On Nikolai Yezhov ("The Dwarf")

If sadism were currency, this guy (the leader of Stalin's GPU; Stalin's version of the Cheka) would have been John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates combined. Starting as a virtual nobody, this former "worker" (not to mention, lifelong alcoholic) ultimately rose to be one of Stalin's most intimate confidants and his role in the Great Terror purge of the early 1930s (in which millions of "old" Bolsheviks were purged from the Communist party and countless others were either jailed and/or executed) is borderline legendary...................................................................................A cruel SOB beyond belief and especially efficient in the art of "soft" torture, Yezhov and his henchmen would literally interrogate people for days (rotating in fresh interrogators every 8, 10 hours) until they finally broke and confessed (the upshot of that being a quick show trial and even quicker execution). Of course what was probably the most sadistic thing of all was the fact that Yerzhov would frequently retrieve the bullets from the brains of these people (the brain matter and blood being removed by his underlings first of course!) and keep them as some sort of a sick commemorative collection....Needles to say, Mr. Yerzhov was one of Stalin's most handsomely compensated associates.