On September 10, 1936, it was announced that the charges against Bukharin and Rykov had been dropped due to lack of evidence. Neither had been willing to make the confessions demanded of them. On September 26 the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, was replaced by someone who would take a tougher approach to the fight against counter-revolution. This was Nikolai Yezhov, a Bolshevik from before the revolution, a former industrial worker, a former Secretary of the Central Committee, and someone who enjoyed a reputation as an agreeable and conscientious man. People in the Soviet Union would call the Great Terror "The Time of Yezhov" (Yezhovshchina). Yezhov began his new reign by rooting out NKVD commissars that he saw as not fit to serve under him. In 1937, it is estimated, around 3,000 of them were shot.
In January 1937, more Bolsheviks stood trial. They confessed and were executed for participating with anti-Soviet "Trotskyites" and for having spied for Germany and Japan. Trotsky, it was said, had met Rudolf Hess and had agreed to a plan to sabotage Soviet industry and a plan to frustrate the Soviet Union's military. Trotsky had moved to Mexico that month, having been booted out of Norway for violating his agreement not to make political statements. And Trotsky was to continue his attempt to expose the fraudulent nature of the accusations against him. Publicly he offered to submit to a trial if the Soviet government published actual details supporting the accusations.
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