Yezhov's counterintelligence chief who ran the army purge and the national operations
Arrested in October 1938, he "confessed" to spying for Germany, Poland and France. It was exactly the kind of confession he had spent two years extracting from others.
Born to a Ukrainian merchant family in Konotop, he finished gymnasium and briefly read law in Kyiv, served as a junior officer in the imperial army, and joined the Red Army in 1918. From 1919 he worked in Cheka military counterintelligence, rising through the Ukrainian and North Caucasus organs under Yevdokimov. Moved to Moscow in late 1936 as head of the NKVD Operational Department, from 1937 he led in turn the Special (5th) Department, the main organ of the repression of the Red Army, and the counterintelligence department, overseeing the Polish, German, Latvian and Korean national operations. Arrested in October 1938, he was sentenced alongside Yezhov and shot in February 1940. In 2013 the Russian Supreme Court ruled him ineligible for rehabilitation.
Career Timeline
- 1916–1918Junior officer in the imperial army
- 1918–1919Red Army; intelligence work
- 1919–1921Cheka military counterintelligence officer
- 1921–1930Security organs of Ukraine and the North Caucasus
- 1930–1932Deputy chief of the OGPU Special Department
- 1935–1936Deputy chief of the Leningrad NKVD
- 1936–1937Head of the NKVD Operational Department
- 1937–1938Head of the GUGB Special (5th) Department, then counterintelligence
- 1938–1940Arrested, tried and executed
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCheka military counterintelligence
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationHead of Counterintelligence Department of GUGB
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeHead of Special Dept & Counterintelligence · ran the army purge and national operationsAs head of the GUGB Special (5th) Department from June 1937 to March 1938, he directed the repression of the Red Army command; as counterintelligence chief thereafter, he oversaw the national operations against Poles, Germans, Latvians, and Koreans. One of the key executors of the Great Terror.
1937: The Desk of the Army Purge and the National Operations
Nikolayev-Zhurid belonged to the so-called North Caucasus cohort that had grown up under Yevdokimov in the Ukrainian and North Caucasus organs since Cheka days, and was called up to Moscow as head of the Operational Department in late 1936, when Yezhov took over the NKVD. The arrests and interrogations of the "right-Trotskyist conspiracy" cases passed through his department, and from June 1937 to March 1938 he headed the Special (5th) Department, the main organ of the repression of the Red Army. It was the desk at which the mass arrests and interrogations of the army command after the Tukhachevsky case were carried out.
From the spring of 1938 he moved to head counterintelligence, overseeing the national operations against Poles, Germans, Latvians and Koreans. Those operations, whose regional lists were approved wholesale by the album procedure, accounted for a large share of the Terror's executions, and he stood at the top of their working level.
Yezhov's fall was his own. Arrested on 25 October 1938 and held in Sukhanovka prison, he ended by "confessing" to espionage for Germany, Poland and France. Sentenced to death on 3 February 1940 together with Yezhov and others, he was shot on 6 February; his remains went into an unmarked pit at the Donskoye cemetery crematorium. In December 2013 the Russian Supreme Court ruled him ineligible for rehabilitation.