Yezhov wasn't. Or Yagoda.
On 11/18/05, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Actually, as NKVD head, you would be exempt.
http://www.geocities.com/redcomrades/yezhov.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSyezhov.htm
Victor Serge, was a close friend of Boris Pilnyak in the early 1930s.
He wrote about him and Nikolai Yezhov in his book Memoirs of a
Revolutionary (1945)
Boris Pilnyak was writing The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea. On his work-table I saw manuscripts under revision. It had been suggested to him that, to avoid banishment from Soviet literature, he should remodel Forest of the Isles, that 'counter-revolutionary' tale of his, into a novel agreeable to the Central Committee. The body's Cultural Section had assigned him a co-author who, page by page, would ask him to suppress this and add that. The helpmate's name was Yezhov, and a high career awaited him, followed by a violent death: this was the successor to Yagoda as head of the GPU.
-- Michael Pugliese