A man variously known as the “Iron Hedgehog” and a “malignant Dwarf”, but also as charming, courteous, and, most importantly “a good party man,” a man who held the position of the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs - the head of the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge - Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov.

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Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940. London: Verso, 2003. "Gay in the Gulag." Libcom. https://libcom.org/history/gay-gulag Getty, J. Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. Getty, John Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Lewin, Moshe. The Soviet Century. London: Verso, 2005. Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Hachette UK, 2010. Weston, Fred. "From Emancipation to Criminalization: Stalinist Persecution of Homosexuals from 1934." https://www.marxist.com/from-emancipation-to-criminalisation-stalinist-persecution-of-homosexuals-from-1934.htm Whyte, Harry. Letter to Joseph Stalin, May 1934. https://www.marxist.com/letter-to-stalin-can-a-homosexual-be-in-the-communist-party.htm

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Nikolai Yezhov

Bad Gays