Yezhov

Yezhov is invoked as the head of the NKVD who organized terror and was held responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Communists. The book gives no personal biography or account of his actions beyond this role; instead, his name anchors an analogy about how political power discovers culpability only after helping to produce the conditions it condemns.

Role in the Terror

The passage identifies Yezhov as the NKVD chief who organized the terror. It associates his office with the deaths of thousands of innocent Communists, making him a concrete figure through whom the machinery and consequences of Stalinist repression become legible. The account does not elaborate on his methods, appointment, or later fate.

Stalin’s Belated Discovery

Yezhov enters the argument through Stalin’s supposed surprise, in late 1930, at discovering that the NKVD chief was responsible for the deaths. The emphasis falls on the timing and posture of that discovery: responsibility is named as though it were an unexpected revelation, although the terror was organized within the state apparatus Stalin led. The example exposes the irony of a political authority treating the violence of its own system as the work of a newly discovered culprit.

Political Significance

The comparison frames Yezhov’s case as an instance of responsibility displaced onto an agent while the enabling power remains unaccounted for. The book places this beside the United States’ earlier support for Saddam Hussein and its later condemnation of his brutality: the condemnation is not denied, but its credibility is compromised if the state’s own role in sustaining his power is omitted. Yezhov’s brief appearance thus serves less as an individual portrait than as a test of whether a belated accusation can confront the political responsibility behind the crime.