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109-530: Dikul was born prematurely, weighing just over one kilogram. His father Ivan Grigoryevich (1920–1950) was Ukrainian by nationality and worked as a serviceman in the NKVD and its successor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs , but was killed in the line of duty. His mother Anna Korneyevna (1925–1952) was Russian by nationality, and died when Valentin was still in kindergarten. Dikul was raised by his grandparents until he

218-671: A commissariat of the Soviet Union in 1934. During the Great Purge in 1936–1938, on Stalin's orders, the NKVD conducted mass arrests, imprisonment, torture, and executions of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens. The agency sent millions to the Gulag system of forced labor camps and, during World War II, carried out the mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Balts, and Romanians, and millions of ethnic minorities from

327-610: A People's Commissar. However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the Workers' and Peasants' Militias staffed by proletarians were largely inexperienced and unqualified. Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR established (20 December [ O.S. 7 December] 1917)

436-456: A ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism . In the new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of ideology. This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries. As the purges began,

545-536: A double team of interrogators. Bukharin's confession in particular became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel Darkness at Noon and philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror . His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what

654-513: A fabricated confession by the interrogators. After the interrogations the files were submitted to NKVD troikas, which pronounced the verdicts in the absence of the accused. During a half-day-long session a troika went through several hundred cases, delivering either a death sentence or a sentence to the Gulag labor camps. Death sentences were immediately enforceable. The executions were carried out at night, either in prisons or in secluded areas run by

763-650: A given region (e.g., the quotas for clergy, former nobles , etc., regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486 . The purges were organized in a number of waves according to decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party . Some examples are the campaigns among engineers ( Shakhty Trial ), party and military elite plots ( Great Purge with Order 00447 ), and medical staff (" Doctors' Plot "). Gas vans were used in

872-402: A network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals. Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself. The validity of these confessions is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin

981-544: A number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: the Finnish , Latvian , Estonian , Bulgarian , Afghan , Iranian , Greek , and Chinese . Of the operations against national minorities, it was the largest one, second only to the "Kulak Operation" in terms of the number of victims. According to Timothy Snyder , ethnic Poles constituted the largest group of victims in the Great Terror, comprising less than 0.5% of

1090-486: A package of instructions designed for medical rehabilitation. In processing a large amount of correspondence he was helped by his wife Lyudmila. Many people using a wheelchair saw it as their hope. Valentin spent three to four hours a day on advising people with disabilities. In 1988, the Dikul center, a Russian rehabilitation center for patients with spinal injuries and with consequences of infantile cerebral paralysis ,

1199-557: A purge coinciding with Stalin's Great Purge in 1937. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff , General Ma Hushan , Ma Shaowu , Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of Xinjiang province, Huang Han-chang, and Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under Soviet influence. In

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1308-489: A rope to his feet, passing it under the headboard, which played the role of the pulley and then pulling it and moving the feet. Then he began using counterweight loads. Friends helped him build a system of weights and pulleys around his bed designed by Dikul. Eight months later he was discharged from the hospital with the first group of disability. A series of publications in the press provoked an avalanche of letters to Dikul with requests for help. In response, he would send them

1417-667: A secret political police, the Cheka , led by Felix Dzerzhinsky . It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions if that was deemed necessary in order to "protect the Russian socialist- communist revolution." The Cheka was reorganized in 1922, as the State Political Directorate , or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR. In 1922 the USSR formed, with the RSFSR as its largest member. The GPU became

1526-679: A seizure of state power led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks , who established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The Provisional Government's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), formerly under Georgy Lvov (from March 1917) and then under Nikolai Avksentiev (from 6 August [ O.S. 24 July] 1917) and Alexei Niketan (from 8 October [ O.S. 25 September] 1917), turned into NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) under

1635-752: A small number of ex-NKVD agents in the Baltic states were convicted of crimes against the local population. These included: The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas. Colonization of Siberia , the Far North , and the Far East were among the explicitly stated goals in the first laws concerning Soviet labor camps . Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of

