Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin’s Soviet Union New Dimensions of Research Edited by Andrej Kotljarchuk Olle Sundström Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin’s Soviet Union New Dimensions of Research Edited by Andrej Kotljarchuk & Olle Sundström Södertörns högskola (Södertörn University) Library SE-141 89 Huddinge www.sh.se/publications © Authors Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Cover image: Front page of the Finnish-language newspaper Polarnoin kollektivisti, 17 December 1937. Courtesy of Russian National Library. Graphic form: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson Printed by Elanders, Stockholm 2017 Södertörn Academic Studies 72 ISSN 1650-433X Northern Studies Monographs 5 ISSN 2000-0405 ISBN 978-91-7601-777-7 (print) Contents List of Illustrations ........................................................................................................................ 7 Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................ 9 Foreword ...................................................................................................................................... 13 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 15 ANDREJ KOTLJARCHUK & OLLE SUNDSTRÖM PART 1 National Operations of the NKVD. A General Approach .................................... 31 CHAPTER 1 The Great Terror. New Dimensions of Research ................................................................................................... 33 HIROAKI KUROMIYA CHAPTER 2 Ethnification of Stalinism? Ethnic Cleansings and the NKVD Order № 00447 in a Comparative Perspective ........... 47 ANDREY SAVIN CHAPTER 3 ‘He who Is not with Us Is against Us.’ Elimination of the ‘Fifth Column’ in the Soviet Union, 1937–1938 ................................... 67 VICTOR DÖNNINGHAUS PART 2 Ethnic Minorities in the Great Terror. Case studies .............................................. 87 CHAPTER 4 Propaganda of Hatred and the Great Terror. A Nordic Approach .................................................................................................................... 89 ANDREJ KOTLJARCHUK CHAPTER 5 Nation-Building by Terror in Soviet Georgia, 1937–1938 .................................................. 123 MARC JUNGE & DANIEL MÜLLER CHAPTER 6 A Long Great Ethnic Terror in the Volga Region. A War before the War .............................................................................................................153 EVA TOULOUZE PART 3 Religious Minorities under Soviet Repression ...................................................... 173 CHAPTER 7 The Ukrainian Evangelicals under Pressure from the NKVD, 1928–1939 ...................................................................................................................................175 OKSANA BEZNOSOVA CHAPTER 8 The Cultural Bases in the North. Sovietisation and Indigenous Resistance ...............................................................................199 EVA TOULOUZE, LAUR VALLIKIVI & ART LEETE CHAPTER 9 Repression of Shamans and Shamanism in Khabarovsk Krai. 1920s to the early 1950s ............................................................................................................225 TATIANA BULGAKOVA & OLLE SUNDSTRÖM CHAPTER 10 Where Have the Amur Region’s Shamans Gone? ................................................................263 YANA IVASHCHENKO Contributors ...............................................................................................................................279 Södertörn Academic Studies ....................................................................................................285 Northern Studies .......................................................................................................................290 List of Illustrations 1. Map of the nationalities of the Soviet Union. From Geograficheskiy atlas dlya sredney shkoly, Moskva: Glavnoe Upravlenie Geodezii i Kartografii pri SNK SSSR (1941). 2. Book cover of Yaponiya u Manchzhuryi [‘Japan in Manchuria’] written by S. Dashynski [Aleksandr M. Nikonov], the Soviet military intelligence operative. The book was published in 1929 in Minsk by the State Belarusian Publishing House. Photo by Mikola Nikalaieu. Courtesy of the Russian National Library. Aleksandr M. Nikonov was arrested by the NKVD on 5 August 1937 and shot on 26 October 1937 in Moscow. 3. Nikolay Yezhov, People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union. Portrait from the children’s magazine Chizh, December 1937. 4. Employment record book from the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 1930s. The parallel texts in Russian and German are equally authentic. Private collection of Igor Toporov. 