Donald Rayfield
The Monster Hedgehog
Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s ‘Iron Fist’
By J Arch Getty & Oleg V Naumov
Yale University Press 283pp £25 order from our bookshop
Yezhov means ‘Hedgehog’, although Stalin called him affectionately Yezhevichka, ‘little bramble’. Despite the implicit prickliness, there was momentary relief in the USSR when, in autumn 1936, Stalin appointed N I Yezhov head of the NKVD, as the secret police was then called. It seemed that at last a series of Polish gentry (Dzierżyński and Menzhinsky) and a Russian Jew of Polish origin (Yagoda) had given way to a diminutive working-class Russian lad, a friendly, sociable troubleshooter.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad