Nikołaj Jeżow — Wzlot i upadek najstraszniejszego kata ZSRR

Nikolai Yezhov—the man whose name bears the most horrific year in the history of the Soviet Union. Head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, he executed the Great Terror, during which 681,000 people were shot. He signed order number 00485, which launched the NKVD's "Polish Operation"—the largest ethnic shooting campaign of the Great Terror: no fewer than 111,000 murdered, and every sixth Pole living in the USSR at the time was repressed. This documentary film tells Yezhov's full biography—from his birth in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the Suwałki Governorate, through years in the shadow of party records, to his Lubyanka office, his downfall, his closed-door trial, and his execution in the very same basement to which he himself sent others. We tell how a man with three grades of primary school education and a height of one hundred and fifty-one centimeters became the third person in the state, why Stalin chose him—and why he then ordered his destruction and erasure from history and official photographs. The film is based exclusively on documented sources: the archives of the NKVD and Politburo, Stalin's telegrams, operational orders, interrogation reports of Yezhov himself, the files of his court case, and the findings of historians studying the Great Terror. We devote particular attention to the "Polish operation" of 1937–1938: the mechanism of the so-called album mode, the fabricated case of the Polish Military Organization, the liquidation of Polish ethnic regions, schools, and parishes, and the fate of Polish communists murdered in Moscow. We also explain why the "Polish operation" should not be confused with the Katyn massacre of 1940—these are two different crimes, connected, however, by the same policy of the same state. From the film, you will learn, among other things: how Yezhov falsified his own biography and concealed his origins from the Polish-Lithuanian border; the characteristics of the "ideal performer who cannot stop"; how the shooting quotas under Order No. 00447 operated; what the commissar's downfall looked like—the escapes of his subordinates, the death of his wife, a night session with Stalin, his arrest in Malenkov's office; what Yezhov said in his last words before his execution; and why he was denied rehabilitation in 1998. This material is educational and documentary in nature. It presents the crimes of the Stalinist regime based on facts, dates, and documents, without heroizing the perpetrators or flaunting violence—with respect for the memory of the victims. Author: Stanisław Wiśniewiecki All rights to this material are reserved. Copying, distributing, and using the film in whole or in part without the author's consent is prohibited and constitutes copyright infringement. #GreatTerror #NKVD #Stalin #PolishHistory #OperationPoland