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Chapter III. Stalinist Terror in the Soviet GULAG: the Case of the White-Sea Combine and the Camp NKVD Circuit Quarens Quem Devoret

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Chapter III. Stalinist Terror in the Soviet GULAG: the Case of the White-Sea Combine and the Camp NKVD Circuit Quarens Quem Devoret ╡65╟ Chapter III. Stalinist Terror in the Soviet GULAG: The Case of the White-Sea Combine and the Camp NKVD Circuit quarens quem devoret Preparing «The Terror» in the GULAG: Trends and Policies Th e «Great Terror» as such is commonly known as a range of repressive operations targeting certain social groups in the Soviet Union in years 1937—1938, also re- ferred to as «Ezhovschina» or «Stalinskie Repressii». («Stalin's purges.») Th e years 1937—1939 are quite justifi ably considered to constitute one of the most macabre pages of the Soviet history. Th e NKVD organs launched a «class struggle» in the form of a competition in disclosing hidden enemies. Moreover, lagging behind in this competition might have had the most deplorable consequences for execution- ers, because they themselves could fall into this category. According to the notion of the laws of the class struggle which were formed in the 1920s and the 1930s in the USSR, morality was equated with the fastest liquidation of the class enemy. Th e origins of radical repressive measures to suppress political opponents and those dissatisfi ed with the regime, accompanied by intense propaganda campaigns fostering total mobilization in the struggle against the external and internal ene- mies can be traced to the period of genesis of the Soviet state. Th e creation of the VCHK as a direct antecedent of the OGPU-NKVD and its policy during the civil war infl uenced future development of the organs of the state security. Th e troiki of 1937 might be seen as a direct continuation of the Revolutionary Tribunals of 1918. Both kinds of institutions functioned according to Lenin's principle «revolutions can not be accomplished by wearing gloves», meaning that for the higher ends any means will do. Although the repressive operations targeted at the GULAG inmates and its hired staff took place during the years 1937 and 1938, (and the executions of the camp NKVD personnel continued well into the 1939), within the camps they had been prepared long before that. On April 26, 1935 following the assassination of Sergey Kirov, and the political campaign in the course of which the NKVD was accused in «delaying the extermination of the enemy», Henrich Yagoda issued an order to the offi cials of the Th ird Departments of the camps. Entitled «On the condition of the secret informers network in the ITL NKVD»* it identifi ed the camps as «the place where the most dangerous spies, terrorists, and other anti-party elements, * Th e informers» network consisted of the informers/ the agents (the words «agent» and «informer» have the same meaning and are used interchangeably) and the residents. A com- missioned NKVD offi cer (Operupolnomochennii) coordinated the activity of the inform- ers, gathered the information, launched the criminal cases and was responsible for their investigation. Being subordinated directly to the offi cer, the residents, that had gathered the ╢66╞ the most malicious enemies of the Soviet state were concentrated, who have noth- ing to lose and are always ready for active counterrevolutionary struggle». It also stated that the camps are used as a base for a counter-revolutionary revolt in the USSR». Further on, the order called for the urgent re-organization of the agent- in- formers network and the intensifi cation of the activity of the Th ird Departments [1. Op. 1a. P. 25]. Finally, it insisted on a closer collaboration between Th ird Depart- ments of the GULAG and the regional offi ces of the State Security (GUGB) in the struggle against « counter-revolutionary elements» [1. Op. 1a. P. 25]. Th e conditions for employment in the Th ird Departments of the GULAG and the principles of promotion in the NKVD in general were gradually changing in the course of the 1930s. In all times, the main prerequisite was a «a spotless working or peasant class background». For the NKVD career «proletarian» origins were of a higher value than «peasant» ones, and among the latter the preference was granted to those from the poorest families. However, if one looks at the actual social background of the middle and highest GULAG staff (all of them wore NKVD regalia) until the end of the 1930s, many of them came from the pre-revolutionary petty bourgeoisie and lower town dwellers strata: peddlers, bakers, petty sellers, gymnasium teachers, etc. Normally their ba- sic education did not for the most part deviate from the following scheme: parish school and army experience was followed by various courses in the OGPU-NKVD. Th eir personal data forms usually included a designation «a worker» acquired in a remote youth and happily forgotten, but later proudly stated as «the main profes- sion» [28. P. 319]. Th ose with higher (and oft en unfi nished education), constituted a smaller part of the camps NKVD apparatus and belonged to the fi rst generation of the GULAG Chekists. Many of them were repressed during the 1930s [20; 17]. During the years 1929—1931 there was a discernible tendency to fi ll the vacancies of the camp offi cers and camp chiefs with the disgraced NKVD offi cials, not those necessarily sentenced to imprisonment, but who no longer enjoyed «political trust» [19. Vol. 2. P. 44].