1940. The execution of Nikolai Yezhov

75 years ago, on February 4, 1940, in the building of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the death sentence was executed by the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, the General Commissioner of State Security Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov. At the trial, he said: "I cleaned 14,000 Chekists, but my huge fault is that I cleaned them little." Yezhov asked: "Shoot me calmly, without torment ... tell Stalin that I will die with his name on the lips." But for the fact that at the trial he refused the data under torture during the investigation in the conspiracy for the revolution and espionage, he was brutally beaten before the execution. In 1988, Yezhov was recognized as not subject to rehabilitation for an important role in organizing political repressions of 1937-1938, the victims of which were many hundreds of thousands of people.