar, who had long been a Polish agent. Konar learned political news from Ezhov and gave them to his bosses in Poland and on one occasion told Ezhov about this and proposed that he volunteer to begin working for the Poles. Since Ezhov had in fact already become an informant of Polish intelligence, since he had transmitted to them via Konar many significant party and state secrets, he supposedly had no other choice than to agree with this proposal.

The Poles supposedly shared a part of the intelligence received from Ezhov with their allies the Germans, and so after a time an offer of collaboration from the latter was also made.

According to Ezhov Marshal A.I. Egorov, first assistant Commissar for Defense, acted as the middleman [between Ezhov and the Germans]. He met with Ezhov in the summer of 1937 and told him that he knew about the latter’s ties with the Poles, that he himself was a German spy who on orders from the German authorities had organized a group of conspirators in the Red Army, and that he had been given a directive to establish close working contact between his group and Ezhov.

Ezhov agreed with this proposal and promised to protect Egorov’s men from arrest."

Ezhov interrogation 04.23.39 (04.24.39)

Quotes are same as beginning and end of Ezhov conf. dated April 24, 1939 in Petrov & Iansen, 365-6 and Pavliukov, 522-523.

Pavliukov says 10 pages in length. P&Ia cite same archive, different location, 4 pages in length.

Pavliukov – no sign this confession was forced, or even asked about this (522).

Petrov & Iansen, 365-6:

"I think it essential that I inform the investigation of a series of new facts concerning my moral-personal dissoluteness. I mean my longtime vice of homosexuality.

This began in my early youth when I lived as an apprentice to a tailor. At about the age of 15 or 16 years I had a few instances of perverse sexual acts with other apprentices of my own age of the same tailor shop. This vice renewed itself in the old Tsarist army in frontline conditions. Aside from one chance contact with one of the solders of our company I had relations with a certain Filatov, my friend from Leningrad with whom we served in the same regiment. Our relations were "mutual", that is the "female" part was played first by one side, then by the other. Afterwards Filatov was killed at the front.

In 1919 I was appointed commissar of the 2^nd base of radio-telegraph formations. My secretary was a certain Antoshin. I know that in 1937 he was still in Moscow and was working somewhere as chief of a radio station. He is an engineer radio technician. In 1919 I had mutual homosexual relations with this same Antoshin.

In 1924 I was working in Semiplatinsk [now the city of Semei, Kazakhstan – GF]. My old friend Dement’ev went there with me. On several occasions in 1924 I had homosexual relations with him in which only I played the active role. [Ezhov apparently means Dement’ev played the "female" role. – GF]

In 1925 in Orenburg I established homosexual relations with a certain Boiarskii, at that time the chairman of the Kazakh oblast’ trade union council. As far as I know he is now working as the director of an artistic theater in Moscow. Our relations were mutual.

At that time he and I had just arrived in Orenburg and were living in the same hotel. Our relations were short-lived, until the arrival of his wife, who arrived quickly.

In the same year 1925 the capital of Kazakhstan was transferred from Orenburg to Kzyl-Orda, whence I also went to work. Soon F.I. Goloshchekin arrived there as the secretary of the regional [Party] committee (he is now employed as a chief arbiter). He arrived as a bachelor, without a wife, and I was also living as a bachelor. Before my departure for Moscow (for about 2 months) I had de facto moved into his apartment and often spent the night there. I quickly established homosexual relations with him as well, and they continued off and on until my departure. As with the others, our relations were mutual.

In 1938 I had two instances of homosexual activity with Dement’ev, with whom I had also had relations in 1924, as I stated above. These relations were in Moscow in the autumn of 1938 in my apartment, after I had already been dismissed from the post of Commissar of Internal Affairs. Dement’ev lived with me at that time about two months.

A little later, also in 1938, there occurred two instances of homosexual activity between myself and Konstantinov. I have known Konstantinov since 1918 in the army. He worked with me before 1921. Since 1921 we hardly saw each other at all. In 1938 on my invitation he began to visit me often at my apartment and two or three times he was at my dacha. He came twice with his wife; the other visits were without wives. He often stayed the night with me. As I have said above, at that time he and I had two instances of homosexual relations. Our relations were mutual. I should also say that during one of his visits to my apartment with his wife I also had sexual relations with her.

All of this was accompanied, as a rule, with heavy drinking.

I give this information to the investigation as an additional detail characterizing my moral dissolution.

- April 24, 1939. N. Ezhov. -

Ezhov interrogation of 04.26.1939

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No. 37. Communication from L.P. Beria to J.V. Stalin about N.I. Ezhov with attachment of the transcript of his interrogation

April 27, 1937

No. 1268/b Top secret

Comrade STALIN

Attached to this I am sending you the transcript of the interrogation of Ezhov of April 26, 1937. Interrogation continues.

People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Union of SSR L. Beria

TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERROGATION

OF THE ARRESTED PERSON EZHOV NIKOLAI IVANOVICH

Of April 26 1939

EZHOV N.I., year of birth 1895, native of the city of Leningrad, former member of the ACP(b) since 1917. Before arrest – People’s Commissar of Water Transportation.

Question: At the last interrogation you confessed that over the period of ten years you carried out espionage work for Poland. However, you hid a number of your espionage contacts. The investigation demands from you truthful and exhaustive confessions on this question.

Answer: I must admit that, although I gave truthful confessions about my espionage work for Poland, I really did hide from the investigation my espionage ties with the Germans.

Question: With what aims did you try to lead the investigation away from your espionage ties with the Germans.

Answer: I did not want to confess to the investigation about my direct espionage ties with the Germans, all the more since my collaboration with German intelligence is not limited only to espionage work assigned by German intelligence, I organized an anti-Soviet conspiracy and was preparing a

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coup d'�tat by means of terrorist acts against the leaders of the party and government.

Question: Confess concerning all the espionage ties of yours that you tried to conceal from the investigation, and the circumstances of your recruitment.

Answer: I was recruited as an agent of German intelligence in 1934 under the following circumstances. In the summer of 1934 I was sent abroad for treatment to Vienna to Professor Norden.

Question: Who is Norden?

Answer: Norden is by nationality a German, who moved from Frankfurt to Vienna for reasons unknown to me, a very big specialist in medical science, who is co-owner of many sanatoria not only in Austria but in several other countries of Europe.

To Vienna, to Norden, for treatment sick people used to go from many countries of the world, including many of the leading workers from the USSR.

Question: Namely who?

Answer: As far as I know, Norden treated Chubar’, Gamarnik, Iakir, Veinberg, and Metalikov.

Question: Who recruited you?

Answer: I was recruited for collaboration with German intelligence by Doctor Engler, who is the senior assistant of Norden.

Question: I don’t understand what connection Dr. Engler has to the work of German intelligence?

Answer: To answer that question in detail I ask that you permit me to tell about the circumstances under which I was recruited by Engler.

Question: Speak.

Answer: Upon my arrival in Vienna at the end of 1934 I was housed in a very comfortable cottage of the sanatorium.

In the third week of my stay at the sanatorium I entered into an intimate relationship with a nurse whose name I do not remember. The first night everything went well, but during her next shift Dr. Engler suddenly entered my room, found me in a compromising position with the nurse and raised a scandal. He immediately called the nurse, who ran out of the room with a cry, and Engler began to explain himself to me in broken Russian.

He declared: “We have never had such a scandalous event at the sanatorium. This is not a house of pleasure, you will ruin the good name of the sanatorium. Here we have scientists from the whole world, and yet you are doing things like this. I must expel you from the sanatorium, and we will inform our government of this disgraceful affair. I cannot guarantee that this scandalous story will not appear in the press.”

I began to beg Engler not to do that and offered him money. Engler became even more heated and demonstratively left.

The next day I went myself to Engler to apologize for my rudeness, for the money I offered him, and told him I would like to settle the whole affair in peace. In a tone that did not permit of any objections, Engler offered me this: “Either you will collaborate with the Germans in future, or we will discredit you in the press. Choose.”

Then and there Engler told me that he knew very well who I was, what I do in the USSR and what position I occupy in the part (at that time I was working as the chief of the industrial section of the Central Committee of the ACP(b) and as vice-chairman of the Commission of Party Control).

I was nonplussed and understood that the nurse had been sent to me according to a previously-arranged plan, and asked Engler permission to think a bit. He agreed.

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Since I was not hurrying to decide this question on the second or third day Engler himself approached me and asked: “Well, you have thought enough, what have you decided to do?” Again I tried to beg him to settle everything nicely, without any scandalous stories. He completely refused. Engler declared directly that that day he would report this story to the president of the police, and tomorrow a report about my disgraceful behavior would appear in the Austrian press. “Consider,” he continued, “that besides debauchery in the sanatorium you have also tried to bribe our employees.”

I decided to agree to Engler’s proposal.

Question: The conditions of your recruitment by German intelligence that you have related do not inspire belief.

It is incomprehensible and strange that you should have agreed to be recruited when all you had to fear was publicity in the foreign press about your intimate relationship with some woman.

Speak plainly: how did German intelligence get its claws into you?

Answer: At that time I had only just been promoted to important political work. Publicity about this incident would have discredited me in the USSR and possibly led to the exposure of my personal depravity. Besides that, before this, as the investigation is aware, I had already been tied with Polish intelligence, so there was nothing for me to lose.

Question: And you tied yourself to the obligation to work for the Germans too?

Answer: I had to. Engler demanded from me a short written promise about collaboration with German intelligence, which I did.

Question: That is you gave them a written promise?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Did they give you a code name?

Answer: No.

Question: What else?

Answer: After my recruitment was formalized I asked Engler to inform me with whom and how I was to maintain my relations with them. Engler answer that he himself was a collaborator with the military intelligence of Germany.

He said, in his own words, that he would maintain ties with me personally.

Question: It’s unclear how Engler could maintain ties with you if he lived in Vienna and you in Moscow?

Answer: It was the case that Engler proposed to move to Moscow to work to take advantage of the fact that the medical directorate of the Kremlin in 1932-33 had raised the question of the organization in the USSR of a special sanatorium of Norden’s type.

As head doctor of this sanatorium it had been proposed to invite one of Norden’s assistants. Engler informed me that negotiations were being conducted with him, and he had given his agreement to move to Moscow. However the matter has been dragged out because Moscow would not accept the conditions that Engler wanted.

Question: You have just said that negotiations had begun with Engler concerning his move to Moscow to work. Who was conducting these negotiations?

Answer: Engler told me that he was negotiating with Metalikov, the former chief of the medical directorate of the Kremlin, who would come to Vienna specially for this purpose.

Question: What tasks did Engler give you after your recruitment?

Answer: Above all Engler gave me the task of rendering any cooperation I could towards the quickest resolution of the question of his invitation to Moscow. I promised Engler to take all the measures that I could to speed up this question.

Question: Did you fulfill this demand of Engler’s?

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Answer: Upon my return to Moscow I immediately talked with Metalikov and recommended that he put this question before the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR for resolution.

After a little time Metalikov informed me that the CPC had rejected this proposal. Then I advised Metalikov to put the question to the Central Committee of the ACP(b).

The Politburo of the CC ACP(b) decided not to invite Engler and instead to send a team of Soviet doctors to Norden to work, and after that to select specialists from among them for the position of chief doctor for the “Barvikh” sanatorium, which would be founded anew along Norden’s line.

This is why Engler’s arrival in Moscow did not take place.

Question: Did you pass to Engler for German intelligence any information that constituted specially guarded state secrets of the Soviet Union?

Answer: During the time of my direct contact with Engler in Vienna and then in Bad Gasstein (a spa of radioactive waters in Austria) where he came twice to contact me I informed Engler only about the general situation in the Soviet Union and the Red Army, in which he was especially interested.

Question: You are avoiding a direct answer. The investigation is interested in the question of what information of an espionage character was given by you to Engler?

Answer: Within the limits of what I knew by memory I told Engler everything about the situation of armament and military preparedness of the Red Army, especially emphasizing the weakest places in the military preparedness of the RKKA [Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, the full name for the Red Army at that time – GF]. I told English that the Red Army was very backward in artillery, both in the quality of artillery weapons and in their quantity, and was significantly behind the artillery armament of the leading capitalist countries.

In touching upon the general economic situation in the USSR I told Engler about the difficulties of building the kolkhozes and about the great problems in the country’s industrialization, stopping especially upon the slow assimilation of the newly constructed enterprises. I illustrated this with the example of the Stalingrad tractor factory, where at the moment that production was under way a significant part of its valuable equipment had already broken down. Consequently, as I told Engler, success in the area of industrialization of the USSR is doubtful.

Further I informed Engler of the immense disproportion in the growth of different sectors of industry which had a strong effect on the general economic situation in the country. I especially stressed the backward condition in the group of nonferrous metals and special alloys that was holding back the development of the military preparedness of the Red Army.

Question: You have confessed that you were not successful in arranging for Engler’s entry into the USSR. How did you carry out your communication with German intelligence after your return to the USSR?

Answer: I have already confessed that there was a decision about sending a group of Soviet doctors to work with Norden. Upon their return from Vienna one of the doctors who had worked with Norden, Taits by name, established espionage relations with me on Engler’s direction.

Question: When and under what circumstances was your espionage connection with this doctor established?

Answer: That was approximately at the beginning of 1935. Doctor Taits was always present at the consultations of high-ranking employees who were sick, so I already knew him well. The first conversation, during which he established espionage relations with me in Engler’s name, took place in my apartment,

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to which he came under the pretense of a regular examination. After the usual questions about my health he began to tell me about his trip to Vienna. After he told me about his stay at Norden’s sanatorium he informed me that he had become well acquainted with doctor Engler who asked him to give me his regards, since we were well acquainted.

In our conversation about Engler Taits carefully told me about the incident that had taken place in Vienna involving me and the nurse. In a joking tone I referred to my own carelessness and asked him whether any of the other doctors who went to practice with Norden knew about this incident. He quieted my anxiety and told me that no one besides Engler and himself knew about this incident and added that he was aware of the “good” relations that he been established between Engler and myself. It was clear to me that he knew everything and I directly asked him what assignments doctor Engler had asked him to give me. Taits told me that Engler had assigned me to establish contact with him in espionage work and to maintain this contact until there was no longer a need for it, and to transmit through him all information that interested Engler.

Question: Where is this Taits at present?

Answer: He was arrested in 1937 and, as far as I remember, was shot.

Question: How long did your ties with him last?

Answer: Roughly throughout the year 1935.

Question: Where did your conspiratorial meetings take place?

Answer: On all the occasions when I had to transmit one or another bit of espionage information our meetings took place in my apartment. Taits would come to me under pretense of checking up on my health.

Question: What assignments for espionage work did you receive from Taits?

Answer: According to Taits, Engler was interested most of all in secret information about the armament of the Red Army and in all the facts about the defense capabilities of the USSR. At that time I headed the industrial division of the CC ACP(b) and was at the same time the vice-chairman of the Party Control Commission, which in practice I led.

In the PCC there was a military group headed by N. Kuibyshev. The work of the group and its materials were of an especially secret nature and therefore the group was under my direction. The materials that were assembled by the military group of the PCC concerning questions of the condition or investigation of one or another kind about the armies and their armament were sent only to the Defense Committee and to me. As a rule I would take all these documents periodically to my apartment and during Taits’ visit would give them to him for a short time, after which he would return them to me.

I know that Taits photographed most of these notes and passed them on to the proper party.

Question: Did he tell you about this?

Answer: Yes, once I was interested in how and where he transmitted the information he received from me. Taits told me that he transmitted this information in photographed form to a certain person in the German embassy who then would transmit these photographs to German intelligence.

Question: How did he get into the German embassy?

Answer: Besides his basic work in the medical directorate of the Kremlin doctor Taits also cared for the workers in the German embassy in Moscow.

Question: Do you remember the nature of the information that you passed to Taits?

Answer: Yes, I remember.

Question: Please be specific.

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Answer: During the time of my relations with doctor Taits I passed on a large quantity of reports and notes on questions of armament, of the materiel and food acquirement, of the moral and political condition and military preparedness of the Red Army. These materials contained exhaustive numerical and factual information of various military forces, types of armament, and condition of military districts.

During this same time I passed on to Taits information about the course and the insufficiencies in military aviation, about the slow penetration of new and more perfected types of aviation engines, about the rates of accidents of military aircraft, about the plan for training aviation cadres and about tactical and technical information that characterized the quality and quantity of the aviation motors and airplanes that we produced.

Besides that I passed through Taits to German intelligence information that the PCC had about the condition of tank armaments of the Red Army. I drew the German’s attention to the poor quality of Soviet armor and the failures to integrate the tanks with diesel motors instead of the aviation motors that were used at that time.

Further, I passed on to Taits exhaustive information about the great insufficiencies in the area of material and food acquirement and quartermaster management of the RKKA. On these questions, by the way, there was a special session of the CC ACP(b), the decision of which I also passed on for the information of German intelligence.

The materials I communicated gave a clear picture of the situation in this important branch of the military. From them it was clear that at the very beginning of a war the Red Army would face serious difficulties.

I passed analogous materials to Taits about the condition of the chemical, light arms, and engineering equipment of the RKKA, and in addition some materials that characterized the condition of military preparedness and political and morale condition of units of the Leningrad, Belorussian, Privolga, and Central Asian military districts, which were supervised by the PCC.

Question: In what did your further collaboration with German intelligence consist?

Answer: At the beginning of 1936 upon the recommendation of the medical directorate of the Kremlin Norden was invited to Moscow for consultation with a number of high-ranking workers. He stayed in the USSR for 10 – 15 days.

Of the large number of persons whom Norden consulted I specifically remember Gamarnik, Iakir, Chubar’, Petrovsky, Kosior, Veinberg, and Metalikov. Norden also consulted me.

Question: Did you establish relations with Norden in your espionage work?

Answer: Yes, I established ties with Norden.

Question: Under what conditions?

Answer: In order to continue special clinical examination I was sent to Barvikh where I was assigned a separate apartment where I remained for 8 – 10 days.

On one of those days Norden came to me and gave me greetings from Engler. He said: “Engler is satisfied with your attention and is very sorry that he was not able to go to the USSR. You must go abroad again to finish your course of treatment.”

I told Norden that I was healthy and saw no need for any special trip abroad. Then Norden gave me directly to understand that it was the Germans who required my trip abroad and that it was not so much a matter of what I wanted than of the demands of German intelligence.

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Then I asked Norden to give me an appropriate conclusion about the condition of my health, which he did later saying that it was essential that I follow a course of treatment in his Vienna sanatorium and consult again with a series of specialists abroad. On the basis of this statement it was decided to send me abroad for treatment again.

Question: Does Norden speak Russian?

Answer: No.

Question: So how did you communicate with each other?

