The man on the left is Nikolai Ezhov, the head of the Soviet NKVD from 1936 to 1940 (translated into the English alphabet, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, the forerunner of the KGB.) Ezhov was Stalin's right hand man and the architect of the Great Purges of the 1930s. Ezhov was executed on February 4, 1940 in the basement of a smal NKVD station in Moscow rather than the main execution chamber of the Lubyanka to ensure total secrecy, lest Nikolai Ezhov reveal embarrassing secrets about Stalin in a formal trial. He was succeeded by his deputy, Lavrenti Beria.
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