Yefim Yevdokimov

Yefim Georgievich Yevdokimov (Russian: Ефи́м Гео́ргиевич Евдоки́мов, 20 January [O.S. 8 January] 1891 – 2 February 1940)[1] was a Soviet politician and member of the Cheka and OGPU. He was a key figure in the Red Terror, the Great Purge and dekulakization that saw millions of people executed and deported.

Yefim Yevdokimov
Ефим Георгиевич Евдокимов
First Secretary of the North Caucasus Regional Committee of the CPSU
In office
January 1934 – 13 March 1937
Preceded byBoris Sheboldayev
Succeeded byPost disestablished
First Secretary of the Azov-Black Sea Regional Committee of the CPSU
In office
13 March 1937 – 13 September 1937
Preceded byPost established
Succeeded byPost disestablished
First Secretary of the Rostov Regional Committee of the CPSU
In office
13 September 1937 – May 1938
Preceded byPost established
Succeeded byBoris Dvinsky
Deputy People's Commissar of Water Transport of the Soviet Union
In office
May 1938 – 9 November 1938
Personal details
Born(1891-01-20)20 January 1891
Kopal, Semirechye Oblast, Russian Empire
Died2 February 1940(1940-02-02) (aged 49)
Kommunarka shooting ground, Moscow, Soviet Union
Resting placeKommunarka shooting ground
NationalityRussian

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 moved to Chita.[2]

Yevdokimov 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 the 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 wrestled control of the secret police from Yezhov. He held out for five months before 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 at the Kommunarka shooting ground. His wife and son were also shot.

Yevdokimov was rehabilitated on 17 March 1956.

Honours and awards

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" in honor of Vyacheslav Molotov.[7]

See also

References
  1. "Евдокимов Ефим Георгиевич" (in Russian). Alexander Yakovlev Archives. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
  2. 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.
  3. Conquest, Robert (1985). Inside Stalin's Secret Police, NKVD Politics 1936-39. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan. pp. 25, 33. ISBN 0-333-39260-4.
  4. McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch. New York: The New Press. p. 211. ISBN 978-1-59558-056-6.
  5. Евдокимов Ефим Георгиевич (1891-1940) (in Russian). Russian-Dossier.ru. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
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