1744-612: The Battle of Stalingrad and the Crimean offensive . to stem desertions under Stalin's Order No. 270 and Order No. 227 decrees of 1941 and 1942, which aimed to raise troop morale through brutality and coercion. At the beginning of the war, the NKVD formed 15 rifle divisions, which grew by 1945 to 53 divisions and 28 brigades. Unlike the Waffen-SS , the NKVD did not field any armored or mechanized units. In enemy-held territories,

1853-604: The Caucasus , to remote areas of the country, resulting in millions of deaths. Hundreds of thousands of NKVD personnel served in Internal Troops divisions in defensive battles alongside the Red Army , as well as in " blocking formations ," preventing retreat. The agency was responsible for foreign assassinations, including that of Leon Trotsky . Within 1941 and from 1943 to 1946, secret police functions were split into

1962-596: The Eastern Front of World War II . The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR , the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as

2071-573: The OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya and various other responsibilities. In 1934, the NKVD of the RSFSR was transformed into an all-union security force, the NKVD (which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders soon came to call "the leading detachment of our party"), and

2180-812: The People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). In March 1946, the People's Commissariats were renamed to Ministries; the NKVD became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), and the NKGB became the Ministry of State Security (MGB). After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsarist police and set up the People's Militias . The subsequent Russian October Revolution of 1917 saw

2289-722: The Russian Orthodox Church , the Ukrainian Orthodox Church , the Roman Catholic Church , Greek Catholics , Islam , Judaism , and other religious organizations, an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov . During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed opposed him. Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as Pavel Sudoplatov and Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including

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2398-672: The Spanish Civil War , the NKVD ran Section X, coordinating the Soviet intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans . NKVD agents acting in conjunction with the Communist Party of Spain exercised substantial control over the Republican government, using Soviet military aid to further Soviet influence. The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around Madrid, used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of

2507-724: The Trial of the Twenty-One , is the most famous of the Soviet show trials, because of persons involved and the scope of charges which tied together all loose threads from earlier trials. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", supposedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, the former chairman of the Communist International , former premier Alexei Rykov , Christian Rakovsky , Nikolai Krestinsky , and Genrikh Yagoda , recently disgraced head of

2616-450: The Tsarist regime , former members of political parties other than the communist party, etc.). They were to be executed or sent to Gulag prison camps extrajudicially, under the decisions of NKVD troikas. The following categories appear to have been on index-cards, catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the NKVD and were systematically tracked down: "ex-kulaks" previously deported to " special settlements " in inhospitable parts of

2725-591: The Year of '37 ( 37-й год , Tridtsat' sed'moy god ) and the Yezhovshchina ( Ежовщина [(j)ɪˈʐofɕːɪnə] , lit.   ' period of Yezhov ' ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. It sought to consolidate Joseph Stalin 's power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and aimed at removing the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky within

2834-594: The general line of the party , often by direct orders of the politburo headed by Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of people were accused of various political crimes (espionage, wrecking , sabotage , anti-Soviet agitation , conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups). They were executed by shooting or sent to the Gulag labor camps . The NKVD targeted certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans , and Soviet citizens of Polish origin, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Throughout

2943-471: The sharashka were Sergey Korolev , head designer of the Soviet rocket program and first human space flight mission in 1961, and Andrei Tupolev , the famous airplane designer. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also imprisoned in a sharashka and based his novel The First Circle on his experiences there. After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov . The scientists were not prisoners, but

3052-649: The "commission" authorized by the Politburo and gave assurances that death sentences would not be carried out. After the trial, Stalin not only broke his promise to spare the defendants, he had most of their relatives arrested and shot. In May 1937, the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials , commonly known as the Dewey Commission, was set up in

3161-417: The "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933 , as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Stalin began to plan for

3270-634: The Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating control over the population in a campaign called the Red Terror . As the Russian Civil War drew to a close, this campaign was relaxed although the secret police did remain active. From 1924 to 1928, the mass repression – including incarceration in the Gulag system – dropped significantly. By 1929, Stalin had defeated his political opponents and gained full control over

