Yefim Yevdokimov
Yefim Yevdokimov Ефим Георгиевич Евдокимов | |
---|---|
File:Evdokimov efim.jpg | |
First Secretary of the North Caucasus Regional Committee of the CPSU | |
In office January 1934 – 13 March 1937 | |
Preceded by | Boris Sheboldayev |
Succeeded by | Post disestablished |
First Secretary of the Azov-Black Sea Regional Committee of the CPSU | |
In office 13 March 1937 – 13 September 1937 | |
Preceded by | Post established |
Succeeded by | Post disestablished |
First Secretary of the Rostov Regional Committee of the CPSU | |
In office 13 September 1937 – May 1938 | |
Preceded by | Post established |
Succeeded by | Boris Dvinsky |
Deputy People's Commissar of Water Transport of the Soviet Union | |
In office May 1938 – 9 November 1938 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Kopal, Semirechye Oblast, Russian Empire | 20 January 1881
Died | 2 February 1940 Communarka shooting ground, Moscow, Soviet Union | (aged 59)
Resting place | Communarka shooting ground |
Nationality | Russian |
Yefim Georgievich Yevdokimov (Template:Lang-ru, 20 January [O.S. 8 January] 1891 – 2 February 1940)[1] was a Soviet politician and member of the Cheka. He was a key figure in the Red Terror, the Great Purge and dekulakization that saw millions of people executed and deported.
Yevdokimov himself was arrested on 9 November 1938 and executed 2 February 1940. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.[1]
Biography
Yevdokimov was born in Kopal, Semirechye Oblast, Russian Empire (now Qapal, Kazakhstan). His father, Georgy Savvateyevich Yevdokimov, was a peasant from Kursk who joined the Semirechye Cossacks. In Semirechye he married a young peasant, Anastasia Arkhipovna. After Yefim was born in 1891, the family decided to move to Chita.[2] He was in prison at the time of the 1917 revolution, reputedly as a criminal rather than for political reasons, but was freed by the revolution, and joined Cheka. In the late 1920s, he was chief of the OGPU in the North Caucasus region, based in Rostov. In this capacity he is reputed to have initiated the purge that culminated in the Shakhty trial, the first Stalinist show trial, against the wishes of his superior, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.[3] He was barred from further promotion in the secret police, but switched to party work as First Secretary of the North Caucasus Regional Committee of the CPSU in January 1934. During the Great Purge, in 1937, he presided over a ruthless purge of the party and police apparatus in the region. This included having friends of the writer Mikhail Sholokhov arrested. He also twice asked Stalin for permission to have Sholokhov arrested, but was refused. In February 1938, Sholokhov wrote to Stalin complaining that Yevdokimov was a "crafty, lame old fox" and either an enemy of the people or "a sorry old geezer."[4] On 4 May 1938, he was transferred to Moscow as Deputy People's Commissar for Water Transport, under N.I.Yezhov, but was arrested on 9 November, along with his wife, Maria, and teenage son, Yuri, after Lavrenti Beria had wrested control of the secret police from Yezhov. He held out for five months being forced to confess to having plotted to assassinate Stalin and others. On 16 January 1940, Yevdokimov, his wife, and 17 year old son were all included with Yezhov, the writer Isaac Babel, on a list drawn up by Beria of 346 people who were to be executed. He was shot on 2 February 1940. His wife and son were also shot. Yevdokimov was rehabilitated in 1956.
Honours and awards
- Order of Lenin
- Order of the Red Banner (1930)[5]
- Order of the Red Banner (1928)[6]
- Order of the Red Banner (1923)
- Order of the Red Banner (1921)
On 19 July 1935, the village of Medvezhensky (now Krasnogvardeyskoye, Stavropol Krai) was renamed "Yevdokimovsky" in honor of Yevdokimov, the first secretary of the North Caucasus Krai. After Yevdokimov's arrest as an "enemy of the people" in 1938, the town was renamed Molotov.[7]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Евдокимов Ефим Георгиевич" (in Russian). Alexander Yakovlev Archives. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
- ^ Mikhail Tumshis; Alexander Papchinsky (2009). "Евдокимов и другие (Yevdokimov and Others)". 1937 Большая чистка НКВД против ЧК [The 1937 NKVD Great Purge Against the Cheka]. ISBN 978-5699343607.
- ^ Conquest, Robert (1985). Inside Stalin's Secret Police, NKVD Politics 1936-39. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan. pp. 25, 33. ISBN 0-333-39260-4.
- ^ McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch. New York: The New Press. p. 211. ISBN 978-1-59558-056-6.
- ^ Евдокимов Ефим Георгиевич (1891-1940) (in Russian). Russian-Dossier.ru. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
- ^ Jansen, Marc and Nikolai Petrov (2002). Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. pp. 184, 186. ISBN 978-0-8179-2902-2.
- ^ Краткая справка об административно-территориальных изменениях Ставропольского края за 1920—1992 гг. [Background on administrative-territorial changes in the Stavropol Krai from 1920-1992] (in Russian). Archives of the Stavropol Krai. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
- 1891 births
- 1940 deaths
- Old Bolsheviks
- Recipients of the Order of Lenin
- Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner
- Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
- Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union executed by the Soviet Union
- Great Purge victims from Russia
- Russian people executed by the Soviet Union
- Russian people executed by firearm
- People from Semirechye Oblast
- Soviet rehabilitations