Answer: I communicated with him through my wife Evgeniia Solomonovich Ezhov, who knows German, English and French.

Question: Did you take that trip abroad?

Answer: In the summer of 1936 I travelled to Vienna and settled into Norden’s sanatorium.

However there was nothing for me to do there, since in fact I did not need any treatment. I asked Norden what I should do. He recommended that I go to the spa in Merano (Italy).

Before my trip to Merano Engler said that there a man to whom Engler himself was subordinate in intelligence work would have a talk with me.

Three or four days after I arrived in Merano there arrived Kandelaki, the former trade representative to German, who suffered from diabetes.

Question: Did Kandelaki come to Merano for treatment?

Answer: Merano is a spa where one is treated with grapes which, of course, is contraindicated for Kandelaki’s disease.

Question: Then what was the cause of Kandelaki’s arrival?

Answer: As I came to learn later Kandelaki’s arrival in Merano, like my own, was connected with espionage matters about which I will confess below.

Question: Continue with your confession?

Answer: Soon after Kandelaki Litvinov arrived in Merano, and then Shtein, the political representative of the USSR in Italy who stayed a few days and departed, leaving his automobile to Litvinov.

On the fifth or sixth day of my stay in Merano Kandelaki informed me that the prominent German general Hammerstein had arrived at our sanatorium in the company of the Polish minister of trade whose name I cannot now recall.

After Hammerstein Engler also came to Merano.

Here I consider it necessary to note the following: once when I was walking through the park of the sanatorium I noticed that Kandelaki greeted Hammerstein and entered into a conversation with him.

One evening Litvinov dropped in on me and invited me to go with him to the caf�. Litvinov addressed himself in German to Hammerstein, who was seated at the table next to us, and exchanged greetings with him. The next day Engler introduced me to Hammerstein.

Question: How did this take place?

Answer: Engler came to my room and said: “I want to examine you”, and then and there informed me that Hammerstein had to meet with me.

My meeting with Hammerstein was organized by Engler under the guise of a joint walk with Engler in the park of Merano. During one of our talks, as it were by chance, we met Hammerstein to whom Engler introduced me, after which we continued our walk as a group of three.

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At the beginning of our talk Hammerstein declared: “We are very grateful for all the services you have rendered us.” He declared that he was satisfied with the information that the Germans had received from me. But, declared Hammerstein, it was all trivial stuff! The position in the USSR that you occupy is such that we cannot be satisfied with the information that you are giving us. Before you stand other assignments of a political order.”

Question: What kind of “political” assignments?

Answer: Hammerstein, knowing that I had already been elected secretary of the Central Committee of the ACP(b), declared: “You have the possibility not just to inform us but also to influence the policy of Soviet power.”

Further Hammerstein made known to me the very serious, in his words, relations that the Germans had in the circles of the high command of the Red Army, and informed me of the existence in the Soviet Union of several military-conspiratorial groups.

Hammerstein told me that a number of high-ranking military workers were dissatisfied with the situation in the USSR and had set as their goal to change the internal and international policies of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government’s present policies, continued Hammerstein, will inevitably bring the USSR into military confrontation with the capitalist states, but that this could be completely avoided if the Soviet Union were to make concessions and “accommodate itself” to the European system.

Since Hammerstein did not know Russian I asked him, with Engler serving as interpreter, how serious the relations of leading circles in Germany were with the representatives of the high command of the Red Army.

Hammerstein answered: “We have relations with different circles among your military. Their goal is the same but, evidently, their points of view are different, and they cannot reach any agreement amongst themselves even though we have categorically demanded it.”

Question: What assignments did Hammerstein give you?

Answer: Hammerstein proposed that I contact these military circles, and with Egorov first of all. He declared that he knew Egorov very well as one of the most important and influential figures among that part of the military conspirators who understood that without the German army, without a solid agreement with Germany it would not be possible to change the political order in the USSR in the desired direction.

Hammerstein proposed to me that through Egorov I should be current with all the conspiratorial matters and influence the conspiratorial groups that existed in the Red Army in the direction of bringing them close to Germany while at the same time taking every step towards their “unification.” “Your position as secretary of the CC ACP(b) will help you in this”, declared Hammerstein.

At this Hammerstein departed after notifying me that he would have several more meetings with me.

Question: In whose name did Hammerstein speak with you?

Answer: In that of Reichswehr circles of Germany. The situation is this: even before Hitler’s coming to power Hammerstein had the reputation as a supporter of a rapprochement between the German and Red Armies. In 1936-1937 Hammerstein was removed from direct work in the Reichswehr, but since he had more contacts than other German generals among Soviet military workers, he was assigned to lead the so called “Russian business.”

Question: Did your further meetings with Hammerstein take place?

Answer: Yes, I had three more meetings with Hammerstein. At the second meeting Hammerstein expressed interest in the details related to the mur-

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der of S.M. Kirov, and about how serious the influence of Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Rights in the ACP(b) was.

I gave him exhaustive information, and specifically noted the fact that there was at that time a sense of despair among Chekists and that Iagoda’s position in connection with Kirov’s murder had been shaken. Then Hammerstein said: “It would be very good if you managed to occupy Iagoda’s post.”

I smiled and answered that “that does not depend upon me.”

My third conversation with the German general concerned the conspiratorial work of the military men in the USSR, since civilian matters did not interest Hammerstein as much.

My fourth, and last, meeting with Hammerstein took place in the caf�.

Question: Give a detailed account of your last meeting with Hammerstein.

Answer: Once Kandelaki suggested that we go to a typical German caf�. I agreed. Into that caf� soon came Hammerstein, with whom Kandelaki exchanged greetings and then invited him to sit with us at our table.

Kandelaki talked about something in German with Hammerstein, and then said: “It seems that you are already acquainted with the general?” After my affirmative answer Hammerstein declared that he often met with Kandelaki in Berlin and “would be happy to send me all his best wishes through him.”

Before he left, while saying his goodbyes, Hammerstein asked me to “send a hearty greeting to Alexander Il’ich” (Egorov).

Question: What did you understand by “best wishes” that Hammerstein decided to pass on to you through Kandelaki?

Answer: I understood that Kandelaki, like I, was in contact with Hammerstein on espionage work and would serve in future as one of the channels of my contacts with German intelligence, all the more since a few days later after Hammerstein had departed Kandelaki too left for Berlin, and during his whole stay at the spa he had never received any treatment at all.

After Kandelaki’s departure Litvinov began to look in on me frequently and invite me for walks or to the caf�.

Once, while sitting in the caf�, Litvinov asked me: “What impression did Hammerstein make on you?” I, somewhat embarrassed, answered: “The impression of an intelligent man.” “Yes”, said Litvinov, “Hammerstein is one of the most intelligent and farsighted generals of the Reichswehr. The military circles of Germany count on him a great deal. Hammerstein enjoys much influence in the army.”

I remember that the conversation with Litvinov took place in the presence of my wife –

Evgenia Solomonovna.

Litvinov danced the foxtrot and then carried on with me a rather strange conversation. He declared: “Here we are relaxing, going to restaurants, dancing, and if they knew about this in the USSR, they’d raise a scandal.”

When I doubted this Litvinov answered: “There’s nothing strange in this, but you see, we have no culture, our political leaders have absolutely no culture of any kind.”

“Here you have made the acquaintance of general Hammerstein,” continued Litvinov, “and what can come from this acquaintance except usefulness to the Soviet Union? If our political leaders had relations with European political figures, many sharp corners in our relations

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with foreign countries would be smoothed over. And here you are returning to Moscow, and they could put you through the mill for your acquaintance with Hammerstein.”

At this point the conversation with Litvinov ended. Soon I left Merano for Paris, and from there I went by car to Rome and returned to Vienna by train.

Question: Was this trip related to your espionage work?

Answer: No.

Question: Did you confide in your wife about the espionage character of your meetings with Hammerstein?

Answer: No, I did not say anything to her at that time, I told her about the nature of my ties with Hammerstein later.

Question: You will tell us about that when you touch upon the espionage activities of your wife Evgenia Solomonovna Ezhova, but for now pass on to your practical work in carrying out Hammerstein’s assignments.

Answer: In the conversation with Hammerstein it was agreed that I would maintain communications with him through Egorov and Kandelaki, during the latter’s trips to Moscow.

Soon after my return to Moscow I invited Egorov to my dacha and began to feel him out about whether he knew about my ties with Hammerstein. But, since Egorov did not report anything concrete, I did not disclose myself to him this time.

On a non-workday he came to my dacha and the first conversation took place in which Egorov told me that he already knew about my meeting with Hammerstein, with whom he himself had long had ties.

Our conversation was interrupted by the unexpected appearance at my dacha of guests, in view of which Egorov and I arranged to continue the conversation we had begun in the next few days.

Question: Did this following meeting with Egorov take place?

Answer: Yes. After three or four days Egorov came to my place against and this time told me in detail about the existence in the RKKA of a group of conspirators consisting of important military men and headed by himself, Egorov.

Egorov further gave me the names of the participants of the conspiratorial group that he led: Budiennyi, Dybenko, Shaposhnikov, Kashirin, Fed’ko, the commander of the Transbaikal military district, and a number of other important commanders whose names I will remember and give in a supplement.

Further Egorov said that in the RKKA there exist two more groups competing with each other: the Trotskyist group of Gamarnik, Iakir and Uborevich, and the officer-Bonapartist group of Tukhachevsky.

Question: You will tell us later in detail about the nature and makeup of each group in particular. For now, please discuss in detail your further conversation with Egorov about Hammerstein.

Answer: In my conversation with Egorov I told him in detail about all my meetings and conversations with Hammerstein and notified him that I already knew from Hammerstein about the existence in the RKKA of several conspiratorial groups.

Then I communicated to Egorov that Hammerstein saw as one of our fundamental tasks to unify all the military conspiratorial groups into one powerful organization for a more successful realization of the plans for an anti-Soviet conspiracy. I said that I would do everything I could to carry out Hammerstein’s task.

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Egorov told me that he too was in contact with Hammerstein on espionage work, that he maintained this contact through Koestring, the military attach� at the German embassy in Moscow. Then Egorov promised to put me too into contact with Koestring, which happened in that same year, 1936.

On the day we had agreed Egorov together with Koestring, who was dressed in civilian clothes, arrived at my dacha and parked not far away as for an emergency. As though I had by chance noticed Egorov by his automobile I invited him together with Koestring to look over my new dacha. Egorov and Koestring agreed, and we proceeded to the dacha.

After breakfast the following conversation took place between Koestring and myself. Koestring, having presented himself, declared: “I have received the assignment of talking with you personally and establishing a full mutual understanding of our common tasks.”

Question: Does Koestring speak Russian?

Answer: Yes, he speaks Russian fluently. Then Koestring informed me that my appointment as People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs opened up the perspective “of uniting all those dissatisfied with the existing political leadership and that, at the head of this movement, I would be able to create a considerable force.”

Koestring said: “We military men think like this: for us the decisive factor is military strength. Therefore the first task which, as it seems to us, presents itself is the unite the military forces in the interests of the common task. WE must strengthen in every way our influence in the Red Army, so as to direct the Russian army at the decisive moment in a manner corresponding to the interests of Germany.”

Koestring especially emphasized the necessity of orientation towards the Egorov group. He said that “Alexander Il’ich is the worthiest figure who is suitable to us, and by its aims his group completely corresponds to the interests of Germany.”

That is why afterwards, in my practical work in the NKVD I tried in every way to keep Egorov’s group from failing, and Egorov and his group were only uncovered thanks to the involvement of the Central Committee of the ACP(b).

Question: Did your conversation with Egorov end with this?

Answer: No, Koestring touched on the NKVD. He said: “In the general plan of the tasks we face, the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs must play a determining role. Therefore for the success of the coup d'�tat and our seizure of power you must create in the NKVD a broad organization of those who agree with you, and it must be united with the military men.” Koestring declared that these organizations, in the army and in the NKVD, must be prepared in such a way as to guarantee united actions at the outbreak of war towards the goal of seizing power.

Question: And what was Egorov doing at this time?

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Answer: Egorov listened to Koestring and he and I together agreed with his proposals.

The conversation lasted one and one-half to two hours, after which Egorov took Koestring with him and went off.

Question: Did you realize your contact with German intelligence through Koestring alone?

Answer: No, I also realized my contact with German intelligence through Kandelaki.

Question: Tell us in detail about your meetings with Kandelaki.

Answer: In the spring of 1936 Kandelaki arrived in Moscow from Germany. When he met with me he gave me greetings from Hammerstein and immediately began a conversation with me about how he was closely in contact with German governmental circles in the person of Goering and had heard from authoritative sources that great significance was given to my political collaboration, as he called it, with the Germans and that the ruling circles in Germany had placed great hopes on my collaboration.

Question: What concrete tasks did German intelligence put before you via Kandelaki?

Answer: Kandelaki oriented me in detail about the subversive work that he was leading as trade representative of the USSR in Berlin by means of concluding negotiations with the German government that were harmful for the USSR.

Question: We are not asking you about this. Do not sidestep the question, answer directly: did you establish espionage contact with German intelligence through Kandelaki?

Answer: Yes, Kandelaki was, as it were, the control contact of German intelligence with me. He would ask me about the pace of fulfillment of the tasks presented to me by Hammerstein, and upon his return to Berlin, according to his own words he would give the information he had received from me to Hammerstein and Goering.

Question: What did Kandelaki say to you concretely about his contacts with Goering?

Answer: At one of his meetings with me, at the end of 1936 or the beginning of 1937, Kandelaki informed me that he had made contact with Goering through Hammerstein.

Goering had directed Kandelaki upon his arrival in the Soviet Union to inform the Soviet government that he, Kandelaki, had succeeded in pressuring the German government in the sense of offering the USSR a loan and that Economic Minister Schacht, under pressure from German business circles, was ready to make several concessions and offer the Soviet Union credit.

Kandelaki said further that Goering had informed Hammerstein about my collaboration with German intelligence and asked me to work in concert with the conclusion of a credit agreement between the USSR and Germany.

Question: Why was your help needed to conclude this agreement?

Answer: Because it corresponded entirely to the interests of Germany alone and was directed towards strengthening the export from the USSR of primary products essential for Germany’s war industries.

Question: What did you undertake to do in order to accomplish the Germans’ task?

Answer: I promised Kandelaki my support and in fact I did negotiate with Rozengol’ts about the desirability of concluding such an agreement. As a re-

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sult the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade rendered a positive decision concerning this agreement.

Question: How did your espionage work proceed further?

Answer: In the summer of 1937, after the trial of Tukhachevsky, Egorov in the name of German intelligence set before me the question of the necessity to build all the espionage work in the army and the NKVD in such a way as to organize, under certain conditions, the seizure of power without waiting for a war, as we had agreed according to the preliminary plan.

Egorov said that the Germans explained this alteration by the fear lest the destruction which had begun of the anti-Soviet formations in the army reach us, i.e. me and Egorov.

According to Egorov the Germans proposed that we communicate to them our concrete ideas about this question as soon as possible.

We discussed this new situation with Egorov and arrived at the conclusion that the Party and the popular masses were behind the leadership of the ACP(b) and that the soil for this coup d'�tat had not been prepared. Therefore we decided that it was necessary to get rid of Stalin or Molotov under the flag of some other kind of anti-Soviet organization in order to create the conditions for my further advancement towards political power. After that, once I occupied a more leading positioni, the possibility would be created for further, more decisive, changes in the politics of the Party and the Soviet Union that corresponded to the interests of Germany.

I asked Egorov to transmit to the Germans through Koestring our ideas and to request the opinion of governmental circles in Germany about this question.

Question: What answer did you receive?

Answer: Soon after that, according to the words of Koestring, Egorov informed me that the government circles of Germany agreed with our proposal.

Question: What measures did you undertake to realize your traitorous designs?

Answer: I decided to organize a conspiracy within the NKVD and to attract to it people through whom I could carry out terrorist acts against the leaders of the Party and government.

Question: Can it be that it was only after your talk with Egorov that you decided to form a conspiratorial organization within the NKVD?

Answer: No. In reality the situation was as follows: long before this conversation with Egorov, at the time of my appointment as People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, I took a group of workers with me into the NKVD who were closely tied to me in counterrevolutionary work. In that way my confession that I began to organize a conspiracy should be understood only in the sense that in connection with my negotiations with Hammerstein and the establishment of contact with the military conspirators it was necessary in the NKVD to develop more broadly, to force, the patching together of the conspiratorial organizations in the NKVD itself.

Question: Give the names of those persons who were tied with you in counterrevolutionary work whom you took with you into the NKVD?

Answer: Litvin, Tsesarsky, Shapiro, Zhukovsky and Ryzhov.

Question: Who from among the old NKVD workers was drawn by you into the anti-Soviet conspiracy?

Answer: Once I was People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs after a certain space of time I drew closer some from among the NKVD workers, and many former members of the conspiratorial organization in the NKVD, both Iagodists and North Caucasus men, were moved into responsible positions.

All these three groups were headed by me.

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Question: Name the participants of these conspiratorial groups in the NKVD.

Answer: 1. Members of the group which I personally formed were: Litvin, Tsesarsky, Shapiro, Zhukovsky and Ryzhov;

2. Among the members of the conspiratorial group of “North Caucus men” were: Frinovsky, Dagin, Evdokimov (although Evdokimov was not an NKVD worker, but I will give exhaustive confessions about him and his group of NKVD workers separately);

3. The third group of conspirators consisted of Bel’sky, Uspensky, Zhurbenko, Reikhman, Liushkov, Passova, Gendin, and Iartsev.

These persons were in the conspiratorial organization headed by Iagoda and Balitsky even before I drew them into anti-Soviet work.

I kept these cadre of conspirators and at different times drew them into anti-Soviet work in the NKVD that was carried out under my leadership.

I will give exhaustive confessions separately about all of these members of this group.

Question: Did you bring those whom you have mentioned above up to date?

Answer: Yes, I made known to each of these persons to one degree or another the organization of the conspiracy, the goals and tasks that we were pursuing. In sum, all of them knew about the existence of the conspiracy and carried out the orders given to them in the course of anti-Soviet conspiratorial work. Each of them was given by me the task of broadening our organization by means of attracting people who were capable of carrying out without question all our directives concerning anti-Soviet work.

As for Evdokimov and Frinovsky, they were fully brought up to date by me about the conspiracy, knew absolutely everything, including about my contacts with the group of military conspirators in the RKKA and with military circles of Germany.

Question: The investigation is letting you know in advance that you will be specially interrogated about the conditions of the recruitment of each of the participants of the conspiracy whom you have named. But now confess how your contact with German intelligence was carried out after this?

Answer: Contact with German intelligence I continued to carry out through Koestring.