3379-523: The Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption. This opposition to current leadership may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite. The Ryutin affair seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. Ryutin was working with the even larger secret Opposition Bloc in which Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev participated, and which later led to both of their deaths. Stalin enforced

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3488-730: The German Gestapo . In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and the Gestapo met for a week in Zakopane to coordinate the pacification of Poland. The Soviet Union allegedly deported hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to Nazi territories as unwanted foreigners. According to the work of Wilhelm Mensing , no evidence that which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as "anti-fascists" for deportations to Nazi Germany. Furthermore, many NKVD units later fought

3597-406: The Moscow Trials to be frame-ups." In the second trial, Karl Radek testified that there was a "third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through [Trotsky's] school," as well as "semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against

3706-428: The NKVD was the largest of this kind. The Polish operation claimed the largest number of the NKVD victims: 143,810 arrests and 111,091 executions according to records. Snyder estimates that at least eighty-five thousand of them were ethnic Poles. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry. Poles comprised 12.5% of those who were killed during the Great Terror, while comprising only 0.4% of

3815-447: The NKVD and located as a rule on the outskirts of major cities. The "Kulak Operation" was the largest single campaign of repression in 1937–38, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed, more than half the total of known executions. A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the order of Nikolai Yezhov . The Polish Operation of

3924-576: The NKVD carried out numerous missions of sabotage. After the fall of Kiev , NKVD agents set fire to the Nazi headquarters and various other targets, eventually burning down much of the city center. Similar actions took place across the occupied Byelorussia and Ukraine . The NKVD (later the KGB ) carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and members of non-communist resistance movements such as

4033-464: The NKVD on the orders of Stalin. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the Soviet Union (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party. Initially, Stalin's leadership

4142-459: The NKVD under chief Genrikh Yagoda began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks , government officials, and regional party bosses . Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by the NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military. The campaigns also affected many other categories of

4251-620: The NKVD's enemies, first focusing on Spanish Nationalists and Spanish Catholics , then after late 1938 increasingly anarchists and Trotskyists as objects of persecution. In 1937, Andrés Nin , the secretary of the Trotskyist POUM , and his colleagues were tortured and killed in an NKVD prison in Alcalá de Henares. Before the German invasion, to accomplish its own goals, the NKVD was prepared to cooperate even with such organizations as

4360-400: The NKVD. Although an Opposition Bloc led by Trotsky and with zinovievites really existed, Pierre Broué asserts that Bukharin was not involved. Differently from Broué, one of his former allies, Jules Humbert-Droz , said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him that he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to remove Stalin from leadership. The fact that Yagoda was one of

4469-500: The NKVD. The military CI was also upgraded from a department to a directorate and put in the NKVD organization as the Directorate of Special Departments , or UOO NKVD USSR. The NKVMF, however, did not return to the NKVD until January 11, 1942. It returned to NKVD control on January 11, 1942, as UOO 9th Department controlled by P. Gladkov. In April 1943, Directorate of Special Departments was transformed into SMERSH and transferred to

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4578-705: The OGPU was incorporated into the NKVD as the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB); the separate NKVD of the RSFSR was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR). As a result, the NKVD also took over control of all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the gulag ), as well as the regular police. At various times, the NKVD had the following Chief Directorates, abbreviated as ""ГУ"ГУ"—Главное управление, Glavnoye upravleniye . Until

4687-564: The Party, gave us this help." By the "third organization," he meant the last remaining former opposition group called the Rightists , led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying: I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. I knew that Bukharin's situation was just as hopeless as my own, because our guilt, if not juridically, then in essence,

4796-562: The People's Defense and Commissariates. At the same time, the NKVD was reduced in size and duties again by converting the GUGB to an independent unit named the NKGB. In 1946, all Soviet commissariats were renamed "ministries." Accordingly, the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the USSR became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), while the NKGB was renamed the Ministry of State Security (MGB). In 1953, after

4905-821: The Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army , which were trying to separate from the Soviet Union, among others. The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1940–1941, including at the Katyń massacre . On November 26, 2010, the State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin's responsibility for the Katyn massacre and the execution of intellectual leaders and 22,000 Polish POWs by Stalin's NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material "not only unveils

