Word: commissar
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Next to Stalin the most powerful man in Soviet Russia for the past two years has been Nikolai Yezhov, Commissar for Internal Affairs since September 1936. Comrade Yezhov is the man who in 1937 put on the largest and costliest purge to date, for which he provided the evidence, the victims and the executioners. Last week a small, back-page notice in Izvestia informed Russians that Comrade Yezhov had been relieved of his post at his own request, would be superseded by Laurentius Pavlovich Beria, until last summer head of the political police in the Transcaucasus, since then Yezhov...
...Yezhov's "ill health." He is known to be suffering from tuberculosis, overwork, and possibly from poisoning, if the fantastic accusation that his predecessor, Henry Yagoda, sprayed the executive office in the Commissariat for Internal Affairs with atomized mercuric poison be true. Comrade Yezhov will continue to be Commissar for Water Transportation, secretary to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and a member of the Politburo...
Walser, a dark lad with curly hair, was "commissar," and Ishmael, who wears a wisp of black mustache, was "vice commissar" of a secret group calling itself "C?C" (Curiosity Club). Its members, 24 boys, nine girls, all wore a uniform of black shirt, black breeches and black boots. Male members also were expected to grow mustaches. Meeting in members' houses, they discussed sex, atheism and a program they distilled from Plato, Aristotle and Edward Bellamy's Utopia. Specific points in their program: less restrictive marriage laws, more sex education, a plan (a kind of first cousin...
...Said Commissar Walser's mother, "I think that I'll go home, get these boys together, roll up my sleeves and bat their heads together...
Meanwhile, there were signs last week that the Soviet Union's rulers at last realized that conditions in the Commissariat of Agriculture had become dangerous. I. A. Benediktov, formerly a Vice Commissar, was named as the new Commissar, equipped with the full powers to "coordinate...