5. Postgraduate diploma of Alexander Held from studies at the Party-Soviet School of the Volga-German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 1924. Alexander Held was born in 1897 in the Volga-German colony Franzosen; member of the VKP(b) since 1919; Minister of Automobile Transport of the Volga-German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic; died in the Ustvymlag in 1944. Private collection of Igor Toporov. 6. Leaders of Sveriges kommunistiska parti kolkhoz [‘Swedish Communist Party kolkhoz’] on the cover of the Swedish magazine Vecko-Journalen, no. 45, 1932. Photo from Gammalsvenskby, Kherson district. Leftmost: Edvin Blom; in the centre: Karl Ture Grääs; rightmost: journalist Alma Braathen. 7. Front page of the Finnish-language newspaper Polarnoin kollektivisti, official organ of the Finnish national district of the Murmansk region. Polarnoin kol- lektivisti, no. 22, 8 March 1937. Courtesy of the Russian National Library. 8. Sergo Goglidze, People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. 7 ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN STALIN’S SOVIET UNION 9. Hard-copy record of meeting no. 44 of the NKVD troika in Georgian SSR from 23 October 1938. Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. 10. Kuzebay Gerd (a.k.a. Kuzma Pavlovich Chaynikov, 1896–1937), Udmurt poet accused by the NKVD to be a leader of SOFIN in Udmurtia. Executed by the NKVD in November 1937 in Sandarmoh (Karelia). Courtesy of the Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature, Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Science. 11. Members of the Union of the Baptists of the USSR, 1925. In the centre: Aleksey Markovich Bukreev (1884–1929), presbyter of Dnipropetrovsk Baptist Con- vention. Photo: Aleksey Sinichkin, Archive of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Russia. 12. Map over culture bases in the Soviet Union, 1920s–1930s. 13. Photo from Tura culture base, Krasnoyarsk krai, 1920s. Public domain. 14. ‘Elect workers to the indigenous council. Don’t let the shaman and the kulak in.’ Soviet propaganda poster by Georgiy Khoroshevskiy, 1931. 15. Images of sevens, kept at the museum in the village Troytskiy, Khabarovsk krai. Photo: Tatiana Bulgakova. 16. A saola of the Zaksor clan, supposed to contain the helping spirits of a female shaman, who died in the 1950s. In front of the saola are offerings of vodka and candy. Daerga village, Khabarovsk krai, 1994. Photo: Tatiana Bulgakova. 17. ‘Attack shamans—a band of charlatans!’ Page from Antireligioznaya azbuka [‘Anti-religious ABC’], Leningrad-Moskva: Utilbyuro Izogiza, 1933. 18. ‘Anti-religious skittles.’ Children’s board game with figures of a “Mongolian shaman,” a “German minister,” a “Russian priest,” the “Jewish god,” an Evenk “Tungus hunting god,” a Nanai “idol,” and the “Christian god.” From the Soviet children’s magazine Murzilka (1932). 8 ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations ARAB Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek [‘The Labour Movement’s Archives and Library’], Stockholm, Sweden Comintern Communist International Cheka Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya [‘Emergency Committee’], Soviet security service 1917–1922 CP(b)U Komunistychna Partyia (bil’shovikiv) Ukrainy [‘The Communist Party of Ukraine’] DADO Derzhavnyy Arkhiv Dnipropetrovskoi Oblasti [‘State Archives of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast’], Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine DAKhO Derzhavnyy Arkhiv Khersonskoi Oblasti [‘State Archives of Kherson Oblast’], Kherson, Ukraine DAOO Derzhavnyy Arkhiv Odeskoi Oblasti [‘State Archives of Odessa Oblast’], Odessa, Ukraine DAZO Derzhavnyy Arkhiv Zaporizhskoi Oblasti [‘State Archives of Zaporizhia Oblast’], Zaporizhia, Ukraine DPU URSR Derzhavne Politychne Upravlinnia Ukrainskoi Radianskoi Sotsyalistychnoi Respubliki [‘State Political Directorate of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’] GDA SBU Galuzevyy Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Sluzhby Bezpeki Ukrainy [‘Departmental State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine’] GAKhK Gosudarstvennyy Arkhiv Khabarovkogo Kraya [‘State Archive of Khabarovsk Krai’], Khabarovsk, Russia GAMO Gosudarstvennyy Arkhiv Murmanskoi Oblasti [‘State Archive of Murmansk Oblast’], Murmansk, Russia GARF Gosudarstvennyy Arkhiv Rossiiskoy Federatsii [State Archive of the Russian Federation’], Moscow, Russia GPU Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie [‘State Political Directorate’], Soviet security service 1922–1923 9 ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN STALIN’S SOVIET UNION GUGB Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosudarestvennoy Bezopasnosti [‘Main Directorate for State Security’], part of the Soviet security service under NKVD 1934–1943 GULAG Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitel’no-Trudovykh