Question: Where did your conspiratorial meetings with Koestring take place?

Answer: In the conspiratorial apartment of the NKVD on Gogolevsk boulevard (Balitsky’s former villa).

Question: How many conspiratorial meetings did you have with Koestring and how were they organized?

Answer: I had two conspiratorial meetings with Koestring at this apartment. As previously arranged between us Koestring appeared at this apartment under the name “Ivanov.” The persons who took care of the apartment were informed well in advance by me to let Ivanov through unhindered.

Question: And did the personnel who took care of the apartment know who “Ivanov” was?

Answer: No, no one knew about my meetings with Koestring.

Question: Tell us Koestring’s external characteristics.

Answer: Koestring is taller than average height, of normal build, with a typical German face, an even nose, prominent chin, shaves his beard, has a moustache.

Question: Summarize the contents of your talks with Koestring.

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Answer: The fact is that not long before my second meeting with Koestring there appeared the accusation against Egorov to the Central Committee exposing Egorov in anti-Soviet conversations.

As a result of a verification that was carried out specially about this accusation Egorov was freed from the post he occupied and transferred to work in the Transcaucasus military district.

Egorov took his removal from the office of first assistant to the Commissar of Defense very hard and regarded this fact as the beginning of his exposure.

In a conversation with Koestring I informed him about the removal of Egorov from the post he occupied, to which Koestring urged me to preserve Egorov from exposure at any cost.

I also informed Koestring that I had formed a conspiratorial organization in the NKVD of the USSR, which was successfully carrying out its subversive work. Koestring approved of my measures, after which we began to negotiate about the manner and form of our further contacts.

Question: About what did you negotiate?

Answer: Koestring proposed to me that, in the event of emergency, to contact him through Fed’ko, who had also been drawn into espionage work and to whom Koestring had official access since he was the Vice-commissar for Defense.

Question: Why was it necessary for you to maintain contact with Koestring through yet another intermediate link, if you were in contact with him directly? There is something missing in your account.

The investigation demands that you stop trying to avoid answering and give a truthful confession.

Answer: This proposal did not come from me but from Koestring, and here is why. According to my agreement with Koestring I maintained permanent contact with him through Egorov, and only in extraordinary cases could a direct meeting with me be arranged.

This arrangement of contact was dictated by the needs of conspiracy.

After Egorov left for work in the Transcaucasus Koestring wanted for contact with me instead of Egorov to use Fed’ko, who because of the position he occupied was able to meet with Koestring without fear. But since I had never even met Fed’ko, even though I agreed in principle to have an intermediary person for contact with the Germans, I still rejected Fed’ko’s candidacy.

Question: Whom did you decide on?

Answer: I personally did not propose anyone and asked for a chance to think over the question before our next meeting and come up with an appropriate person.

Question: Whom did you name?

Answer: I personally did not name anyone. At my next meeting with Koestring which took place approximately in July 1938 Koestring gave me the names of several persons through whom he considered it possible to maintain contact with me.

As contact persons Koestring proposed: Zakhar Belen’ky, Zhukovsky (my former assistant) and Khoziainov, the assistant to the chief of the Naval Directorate of the People’s Commissariat for Water Transportation.

Question: Which of these did you use for contact with Koestring?

Answer: I decided upon Khoziainov.

Question: Why?

Answer: Because I knew Belen’ky as a talkative, unorganized person, and Zhukovsky was famous for his former ties

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to Trotskyists. I preferred Khoziainov to them because I had the ability to meet with him at any time in the People’s Commissariat of Water Transportation under the cover of work relations.

Question: Is this how your conversation with Koestring ended?

Answer: No, I informed Koestring about further arrests among military workers and declared to him that I did not have the power to prevent these arrests, and in particular I reported about the arrest of Egorov, which had the possibility of causing the ruin of the whole conspiracy.

Koestring was extremely upset by all these events. He sharply put to me the question that either we immediately take some kind of measures to seize power, or we will be destroyed one at a time.

Koestring again returned to our old plan of a so-called “short blow” and demanded that it be executed immediately.

Question: You will be interrogated about your villanous plans, but for now continue you confessions about your further espionage contacts with Khoziainov. Did you establish contact with Khoziainov?

Answer: Yes, I established contact with Khoziainov. During one of the frequent working meetings with him, in my work office in the People’s Commissariat for Water Transport, I asked Khoziainov whether he had been abroad. He replied in the affirmative and declared that in his capacity at the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade he worked in the London and then in the Berlin trade representative offices. Since Khoziainov did not say anything more to me I understood that he had not yet been notified by Koestring.

A few days later when he was in my office for a report Khoziainv asked about the reasons for my interest in his work abroad. It was during this conversation that Khoziainov informed me that he had instructions from the Germans to get into contact with me. I agreed.

Question: Did Khoziainov name Koestring to you?

Answer: No, as far as I remember Koestring, when he listed the names of Belen’ky, Zhukovsky, and Khoziainov, these last were in contact with German intelligence through another worker at the embassy but not through Koestring, who carried out intelligence work only along military lines, while the persons named were utilized along the lines of general espionage.

Question: Did you have any more meetings with Koestring?

Answer: I did not meet personally with Koestring any more. After that contact between us took place through Khoziainov.

Question: Did Khoziainov know about the terrorist acts which you were preparing against the leadership of the Party and government?

Answer: Yes, he knew. Khoziainov had been made aware of that not only by me but by German intelligence, since during the first meeting after we had established contact between us Khoziainov transmitted to me a directive of the Germans: to speed up at all costs the carrying out of terrorist acts.

Besides that Khoziainov transmitted to me the directives of German intelligence that in connection with my dismissal from work in the NKVD and the naming of Beria as People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs German intelligence considered it essential to assassinate someone among the Politburo members and by this means to provoke a new leadership in the NKVD.

In this same period in the NKVD itself there began arrests of the active members of the conspiracy which I headed, and then we concluded that it was essential to organize a mass action on November 7, 1938.

Question: Who is “we”?

Answer: I, Ezhov, Frinovsky, Dagin, and Evdokimov.

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Question: What was your mass action of November 7, 1938 supposed to consist in?

Answer: In a putsch.

Question: Please be precise. What kind of putsch?

Answer: The hopelessness of the situation had brought me to despair and pushed me to any adventure that might prevent the full collapse of our conspiracy and my exposure.

Frinovsky, Evdokimov, Dagin and I agreed that on November 7, 1938 at the end of the parade, during the demonstration, when the military forces were going away, we would create a “cork” in Red Square by means of an appropriate arrangement of columns. We would take advantage of the panic and confusion in the columns of demonstrators and planned to throw bombs around and kill some of the members of the government.

Question: How did you apportion the roles amongst yourselves?

Answer: The organization and direction of the putsch was undertaken by me, Ezhov, Frinovsky, and Evdokimov. As for the terrorist acts, their practical execution was given to Dagin. Here I must add in advance that I reached agreements with each of them separately.

Question: Who was supposed to do the shooting?

Answer: Dagin told me that for these purposes he had trained Popashenko, Zarifov and Ushaev, secretary to Evdokimov, a former Chekist of the “North Caucasus group” about whom Dagin said he was a militant young man fully capable of carrying out a terrorist act.

According to my agreement with Dagin, on the eve of November 7 he was supposed to inform me about the concrete plan and those who would directly carry out the terrorist acts. However on the 5^th of November Dagin and the other conspirators from the Okhrana division, including Popashenko and Zarifov, were arrested. All our plans collapsed. Here I consider it essential to mention that when on November 5 L. Beria presented the question of arresting the conspirators from the Okhrana division of the NKVD to the CC of the ACP(b), including Dagin, Popashenko, and Zarifov, I tried in every possible way to defend these men and delay their arrest, giving as my reasons that, supposedly, Dagin and the other conspirators from the Okhrana division were needed to guarantee order during the days of the October celebrations. Paying no heed to that the CC of the ACP(b) proposed the arrest of the conspirators. Thus all our plans collapsed.

Question: Remember that the investigation will demand that you give up all conspirators and terrorists. You will not succeed in hiding even one of these traitors.

Answer now, what measures did you undertake to carry out terrorist acts after the failure of your perfidious plans?

Answer: In the last days of November 1938 I was dismissed from work in the NKVD. Then I finally understood that the Party did not trust me and the moment of my exposure was approaching. I started to seek a way out of the situation I had created and decided not to stop at anything in order to either carry out the assignment of German intelligence, to kill one of the members of the Politburo, or to flee abroad myself and save my skin.

Question: How did you plan to accomplish these plans of yours?

Answer: Now I decided to personally train a person who would be capable of carrying out a terrorist act.

Question: Whom did you recruit for these purposes?

Answer: Lazebny, a former Chekist, chief of the port directorate of the People’s Commissariat for Water Transport.

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I knew that in the NKVD there were confessions against Lazebny about his participation in anti-Soviet work, and decided to use this circumstance to recruit Lazebny.

In one of the meetings in my work office in the People’s Commissariat for Water Transport I informed Lazebny that there were materials in the NKVD that compromised him, and that either today or tomorrow he would be arrested and that ruin threatened him.

I told Lazebny: “There is no way out for you, you are going to be destroyed in any case, but by sacrificing yourself you might save a large group of people.” When Lazebny questioned me about this I informed him that the murder of Stalin would save the situation in the country. Lazebny agreed.

Question: What basis did you have to hold such a frank conversation with Lazebny?

Answer: In general Lazebny had gone around recently like someone half-drowned, was in a state of hopelessness and more than once expressed the desire to kill himself. Therefore he accepted my proposal without hesitation. Lazebny even agreed that after carrying out the terrorist act he would commit suicide at the site of the crime.

Question: Who else besides Lazebny did you recruit as a terrorist?

Answer: Besides Lazebny I prepared as terrorists my old friends Konstantinov Vladimir Konstantinovich chief of Military Trade for the Leningrad Military District, and Dement’ev Ivan Nikolaevich, assistant to the chief of the guard of the Leningrad factory “Svetoch”. They gave me their full agreement to carry out a terrorist act upon my direction.

Question: Why did you fix your choice as terrorists precisely upon Dement’ev and Konstantinov?

Answer: In addition to my long personal friendship with Konstantinov and Dement’ev, I was tied to them by physical propinquity. As I have already communicated in my declaration in the name of the investigation, I was tied to Konstantinov and Dement’ev by depraved relations, i.e. homosexuality.

Question: You will be interrogated separately concerning the circumstances of recruitment of Konstantinov and Dement’ev and the specific tasks you gave them. Now tell by what means you planned to accomplish your flight abroad?

Answer: With the goal of avoiding my inexorable arrest I instructed Khoziainov to put the question to the Germans of organizing my flight abroad. After a few days Khoziainov informed me that the Germans did not agree to transfer me to Germany and proposed that I remain in the USSR and continue my anti-Soviet work.

Question: What then, did you agree with the instructions of German intelligence?

Answer: No, I did not agree, and determined to go abroad at any cost I considered turning to the British for help.

Question: What have the British to do with this? Were you connected with British intelligence?

Answer: It was not I who was connected with British intelligence but my wife, Evgenia Solomonovna Ezhova.

Question: How did you know this?

Answer: In the Spring of 1938 I was asked in the CC of the ACP(b) about the nature of my relations with Konar. From this fact I concluded that they were checking up on me, and I began to get nervous and because of this, to get drunk. My wife Evgenia Solomonovna Ezhova asked me many times why I was getting drunk. I was certain about her devotion to me and determined at last to open up to her and tell her about my anti-Soviet work and connections with Polish and German intelligence.

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Evgenia Solomonovna Ezhova soothed me and informed me that she too was connected with the British intelligence services, that she had been drawn into espionage work for the English by her former husband Gladun already in 1926, when they were in England because of their work.

Question: Where is Gladun at the present time?

Answer: As far as I recall in 1937 Gladun was the chief of construction for one of the factories in Khar’kov.

Question: That means Gladun is also an English spy?

Answer: Yes, Gladun, according to the words of Evgenia Ezhova, is an old English spy and, as I confessed above, drew her into espionage work in the service of English intelligence.

Question: What did Ezhova tell you about her ties with British intelligence?

Answer: Ezhova told me that she was tied with the intelligence service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of England and gave information about the situation in the USSR and the political attitudes of the Russian intelligentsia. In her espionage aims Ezhova used me as well, as I freely shared with her all the secret materials that I had.

Question: You are lying. You were aware of your wife’s, E.S. Ezhova’s, connections with English intelligence long before 1938, and you not only knew about this but actively collaborated with your wife in the service of the English. For this reason you must answer before the investigation.

State frankly with whom else was Ezhova connected in her espionage work in the USSR?

Answer: With Zinaida Glikina and Mikhail Kol’tsov.

Question: The investigation will return to the question of the nature of the espionage connections of Ezhova, Glikina, and Kol’tsov, but now confess how you wished to have recourse to the aid of English intelligence to organize your flight abroad?

Answer: Since my wife died in December 1938, and the Germans refused to convey me to Germany, I myself undertook measures to establish contact with the English.

Question: What measures did you undertake to establish ties with the English?

Answer: From the materials of the NKVD I knew that the chief of the Baltic steamships in Leningrad Mel’nikov was tied in espionage work with a British agent, the former chief of the port of Leningrad, Bronshtein, now convicted.

I informed Evdokimov about these materials and proposed that he recruit Mel’nikov into our conspiratorial organization.

Soon Evdokimov informed me that he had been able to recruit Mel’nikov and the latter agreed to participate in the anti-Soviet conspiracy.

In about the end of January or the beginning of February of this year Mel’nikov turned to me with a declaration about permitting him to go to England on matters related to his work.

I decided to make use of this pretext and tell Mel’nikov about the materials I was aware of about his espionage work with the English spy Bronshtein.

Further, I decided to say to him that I knew from Evdokimov about Mel’nikov’s participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy, and to give him the task upon his trip to England to contact English governmental circles and ask in my name for help in getting me to England, reminding them that my wife E.S. Ezhova had been a collaborator with English intelligence.

Question: Did you have such a conversation with Mel’nikov?

/ 71 /

Answer: No, that conversation did not take place, since at about that time the Party conferences began. I postponed Mel’nikov’s work trip to England till the end of the 18^th Party Congress, to which Mel’nikov was a delegate.

After the congress I was arrested.

Question: Your confessions about Mel’nikov are unconvincing. You are attempting, completely in vain, to hide your real connections with English intelligence.

Answer: I have no intention whatsoever to hide anything from the investigation. I ask that you give me the possibility to remember everything that I know about this question, and at one of the next interrogations I will give truthful confessions about them.

Question: The investigation is aware that the poisoning of your wife E.S. Ezhova, as a result of which her death followed, was an affair of your hands.

Do you confess yourself guilty of this?

Answer: Yes, I do confess.

Question: For what purpose did you poison your wife?

Answer: I feared her arrest and that in the investigation she would give up everything that she knew about my conspiratorial and espionage work.

Question: How did you accomplish this poisoning?

Answer: After it had been suggested to me to divorce E.S. Ezhova and I informed her of this she became depressed and often stated her intention to commit suicide. I arranged for her to be admitted to a psychiatric sanatorium and attached to her, on her request, Zinaida Glikina and a doctor of the VIEM [All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine – GF] Ekaterina Gol’ts.

Soon Zinaida Ordzhonikidze, having visited my wife, brought me a note in which Ezhova informed me that she had firmly decided to take all steps necessary to end her own life and asked me to bring her some sleep-inducing medicine.

Question: Did you fulfill Ezhova’s request?

Answer: Through Dement’ev, whom I mentioned in this present transcript, I sent her fruit, a statuette of a gnome, and a large quantity of luminal, which Dement’ev personally gave to E.S. Ezhova in turn, after he had received from her a note for me.

Question: What answer did Dement’ev bring you from Ezhova?

Answer: Dement’ev brought me a note from Ezhova in which she said goodbye to me.

Besides that; I received a second letter through Zinaida Ordzhonikidze in which E.S. Ezhova again said goodbye to me.

When I received this letter Ezhova was already dead, having poisoned herself with the great quantity of luminal that I had sent her.

Question: Consequently, you are a primary culprit in the death of E.S. Ezhova?

Answer: Yes, I confess that I am guilty of this.

Question: The investigation affirms that you continue your hostile position and conduct yourself insincerely. That is expressed in that you

1. Remain silent about your ties with Polish intelligence after 1937;
2. Do not tell everything concerning the question of your espionage work for Germany;
3. As persons who took part in your conspiratorial and espionage work you name either the dead or official collaborators of foreign embassies;
4. You hide the persons who together with you led the treasonous work of organizing a counterrevolutionary coup in the USSR.

/ 72 /

Consider that you will be questioned again about all these questions tomorrow and you will have to give exhaustive confessions. This interrogation has ceased. Written down from my works accurately, read through by me.

N. EZHOV

Interrogators:

Chief of the investigative division Kobulov

Aide to the chief of the investigative division Shvartsman

Senior investigator Sergienko

AP RF F. 3 Op. 24. D. 375. L. 122-164. Original. Typewritten.

Ezhov interrogation 04.30.39

Acc. to Pavliukov 526, Ezhov named 66 names of fellow conspirators in this one interrogation.

Summary: "The first stage of the investigation was completed on April 30, 1939. In the course of the interrogation that took place on that day Ezhov told about the method of recruiting his subordinates in the Cheka into the anti-Soviet conspiracy and about the basic direction of the sabotage work in the NKVD. This sabotage consisted in massive arrests without any basis, falsification of investigative materials, forgeries, and reprisals against undesirable elements."

Quotation (Pavliukov 525-6)

"All this was done in order to cause widespread dissatisfaction in the population with the leadership of the Party and the Soviet government and in that way to create the most favorable base for carrying out our conspiratorial plans."

Ezhov interrogation 05.05.1939

Summary:

"…at his interrogation of May 5 1939 Ezhov recounted the work of the ‘conspirators’ in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. Here at that same time took place the beginning of the large-scale purge (after the removal of M.M. Litvinov, the director of the division of foreign political affairs). Therefore the theme of subversive activity in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs was especially timely in those days.

Ezhov stated that the goal of this activity was the creation of conditions for the victory of Germany and Japan in the inevitable war with the USSR. Specifically, they undertook attempts to create disagreements between the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek and the Soviet authorities, for the purpose, in the last analysis, of facilitating Japanese seizure of the Soviet Far East.

At the beginning of May 1939 confessions were obtained from several arrested NKVD employees concerning the fabrication, at Ezhov’s instruction, of the so-called mercury poisoning. Interrogated on this point Ezhov confirmed the fact of the falsification and explained that this initiative was undertaken with the goal of raising his authority even higher in the eyes of the country’s leadership."