5014-542: The Soviet Union during the Great Purge in the cities of Moscow , Ivanovo , and Omsk A number of mass operations of the NKVD related to persecution of entire ethnic categories. For example, the Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles. Whole populations of certain ethnicities were forcibly resettled . Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention. When disillusioned American citizens in

5123-405: The Soviet Union and restore capitalism. These trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world, which was mesmerized by the spectacle of Lenin's closest associates confessing to most outrageous crimes and begging for death sentences: It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From

5232-651: The Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U.S. passports to leave the USSR (their original U.S. passports had been taken for 'registration' purposes years before), none were issued. Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested the Americans, who were all taken to Lubyanka Prison and later shot. American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being 'poisoned' by Western influences, were dragged off with

5341-461: The Soviet Union § Violence and terror and Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Terror, famine and the Gulag 55°45′38″N 37°37′41″E  /  55.7606°N 37.6281°E  / 55.7606; 37.6281 Great Purge The Great Purge , or the Great Terror ( Russian : Большой террор , romanized :  Bol'shoy terror ), also known as

5450-466: The Soviet Union. The term great purge was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror , whose title was an allusion to the French Revolution 's Reign of Terror . The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936,

5559-470: The Soviet government. The food shortage led to a mass famine across the USSR and slowed the Five Year Plan. A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens, prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets for the purges. The purge of the Party

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5668-423: The Soviet state (" enemies of the people "), untold multitudes of people were sent to GULAG camps, and hundreds of thousands were executed by the NKVD. Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas ("triplets") – special courts martial . Evidence standards were very low: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Use of "physical means of persuasion" (torture)

5777-543: The USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of Joseph Stalin . Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were: Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Walter Krivitsky , Lev Sedov , Ignace Reiss , and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg . Pro-Soviet leader Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang received NKVD assistance to conduct

5886-775: The United States by supporters of Trotsky, to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by the noted American philosopher and educator John Dewey . Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true. For example, Georgy Pyatakov testified that he had flown to Oslo in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. Another defendant, Ivan Smirnov , confessed to taking part in

5995-521: The United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as Martha Dodd . Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business , where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated. The NKVD's intelligence and special operations ( Inostranny Otdel ) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of

6104-425: The Wehrmacht, for example the 10th NKVD Rifle Division , which fought at the Battle of Stalingrad . After the German invasion, the NKVD evacuated and killed prisoners . During World War II, NKVD Internal Troops were used for rear area security, including preventing the retreat of Soviet army divisions. Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used at the front, for example during

6213-410: The accounts of former OGPU officer Alexander Orlov and others, the methods used to extract the confessions are known: such tortures as repeated beatings, simulated drownings, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation,

6322-485: The accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was based solely on confessions. He finished his last plea with the words: [T]he monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all. Romain Rolland and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all

6431-471: The accused showed the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. It was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder Maxim Gorky by poison, partition the USSR and hand its territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain, and other charges. Even previously sympathetic observers who had accepted the earlier trials found it more difficult to accept these new allegations as they became ever more absurd, and

6540-638: The arrest of Lavrenty Beria , the MGB merged back into the MVD. The police and security services finally split in 1954 to become: In 1935–1945, the Main Directorate of State Security of NKVD had its own ranking system before it was merged into the Soviet military standardized ranking system. The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union through massive political repression , including authorized murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations, and mass deportations. In implemention of Soviet internal policy towards perceived enemies of

6649-428: The assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year. The Dewey Commission later published its findings in a 422-page book titled Not Guilty . Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary, the commission wrote Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds: The commission concluded: "We therefore find

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6758-524: The basis of denunciations or because they were related to, were friends with or knew people already arrested. Engineers, peasants, railwaymen, and other types of workers were arrested during the "Kulak Operation" based on the fact that they worked for or near important strategic sites and factories where work accidents had occurred due to "frantic rhythms and plans". During this period the NKVD reopened these cases and relabeled them as "sabotage" or "wrecking." The Orthodox clergy , including active parishioners,

