bbb's Journal

Культурный отдых в Орграспредотделе ЦК времен раннего Сталина
Another drinking pal was Lev Efimovich Mar’iasin, Ezhov’s co-deputy head of Orgraspredotdel from November 1927 on. In 1930 he was appointed to the governing board of the USSR State Bank; the next year he became its deputy president and in 1934 its president; at the same time, he was Deputy People’s Commissar of Finances. There is evidence about how Mar’iasin and Ezhov loved to kill time. Having gotten drunk, the two organized a competi-tion to see who, with their pants off and squatted, was faster and better at blowing away a handful of cigarette ash from a penny by farting.

http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/homepage/books/fulltext/ezhov/1.pdf