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According to Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, with respect to the trials of former leaders, some Western observers were unintentionally or intentionally ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the charges and evidence, notably Walter Duranty of The New York Times, a Russian speaker; the American ...
[33] [34] On November 26, 2010, the State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin's responsibility for the Katyn massacre and the execution of intellectual leaders and 22,000 Polish POWs by Stalin's NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material "not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the ...
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge.
Stalin's death prevented a final purge of Old Bolsheviks Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had been laying the groundwork in the year prior to his death. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria announced triumphantly to the Politburo that he had "done [Stalin] in" and "saved [us] all", according to Molotov's memoirs.
According to the depositions, Soviet massacres of German, Italian, Spanish, and other Axis POWs were often incited by unit Commissars, who claimed to be acting under orders from Stalin and the Politburo. Other evidence cemented the War Crimes Bureau's belief that Stalin had given secret orders about the massacre of POWs. [204]
[1]: 2–4 Stalin allegedly received reports that correspondence from Trotsky was found among the possessions of one of those arrested in the widened probe. [1]: 2 Consequently, Stalin stressed the importance of the investigation and ordered Nikolai Yezhov to take over the case and ascertain whether Trotsky was involved.
Stalin distrusted the Soviet secret police – the NKVD – which was filled with Old Bolsheviks and ethnicities he distrusted, such as Poles, Jews and Latvians. [59] In September 1936, Stalin fired the head of the NKVD , Genrikh Yagoda , and replaced him with the more aggressive and zealous Yezhov , with Yezhov overseeing the most brutally ...
The majority were military and police officers who had been captured following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. [9] The event's infamy also stems from the Stalin regime's orchestration of the murders, and the subsequent Allied propaganda campaign which blamed Nazi Germany for the massacres, aided by the Western Allies in order to preserve ...