- Pavliukov

Ezhov interrogation May 11 1939 by Kobulov

Long quotes in Polianskii 222-226. Acc to Polianskii, this is where Kuz’min’s report of Dec. 12 1938 about Sholokhov and Ezhova is located.

"It is not altogether clear why the closeness of these persons to Ezhova [Ezhov’s wife – GF] appeared suspicious to you.

Ezhova’s closeness to these people was suspicious insofar as Babel, for example, as I knew, had written almost nothing during the past few years, circulating all the time in a suspicious Trotskyist milieu and, besides that, had close ties to a series of French writers who could by no means be considered among those who were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Not to mention the fact that Babel demonstratively refused to write off his wife, who had been living in Paris for many years, but preferred to go to see her. Ezhova had a special friendship with Babel. I suspect – in truth, just on the basis of my personal observations – that there must have been ties of espionage between my wife and Babel.

On what factual basis do you make this statement?

I know from my wife’s own words that she had been acquainted with Babel since 1925. She always insisted that she had never had intimate relations with him. Their ties were limited to her desire to maintain an acquaintance with a talented, singular writer. Babel visited us at home a few times at her invitation, where, of course, I also made his acquaintance.

I observed that in his relationship with my wife Babel was demanding and rude. I saw that my wife was simply afraid of him. I understood that this was not a question of my wife’s literary interests, but of something more serious. I excluded any intimate relations because I thought that Babel would hardly treat my wife with such rudeness when he knew what social position I occupied. To my questions to my wife whether she had the same kind of relations with Babel as she had with Kol’tsov she either remained silent or weakly denied it. I always supposed that with this indefinite answer she simply wished to hide from me her espionage ties with Babel, evidently not wishing to confide the numerous channels of this kind of relationship with me…

What you have said about Babel is not a sufficient basis for suspecting him of taking part in espionage for England. Aren’t you just slandering Babel?

I am not slandering him. Ezhova definitely never said that she was linked with Babel in her work for English intelligence. In this case I am only expressing that supposition, based upon my observation of the nature of the mutual relations between my wife and the writer Babel.

What do you think in general about, shall we say, Ezhova’s friendship with cultural figures?

This whole specific milieu of people who were tied with the interests of the Soviet people with very thin threads, could not fail to arouse my suspicions.

What can you tell us about her relations with the writer Sholokhov?

I seem to recall that, I think last spring, my wife told me that she had meet Sholokhov, who had come to Moscow and dropped in at the journal "SSSR na stroike". There was nothing surprising in this, Ezhova always tried to meet writers and never missed an opportunity to do so. I was very well informed about this.

Good. And what did you do when you found out about the intimate relations between Ezhova and Sholokhov?

I did not know anything about such relations; this is the first time I have heard about them.

Don’t lie, Ezhov. In June and August of last year upon your instructions Alekhin arranged to monitor the letter "N" at the phone number of the Hotel "Nationale", where Sholokhov was staying.

I issued no such instructions. Ezhova may have showed up under the letter "N" solely by chance.

But you did know that the intimate relations of Sholokhov with your wife were recorded. Here, take a look at this.

[Here reads Kuz’min report of Dec. 12 1938, acc. to Polianskii 224-5]

Do you admit that a few days after you received the transcript you brought it home and showed the document to your wife, and then berated her for betraying you?

No such event happened. No one ever gave me this transcript of the intimate relations between Ezhov and Sholokhov, and in general I never showed my wife documents from my work and never told her what they contained.

Of course you can deny this, Ezhov. But we have the confessions of Glikina, Ezhova’s close friend and a German spy, who is now arrested and is under investigation. Glikina confesses that Ezhova was beaten by you and complained to her and told her about everything. Therefore let me remind you that lying will not help you!"

The following short extract from Ezhov's interrogation-confession of May 11, 1939 is printed in Viktor Fradkin, Delo Kol'tsova. Moscow: Vagrius / Mezhdunarodnyi Fond "Demokratiia", 2002. Published under the auspices of the "Memorial" society, there is every reason to believe that the documents reproduced in this volume are genuine.

Question: Besides Zinaida Glikina, whom you have already named, was anyone else connected with your wife Ezhova E.S. [Evgeniia Solomonovna - GF] in espionage work?

Answer: I can only reply with more or less precise suppositions. After the journalist M. Kol'tsov arrived from Spain his friendship with my wife grew much stronger. This friendship was so close that my wife even visited him in the hospital when he was ill.

Kol'tsov also worked in the commission -- or committee -- on foreign literature, that is, where Glikina also worked and, as far as I know, Kol'tsov obtained this job for Glikina upon Ezhova's recommendation.

I became interested in the reasons for my wife's closeness with Kol'tsov and once asked her about this. My wife at first put me off with general phrases, but then said that this closeness was connected with her work. I asked her, with which work, the literary or the other, and she answered: "With both the first and the second."

I understood that Ezhova was connected with Kol'tsov in her espionage work for England.

Ezhov interrogation 05.17.39

Interrogation re: murder of Slutsky, organized by Ezhov. Pavliukov 527. No QQ, no note. See Pavliukov 531-2 on Frinovskii’s testimony at Ezhov’s trial on February 3, 1940, where Frinovskii discussed Slutsky’s murder.

Summary:

"The interrogation of May 17 1939 was devoted to the circumstances surrounding the death of the former head of the Foreign division of the GUGB of the NKVD M. M. Slutsky. Ezhov informed us that the murder of Slutskii was organized according to his instructions, and was done because of the feat that Slutsky, whose arrest had become inevitable, might reveal during his interrogation the facts he knew about the criminal activity of the conspirators. "

Ezhov interrogation 06.16.39 by Rodos, selections – Polianskii 230-233

"Do you confirm Kosior’s confessions about your collaboration in working for Polish intelligence? Where, when and what secret information did you transmit to Kosior, and whom else did you recruit for this work?"

…

Perhaps you did not know Radek and Piatakov well and did not receive any instructions from Trotsky through them?

I never received any instructions from Trotsky from anybody. I knew Radek very poorly, I met him at Piatakov’s apartment a few times, but that was about ten years ago!

Were you friends with Piatakov?

Never. Mar'iasin, the president of the Gosbank, introduced us. We would get together for a drinking bout sometimes at his place, sometimes at Piatakov’s. And then I always got angry with Piatakov.

All right, then. When was this?

In 1930 or 1931, I can’t remember now.

And what did you do with him?

When he was drunk Piatakov often played the hooligan, made fun of those present. Once I was sitting next to him at the table. Piatakov quietly stuck me with a pin and then pretended that it was not he who had done it. A little while later he did it again even harder. I did not hold back and hit Piatakov in the face and split his lip. That evening I went away angry with him and never made it up with him and never had any doings with him at all.

…

You lie well, you bastard. Only I am not Piatakov, I won’t stick you with a pin, but I will force you to tell the truth.

…

I’ll tell you everything, don’t beat me. My guilt before the party and the people is so great that it’s senseless to justify myself."

Ezhov interrogation June 19 1939

No QQ. Re: nephews Viktor and Anatolii, and Mikhail Blinov, husband of his niece.

Pavliukov 528; 537.

Pavliukov 528:

"In particular, during the course of the interrogation of June 19 1939 Ezhov told about his conversations of a counterrevolutionary nature, which he supposedly had with his nephews Viktor and Anatolii, and also with the husband of his niece Mikhail Blinov. They supposedly agreed completely with his anti-Soviet views, and Viktor also shared, in Ezhov’s words, even his terrorist intentions, although he [Ezhov] never gave him any assignments of that nature."

Pavliukov, 537:

"As has already been mentioned earlier, during the course of the interrogation of June 19 1939 confessions were beaten out of Ezhov according to which Anatolii and Viktor shared his anti-Soviet views and even sympathized with his terrorist orientation. After that they went after his nephews in a serious way. They succeeded in breaking Anatolii first. He not only ‘confessed’ that he knew about Ezhov’s terrorist orientations but also stated that together with his brother Viktor he was read to do anything to help bring about these criminal plans."

[There is NO evidence that Ezhov beaten or tortured to get these confessions – only "supposed" by Pavliukov, 527 bot. - GF]

"As concerns confessions of a personal nature, to obtain some of them the investigators, probably, had to have recourse to the practice of interrogation "with partiality" [i.e. to beat Ezhov – GF]. Otherwise it is hard to understand now, for example, they were able to obtain from Ezhov confessions compromising his nearest relations."

Ezhov interrogation 06.21.39 by Rodos

- summarized by Pavliukov 527 bot.

"If you intend to lie again and make fun of the investigation, then we will not waste our time. I’d prefer to send you back to prison for a week or so to think it over."

Ezhov had already thought about the beginning of his dialog with the investigator and began to talk quickly:

"I admit that I was connected with Zhukovskii in espionage work for Germany since 1932. The fact that I tried to conceal that circumstance from the investigation can be explained only by my cowardice, which I showed at the beginning of the investigation when I tried to minimize my personal guilt, and since my espionage link with Zhukovskii concealed my even earlier ties with German intelligence, it was hard for me to speak [about them] at the first interrogation.

When did you become a German spy?

I was recruited in 1930. In Germany, in Königsberg.

How did you happen to be there?

I was sent to Germany by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture. In Germany I was well treated and shown every attention. The most assiduous attention I received from the prominent official of the Economic Ministry of Germany Artnau. Having been invited to his estate near Königsberg I spent the time happily enough, partaking excessively of alcoholic drinks. In Königsberg Artnau often paid the restaurant bills for me. I did not protest. All these circumstances made me feel close to Artnau and often without holding back I blurted out to him all kinds of secrets about the situation in the Soviet Union. Sometimes, when I was drunk, I was even more frank with Artnau and gave him to understand that I personally was not wholly in agreement with the Party’s line and with the existing Party leadership. Things got to the point that during one of the conversations I directly promised Artnau to discuss a series of questions in the government of the USSR concerning the purchase of livestock and agricultural machinery, in which Germany and Artnau were very much interested.

And how did German intelligence recruit Zhukovsky? Did his recruitment take place through you?

I established espionage ties with Zhukovskii in 1932 under the following circumstances. Zhukovskii was then working as assistant trade representative of the USSR in Germany. At that time I was the chairman of the Raspredotdel of the Central Committee of the Party. When he somehow found himself in Moscow Zhukovskii applied to me with the request to take him along to the negotiations. Before this I had not been acquainted with Zhukovskii and saw him for the first time in my office at the CC. I was astonished that Zhukovskii began to report to me about the situation in the Berlin trade representative office of the USSR concerning questions which had nothing to do with my position. I understood that the basic reason for Zhukovsky’s visiting me was, obviously, not to initiate me into the situation of the affairs of the office of the Soviet trade representative in Berlin but in something else entirely, about which he preferred to remain silent for the time being, awaiting my initiative. Not long before Zhukovsky’s arrival there arrived at the office of foreign groups, which at that time was also a part of the Raspredotdel of the CC of the Party and was under my supervision, there had arrived materials that characterized Zhukovskii in an extremely negative way. From these materials it was obvious that Zhukovskii had carried out a number of trade operations that had been unprofitable for the Commissariat of Foreign Trade. From these materials it was also obvious that in Berlin Zhukovskii was involved with the Trotskyists and spoke in their defense even at official Party gatherings of the Soviet colony. On that basis the Party organization of the Soviet colony insisted that Zhukovskii be recalled from Berlin. Knowing that these materials would have to come before me Zhukovskii obviously expected that I would be first to begin a talk with him concerning his further work abroad. After Zhukovskii had finished his report I reminded him about the failures in his work. Zhukovskii gave me his explanations and at the end of the conversation asked me my opinion as to whether he might continue his work in the office of the Soviet trade representative or be recalled to Moscow. I avoided any answer and promised to deal with the materials and report the results. At the same time I decided to transmit all the compromising materials on Zhukovskii to Berlin so that Artnau might be able to use them and to recruit Zhukovskii to collaboration with German intelligence. I considered Zhukovskii my man, and he unhesitatingly fulfilled all my assignments concerning espionage for Germany. Zhukovskii had the essential conditions of free access to all materials of the Commission of Party Control, and he made use of them whenever German intelligence demanded from him materials on this or that question. I also created for him in the NKVD such conditions that he was able to use for espionage work information through the secretariat of the NKVD on any questions."

Ezhov confession 06.25.39 Rodos re poisons

FROM THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERROGATION OF N.I. EZHOV BY INVESTIGATOR RODOS ON JUNE 25 1939:

"How did you use this NKVD laboratory in your espionage and conspiratorial activities?" asked Rodos, glancing at Kobulov who was sitting beside him.

"ANSWER: I knew that such a laboratory existed and that Iagoda made use of it in his conspiratorial activities. But when I came to the NKVD Frinovskii explained to me that we could not do without the activities of this laboratory, and that it was necessary for our intelligence activities in the Foreign Division abroad. But I did not know anything about what they were doing. I did not even hear about all these experiments about which Zhukovskii spoke, probably Frinovskii allowed him all this. True, once – I don’t remember when – Frinovskii told me that Alekhin had in the laboratory some substance which, if a person ingested it, would cause death like that from a heart attack. Such a substance is essential when it’s necessary to eliminate enemies abroad. But it had to be tested to see whether it would leave traces on the organism that could be discovered by experts upon autopsy. Frinovskii said that they had a doctor who for this purpose needed to carry out research on the corps of a person who had died from this substance. The doctor needed to carry out experiments on three or four persons. What’s the difference how they die, poison is even easier than a bullet in the back of the head. Therefore I agreed, but I never heard anything more about this laboratory and about what they were doing there.

QUESTION: Once again your answer is not to the point. Name the persons whom you liquidated in your espionage and conspiratorial activities by the use of the poisons which you received from this laboratory.

ANSWER: I have no idea about these poisons, I have never seen them.

KOBULOV: Ezhov is lying again, he thinks that somebody will believe him. We remind him that he gave the directive to poison Slutsky. Both Frinovskii and Alekhin have given testimony about this.

Did you hear what we are asking you about? How did you organize the poisoning of Slutsky? – asked Rodos.

Frinovskii actively spoke against Slutsky. He said that this was Iagoda’s man and that we could never trust him under any circumstances.

But here Frinovskii does not view Slutskii at all in the way you do – Kobulov suddenly said. Slutskii head the INO (International section) and could have had access to information from abroad about your espionage links. You feared that and poisoned Slutskii after putting your own agent Shpigel’glas in his place. But you didn’t manage to cover your tracks. Shpigel’glas figured everything out, uncovered your whole band of spies. You had to take care of your agents in the INO and abroad in the most meticulous manner.

Tell us in detail how you organized the murder of your wife Evgeniia Solomonovna Ezhova by means of poisoning.

I did not organize such a poisoning. She died from a sedative, she drank a large dose.

And here your chauffer confessed in the investigation that a day before Ezhova’s death you asked him to take chocolate candies and fruit to her in the hospital. You poisoned these products. Who gave you the poison? Zhukovsky? Alekhin?

My wife died November 21. At that time both of them had already been arrested. And then, I don’t’ remember that I sent my chauffer to her with a present.

KOBULOV: Don’t play the fool, Ezhov, we are not children here, and we will not believe that such a hardened bandit and spy as you are did not keep poison and did not know how to use it.

I do not recall the exact date when I saw my wife in the hospital for the last time. Probably it was the 17^th or 18^th. She told me that she did not want to live, that in any case they would soon arrest her, that she felt there were serious crimes on her account. She asked me that I bring her some kind of poison the next time…

Did you arrange your wife’s suicide?

Yes. She knew a lot about my subversive activities, my accomplices, and my criminal plans. But I decided not to give her poison. I did not have any special poison. Normal poison I could of course obtain, but such a poisoning could have brought suspicion upon me, that I had put her to death myself or through accomplices, or simply had given her poison for suicide. I knew that a large dose of sedative could cause death. I told her that I did not have any poison, but I did have a very great deal of sedative. She understood everything.

On the 20^th I took a box of chocolate candies and put a packet of Luminal in it. Then I put the box into a basket with grapes and apples and told my chauffer to take all this to the hospital. Of course I committed a serious crime, but she herself asked me about this. She wanted to end her life."

Ezhov interrogation 06.29.39 by Rodos re Kedrov’s report

Tell us about your espionage connections with the agent of German intelligence Mnatsakanov.

I never had such connections with him.

And if you think about it the right way. When did you become acquainted with him?

That was, it seems, in 1935. I was going to Vienna for treatment together with my wife. Then I was already a secretary of the Central Committee and Slutskii had the task of security for our trip abroad. He, so to speak, attached this Mnatsakanov to me. He had been a consul or a vice-consul, had an automobile, and drove us around the town.

Yee-es. And he drove you around so well that once you were Commissar you immediately dragged this villain to a leading post in the INO knowing that he was a German spy, that his wife was linked to Polish intelligence, and that his brother was an experienced Trotskyist provocateur!

I didn’t know any of this. Slutskii had simply worked with him in Vienna, had a high opinion of him, and decided to take him into the INO apparatus. I supported Slutsky, not because I knew Mnatsakanov a bit. I did not spend much time on INO matters and completely relied on Slutskii in matters of cadre.

So it turns out that it was Slutskii who is to blame. He foisted a German agent onto you, and you knew nothing about him. Is that the way things were?

I do not wish to blame Slutskii for anything. He did not foist Mnatsakanov onto me. In my opinion I did not see this Mnatsakanov in the NKVD even once. In the INO at that time I only met with Slutskii about the work, sometimes with Shpigel’glas, and with Boris Berman.

Why then did Mnatsakanov call you and ask you to intercede for him when they unmasked him and began to expel him from the Party?

He could not have called me. I had a direct connection only with the heads of departments and their assistants. Who among them would even let Mnatsakanov near such a telephone, much less since they wanted to expel him from the Party. That is impossible.

I remind you that he called at that time from Kedrov’s office.

About Kedrov I know that he was just a simple worker in the INO. From his telephone it was also impossible to reach me.

[…]

That’s all, we are finished with lying. You have two days to think hard about your espionage work with Mnatsakanov, to remember all the details. And especially how you warned him in Duilov’s office not to give any confessions. If you continue to lie and mock me, I’ll have your head.

Ezhov interrogation 07.02.39 by Rodos re Mnatsakanov

When and how did Mnatsakanov enter into espionage relations with you?

This was in 1935 when I went to Vienna for the second time to get treatment for my lung disease.

You had been there before, when?

In 1934, I was alone then, and the next time I went with my wife. I was treated the whole time by the famous Professor Norden.

German intelligence summoned you to him, he was an agent of theirs?

