Gulag: A History

by Anne Applebaum

In the Gulag, the purge first left its mark on the camp commanders— by eliminating many of them. If, throughout the rest of the country, 1937 was remembered as the year in which the Revolution devoured its children, in the camp system it would be remembered as the year in which the Gulag consumed its founders, beginning at the very top: Genrikh Yagoda, the secret police chief who bore the most responsibility for the expansion of the camp system, was tried and shot in 1938, after pleading for his life in a letter to the Supreme Soviet. “It is hard to die,” wrote the man who had sent so many others to their deaths. “I fall to my knees before the People and the Party, and ask them to pardon me, to save my life.” 8 Yagoda’s replacement, the dwarfish Nikolai Yezhov (he was only five feet tall), immediately began to dispose of Yagoda’s friends and subordinates in the NKVD. He attacked Yagoda’s family too—as he would attack the families of others—arresting his wife, parents, sisters, nephews, and nieces.