"A Tribute to Terrible Times." A bust of People's Commissar Yezhov, unearthed in a park in Oryol, was donated to a museum.
Restored bust of the People's Commissar Nikolai Yezhov Donated to the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia. A year ago, it was discovered during construction work in the city park next to the Quantorium. The construction workers themselves didn't notice it, but a passing schoolboy spotted it in a pile of excavated earth.
A prison previously stood on this site, and the bust likely stood at its entrance in 1936-1937. Yezhov is associated with mass executions in the country; purges and executions within the NKVD were carried out under his direct orders. However, in November 1938, Yezhov himself fell into disgrace, was arrested in April 1939, and executed a year later. In 1998, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ruled Yezhov ineligible for rehabilitation.
After the discovery of the bust, the doctor of historical sciences Victor Livtsov He declared it "unique, nothing like it in Russia." Another surprising thing: it wasn't destroyed after Yezhov was declared an "enemy of the people," but buried. Local officials likely clung to the hope that Yezhov's "good name" would be restored.
"One way or another, the monument was torn down back in 1938. The bust, at the initiative of the Oryol branch of the Russian Military Historical Society and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), was restored and transferred to a museum—not, of course, to glorify the executioner, but as a tribute to those terrible times."- рассказал head of the Oryol regional branch of VOOPIK Stanislav Abakumov.
Photo: OrelTimes (a bust found a year ago); courtesy of Stanislav Abakumov (after restoration)