Not. The Kremlin medical directorate sent me to him. Many important workers and their wives were treated by him. He had been in Moscow several times, already in the 1920s. And Norden could hardly have been connected with German intelligence. I was told while still in Moscow that this professor was a monarchist and supporter of Franz-Josef and no lover of Hitler, that’s why he moved from Berlin to Vienna, so the fascists could not persecute him. And also, he is very old.

Tell us about your first trip to Vienna, with whom did you meet there?

In Vienna Slutskii met me. He had received a special directive about this from Iagoda.

From Iagoda? That is interesting. Did you yourself ask Iagoda to do this?

No. I did not talk with Iagoda about this. At that time I was an assistant department head in the CC and traveled to Austria under a false name. Therefore the CC gave a directive to Iagoda that he should take care of guaranteeing my security.

Well, and who was it who took care of your security then, Mnatsakanov?

No, then Mnatsakanov was not yet working in Vienna, I think. It was Slutskii himself who brought me to Norden at first, and then, twice, some collaborator of his. To be honest I do not remember his name and never met him again.

And when did Mnatsakanov approach you?

In 1935. He met Evgeniia Solomonovna and myself at the station and drove us to the plenipotentiary’s office to Slutsky. Then he took us to Norden and showed us the city. He was very polite and kind to us.

I’ll bet. Did he connect with you by some code word in the name of German intelligence?

No. He gave me a greeting from Artnau and I understood everything. Thereupon I communicated secret political information to him.

What kind of information?

I don’t remember exactly now, but in my opinion Mnatsakanov was interested in information about industry and about the weaponry of the Red Army. Not long before this I headed the industrial division of the CC, and I was very familiar with this information. Probably that’s why the Germans asked me such questions.

He gave you tasks of a subversive and sabotage character?

Yes, he did. But in general.

What do you mean "in general"?

At that time I had already become a secretary of the CC, head of the department of leading Party organs, chairman of the Party Control Commission, and chairman of the Commission on Foreign Assignments. German intelligence knew this very well, and I received from Mnatsakanov the task of performing sabotage while in these positions, of subverting Party work.

Be more concrete.

Well, how shall I say it? In my hands at that time was in fact all the work of reassigning of leading cadres. Choosing their activities, punishments, directing them for work abroad. So I did everything that a saboteur could do in such positionis. I directed to leading positions people who were weak in professional, political, and moral sense, people who could ruin production, undermine the fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan. To compromise the Party. In the Party Control Commission I managed things so as to cover-up and not disclose elements hostile to the Party, and to deprive of Party membership and shut out in every way those who were loyal to the Party. Abroad I tried to send those who would probably become spies or non-returnees.

What a scoundrel you were anyway, Ezhov – hissed Rodos with pleasure through his teeth. Why, after that there is no place for you on this earth.

I understand that I caused enormous harm to the Party and the country, I repent fully of my crimes and am ready to bear the punishment I deserve for them, -- said Ezhov, as if by rote, glancing in fear at the investigator.

Were you familiar with Mnatsakanov’s wife, Erna Boshkovich?

Yes, he introduced us to her in Vienna.

Did you know that her first husband was a Polish spy and that she herself works for Polish intelligence?

No. I did not even know that she had been married before Mnatsakanov.

Did your wife meet with her alone?

I seem to remember that not long before our departure Mnatsakanov and Boshkovich took her shopping, and at that time I was in the office of the trade representative.

What do you think? Could Ezhova have established espionage connections with Boshkovich in Vienna? What information do you have about that?

I have no information about that. Evgeniia and I never spoke about Boshkovich. She never told me anything about espionage connections either with her or with Mnatsakanov.

That doesn’t mean that there were no such connections. It is already proven now that Ezhova was an English spy and you even confirmed this to the investigation. Tell us honestly, do you know about any meetings with Boshkovich after her arrival in Moscow?

My wife told me almost nothing about her espionage work. But I concede that she might have had espionage connections with Boshkovich in Moscow, since the English and Polish intelligence services often work together.

You called Mnatsakanov to Moscow specially in order through him to get into contact with the Gestapo. Did he ask you about this?

Yes. Before my own departure from Vienna he expressed such a wish and I ordered Slutskii to have him recalled for work in the NKVD as soon as I became the Commissar.

Did you conduct your conspiratorial contact with him in the NKVD building?

Yes, we had that kind of contact right up until his exposure and arrest.

[...]

What tasks did Mnatsakanov give you? Did you hand over to him secret NKVD information?

He was not interested in secret NKVD information. In the leadership of the Commissariat on the level of heads of departments and their assistants were Gestapo agents. Then many of them were exposed, as was Mnatsakanov himself. These agents knew more detailed information than I did. So I told him about Politburo sessions, CC plenums, conversations with Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich and other leaders, related to him the contents of secret letters and telegrams of the Central Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars.

You did good work. And why didn’t you rescue him when he fell? For he asked you to help him.

There was nothing I could do because he was completely exposed and confessed his espionage work.

Were you afraid that he would give you up?

No. No one would have believed him.

You are lying, Ezhov! We have evidence against you. When investigator Dulov was interrogating Mnatsakanov you went specially to his office and told your collaborator: "You are writing? Well, write, write." This meant you were warning him in this way that he should keep silent about you, and then arranged it so that he would be shot as quickly as possible. Wasn’t it like that?

Yes, I remember what happened. I was afraid that Mnatsakanov would expose me as a German spy. I wanted him to be shot as quickly as possible, and I achieved that.

On this occasion Rodos was satisfied with his suspect. His confessions fit into the plan that had been thought out in advance and covered many unclear points. He nodded to Ezhov, who had deserved a cigarette, to the packet lying on the table. While the former Commissar lit up Rodos took a copy of a typewritten text from a file.

This was some kind of unrelated and unidentified communication from either a suspect or an interrogator, and perhaps just an excerpt from an anonymous denunciation. In the NKVD it was considered impermissible to take an interest in the source of operational information and, having received this paper from Kobulov, Rodos did not add any details to it.

Someone had informed about an amorous contact between Ezhov and a certain Stefforn, a Czech and German female spy, that had taken place in 1934. Before this Rodos had read the text about three times but still did not understand who this Stefforn was – an NKVD collaborator, the wife of a colleague in the INO in Berlin, or both at the same time. Supposedly Ezhov had asked her to marry him but she had refused, and then regretted it. But soon she found herself a new husband, one Petrushev. When Stefforn was imprisoned for espionage Petrushev had asked Evgeniia Ezhova to intercede for her with her husband, but that did not help. That was all the information.

Rodos thought. Ezhov had already named about ten German spies with whom he was working in Moscow, therefore the Czech woman Stefforn was hardly essential here. But she might have played a role in Ezhov’s moral dissolution, which was now very important.

Did you know a woman named Stefforn?

Perhaps. Remind me who she is.

I will. She was your lover, a Czech whom you even wanted to marry, but she preferred somebody named Petrushev to you.

Maybe that’s Elena Petrusheva, a friend of Evgeniia, they had met in Germany at the end of the 1930s. But…

Tell me about her in detail.

My wife told me that Lena’s father was a German Jew from Prague and her mother was either a Czech or a Pole. She was married to a Soviet citizen working abroad and lived with him for some time in Germany.

Was this husband an employee of the INO of the OGPU?

I don’t know, that wasn’t mentioned in the conversation. Sometime in 1930 she left him and went to Moscow. I don’t know the husband’s last name. Then she married Petrushev. I met them a couple of times, a respectable-looking man. He said that his father had been a well-known pre-Revolutionary photographer, the best one in Russia, and very rich. And Petrushev himself worked in some publishing house or other either as a photographer or, maybe, as an artist. The wife told me that he could draw very well, his pictures were hanging in their home.

Don’t go off on me about pictures, stay with the main point of the question. Petrushev asked your wife to get you to help his wife Stefforn when she was arrested for espionage on behalf of Germany.

Evgeniia Solomonovna never said anything about that to me. In general she and I agreed that she would not ask me about government employees and saboteurs who were under arrest. Once she did ask me to help the husband of a friend, who had been seized for sabotage in a factory, and I told her that I could not do that because my real activities might be uncovered and then we would both burn. Since that time she did not trouble me with such questions.

Be that as it may, Ezhov. But you are avoiding the question about your amorous relations with this Stefforn, or Petrusheva. Tell me now about that.

Elena was an interesting woman and she pleased me. She came to our apartment a few times – that was, it seems, at the end of 1934. With her there was another woman. We drank. When she and I were smoking together in another room I began to embrace her and wanted to arrange to meet at her apartment since she had said that her husband Petrushev was resting at a spa in Kislovodsk. I asked for her telephone number so I could call her the next day. But she said that they had no telephone. I remembered that my wife had called her at home. That meant that she did not want to get together with me.

What, she didn’t work and sat at home all the time?

As I remember she was a typist at home, but I might be mistaken.

And what, you didn’t meet with her again. Was it really that hard to get her to go to bed?

I didn’t try to do that again. After 1934 I didn’t see her again. Zhenia [= Evgeniia] did not invite her to our place any more.

How so?

Elena had unpleasant conversations with her, anti-Party, politically harmful. About the hunger in the Ukraine, where some of her relatives lived. No doubt she was trying to see how my wife would react to that. In addition Evgeniia heard from one of her friends that Petrusheva had gotten a little drunk and hinted to her that she was collaborating with the NKVD.

Ezhov, there is no point in lying. We have information and evidence that you lived for a long time with this woman, wanted to leave your wife for her, gave her expensive gifts and told her state secrets when you were drunk. I don’t have the time to drag every word out of you. Today in this room you’ll be given a pencil and paper, and you write in detail about your grimy ties with this slut. And don’t forget to tell had your complete moral degeneration led to your becoming a spy and traitor.

OK.

And something else. For a long time you have been hiding your attraction to men, what’s called homosexuality. But this became known after you agreed to the shameful affair of citizen V. from the Commissariat of Water Transport in your apartment, and before that in V’s presence you amused yourself with his wife in bed. Do you understand how far you have fallen? You are simply a monster, Ezhov, a filthy person and a pervert. I’m disgusted to look at you.

At that time I was very drunk…

What’s that, justification?

No, but I don’t remember anything, I woke up in the morning and they were no longer there. The chauffer then told me that he took them away at 3 a.m. I could have done anything at all then…

I’m not interested in that. But we know that you told V. about your passion for homosexuality since childhood and that men could completely replace women for you. You should write in detailed when you became a homosexual and with whom you then became involved in this filthy business…

Ezhov interrogation 07.08.39 by Rodos

"Tell us how and when you recruited Uspenskii in the espionage-sabotage organization in the NKVD that you had created.

I turned my attention to Uspenskii already at the beginning of 1936.

That was when he was still the assistant commandant of the Moscow Kremlin for internal security?

Yes.

Where did you find out about Uspenskii’s hostile anti-Soviet views. Did he express them to you himself?

No. Veinshtok and Frinovskii told me about that. They knew him well and believed that he’d be very suitable for espionage work.

Did you recruit Uspenskii personally?

Yes. That was right after my arrival in the Commissariat. He quickly agreed and I told him that we needed our own men in the provinces. That was why I sent him to Western Siberia.

What kinds of assignments did you given him then?

He was supposed to recruit agents into our organization from among the Chekist cadre and to promote them to leading positionis so that they could seize power in the event of war or a coup.

In November 1937 you sent Uspenskii a coded message with the following content: "If you think you are going to sit in Orenburg for five years, you are mistaken. Very soon, it seems, I will have to promote you to a more responsible post. What is the meaning of this message?

At that time the leadership of our organization decided to move to active measures. There was a lot of evidence against Leplevskii and Zakovskii showing that they were spies and enemies of the people. It was impossible to hide such matters, and we had to get rid of these people, we couldn’t use them, they could cause everything to fail. We decided to replace them with Uspenskii and Litvin. I gave Uspenskii a coded message so that he would find out about his forthcoming departure from Orenburg and would switch all the sabotage-espionage work over to other people whom he had been able to recruit there.

OK. And now tell us how you warned Uspenskii about the fact that they wanted to arrest him.

Did Dagin tell you about the fact of Uspenskii's forthcoming arrest?

Yes, I think it was he. He came to my office and told me about that.

And didn’t he tell you that he had listened in on the telephone conversation between comrades Stalin and Khrushchev about Uspenskii?

Yes, I remember that he told me about the telephone conversation about Uspenskii which he had listened in on, but he did not say that that was Stalin’s conversation. Dagin, on my instructions, listened in on all telephone conversations of the Politburo and immediately told me about them so that I would be up to date.

After that you called Kiev and warned Uspenskii. What did you tell him?

I said: ‘You are being recalled, your situation is bad.’ Something like that. I was afraid to send him a coded message, they could intercept it, since I had already lost trust and was under suspicion among the Party [leaders] as a hostile element.

Did Dagin also tell you about the recall of Litvin from Leningrad?

I did not know anything about the recall of Litvin to Moscow and did not warn him. There was no need to do so.

Why was that?

I had an agreement with him that in the event he was exposed he would commit suicide.

Was that your order?

No. In September of that year Litvin was in Moscow and used to come to my dacha. He told me that the arrival of Beria at the NKVD was the beginning of the end and soon we would all be arrested, since the Party was most likely aware about our plot. And he also said that he would not give himself up alive and that if they unexpectedly recalled him to Moscow he would shoot himself. That’s what happened.

Did you support him in this intention?

No. But I didn’t try to dissuade him either.

That means that you admit that you de-facto gave your accomplice an order to commit suicide in the event of failure?

Yes, that was de-facto the case.

When did you include Litvin in your espionage work?

That was in 1931, when I transferred him to Moscow.

Why did he agree to become a spy?

Already in the 1920s when I was getting together with Litvin I noticed his inexplicable relationship to Trotskyism. Openly he was not a supporter of Trotsky, but in his circle at that time there were many exposed Trotskyists and I think that in his inner being he had always been a Trotskyist.

You wish to say that even then Litvin was a double-dealer?

Yes. He was a double-dealer and, as later turned out, was a supporter of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist line. Therefore he willingly agreed to my proposal to become a German spy. I think because at that time the Left opposition had already suffered its final failure and Trotsky had been driven out of the USSR altogether.

In 1933 Litvin upon your recommendation was named the chief of the cadre section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine. Was that done on the instruction of German intelligence?

Yes, I received that instruction from Artnau.

What directives about espionage did Litvin receive from you?

These directives were of a subversive and sabotage nature. I asked him to appoint to leading positions people who could by their actions cause arouse the dissatisfaction of the population of the Ukraine, people who would carry out sabotage, ruin foodstuff and livestock, disrupt the fulfillment of industrial plans. These were hidden Right and Left Oppositionist, who also carried out assignments for Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov and other enemies.

Litvin was included by you in the basic plan for sabotage that German intelligence gave you? Did you also take him into the NKVD upon the assignment of the fascists in order to organize there the espionage-conspiratorial organization?

Yes, that’s how it was.

When you came to work in the NKVD you also brought with you there another of your collaborators, Isaac Shapiro. When was he recruited by you?

I had known Shapiro since 1930. He worked in the cadre section of the Commissariat of Agriculture in which I was a chief. He and I had a good friendship and I valued his zeal and literacy. And when Artnau recruited me and asked me to find people for espionage work I thought right away about Shapiro, who was personally devoted to me and it had always seemed to me that he did not like Soviet power very much and disapproved of the political line of the Party.

Did Shapiro carry out sabotage activity in the Commissariat of Agriculture on your instruction?

Yes, he did. But for a short time only. I decided to take him into the Central Committee, since there I needed people for subversive work.

He knew that you were a German spy?

Yes, I told him that together we would work for German intelligence, so as later to overthrow the government and come to power if there were a war with Germany.

What assignments of yours did Shapiro carry out in the NKVD?

He was de-facto my main assistant. Indeed I first appointed him the chief of the secretariat, and then made him also chief of the first special section. He had a lot of possibilities for sabotage in the NKVD and he carried out all my assignments of an espionage-subversive nature, both mine and Frinovskii's. And when Beria arrived at the NKVD he immediately found out that Shapiro was an enemy and arrested him in November of ’38.

I know that. It would be better for you to tell me how you recruited Liushkov and how you helped him escape to Japan.

I recruited Liushkov right after his return from Leningrad from the investigation of Kirov’s murder. At that time I was already secretary of the Central Committee and Liushkov knew that I was beginning to oversee the NKVD. Therefore, when I called him to my office and hinted that I had information about his ties with the Petliurovists during the civil war in the Ukraine and other incriminating facts, he was frightened and immediately agreed to work for me as a German-Japanese intelligence man.

Did you really have that kind of information?

No, I did not have. I made it all up in order to recruit Liushkov. But I guessed that he was a hostile element with a foul past, and turned out to be correct. Liushkov agreed to become a spy.

How did you order Liushkov to flee to the Japanese?

Ezhov thought for a few seconds. He could not think of a reason why Frinovskii, one of the leaders of the conspiratorial group in the NKVD, had suggested arresting his colleague Liushkov. But then he found a solution.

Frinovskii often told me that he did not like Liushkov. He was cowardly and could betray us all at any moment. Upon our orders he was carrying out important espionage tasks for Japanese intelligence and knew a great deal about our subversive and sabotage work. Frinovskii said that we had to get rid of him, that means, kill him. And he told me that he would take care of that himself. I decided not to hinder him.

Did Frinovskii say how he wanted to kill Liushkov?

No. But I think that he wanted to arrest him first, and then in the inner prison to poison him or put him to death somehow.

What a gang! And who warned Liushkov anyway about the danger?

I don’t know. But Frinovskii wanted to appoint Gorbach from Novosibirsk to Liushkov’s place and recall the latter to Moscow, supposedly for a new job, but in reality to arrest him. Liushkov, most likely, found out that Gorbach was already on route to Khabarovsk, and fled across the border.

Ezhov ochnaia stavka w. Zhukovskii 07.21.39 – Rodos & Esaulov present

Do you know this man?

Yes.

Who is it?

Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov.

And you? Rodos asked Ezhov.

Yes, that is Semion Borisovich Zhukovsky.

Suspect Ezhov. Confirm your confessions concerning the conspiratorial, sabotage, and terrorist activities of the former assistant Commissar of the NKVD Zhukovsky, that you gave at the interrogation of July 17 of this year.

Investigator: When did you become a German spy?

Ezhov: I was recruited in 1930 in Germany, in Königsberg.

[Here Ezhov repeats word for word the confession included above in the section - GF]

In Germany I was well treated and shown every attention. The most assiduous attention I received from the prominent official of the Economic Ministry of Germany Artnau. Having been invited to his estate near Königsberg I spent the time happily enough, partaking excessively of alcoholic drinks… (In Königsberg Artnau) often paid the restaurant bills for me… I did not protest… All these circumstances made me feel close to Artnau and often without holding back I blurted out to him all kinds of secrets about the situation in the Soviet Union… Sometimes, when I was drunk, I was even more frank with Artnau and gave him to understand that I personally was not wholly in agreement with the Party’s line and with the existing Party leadership. Things got to the point that during one of the conversations I directly promised Artnau to discuss a series of questions in the government of the USSR concerning the purchase of livestock and agricultural machinery, in which Germany and Artnau were very much interested….

