Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a senior figure in the NKVD during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as "Yezhovshchina", "The Yezhov era"; also "The Hedgehog Era," since the word Yezh means hedgehog.Little reliable information is available about Yezhov's family and early years. The name Nikolai Yezhov itself is the name of a character from Maxim Gorky's novel Foma Gordeyev, and as such may have been an adopted revolutionary pseudonym, a common practice among Soviet revolutionaries which would help to evade tsarist prosecution. After the success of the Bolshevik revolution, many early participants such as Lenin and Stalin would continue to be known by their nicknames.Yezhov was born in Saint Petersburg according to his official Soviet biography, though other records point to the possibility that he was born in Marijampol . In a form filled out in 1921, Yezhov claimed some ability to speak Polish and Lithuanian.