6867-406: The circus in Kaunas. In 1962, when Valentin was almost fifteen, he starred in his first act of air gymnastics at the Sports Palace. The act was performed at an altitude of 13 meters. During one such performance, a steel support cross beam suddenly broke, and Valentin fell from 13 meters. He spent a week in intensive care at the City Hospital and was then transferred to the neurosurgery department of

6976-449: The country ( Siberia , the Urals , Kazakhstan, and the Far North ), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the White Army , participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, like thieves, known to the police and various other "socially harmful elements". However, a large number of people were arrested at random in sweeps, on

7085-402: The death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev halted NKVD purges. From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of victims were legally "rehabilitated," i.e., acquitted with their rights restored. Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation, either out of fear or a lack of documents. The rehabilitation was not complete; in most cases, the formulation

7194-430: The death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million. Despite the end of the Great Purge, the widespread surveillance and atmosphere of mistrust continued for decades. Similar purges took place in Mongolia and Xinjiang . While the Soviet government desired to put Trotsky on trial during the purge, his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, though he would be assassinated in 1940 by

7303-407: The defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion. Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded, as a condition for "confessing", a direct guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and that of their families and followers would be spared. This offer was accepted, but when they were taken to the alleged Politburo meeting, only Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov , and Yezhov were present. Stalin claimed that they were

7412-424: The elements. On 3 February 1941, the 4th Department (Special Section, OO) of the GUGB NKVD security service responsible for the Soviet Armed Forces military counterintelligence, consisting of 12 sections and one investigation unit, was separated from the GUGB NKVD USSR. The official liquidation of OO GUGB within NKVD was announced on 12 February by joint order No. 00151/003 of NKVD and NKGB USSR. The rest of GUGB

7521-472: The estimated number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to the gulag camps. The party chiefs complied and produced these lists within days, with figures which roughly corresponded to the individuals who were already under secret police surveillance. On 30 July 1937, the NKVD Order No. 00447 was issued, directed against "ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements" (such as former officials of

7630-442: The fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 votes against. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder as well as a growing list of other offenses, including treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage. Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war. Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich , participants in

7739-412: The first three into fervent anti-communists eventually. To them, Bukharin's confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation. On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, he changed his plea

7848-567: The government (through the NKVD) shot Bolshevik heroes, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Béla Kun , as well as the majority of Lenin's Politburo, for disagreements in policy. The NKVD attacked the supporters, friends, and family of these "heretical" Marxists, whether they lived in Russia or not. The NKVD nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before killing him in Mexico; the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader

7957-410: The hospital. His final diagnosis was a compression fracture of the lumbar spine and traumatic brain injury , with many local fractures. Dikul trained for 5–6 hours a day lifting objects, stretching rubber bands and performing push-ups; however, his legs did not work. Suffering from pain in the spine and fatigue, he performed strength exercises and studied the medical literature on the spine, gathering

8066-525: The labor camps were part of the Soviet planned economy , and the NKVD had its own production plans. The most unusual part of the NKVD's achievements was its role in Soviet science and arms development . Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the gulag, colloquially known as sharashkas . These prisoners continued their work in these prisons and were later released. Some of them became world leaders in science and technology. Among

8175-618: The late stages of the Purge rather than deliberate discrimination in sentencing). The wives and children of those arrested and executed were dealt with by the NKVD Order No. 00486 . The women were sentenced to forced labour for 5 or 10 years. Their minor children were put in orphanages. All possessions were confiscated. Extended families were purposely left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well, affecting up to 200,000–250,000 people of Polish background depending on

8284-472: The leading defendants were executed except Rakovsky and two others (who were killed in NKVD prisoner massacres in 1941). Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina , was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband posthumously rehabilitated a half-century later by the Soviet state under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. On 2 July 1937, in a top secret order to regional Party and NKVD chiefs Stalin instructed them to produce