[Here the source continues with new material, not printed earlier as a part of this confession. - GF]

Since I knew about Zhukovsky’s cowardice and stubbornness I did not consider it necessary to keep him up to date about conspiratorial matters. I only introduced him fully to these matters in the Spring of 1938. Then he was appointed my assistant and headed the whole accounting of the NKVD and the GULAG. We conspirators had special plans about the GULAG about which I have given detailed confessions, and I decided to bring Zhukovskii up to date. By this time the people who could have exposed Zhukovskii along the lines of his Trotskyist and espionage connections were already condemned and the danger of Zhukovsky’s arrest had passed. I told Zhukovskii about the existence of the conspiracy in the NKVD, that the conspiratorial organization is connected with governmental circles of Germany, Poland, and Japan. I don’t remember exactly now, but I think that I told him about our desire to get into contact with the English. Then I told him about the leading members of the conspiratorial organization and about our plans, specifically about our terrorist plans…

What assignments did you give Zhukovskii concerning the GULAG?

The conspiratorial assignments concerning the GULAG that I gave to Zhukovskii consisted in this: we sent to work the GULAG a very great quantity of compromised people. We could not leave them in the operational work, but we kept them in the GULAG for the purpose of forming a sort of reserve for conspiracies in the case of a coup in the country. I assigned Zhukovskii to maintain these people, but not to connect himself with them along conspiratorial lines, but to carry out all conspiratorial assignments that came to the GULAG through these people…

Investigator: Did you give these terrorist assignments to Zhukovskii at the time of his work in the section of operational technology? Did you talk with him about the terrorist tasks of the conspiracy.

Ezhov: Yes, I talked to him. There were two variants of our plans. The first variant: in the case of war, when we proposed to carry out the arrests of the members of the government and their physical removal. And the second variant: if there were no war in the immediate future, then to get rid of the leadership of the Party and the government, especially Stalin and Molotov, by carrying out terrorist acts against them. I firmly remember that I told Zhukovskii about this after I had entrusted him with the existence of the conspiracy.

Investigator: Suspect Zhukovsky, did you receive from Ezhov the criminal assignments about which he has just spoken?

Zhukovsky: I did not receive any such criminal assignments and am hearing about terrorist tasks for the first time at this face-to-face confrontation.

You have nothing else that you want to tell the investigation? [ asked Rodos to Zhukovskii and, having received a negative answer, pushed the button to call the guards to take them away.]

Ezhov interrogation 07.24.39 by Rodos, including a quotation from a Frinovskii interrogation

Recently Frinovskii gave confessions about your terrorist activity. Now I shall read them to you: "When Zhukovskii was chief of the 12^th section, Ezhov gave him an assignment to develop poisons with the aim of using them in carrying out terrorist acts. Ezhov, speaking with Zhukovskii in my presence, said that it was necessary to work on the question of poisons that would work instantaneously, which could be used on people but without [leaving] visible traces of poisoning. Ezhov also clearly said that we needed these poisons for use within the country."

Do you confirm his confession, Ezhov?

I cannot confirm that. At one of the interrogations I said that I had no relation to this laboratory. Frinovskii and Zhukovskii took care of it. I did not give them any tasks concerning poisons and did not have any conversations about these poisons.

Stop lying! You are incriminated not only by Frinovskii but by Zhukovsky, Alekhin and Dagin. You stood at the head of the conspiracy and gave directions to prepare poisons for the villainous murder of leaders of the Party and government. Here is some more of what Frinovskii confessed about this:

"I must say that the open use of servants for a terrorist act was not essential, servants could be used secretly, because the laboratory and the preparation of products were in the hands of Barkan and Dagin, they could poison the products in advance, and the servant, not knowing the products were poisoned, could give them to the members of the Politburo.

Ezhov gave Zhukovskii directives about the preparation of poisons, after he left the 12^th department Zhukovskii transmitted these directives to Alekhin, and I and Ezhov confirmed these directives more than once. In 1937 and 1938 there were several joint conversations in Ezhov’s office between myself, Ezhov, and Alekhin. We were constantly concerned with how to carry out this work in the laboratory. The point is that those poisons that were being developed in the laboratory had had some kind of taste or left traces of their use in the human organism. We set the task of developing in the laboratory poisons that would be without any taste, so that they could be used in wine, drink and food, without changing the taste and color of the food and the drink. We proposed to invent separately poisons of instantaneous and of delayed action, and also whose use would not cause any visible destruction in the human organizing so that it could not be determined by autopsy of the body of the person killed by poison that poisons had been used to murder him.

What do you say to this?

I seem to remember a few conversations with Frinovskii about poisons. But I do not remember that I gave him any directives about their preparation and use.

But you will remember, think about it. I am convinced that the memory of traitors and scoundrels such as yourself is quickly restored in punitive cells and isolation cells. Everybody remembers after a few days.

The use of poisons for the purpose of terror against the government was discussed by use, when our original plan of a coup d’état and seizure of power fell apart.

Tell us about this in more detail.

Already in the summer of last year [1938 – GF] our organization took the decision to organize a military coup on the 7^th of November.

Who was present at this assembly and where did it take place?

It took place at my dacha. Present were Frinovskii, Evdokimov, Dagin, Zhurbenko, Zhukovsky, and Nikolaev-Zhurid. That was, so to speak, the general staff of our subversive organization. Oh, I forgot, Litvin was also there, he was coming to Moscow at that time on official business.

Did you call together this meeting specially so that your general staff of bandits could take part?

Yes. The staff’s presence was essential, as the coup was to take place also in Leningrad and the staff was supposed to guarantee everything.

It was for this purpose that you also moved Zhurbenko to be the head of the UNKVD for Moscow and Moscow oblast’, so that he could be there to guarantee your treasonous conspiracy?

Yes, that is so. I specially appointed Zhurbenko to this position before Beria’s arrival in the NKVD.

Continue. What did you discuss there at the dacha?

We decided that the interior troops [of the NKVD – GF] that were in Moscow and were under the command of Frinovskii as first assistant to the Commissar would carry out the coup. As for him, he should prepare a fighting group that would annihilate the members of the government in attendance at the parade. Then we decided to confirm a final plan for the coup in September or October and to send around directive to our people in the republics and oblasts’ about what they should do on the seventh of November.

And this meeting took place, who was present at it?

There were only three of us: Frinovskii, Zhukovsky, and I. Either the end of September or the beginning of October we met in my office.

And what did you discuss?

At that time the possibilities of our organization had been seriously disrupted by the arrival of Beria in the NKVD. He replaced Frinovskii, and we could no longer use the internal troops.

But why, he must have had his agents there?

Yes, he did have his agents, but obviously Beria already had information about our conspiracy and arrested almost all of them in September. I could not prevent these arrests or I would have exposed myself. Then Frinovskii proposed that we put off the coup and take power by means of poisoning the members of the government and in the first place Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov. Their deaths would have immediately caused confusion in the country and we would have taken advantage of this and seized power. We calculated that we could then arrest all the people in the government and the NKVD who were unsuitable for us, and to claim that they were conspirators guilty in the deaths of the leaders.

What low-lifes! What could have stopped you hoodlums?

Frinovskii then said that Dagin would carry out the poisoning, and that Alekhin and Zhukovskii would give him the poisons. But it would be necessary to prepare the poisons, and we decided to carry out this terrorist act when the requisite poisons were collected. We agreed to meet when Dagin had the poisons and to put together a detailed plan for the coup. But Zhukovskii was unexpectedly arrested, a few days after this meeting, and after him Alekhin and Dagin, and I do not know whether or not Dagin received the poisons.

Ezhov interrogation 08.02.39 by Rodos

/ 275 /

Tell us in detail about the sabotage activities that were carried out by you and your colleagues on the economic properties of the NKVD – said Rodos, preparing to write down the confessions.

In addition to the large quantity of economic properties that had been under the direction of the NKVD under Iagoda and which had developed greatly during the years 1937-1938, that is Kolyma, Indigirka, Norilstroi and others, I succeeded in significantly increasing the economic activity of the NKVD by means of new properties.

During these years I succeeded in carrying forth in the government the question about the transfer to the direction of the NKVD of many forest regions of the Commissariat of Forests, in connection with which the production program of the forest camps of the NKVD in the preparation and export of wood products in 1938 comprised almost half of the whole program of the Commissariat of Forests.

Into the direction of the NKVD were transferred the construction of railroad lines that had the most important defense significance, such as the Baikal-Amur railway, the line from Ulan-Ude to Naushi, the Soroka-Pliasetskaia, the Ukhto-Pecherskaia line, and others.

Among the purely defense-oriented properties I achieved the transfer under the direction of the NKVD of the construction of the Archangel shipbuilding factory and almost all the powder cellulose factories in Archangel, Solikamsk and other places, at the same time having organized the construction of ten smaller cellulose factories. On the initiative of the NKVD, on top of the programs confirmed by the government, the NKVD was given the construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric station – the Kuibyshev hydro network.

/140/

Sabotage and mismanagement in the construction sites flourished with complete impunity. We managed to go over completely to questions of defense construction, achieving practical control over a significant part of it. This gave us the possibility in case of need in our conspiratorial goals to vary and carry out different subversive measures which could help accomplish the defeat of the USSR in wartime and our coming to power.

…The greatest population of prisoners was the border regions of the far Eastern borders. Here it was very easy for us to take over different economic tasks of a defense nature because of the lack of workers. However the camps of the Far Eastern Region were situated not only near to the borders but we sent there mostly prisoners sentenced for espionage, diversion, terror and other more serious crimes, and we sent almost no so-called "ordinary" prisoners.

In this way along the borders of the FER, in the direct rear of the Red Army was prepared the most active and embittered counterrevolutionary force, which we planned to use in the widest possible manner in case of complication or of war with the Japanese… A significant quantity of prisoners were concentrated on our western borders of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Leningrad oblast’, and the Karelian ASSR, especially in road construction.

… The whole conspiratorial plan of the regime we created for the prisoners consisted in that the most privileged conditions were created for the prisoners sentenced for the most serious crimes (espionage and terrorism), since that was the qualified force that would often be used for directing the administrative and economic work in the camps. In their hands was concentrated also all the cultural and educational work of the prisoners. It is clear in what spirit they were educated. Finally the regime created in the camps often permitted the counterrevolutionary activity of the prisoners to continue with complete impunity.

In the camps the work of the so-called 3^rd sections was so badly organized and the camps were guarded so poorly, that the prisoners had the possibility of creating their own counterrevolutionary groups in the camps and to associate with each other at will. Facts like this were many. The guard of the camps was extremely small, made up of unreliable people, the material situation of the soldiers and the command staff was very poor, and, finally, the prisoners themselves were used in many cases in the capacity of guards. As a result of a security organized like this there were many cases of mass escapes from the camps. We fought against this evil poorly and did so consciously, in the hopes that the escapees from the camps would continue their counterrevolutionary activity and would become a force that would spread all kinds of anti-Soviet agitation and rumors.

/ 276 /

I achieved the transfer under the direction of the NKVD a series of working factors of the defense industry. The reason for that could not have been the use of the labor of prisoners, since among them were the Pavshinskii factory, the Tushinskii factory of aviation motor construction, and others. Besides that, the NKVD organized a series of new factories on its own initiative, which carried out defense production…

What, do you think we called you here to report on behalf of the NKVD about the successful fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan! You are a bandit, a conspirator, a saboteur, a terrorist, and a traitor. Answer the question asked you to the point.

Sabotage and mismanagement in the construction sites flourished with complete impunity.

I’ll bet, with a Commissar like that. – said Rodos with a grimace, not stopping his note-taking.

We managed to go over completely to questions of defense construction, achieving practical control over a significant part of it…

Who is this "we"?

Well, our conspiratorial organization. Myself, Zhukovsky, Frinovskii, and others. I have already named them all earlier.

This gave our organization the possibility in case of need in our conspiratorial goals to vary and carry out different subversive measures which could help accomplish the defeat of the USSR in wartime and our coming to power.

In which areas was the subversive activity of your organization mainly distributed?

The greatest population of prisoners was the border regions of the far Eastern borders. Here it was very easy for us to take over different economic tasks of a defense nature because of the lack of workers. However the camps of the Far Eastern Region were situated not only near to the borders but we sent there mostly prisoners sentenced for espionage, diversion, terror and other more serious crimes, and we sent almost no so-called "ordinary" prisoners.

In this way along the borders of the FER, in the direct rear of the Red Army was prepared the most active and embittered counterrevolutionary force, which we planned to use in the widest possible manner in case of complication or of war with the Japanese.

Did you send Liushkov there specially. What assignments did you give him?

At the beginning of 1937 Frinovskii and I conferred with each other and decided that we had to have our own man in the Far East, through whom we could maintain contact with Japanese intelligence. In the event of an attack by the Japanese he was to let the counterrevolutionaries out of the camps, seize with their help the stores of arms and military supplies, and then head terrorist-diversionist work in the rear of the Red Army. We thought about this and chose Liushkov for these purposes, whom I had already recruited to our organization in 1936. Then I transferred him from the Azovo-Chernomorskii region and made him the head of the NKVD in the Far Eastern Region.

In which other areas did you create the same kind of espionage-diversionist centers?

We also did this in the western borders of the USSR. A significant quantity of prisoners were concentrated on our western borders of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Leningrad oblast’, and the Karelian ASSR.

In Leningrad oblast and Karelia Litvin was in charge for you, of course?

Yes. I sent him there specially at the beginning of 1938 instead of Zakovskii, whom I could not fully trust.

And in the Ukraine?

There Uspenskii all the assignments, including contact with Polish and German intelligence. That is why I made him Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukraine.

When was he recruited by you?

At the beginning of 1937. He came to Moscow from Novosibirsk before he was appointed to the position of chief of the UNKVD for the Orenburg oblast. I knew that Uspenskii was anti-Soviet, anti-party, and for that reason he immediately agreed to work in our organization.

In Belorussia you sent Boris Berman? Did you know that he was an old German agent?

Yes. Artnau told me that Berman was working for German intelligence as soon as I became Commissar of Internal Affairs. He had been recruited at the beginning of the ‘thirties, when he was

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[Soviet] resident in Germany. I immediately established espionage contact with him, then he was the assistant chief of the INO. In 1937 I specially sent him from our organization to Belorussia and made him Commissar of Internal Affairs. There he met with German agents and received assignments and instructions.

That means your widespread espionage organization in the case of an attack on the USSR by Japan and Germany could seize power not only in Moscow but in border areas, opening the road to the invaders. Do I understand this correctly from your confessions?

Yes. That was exactly what we had planned. It’s useless to deny such things.

Tell me, was counterrevolutionary work carried on by your confederates in the camps for the purpose of establishing there bases for sabotage and anti-Soviet activity?

In the camps the work of the so-called 3rd sections was so badly organized and the camps were guarded so poorly, that the prisoners had the possibility of creating their own counterrevolutionary groups in the camps and to associate with each other at will. Facts like this were many. The guard of the camps was extremely small, made up of unreliable people, the material situation of the soldiers and the command staff was very poor, and, finally, the prisoners themselves were used in many cases in the capacity of guards. As a result of a security organized like this there were many cases of mass escapes from the camps. We fought against this evil poorly and did so consciously, in the hopes that the escapees from the camps would continue their counterrevolutionary activity and would become a force that would spread all kinds of anti-Soviet agitation and rumors…

[At that moment the telephone on Rodos’s table started to ring.]

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I am leaving right away, I will be back at four o’clock for sure. We shall continue the interrogation tomorrow, and you remember what concretely sabotage work you carried out with your confederates in the economic properties of the NKVD.

Ezhov interrogation 08.03.39 by Rodos

"The overwhelming majority of the prisoners were so-called vicious "refusers", as a rule people who had not fulfilled the assigned norm of work, in connection with which these latter were deliberately extremely poorly provided, something we also did for sabotage purposes. This circumstance, and a series of other subversive measures of the conspiratorial organization caused the necessity of more and more prisoners being brought to Kolyma. The government every year devoted enormous expenses to the development of Kolyma, spending hundreds of millions of rubles. If these means had been rationally spent, the mining at the rich Kolyma sites could have been significantly mechanized. Mechanization would not only have reduced the necessity of holding a large quantity of prisoners in Kolyma and of bringing to them a huge amount of foodstuffs and other supplies, but would have increased the yield of metal and sharply lowered its cost. Meanwhile mechanization was slowed down by sabotage and all the extraction was based on muscle power alone. As a result already in 1938 more than 100,000 prisoners were brought to Kolyma. The whole area of Kolyma is rich not only in gold, but in many other ores. Specifically, in Kolyma there are huge supplies of coal and other forms of fuel. With any kind of careful economic approach to the matter it would have been possible without any difficulty to satisfy the demands of Kolyma with coal and even with oil without the costly transporting of them from the European part of the USSR. However the coal deposits of Kolyma are not exploited at all. In Kolyma it would unquestionably be possible to wholly cease the importation even of explosive materials and of the simplest equipment, which also is brought in every year in great quantities. For this purposes it would be necessary to build in Kolyma a very simple mechanical factory of modest size or, even better, workshops that could manufacture the simplest equipment and spare parts. Just as easily and quickly could and should be built in Kolyma an explosives factory of modest size, since almost all raw materials necessary for this exist there. Finally, in Kolyma the importation of foodstuffs could be significantly reduced. Such a possibility is completely obtainable for Kolyma, where meat, fish and even vegetable production could be developed. All this was deliberately ignored by us, and the supply of Kolyma was wholly laid upon the shoulders of the state. I have already said that the region of Kolyma together with the gold-bearing regions are rich also in a whole series of other rare ores. So, for example, there are rich industrial supplies of tin, antimony, copper, micas, and other ores. These extremely valuable ores that have enormous economic and defense significance are not worked at all or are extracted in tiny quantities, like tin, while in Kolyma there are all the possibilities of setting up the extraction of these ores at the same time as that of gold, the more so since the regions with these ores are nearby.

It is clear that the parallel extraction of gold and of other valuable ores that are so territorially adjacent where, consequently, it would be possible to set up a unified, energetic, mechanical economic unit, and to reduce to a significant extent the cost of gold and of other rare metals. These questions we deliberately and as an act of sabotage ignored, and did not even present to the government.

What role in this was played by the foreign intelligence services with which you were collaborating?