* Th is category became the main source of the cadres supply for the GULAG in the 1930s and the Chekists, sentenced not for political crimes, but for power abuse (in other words, excess of zeal in exterminating «the enemies of the people»), or bitovoe razlozenie — corruption, drunkery, sexual contacts or lia- sons with prisoners [121]. Th e administration frequently staff ed the VOKHR De- partment and the Operative Department of the camps with the prisoners, sen- tenced for duty crimes. In 1935 courses were introduced for training the operative staff for the camp Th ird (Operative) Departments at the headquarters of the NKVD of the Leningrad re- information from the agents, were supposed to be recruited exclusively from the ranks of the hired staff . * In many cases, it was not expressed offi cially. Oft en the disclosure of the alien social origins, of suspicious circumstances during foreign trips (mainly refers to the former intel- ligence offi cers, such as S. Firin), relations with the relatives residing outside of the USSR resulted in transfer to the camps system. ╡67╟ October 7, 1932. Povenets. Th e armed guards detachment during the ceremonial march gion. Th e fi ve-months training was targeted at fi ft y Communists with a party re- cord of no less than two years, recommended by their party organizations; also at demobilized senior and junior commanders of the NKVD troops, from twenty three to thirty two years old with completed secondary school. Th e GULAG fi - nanced the courses and supplied the teaching materials [2. Op. 1a. D. 9. P. 132]. Aft er the repressive operations among the NKVD staff in the course of the «Great Terror», the newly recruited cadres indeed were of pure proletarian origins, and Russian nationality became the norm [20]. Th ese were quite young people, entrust- ed by L. Beria with the task of investigation of forged criminal cases. Th e change in the national composition of the NKVD staff that occurred in 1938— 1939 was especially signifi cant among the leading NKVD offi cials (and, according, in the GULAG central and regional management, including the BBK NKVD). Pri- or to the «Great Terror» and the repressions within the NKVD apparatus the share of the Chekists of Jewish and Latvian origins was rather high. In 1939 the majority of the repressed high-rank offi cials were replaced with the Chekists, whose nation- ality, as a rule, was listed as «Russian» [18; 20]. Th e lowest NKVD staff of the Th ird Departments always was fi lled with people of «proper» origins. Th e basic source for recruitment were the leading offi cials of the NKVD troops, but oft en in the conditions of desperate lack of cadres, the Th ird Departments were urged to recruit the investigators directly from the guards with a semblance of professional training. ╢68╞ In 1938 in response to the severe shortage of the camp security offi cers the NKVD launched a program of intensifi ed training at the Kharkov School. Th e training lasted for six months. Th e recruitment took place twice a year primarily among the mem- bers of demobilized junior commanders of the Red Army and the NKVD troops. Apart from the general curriculum, consisting of Russian language (ninety hours), history of the USSR (ninety hours), history of the VCHK-OGPU in connection with the fi ght with the enemies of the people (twenty hours), and Soviet constitu- tion (thirty hours), the six-month training provided an intense training in manag- ing the informers network as a part of the so called «special curriculum». Overall this cluster of subjects accounted for seventy academic hours. A second subject was called «fi ght with the foreign services and their Trotskyite-Bukharinite agents». It included sub disciplines such as the «Struggle with the German foreign service» (thirty hours), with the Polish one (thirty hours), the Japanese (thirty hours), and with «others» (thirty hours). In addition there was a disciplinary subdivision called «the peculiarities of the agent-operative tactics among the Trotskyite-Bukharinite agents of the foreign ser- vices (forty hours)». Special subjects instructed how to counteract the Menshevik agents, Socialist-Revolutionary ones, and Anarchists (fourteen hours), foreign White émigré organizations (ten hours), «Nationalist Counterrevolution» (sixteen hours), and «the remnants of the liquidated classes» (kulaks, White offi cers, foreign sects, and the believers (sixteen hours). Overall this disciplinary subsection amount- ed to two hundred twenty hours.
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