8393-409: The necessary information. Doctors asked him to stop wasting time and effort, explaining that success is impossible. But he continued to exhaustion. He began to lift weights small at first, then more and more increasing the weight, developing all the muscles of the back which he was able to. Then he had the idea that you need to move the inactive parts of the body as if they were healthy a full cycle. Tied

8502-660: The next day after "special measures", which dislocated his left shoulder among other things. Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted", and were under great pressure to extract confession out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin initially held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with

8611-662: The others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps. Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at Yuzhnoye Butovo District , near Moscow. However, the people of the Soviet Republics were still the majority of NKVD victims. The NKVD also served as an arm of the Russian Soviet communist government for lethal mass persecution and destruction of ethnic minorities and religious beliefs, such as

8720-473: The party. He organized a committee to begin the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture escalated, which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas. Soviet authorities increased repression against the kulaks (i.e., wealthy peasants that owned farmland) in a policy called dekulakization . The kulaks responded by destroying crop yields and other acts of sabotage against

8829-576: The passport regime", etc. were also dealt with in a summary way. In Moscow, for example, nearly one third of the 20,765 persons executed on the Butovo firing range were charged with a non-political criminal offence. To carry out the mass arrests, the 25,000 officers of the State Security personnel of NKVD were complemented with units of ordinary police, and Komsomol ( Young Communist League ) and civilian Communist Party members. Seeking to fulfill

8938-476: The population. Overall, national minorities targeted in these campaigns composed 36% of the victims of the Great Purge, despite being only 1.6% of the Soviet Union's population. 74% of ethnic minorities arrested during the Great Purge were executed while those sentenced during the Kulak Operation had only a 50% chance of being executed, (though this may have been due to the Gulag camp's lack of space in

9047-483: The preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies." The term " purge " in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression purge of the Party ranks . In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people. But from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution. The political purge

9156-468: The project was supervised by the NKVD because of its great importance and the corresponding requirement for absolute security and secrecy. The project also used information obtained by the NKVD from the United States. The agency was headed by a people's commissar (minister). His first deputy was the director of State Security Service (GUGB). Note: In the first half of 1941 Vsevolod Merkulov transformed his agency into separate commissariat (ministry), but it

9265-567: The purge expanded to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin and Kalinin . No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing. For some prominent communists such as Bertram Wolfe , Jay Lovestone , Arthur Koestler , and Heinrich Brandler , the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism, and even turned

9374-427: The purge, the NKVD sought to strengthen control over civilians through fear, and frequently used imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and executions during its mass operations . In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on the purges, criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions, and oversaw the execution of Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov , who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Scholars estimate

9483-401: The purges. Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion. Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among the moderates. The 1934 Party Congress elected Kirov to the central committee with only three votes against,

9592-419: The quotas, the police rounded up people in markets and train stations, with the purpose of arresting "social outcasts". Local units of the NKVD, in order to meet their "casework minimums" and force confessions out of arrestees worked long uninterrupted shifts during which they interrogated, tortured and beat the prisoners. In many cases those arrested were forced to sign blank pages which were later filled in with

9701-493: The reorganization begun by Nikolai Yezhov with a purge of the regional political police in the autumn of 1936 and formalized by a May 1939 directive of the All-Union NKVD by which all appointments to the local political police were controlled from the center, there was frequent tension between centralized control of local units and the collusion of those units with local and regional party elements, frequently resulting in

9810-505: The repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists. Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed the country as threatened from within by fascist spies. From the October Revolution onward, Lenin had used repression against perceived and legitimate enemies of

9919-680: The scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders." NKVD units were also used to repress the prolonged partisan war in Ukraine and the Baltics , which lasted until the early 1950s. NKVD also faced strong opposition in Poland from the Polish resistance movement known as the Armia Krajowa . After

10028-446: The size of their families. National operations of the NKVD were conducted on a quota system using album procedure . The officials were mandated to arrest and execute a specific number of so-called "counter-revolutionaries", compiled by administration using various statistics but also telephone books with names sounding non-Russian. The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting

10137-447: The society: intelligentsia , wealthy peasants —especially those lending out money or wealth ( kulaks )—and professionals. As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began affecting civilian life. The purge reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938 under the leadership of Nikolai Yezhov , hence the name Yezhovshchina . The campaigns were carried out according to

