exile since January 1937, eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three members of the " Old Bolsheviks " (Lenin's Politburo ) now remained—Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (всесоюзный староста) Mikhail Kalinin , and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov . Nikolai Yezhov , the young man