They, of course, knew what we were doing and encouraged and supported our subversive work in every way. But as far as I know they did not specially give any assignments either to me or to their other agents, since, no doubt, they were certain that we ourselves knew where we should best carry out the sabotage.

Name the concrete properties where sabotage was carried out according to your instructions.

The construction of the Ukhto-Pechersk road has a decisive meaning for the development of the extraction of coal, oil, and other valuable products, without which the economic development of the Northern region as a whole is impossible. Meanwhile the construction of this road was retarded by us deliberately and in every way, under various pretexts and the resources allotted to it were spread over a large area of work and did not have any effect. The retardation in the construction of the Ukhto-Pechersk railroad is explained in the main by the lack of a satisfactory plan, which the Commissariat of Roads and Rails should present. The saboteurs in the GULAG and in the Commissariat of Roads and Rails with our support organized a never-ending dispute about the choice of the direction of the roads, which has been going on for a long time now, and the planning and even the exploratory works in many sectors have not been begun to this day. Finally, it was essential not to spread out our resources over a broad front of works, but to concentrate on the decisive sections for the export of production. And precisely the construction of the Ukhto-Pechersk line should have been strictly divided into several stages. In the first part should have been concentrated all the forces and resources to finish the construction of the Vorkuta-Abez’ section, for the purpose of exporting coal. But we hindered that, insofar as all decisions were mine. Further, the construction of the section from the oil-bearing areas of Ukhta to Kotel’nich should have been organized, and these works could have been fully developed from two directions, both from Kotel’nich and from Ukhta. Only in the final stage could have been finished those sections that unite the coal-rich Vorkuta areas with the oil-bearing Ukhta areas and that give in this way an outlet for coal and oil in two directions. But nothing of this was done because of our sabotage.

What subversive, espionage and sabotage activity did you carry out in the GULAG itself?

* We understood, that the expansion of the economic functions of the NKVD must express themselves in the worsening of our basic operative work. We proposed to widely use the system of camps so as to send there the compromised part of NKVD workers. There are not only drunkards, idlers and wastrels. Among them were people with a Trotskyist past, Rights who sympathized with Bukharin, and Iagoda’s people. De-facto they were all recruited by us since, in sending them to the GULAG, we were hinting to them that we had evidence against them that could be investigated at any moment. In this manner we created a special reserve of people read to carry out any conspiratorial task.

But there were many anti-Soviet elements in the GULAG even without this. The conspiratorial leadership of the GULAG remained, for all practical purposes, unreplaced. At the time of my arrival in the NKVD the GULAG was headed by the conspirator of Iagoda’s group Matvei Berman, Boris Berman’s older brother. He had put together a large anti-Soviet group of people who occupied more or less responsible posts in the GULAG. Among these people were a great many Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Rights, and it was easy to attract them to our side after Berman left when the GULAG was headed by Ryzhov, a participant of the conspiracy recruited by men, who was sent to this work on my initiative in order to carry out sabotage assignments. And after his departure for the Commissariat of Forests, the GULAG was headed by the conspirator and spy Zhukovsky, who was connected with me and who was at the same time my assistant.

In the summer of 1938 the Central Committee of the Party more than once pointed my attention to the fact that I was surrounded by suspicious people who had come with me to work in the NKVD. In the Central Committee the question of removing Tsesarskii was raised, it was proposed to me that I remove Shapiro, Zhukovsky, and Litvin from the work. That put me on my guard, inasmuch as all these men were my confederates, and that meant that something might be known to the Party about the conspiracy. In order to somehow conceal my anti-government activity I had to agree with the demands of the Central Committee and I decided to send Zhukovskii packing without any fuss, away to the countryside. I carried out this attempt but it did not succeed, since about that time Beria began to work and Zhukovsky, instead of going to the place I had assigned him as director of the Ridder polymetallic combine, was arrested."

Ezhov August 4 1939 Confession

Question: The investigation is aware that you used the mass operations carried about by the organs of the NKVD of the USSR in 1937-1938 of former kulaks, counter-revolutionary clergy, criminals, and refugees from different countries neighboring on the USSR to further an anti-Soviet conspiracy.

To what extent does this correspond to the truth?

Answer: Yes, that corresponds completely to the truth.

<…>

[NOTE: The reactionary editor of this interrogation Nikita Petrov, a senior researcher at the “Memorial” society in Russia, a super right-wing anticommunist group of liars, has omitted about 8 pages in which Ezhov details his NKVD conspiracy. Petrov does not ‘believe’ in such conspiracies, so he omits it! – GF]

Question: Did you achieve your provocational, conspiratorial aims in carrying out these mass operations?

Answer: The first results of the mass operation were completely unexpected by us conspirators. Not only did they not create dissatisfaction among the population with the punitive policy of Soviet power, but on the contrary they resulted in a large political upsurge, especially in the countryside. We observed a great many cases in which the kolkhoz workers themselves came to the UNKVD and the regional sections of the UNKVD with the demand that we arrest one or another fugitive kulak, White Guardist, trader, and so on.

In the towns the levels of robbery, knife-fighting, and hooliganism, from which working-class regions suffered especially, were sharply reduced.

It was completely obvious that the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) was correct and timely in deciding to carry out these measures. Despite the provocational measures with which we undertook to carry out the mass operation it met with friendly approval by the working people.

Question: Did this cause you to abandon your heinous aims?

Answer: I don’t want to say that. On the contrary, we conspirators used this situation to expand the mass operations in every possible way. In the final analysis we succeeded in intensifying the provocational methods of carrying it out and realizing our treasonous conspiratorial schemes.

Question: How did you manage to use the working people’s sympathy with repression against kulaks, counter-revolutionary clerics, and criminals, in order to attain the goals set by the conspiratorial organization?

Answer: In the provinces, when the so-called “limits” that had been set of the numbers of former kulaks, White Guards, counter-revolutionary clerics, and criminals to be repressed had been exhausted, we the conspirators and I in particular again set before the government the question of the need to prolong the mass operations and increase the number of those to be repressed.

As evidence of the need to prolong the mass operations we alleged that the kolkhozes in the countryside and the factories in the towns had been heavily infested by these elements, and stressed the interest and sympathy of the working people of town and country for these measures.

Question: Did you succeed in obtaining a government decision to prolong the mass operations?

Answer: Yes. We did obtain the decision of the government to prolong the mass operation and to increase the number of those to be repressed.

Question: What did you do, deceive the government?

Answer: It was unquestionably essential for us to prolong the mass operation and increase the number of persons repressed.

However, it was necessary to extend the time period for these measures and to set up a real and accurate account so that once we had prepared ourselves, we could strike our blow directly on the most dangerous part, the organizational leadership of the counterrevolutionary elements.

The government, understandably, had no conception of our conspiratorial plans and in the present case proceeded solely on the basis of the necessity to prolong the operation without going into the essence of how it was carried out.

In this sense, of course, we were deceiving the government in the most blatant manner.

Question: Were there any warnings from local NKVD workers and from the population about the distortion that existed in the conduct of the mass operation?

Answer: There were a great many warnings concerning these distortions from among the rank and file workers of the local UNKVDs. There were even more warnings of this sort from the population. However, we stifled these warnings both in the UNKVDs and in the Central headquarters of the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, and often arrested the workers who sent those warnings for doing so.

Question: How did you manage to stifle the warnings about these excesses that came from the local workers and from the population?

Answer: We managed to stifle these warnings with relative ease, in view of the fact that all leadership positions were concentrated in the hands of the conspirators. In the center the whole affair concerning the mass operations was concentrated entirely in the hands of the conspirators. Many [local] directorates of the NKVD were also headed by conspirators who were fully conversant with our conspiratorial plans.

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Concerning these questions we from the center dispatched such “concrete” leadership that we pushed all the heads of the UNKVDs to broaden the mass repressions and their provocational conduct.

In the end they became accustomed to the fact that the mass operations were the easiest form of operational work, all the more so since these operations were in fact carried out without any supervision, without recourse to the courts.

Question: After you succeeded in prolonging the mass operations, did you achieve the set aims of the conspiratorial organization to cause dissatisfaction among the population with the punitive policy of Soviet power?

Answer: Yes, once we had prolonged the mass operations over many months we finally succeeded, in a number of areas, in causing incomprehension and dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of Soviet power among specific sectors of the population.

Question: In which areas specifically did you succeed in attaining your conspiratorial plans and how was this manifested?

Answer: This relates mainly to the following regions: the Ukraine, Belorussia, the Central Asian republics, the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Western Siberian, Leningrad, Western, Rostov, and Ordzhonikidze oblasts and the Far Eastern Region. That may be explained, in the first place, because our attention was concentrated on these areas most of all, and secondly, because almost all the heads of the UNKVDs of these oblasts were conspirators.

In all of these oblasts there were more gross anti-Soviet acts of repression against people who were basically innocent, which caused legitimate dissatisfaction among the working people.

Question: Give more detailed information about each oblast separately, and report to the investigation those facts known to you about provocational methods of repression that were deliberately carried out.

Answer: I’ll begin with the Ukraine. The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the UkSSR was headed at the beginning by Leplevski, a member of the anti-Soviet organization of Rightists, and then by Uspensky, a conspirator whom I had recruited. The mass operation had been begun under Leplevsky, but Uspensky’s share of repressed persons was no smaller.

Question: Was Leplevsky aware of your conspiratorial plans?

Answer: No, Leplevsky could hardly have known about our real conspiratorial plans. In any case I myself did not recruit him to our conspiratorial organization and did not inform him of out plan to conduct the operation in a provocational manner. None of the leading conspirators told me that he was connected to Leplevsky in the conspiracy.

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In carrying out the mass operation Leplevsky, like most of the other chiefs of the UNKVDs who were not conspirators, spread them out over a broad front while leaving the most bitter and active of the organizers from among the kulaks, White Guardists, Petliurovists, counter-revolutionary clergy, etc., almost untouched. At the same time he concentrated the whole force of his blow against the less active elements and in part among that part of the population that was close to Soviet power.

Question: Was Uspensky aware of your conspiratorial plans to carry out the mass operations in a provocational manner?

Answer: Yes, Uspensky was completely informed about our conspiratorial plans and I informed him about them personally. I personally also gave him concrete assignments concerning this matter. The result was that Uspensky not only continued Leplevsky’s practice of sabotage but increased it significantly.

Uspensky received additional “limits” after my arrival in the Ukraine and, on my direction, he did not limit himself only to repression of former kulaks, clerics, and criminals, but broadened the category of those subject to repression to include nationalists, former prisoners of war, and others.

He even urged in my presence that we extend the category of those subject to repression to all former Party members. However I forbade him to arrest people on that basis alone, since that was too obvious and blatant a provocation.

Question: What was the result of the sabotage and provocational practice in conducting the mass operation?

Answer: I have to say that the whole blow of the mass operation in the oblasts of the Ukraine was in many respects carried out in a provocational manner and affected a significant part of those sectors of the population close to Soviet power.

All of this caused bewilderment and dissatisfaction among the working people in many regions of the Ukraine. This dissatisfaction was especially strong in the regions near the border, where there remained families of those who were repressed.

The NKVD of the USSR and the Procuracy received many warnings about this from the oblasts of the Ukraine. However no one reacted to them in any way. These warnings were hidden from the Central Committee of the Party and from the government.

Question: Are you aware of the facts concerning how the dissatisfaction of the population was concretely expressed?

Answer: Of course I don’t know all these facts. I knew about them only from information given me by Uspensky.

From what Uspensky said I know that flights through the border posts into Poland increased as a result of the provocational conduct of the mass operations, especially in the border regions of the Ukraine. The families of those repressed began to be expelled from kolkhozes, and in connection with that, robberies, arson, and thefts began. There were even a few examples of terrorist acts against workers of the village soviets and kolkhozes. Not only families of the repressed, but rank-and-file kolkhoz members and even Party members began to write complaints.

Dissatisfaction with the punitive policy was so great that local party organizations began to insist that all the family members of persons who had been repressed be resettled from the Ukraine to other regions.

Such in general terms were the results of the provocational conduct of the mass operations in the Ukraine.

We were successful in achieving about the same results in Belorussia too.

At the time the mass operations were taking place B. Berman was in charge of the NKVD of Belorussia.

Question: Was Berman a member of the conspiratorial organization in the NKVD?

Answer: Berman was not a member of our conspiratorial organization. However, Frinovsky, Bel’sky, and I knew by the beginning of 1938 that he was an active member of Yagoda’s anti-Soviet conspiratorial group.

We did not plan to draw Berman into our conspiratorial organization. Already at that time he was sufficiently compromised and was subject to arrest. However, we delayed his arrest. In turn Berman, who feared arrest, worked very hard. I only had to give him general directives that Belorussia was badly infested and that it was necessary to purge it in a thoroughgoing way, and he carried out the mass operations with the same result as Uspensky.

Question: With what result specifically?

Answer: He incessantly demanded an increase of “limits” and, following Uspensky’s example, put “nationalists” into the category of persons subject to repression, carried out completely unfounded arrests, created exactly the same kind of dissatisfaction in the border regions of Belorussia, and left the families of those repressed where they were.

There were even more warnings sent to the NKVD and the Procuracy concerning dissatisfaction among the population of the border regions of Belorussia than in the Ukraine. We left all these too without investigating them and hid them from the Central Committee of the Party and the government.

Question: How did things stand in the other oblasts that you enumerated?

Answer: In the other oblasts I enumerated in my confession we achieved analogous results and also succeeded in creating dissatisfaction among certain sectors of the population.

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These results were different only in the conduct of the mass nationalist operations, about which I will confess below.

I need only to select some results of the mass operations in the Far Eastern Region, the Donbass, and the Central Asian republics.

Question: Why specifically do you consider it essential to separately select the results of the provocational conduct of the mass operations in the Far Eastern Region, the Donbass, and the Central Asian republics?

Answer: We attributed a very great importance to these regions in the sense of possibilities for sabotage and the provocational conduct of the mass operations.

We assumed that in these areas, far from the center and with weak Party organizations, we would be able to apply our provocational methods with more determination and without any special precautions, and that we would be able at the same time to achieve more tangible results in accomplishing the tasks we had set for our conspiratorial organization. We said directly that if we were bold in carrying out the operation we would be able to lower the output of coal in the Donbass, to curtail the sowing and harvest of cotton in Central Asia, and on top of that here it would be easiest of all to evoke the dissatisfaction of the population.

These were the sole considerations, for example, upon which my vice-commissar in the NKVD and conspirator Bel’sky, to whom was assigned the leadership in the conduct of the mass operation, was specially sent to the Donbass and Central Asia.

Q: What was the result of Bel’sky’s trip?

A: Bel’sky instructed the Narkoms of Internal Affairs of the Central Asian republics along these lines and he himself carried out the mass operations in the republics of Central Asia and in the Donbass in such a way that he carried out our conspiratorial tasks completely and fully.

So, for example, as a result of the operation that he conducted he achieved dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of Soviet power among the workers of the Donbass, an enormous instability of the work force, and a decrease in the extraction of coal. In the Central Asian republics and especially in Turkmenia the NKVD, which was led by a conspirator recruited by Bel’sky – Kondakov, I think (I don’t remember his name exactly right now) caused great dissatisfaction and ferment in the population, in connection with which the desire to emigrate was strengthened and there occurred many instances of organized illegal border crossings of large groups of persons.

Q: In what you said above you named the Far Eastern Region [FER] as among the group of areas upon which you thought it essential to concentrate specially. Give your confession as to what were the results of the provocational conduct of the mass operations in the FER?

A: I considered it essential to give special attention to the conduct of the mass operation in the FER not only because of the importance of this region but also in connection with those conspiratorial tasks that Frinovsky received at the time of his trip to the FER in June 1938.

Q: What specifically were the conspiratorial tasks given to Frinovsky that you have in mind?

A: I mean only the task of conducting the mass operation of repressing former kulaks, counter-revolutionary clergy, White Guardists, et al. in a provocational manner.

Q: But can it be that in June 1938 this operation had still not been completed in the FER?

A: It had already been completed in the FER. However, we had arranged with Frinovsky that after he had arrived in the Far East he would send a telegram with the request to increase the “limits” of the numbers of persons to be repressed, giving as the reason for this measure that the FER was heavily infested with counter-revolutionary elements who remained almost untouched.

Frinovsky did this. He arrived in the FER and after a few days asked that the limits be increased by 15,000 persons, for which he received permission. For the FER with its small population this was a significant figure.

Q: Why did you find it necessary to renew the mass operation in the FER?

A: We considered it to be the most convenient and most effective form of sabotage, capable of very quickly evoking dissatisfaction among the population. Since the situation in the FER at that time was rather tense we therefore decided to exacerbate it even further through the provocational prolongation of the mass operation.

Q: What were the results of the provocational conduct of the mass operation in the FER?

A: Upon his arrival from the FER Frinovsky reported to me that he had been completely successful in carrying out this operation according to the provocational plans of the conspirators, taking into account the complex and sharp condition of the conflict with the Japanese.

Q: The investigation is interested in concrete facts. What precisely was Frinovsky reporting to you concerning the provocational conduct of the operation in the FER?

A: According to Frinovsky’s words the mass operation prolonged by us came in very handy indeed. He created the impression that he had thoroughly routed the anti-Soviet elements in the FER and in fact was successful in using the mass operation in order to preserve the more leading and active cadre of the counterrevolution and of the conspirators. Frinovsky concentrated the whole blow of the mass operation on those sectors of the population closest to us and on passive, declassed elements and was able on the one hand to stir up legitimate dissatisfaction among the population of many areas of the FER, and on the other hand to preserve the organized and active cadre of the counterrevolution. He especially boasted that from a formal point of view you could not find fault with his conduct of the operation. He routed Kolchak supporters, Kapelev supporters, and Semenov supporters who, however, were mostly old men, many of whom for this reason alone had not emigrated to China, Manchuria and Japan when they could. Frinovsky jokingly called the operation in the FER the “Starikov” operation [“starik” = old man].

Q: You are talking about the mass operations conducted in those areas in which you had concentrated your attention. But were matters really better in other oblasts and yet you did not apply your sabotage and provocational practices?

A: It was no better in other oblasts. However, there the contingent of repressed was smaller and so the results of our provocation on the population were not as strongly expressed.

At this time I have, in general terms, told everything on the question of the provocational conduct of the mass operation of the repression of former kulaks, counter-revolutionary clerics, and criminals. I can only make it more concrete and amplify it with some of the many facts that I have, which however will not change the general picture.

Q: Above you have touched on the question that you also utilized the mass operations concerned with the repression of persons of foreign origin from the capitalist countries neighboring with us (refugees, political emigrants, and others) in a provocational manner in the interests of realizing your conspiratorial plans.

Give detailed confessions on this question.

