Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a Soviet statesman who served as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs from 1936 to 1938. He was responsible for most of the Great Purge, also known as the Yezhovshchina, in which tens if not hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens (many of whom were innocent) were arrested, often on false or trumped-up charges, and killed. Yezhov was part of a conspiracy much larger than himself tasked with overthrowing the Soviet government, and the mass killings that he presided over were carried out in an attempt to cover his tracks and create discontent among the Soviet populace. Yezhov fell victim to his own purge in 1938 and was executed in 1940.