10246-491: The thwarting of Moscow's plans. During Yezhov's time in office, the Great Purge reached its height. In the years 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were executed for 'crimes against the state'. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and

10355-401: Was "due to lack of evidence of the case of crime." Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation "cleared of all charges.". Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of a particular violation of anyone's rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also "purged" without legitimate a criminal investigation or court decision. In the 1990s and 2000s,

10464-763: Was abolished, and staff were moved to the newly created People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). Departments of former GUGB were renamed directorates. For example, the foreign intelligence unit known as the Foreign Department (INO) became the Foreign Directorate (INU); the GUGB political police unit represented by the Secret Political Department (SPO) became the Secret Political Directorate (SPU), and so on. The former GUGB 4th Department (OO),

10573-433: Was accompanied by the purge of the whole society. Soviet historians organize the Great Purge into three corresponding trials. The following events are used for the demarcation of the period: Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember

10682-435: Was in written confession and refuse to go any further. The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. One observer noted that after disproving several charges against him, Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case." He continued by saying that "the confession of

10791-457: Was merged back to the people's commissariat of Interior soon after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union . In 1943 Merkulov once again split his agency this time for good. Andrei Zhukov singlehandedly identified every single NKVD officer involved in 1930s arrests and killings by researching a Moscow archive. There are just over 40,000 names on the list. See also: Bibliography of Stalinism and

10900-414: Was nearly annihilated: 85% of the 35,000 members of the clergy were arrested. Particularly vulnerable to repression were also the so-called "special settlers" ( spetzpereselentsy ) who were under permanent police surveillance and constituted a huge pool of potential "enemies" to draw on. At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror. Common criminals such as thieves, "violators of

11009-664: Was opened. Dikul was also known for his immense strength, in which he displayed mostly in the form of juggling, flipping, and snatching massive kettlebells. He is known to have used kettlebells weighing up to 80–90 kg for the afore mentioned movements. In 2013, Dikul was criticised for allegedly falsifying results of heavylifting of a rock. NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs ( Russian : Народный комиссариат внутренних дел , romanized :  Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del , IPA: [nɐˈrodnɨj kəmʲɪsərʲɪˈat ˈvnutrʲɪnʲɪɣ dʲel] ), abbreviated as NKVD (Russian: НКВД ; listen ),

11118-457: Was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov , under the personal orders of Stalin. By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over the party. In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official Sergei Kirov was assassinated . The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed

11227-486: Was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin , respectively. Following the Civil War and reconstruction of the Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Bolsheviks no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin. Stalin's opponents inside

11336-462: Was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD themselves. Hundreds of mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret "plans." Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "public enemies") in

11445-578: Was seven years old, when he began living in orphanages, first in Vilnius and then in Kaunas. Aged nine, he became interested in the circus and helped to put up the circus tent, cleaning the arena, looking after the animals, sweeping, and washing the floors. At fourteen he began working as a motorcycle repairman. In his free time he trained in gymnastics, wrestling, weightlifting, balancing acts, acrobatics, juggling, and stunts, and eventually became involved with

11554-527: Was split into three sections. One section, which handled military counterintelligence in NKVD troops (former 11th Section of GUGB 4th Department OO) became the 3rd NKVD Department, or OKR (Otdel KontrRazvedki). The chief of OKR NKVD was Aleksander Belyanov. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941), the NKGB USSR was abolished, and on July 20, 1941, the units that formed the NKGB became part of

11663-520: Was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin , as well as counterintelligence and other operations on

11772-471: Was the same. But we are close friends, and intellectual friendship is stronger than other friendships. I knew that Bukharin was in the same state of upheaval as myself. That is why I did not want to deliver him bound hand and foot to the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. Just as in relation to our other cadres, I wanted Bukharin himself to lay down his arms. The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as

11881-422: Was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and Stalin's doctrine of " socialism in one country " became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to the human cost of the first five-year plan and the collectivization of agriculture . From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared

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