A: The mass operations concerning the repression of persons of foreign origin from neighboring capitalist countries had as their goal to destroy the base of foreign intelligence services within the USSR. They took place at the same time as the mass operations against kulaks, criminals, et al.

We conspirators naturally could not carry out these operations without trying to use them for our conspiratorial ends.

We conspirators decided to conduct these operations too on a broad front and strike as great a number of persons as possible, all the more so since there were no definite limits assigned to these operations and, accordingly, we were able to broaden them at will according to our judgment.

Q: What were your aims in carrying out these operations?

A: The aims that we pursued in the provocational conduct of these operations also consisted in causing dissatisfaction and ferment within the Soviet population who belonged to these nationalities. Besides that we hoped, by the provocational conduct of these operations, to create the public opinion in European states that people in the USSR are being repressed solely according to the criterion of nationality, and to stimulate protests by some of these states.

I must say that all this also coincided with our conspiratorial plans of orienting ourselves towards the seizure of power during wartime, insofar as it created the prerequisite conditions for this. These conditions in the present case were expressed in creating a condition of dissatisfaction not just with the punitive but also with the national policies of Soviet power.

Question: Did you succeed in attaining the treasonous aims that you mentioned by means of conducting these operations?

Answer: Yes, we were successful, and to a considerable extent with greater effect for us conspirators than in the conduct of the mass operation against kulaks, counter-revolutionary clergy and criminals. As a result of the provocational conduct of this kind of mass operations we succeeded in achieving the result that among the Soviet population of nationalities under repression we created a great sense of alarm, incomprehension concerning the purpose of these repressions, dissatisfaction with Soviet power, talk about the approach of war, and strong a orientation towards emigration.

All these things took place everywhere, however they were especially developed -- in the Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Central Asian republics, that is, those areas to which we paid special attention.

Besides that, as a result of the provocational conduct of these operations there were many protests on the part of the government of Germany, Poland, Persia, Greece, and other states, and articles of protest appeared in a number of newspapers of European countries.

Question: Precisely which were the protests you mean? Give more detailed confessions.

Answer: The most energetic protests were from the Iranian government. It protested the repressions being carried out against Persian citizens and their banishment from the USSR to Iran, and against the confiscation of their property. They even presented this question to diplomatic representatives of other countries with a proposal for a joint protest.

Besides that in Iran a series of corresponding repressions against Soviet citizens were taken.

The government of Greece protested against the repressions and deportation of Greek citizens, and demonstratively refused visas for entry into Greece to Greeks who wanted to go there.

The Finnish government also protested against arrests of Finns and demanded their release and deportation to Finland.

The governments of England, Germany, Poland, and France protested the arrests of individual foreign nationals.

Besides that, as I have already said, in the European press a number of articles of protest appeared, which succeeded in evoking incomprehension and protests even among friends of the Soviet Union.

Question: And namely?

Answer: I have in mind in the first place Romain Rolland. He sent a special letter in which he asked that he be told whether it were true that repressions against foreigners had begun in the USSR that took place purely on the basis of nationality without regard to their attitude towards the Soviet Union. He explained this request by the fact that a number of protest articles had appeared in the foreign press, and then many prominent figures in Europe had turned to him to ask about this, knowing that he was a friend of the Soviet Union.

Besides that Romain Rolland had already asked about certain persons under arrest whom he knew personally and whom he recommended because of their sympathy with Soviet power.

Question: By means of what provocational methods of conducting these mass operations were you able to achieve the conspiratorial aims you had set for yourselves?

Answer: As I have already said, we had decided to carry out these mass operations on a broad front and to encompass in the repressions the greatest number of people possible.

Our main pressure on the heads of the UNKVDs, whether they were conspirators or not, was precisely along these lines with the aim of forcing them all the time to expand the operation.

As a result of this pressure the practice of repressions without any incriminating evidence whatsoever on the sole basis of one criterion alone, that the person repressed belonged to such-and-such a nationality (Pole, German, Latvian, Greek, etc.), was broadly expanded.

However, that was not enough. The practice of including Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, et al. in the category of Poles, Finns, Germans, et al., became a rather mass phenomenon, especially in certain oblasts.

Of those who especially distinguished themselves in this manner were the People’s Commissars of Internal Affairs of such republics as: the Ukraine, Belorussia, Turkmenia, and the heads of the UNKVDs of such oblasts as the Sverdlovsk, Leningrad, and Moscow.

So for example Dmitriev, former head of the NKVD of the Sverdlovsk oblast included a great many Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and even Russians under the category of repressed Polish refugees. In any case for every arrested Pole there were no fewer than ten Russians, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians.

There were many cases in which Russians, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians generally were made into Poles with falsified documents.

The practice in Leningrad was the same. Instead of Finns Zakovsky arrested many native inhabitants of the USSR – Karelians, and “transformed” them into Finns.

Uspensky, under the appearance of Poles arrested many Ukrainian Uniates, that is, selected them not on the basis of national origin but according to their religion. I could multiply many times examples of this kind. They are characteristic for the majority of oblasts.

Question: How did you manage to realize such obvious and crude criminal activities?

Answer: The judicial system of review of this kind of case was simplified to the extreme. It was simpler and in this sense even more unsupervised than the system of review of cases in the mass operation against former kulaks and criminals. There at least judicial troikas existed, in whose membership the secretaries of the oblast committees were included. But in these national, or so-called “album operations” even this simplified judicial procedure did not exist. The list of those to be repressed, with a short explanation of the case in an “album” and with the measure of punishment noted, was signed by the chief of the UNKVD and Procuror of the oblast, and was then transferred to Moscow for confirmation to the NKVD of the USSR and the Procuracy. In Moscow the case was decided only on the basis of the short album report. The protocol (list) would be signed by me or by Frinovsky from the NKVD and by Vyshinsky from the Procuracy, after which the sentence would take effect and was reported to the chief of the UNKVD and the Procuror of the oblast in question, to be carried out.

This simplified judicial system of review of cases completely guaranteed us against supervision and permitted us to realize in full measure our sabotage and provocational conspiratorial plans.

Question: Was it only the simplified judicial procedure that permitted you to realize your provocational plans?

Answer: Basically, of course, it permitted us to carry out sabotage with impunity.

As a result of such an extremely simplified judicial procedure in the oblasts, for example, the practice of falsifying investigative facts, forgery, and deception was widely developed.

In particular this characterized once again the Ukraine, Belorussia, Turkmenia, Sverdlovsk, Moscow, and Leningrad, the heads of the UNKVDs of which were to a man either members of our conspiratorial organization or members of Yagoda’s anti-Soviet group.

The heads of those UNKVDs, conspirators Uspensky and Zakovsky, and the members of Yagoda’s anti-Soviet group Dmitriev and Berman committed forgeries and falsified investigative results and repressed many innocent persons who had no connection with counterrevolutionary crimes, and created a base of discontent among specific sectors of the population.

Question: Confess in what manner you managed to deceive the organs of prosecutorial oversight in implementing this clear, obvious, and criminal practice of repression?

Answer: I can’t say that we had any special thought-out plan to consciously deceive the organs of the Procuracy.

The procurors of the oblasts, krais, and republics, and also the Procuracy of the USSR could not have been unaware of such a blatant criminal practice of mass provocational arrests and falsification of investigative facts, since they bore responsibility, together with the NKVD, for the review of such cases.

This inactivity of prosecutorial supervision can only be explained by the fact that in charge of the Procuracy in many oblasts, krais, and republics were members of various anti-Soviet organizations who often practiced even more widespread provocational repressions among the population.

Another part of the procurors those who were not involved in participation in anti-Soviet groupings simply feared to argue with the heads of the UNKVDs on these questions, all the more so since they did not have any directives on these matters from the center, where all the falsified investigative reports that had been mechanically signed by themselves, i.e. the procurors, went through without any kind of restraint or remarks.

Question: You are talking about the local organs of the Procuracy. But didn’t they see these criminal machinations in the Procuracy of the USSR?

Answer: The Procuracy of the USSR could not, of course, have failed to notice all these perversions.

I explain the behavior of the Procuracy of the USSR and, in particular, of Procuror of the USSR Vyshinsky by that same fear of quarreling with the NKVD and by [the desire] to prove themselves no less “revolutionary” in the sense of conducting mass repressions.

I have come to this conclusion also because Vyshinsky often spoke to me personally about the tens of thousands of complaints coming in to the Procuracy and to which he was paying no attention. Likewise, during the whole period of the conduct of the operations I do not recall a single instance of a protest by Vyshinsky concerning the mass operations, while there were instances when he insisted on more severe sentences in relation to some persons or other.

This is the only way I can explain the virtual absence of any procuratorial supervision at all during the mass operations and the absence of any protests from them to the government against the acts of the NKVD. I repeat, we the conspirators and specifically, I myself did not have any kind of thought-out plans to fool the Procuracy.

Question: It is well known that a large number of those persons repressed in all the mass operations were sentenced to terms of imprisonment in the camps.

How is it that you did not fear the exposure of your criminal practices, since you knew that many of these people were convicted on the basis of falsified materials?

Answer: We, and specifically I, had no fears that our criminal machinations might be exposed by those imprisoned in the camps. All the camps were not only under the command of the NKVD but were also commanded from the GULAG by conspirators. Under these conditions we could always take the appropriate preventative measures.

Most important, we had our own special consideration when we sent this contingent to the camps.

These considerations and plans were as follows: when we sent repressed persons to the camps on the basis of materials that had no sufficient basis we planed to use their dissatisfaction during wartime and, in particular, upon our seizure of power.

Question: What else can you add to your confessions about your hostile work in the mass operations?

Answer: I have basically told you everything. It’s possible that I did not point out a few minor details of our hostile work in the mass operations, but they do not change the general picture of our criminal activities.

Confessions are truthful, read through by me – (Ezhov)

Interrogator: Senior investigator of the investigative section of the NKVD USSR Senior lieutenant of state security: (Esaulov)

Ezhov ochnaia stavka with Bulatov 09.20.39

Discussion: "There were also those who continued to offer resistance [to the investigation – GF]. For example, in the course of the face-to-face confrontation held on September 20 1939 with his former associate in the Central Committee apparatus D.A. Bulatov, the latter rejected all accusations directed against him and left the interrogation unbroken."

Ezhov interrogation 10.25.39 by Esaulov

"Listen", implored Ezhov, "What kind of spy am I? I have a ‘tail’ behind me at all times, my chauffer or a guard. What kind of a resident could I meet with? And no one recruited me in Germany in 1930. I have been lying a lot. And I lied about Slutsky. I did not give Frinovskii the assignment to poison him, and Alekhin and Zakovskii have nothing to do with it. Slutskii died by himself, from his heart. And lied about everything.

You should not lie…

…

In various documents you stated contradictory and untrue information about yourself. The verification has proven this. Did you do this out of espionage and sabotage motives?

Yes. I deliberately distorted my biography. I did this for careerist purposes, to be promoted in the Party.

You thought up another biography for yourself not out of careerist, but out of provocateurist motives, in order to deceive the Party, to insinuate yourself into its leadership, and corrupt it from within by means of sabotage and espionage. Was that so?

Yes. I did this out of sabotage and prevocational motives in order to struggle against the Party.

Now let us move on to an explanation of those facts that you have deliberately distorted. In official documents you lied that you were born in Petrograd. No information about your birth in that city have been found. Where were you born in reality?

...

I only know about the place I was born from my mother’s words, from memories of my early childhood. Mother said that I was born in the city of Mariampol, in the former Suval’sk guberniia of Lithuania. Afterwards I went to Petrograd. By means of the facts about my birth in Petrograd I wanted to portray myself in the guise of a deeply-rooted proletarian and old revolutionary.

Did you also lie when you said your father was a worker?

Yes, I also lied about this for the same reason.

Who was your father in reality?

My father, Ivan Ezhov, from near Tula by birth, was from a peasant family.

Were they well-off?

Yes. He served in the army, in a musical unit, as a senior musician in Mariampol. There he also married the servant girl of a choirmaster.

What did your father do after demobilization?

He was a forester and a switchman on the railroad.

In a prerevolutionary Peterburg handbook an Ivan Ezhov is mentioned who was owner of a saloon. Was that your father?

For a time my father owned a tea house.

We have information that this tea house also served as a front for criminal activities. Is that so?

Yes. It was in reality a house of assignation…

A bordello.

It was a bordello, and my father lived on the proceeds. When they shut down the tea house, he became a painter.

Did he hire other workers?

I don’t deny that in later years father had one or two hired workers and was something like a contractor.

Did you also lie deliberately about working as a mechanic in Petrograd factories?

I did this to pretty up my background. I worked very little as a mechanic, my main work was always the trade of tailor.

And now tell us what your real nationality is.

I have always considered myself a Russian and identify myself as such on official documents. I was born into a Russian peasant family.

Aren’t you concealing your real nationality? After all, your mother was from Lithuania.

In official documents my nationality is recorded more or less correctly.

What does "more or less" mean?

That means that my mother was born in Lithuania and therefore was a Lithuanian by nationality.

In one of your [biographical] forms you wrote that you know both the Lithuanian and the Polish languages. Did your mother teach them to you?

No. My mother and father knew Lithuanian, but never spoke it at home. I served in Vitebsk in the Tsarist army, and there were many Poles and Lithuanians. That’s where I learned a few words and sentences. But I do not know how to speak these languages and wrote on the form that I know them for prevocational purposes.

The investigation possesses information that you know Yiddish. Why do you conceal this?

I do not know Yiddish, if you do not count a few words and expressions that I learned from my acquaintances who were Jews.

And here we have information that you often spoke Yiddish with your wife.

That is some kind of mistake. I cannot speak Yiddish. Even my wife, in my opinion, knew Yiddish poorly and never spoke it with any Jewish people.

Ezhov protocol of end of investigation 02.01.40

"1. Was the leader of an anti-Soviet conspiratorial organization in the armed forces and the organs of the NKVD.

2. Betrayed his fatherland by carrying out espionage work in the service of Polish, German, Japanese, and English intelligence services.

3. Toward the goal of seizing power in the USSR prepared an armed uprising and the commission of terrorist acts against leaders of the Party and the government.

4. Undertook subversive, sabotage work in Soviet and Party apparatuses.

5. For adventurist and careerist goals created a case about an imaginary "mercury" poisoning of himself, organized the murder of a series of persons who were inconvenient to him and who could have exposed his treasonous work, and had sexual relations with men (homosexuality)."

"The last interrogation took place on January 31 [1940], and on the very next day the assistant chief of the investigative section of the NKVD of the USSR A.A. Esaulov composed a protocol of the conclusion of the investigation. Ezhov was given for his perusal 12 volumes of his criminal case. He read through it and declared that he confirmed all the confessions given by him at the preliminary investigation, and that he had no additions to make."

Ezhov’s Concluding Statement at Trial

A transcript obviously exists, but it [the full trial transcript - EU] is still secret.

Transcript of Ezhov’s final words at trial belongs here.

The following is from Pavliukov, 531-532:

"Then the protocol concerning the conclusion of the investigation was announced, in which Ezhov had confirmed the truth of his confessions with his own signature. Ezhov stated that at that moment he had not retracted these confessions, but that he was retracting them now. He had no connections with any intelligence services, had not planned any terrorist act on Red Square on November 7 1938, and had never taken part in any conspiratorial activity.

It was necessary for the court, setting aside its preliminary intention to do without witnesses, to call into the courtroom one of them, Ezhov’s former assistant M. P. Frinovskii. That same day he too was supposed to appear in court and probably was somewhere nearby.

Frinovskii stated that soon after his appointment as Commissar of Internal Affairs Ezhov had recruited him into the conspiratorial organization in the NKVD organized by himself. At first they prevented the exposure of the participants of the Right-Trotskyite bloc as much as possible, and at the end of 1937 they set to the creation of a terrorist group within the NKVD.

/ 532 /

Besides that Frinovskii discussed the falsification, in accordance with Ezhov’s directives, of the so-called mercury poisoning, the murder on Ezhov’s order of the chief of the Foreign Division of the GUGB of the NKVD A. A. Slutsky, and of the poisoning by Ezhov of his own wife.

In answer to the questions of the chairman V.V. Ul’rikh Ezhov called everything Frinovskii said to be vicious slander. He did not poison his wife and did not send her luminal, and in relation to Slutskii had had a directive from "directive organs" not to arrest him but to get rid of him by another means, "as otherwise our whole foreign intelligence service would have fled". The need to get rid of Slutskii was dictated, in Ezhov’s words, by the fact that there were very weighty confessions of the former assistant commissar for internal affairs Ia. S. Agranov.

Ezhov continued that he did not take part in the anti-Soviet conspiracy together with Frinovskii. Evdokimov, Dagin, and the other persons whom he had named in his confessions as participants in the conspiracy were in fact not such, or in any case he did not know anything about that."

Comments on Ezhov’s last words from Briukhanov & Shoshkov, 153:

"Reading ‘the Last word’ it is impossible not to notice that Ezhov said nothing about the essence of the accusations leveled against him. He rejected them all, but spoke mainly about his services in exposing "enemies and spies of various types and intelligence services" while stating at the same time he had "such crimes for which I could be shot", promising to discuss them, but admitted guilt only in that he "did not purge enough" enemies.

Ezhov denied his participation in a secret organization directed against the Party and the government, saying that, on the contrary, he had taken all measures to expose the conspirators who had murdered S.M. Kirov. But was there a conspiracy in the organs of the NKVD? Or did those 14 thousand NKVD men whom Ezhov purged act individually – each one on his own?

Judging from the transcript [of Ezhov’s trial] such a question was not raised at the trial: Everything was clear to the court as it was. The "sincere confessions" in his "Last word" did not ring true. Ezhov was careful to avoid any sharp corners. He even distorted the episode that had already figured in the trial of Bukharin, Rykov and the others, concerning the falsification of a terrorist act against himself. As it turned out the "terrorist act" was planned and executed – if we can even use that word in this case – by Ezhov and by the former chief of the counter-revolutionary section Nikolaev in order to increase the authority of the "iron commissar." Having consulted with specialists about the conditions for mercury poisoning Nikolaev had rubbed mercury into the upholstery of the soft furniture in Ezhov’s office and submitted a piece of cloth for laboratory analysis. In the "terrorist act" they blamed NKVD man Savolainen, on whom a vial of mercury was planted. After the necessary "working over" Savolainen confessed to everything.

And Ezhov’s attempt to deny the accusation about dissolution in his morals and private life, to convince the court that he was supposedly loved for his modesty and honesty.

As a whole the ‘Last word’ creates an impression of something not thought through, rambling, incomplete, and dishonest. And yet Ezhov, in essence, had nothing to lose. He could have spoken more frankly."