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was equally controversial, as his government
presided over a series of economic crises includ-
ing the collapse of the ruble in August 1998,
charges of corruption, frequent ministerial
changes, Chechen terrorist incursions into Rus-
sia, and continued questions about his health.
On December 31, 1999, after having steered a
parliamentary victory and appointed the previ-
ously obscure Vladimir
PUTIN
as prime minister,
Yeltsin announced his resignation a few
months before the end of his term. He was suc-
ceeded by Putin, who proceeded easily to win
the 2000 presidential elections.
Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanovich
(1895-1939)
Soviet official
One of the most sinister figures of the
STALIN
era,
which certainly produced other worthy candi-
dates for that dubious title, Yezhov prepared and
conducted the Great Purge of 1936-38, as com-
missar of internal affairs. He joined the
BOLSHE
-
VIK
Party in April 1917, worked as a political
commissar in the Red Army during the civil war,
then worked in relative obscurity until 1934,
when he became a member of the
COMMUNIST
PARTY
's Central Committee and its Organiza-
tional Bureau in 1934. He was soon appointed
chairman of the Commission of Party Control
(the Party's “intelligence service”) and in 1936
replaced Genrikh
YAGODA
as people's commissar
for internal affairs. In this capacity he organized
the Great Purge, becoming so identified with it
that the period is often known colloquially as the
“Yezhovshchina” (the Yezhov era). In 1937 he
became a member of the Politburo. He is said to
have personally executed his predecessor,
Yagoda, in 1938. Yet, he soon suffered the same
fate as Yagoda. Dismissed by Stalin in December
1938, Yezhov was appointed commissar for river
transport but was arrested in March 1939. He
was probably executed soon after his arrest and
succeeded by Lavrenty
BERIA
. At the peak of his
tenure, the press referred to him as the Iron
Commissar, but in the privacy of people's homes
and thoughts, he was known more colloquially
as the “bloody dwarf,” in reference to his short
stature. In his Secret Speech of 1956 at the 20th
Party Congress,
KHRUSHCHEV
sharply denounced
Yezhov as a criminal, drug addict, and degener-
ate whose fate was more than well deserved.
Yenisei River
One of the longest rivers in the world at an esti-
mated 2,540 miles, the Yenisei forms in the
Savan Mountains in the eastern part of Tuva and
flows through central Siberia northward into the
Yenisei Bay of the Kara Sea of the Arctic Ocean.
It is first formed from the union of the Biv-Khem
(Greater Yenisei) and the Ka-Khem (Little Yeni-
sei) and flows through a deep gorge in the Savan
Mountains. South of the large Siberian city of
Krasnoyarsk, the Yenisei becomes navigable and
remains so for most of its course to the Arctic
Ocean, although it is usually frozen from Novem-
ber to May. As it flows north of Krasnoyarsk, it
divides the western Siberian lowlands from the
central Siberian plateau. Its main tributaries are
the Angara, the Stony Tunguska, and the Lower
Tunguska Rivers. Oceangoing vessels can sail
into the river as far the port of Igarka, about 425
miles inland.
The Yenisei was first seen by Russian explor-
ers in the 16th century, and in the following cen-
tury its basin was gradually colonized. Like other
parts of Siberia, it became a place of banishment
and, during the
STALIN
years, the site of several
labor camps, both in the region north of Krasno-
yarsk and farther north near its mouth around
the nickel-producing region of Norilsk. Since
1956, with the construction of the Krasnoyarsk
and Yeniseisk hydroelectric stations, the river
has become a great energy producer for Russia.
Yevtushenko, Yevgenii
Aleksandrovich
(1933-
)
poet and writer
A Russian poet who came to prominence during
the cultural “thaw” that followed Joseph
STALIN
's
death in March 1953, Yevtushenko was part of a
young generation of Soviet poets, including Bella
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