To these "standard categories", local officials of the NKVD were encouraged to add "specific groups" – which they did. Thus, the Great Terror of 1937-1938 in the Soviet Union solidified in popular and academic memory as Stalin’s attack on political and social elites, as the “Great Purges”. Except for those who were forced to testify during the limited purges of the NKVD apparatus after the end of the Great Terror (it goes without saying that these testimonies should be subjected to strong historical criticism), very few witnesses, such as people living in the neighborhood of the NKVD "shooting ranges" for example, left testimonies on this secret mass crime. The few rehabilitated persons – approximately five to ten thousand per year in the late 1950s and early 1960s – received neither moral, nor material compensation for all the time they had spent in camps (except a two-month wage calculated on the basis of their last salary before arrest, the latter being assimilated to a "breach of work contract").
Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS, fevral’ 1956- nacalo 1980-x godov (Rehabilitation: as it happened. Immediately after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, the Soviet NKVD began shooting prisoners who were sentenced to death. At the end of the 1960s, Robert Conquest published the first detailed account, which was to become a classic reference, on the Great Terror (Conquest, 1968). As a matter of fact, diaspora nationalities with cross-border ethnic ties to a foreign Nation-State had been considered as potentially disloyal for several years. For the same reason, Bielorussian provinces accounted for 17% of the arrested under Order n° 00485. After Khruschev’s fall, in October 1964, the rehabilitation process came to a complete stop for nearly twenty years.

Il s'occupait de la déportation et de l'exécution des ennemis du pouvoir, et de la répression du peuple soviétique.

They contain both original execution lists with resolutions of NKVD officers of completion, as well as lists made in the 1990s based on exhumations of graves, archive research and witness testimonies. A good illustration of this is provided by one specific National Operation, initiated by NKVD Order n° 00593 on September 20, 1937, which targeted the so-called "Kharbintsy". Apparently, it brought the chief of Stalin’s executioner in a special kind of pleasure.

After the sale, by the Soviet government, of this railway to Japan in 1935, many returned to the Soviet Union. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. ARTIZOV, Andrei, SIGACHEV, Iouri, et al. 153-172. But most were stabbed in the stomach with a bayonet. The testimony of a NKVD official put these historians on the track of the Butovo "shooting range". Statsobject 110” historian, researcher of the Gulag Lidia Golovkova. The mass operations of 1937-1938 remained secret for over half a century, until the beginning of the 1990s. Many of the memorial books also include extensive valuable documentary materials from local and central KGB archives, as well as autobiographical memoirs from survivors.
Often the executions were done with cruelty: in Lutsk, the prisoners were blown up by grenades, and in Zalischyky two train cars filled with prisoners were thrown off a bridge into a precipice formed by the Dniester river. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. For example, the list of prisoners Lviv prison #4  carries the resolution of the local NKVD chief: “I authorize the execution of the enemies of the nation.”. The question of what they should be answered was discussed at the highest level of the Party and the State Security. In prison racked experienced military. - all "antisoviet and nationalistic elements" from districts and regions of the USSR where a Polish community existed. General Sidyakin after tortures has gone mad: Golovkova writes that he began to howl and to bark like a dog. Then the NKVD decided to eliminate those prisoners whose evacuation wasn’t possible. GETTY, John Arch, 1985, Origins of the Great Purges: the Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. was in the Arsenal of the executioners and more sophisticated means. During these two months, over 105,000 people were sentenced. KUROMIYA, Hiroaki, 2007, The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930’s, New Haven, London: Yale University Press. The Procuracy and the KGB slowed down all the demands of revision. A remarkable feature of the National Operations should be underlined: until May 1938, the NKVD leadership did not seem concerned by the ethnic origin of those arrested; information concerning their nationality and ethnic origin was systematically collected only after September 1938, when "special troïki" were set up to "finish off" the National Operations. At noon, a few prisoner were called out of their cells. Some were naked or almost naked, others in decent street clothes. The sexuality of the German Soldiers in WW2. The NKVD invented a special paddy wagons, which were the real killing machines. These special troïki were to complete the examination of all cases related to the different National Operations before November 15. Documents of the Praesidium of the CC of the CPSU, February1956 – beginning of the 1980’s), Moscow: Mejdunarodnyi Fond Demokratia.

In Ukraine and Western Belarus 60,000 people were forced to evacuate on foot. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Une commission spéciale du Congrès américain a bien enquêté sur le massacre de Katyn, déclarant dans son rapport final en 1952 que la culpabilité des Soviétiques ne faisait aucun doute et que le gouvernement Roosevelt avait dissimulé l'information à l'opinion publique, par nécessité militaire. Most of the documents show the picture of executions in Lviv, Ternopil, and, partially – Ivano-Frankivsk and Cherkasy Oblasts. For Stalin and his team, although most of the Kharbintsy were ethnic Russians, their cross-border ties to the Kharbintsy remaining in China turned them into the functional equivalent of a diaspora nationality. When referencing our materials, please include an active hyperlink to the Euromaidan Press material and a maximum 500-character extract of the story. Most of their guilt wasn’t proven. Their mission is to make the past accessible. Stalin was convinced that hostile capitalist powers such as Germany, Poland, Japan, Finland, Romania and the Baltic States would organize, in the ever more probable event of war with the Soviet Union, the same kind of rearguard uprisings, resorting to anyone who had some sort of connection with foreign countries, in order to form a "fifth column of diversionists and wreckers" (Khlevniuk, 2000). Exhaust pipe they were withdrawn inside the body, and prisoners died in transit – their bodies are immediately transported to the crematorium. Based on the 4 April secret order from Stalin to NKVD Chief Lavrentiy Beria (as well as NKVD Order № 00485, which still applied), the executions were carried out over 28 consecutive nights at the specially constructed basement execution chamber at the NKVD headquarters in Kalinin, and were assigned, by name, directly to Blokhin, making him the official executioner of the NKVD. ” In addition to the execution lists, the collection contains a number of memoirs and letters of Bohdan and Olena Kazanivskyi – NKVD prison inmates in Lviv who were lucky to escape. In the course of the Kharbin Operation, 33,000 persons were sentenced, of whom 65% (21,200) were executed. The bottom ones were still warm. In the aftermath, medical students described the scene at one of the prisons: “From the courtyard, doors led to a large space, filled from top to bottom with corpses.

Lwów,  the massacres in this city began immediately after German attack, on June 22 and continued until June 28, culminating in the Lviv pogroms. Les rapports des missions du NKVD sont uniquement transmises à Staline en personne. By using this website we assume that you agree with this. WERTH, Nicolas, 2009, L’ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs. Red Army soldiers or ordinary policemen are not to be employed. In Sverdlovsk, the NKVD Chief D. Dmitriev decided, for lack of "proper suspects" for the German Operation, to arrest thousands of Ukrainian and Russian deportees.

Another fairly common at the time, the way of obtaining evidence — the test of insomnia: a prisoner could in 10-20 days for a long time deprived of sleep. J.Stalin, 14.X.37". The NKVD invented a special paddy wagons, which were the real killing machines. The NKVD executed several thousand inmates in a number of provisional prisons. The Latvian Operation ended in 22,000 sentences (75% – or 16,500 – in the first category). Concerning diaspora minorities, the vast majority of whom were Soviet citizens and whose ancestors had resided for decades and sometimes centuries in the Soviet Union and Russian Empire, "this designation absolutized their cross-border ethnicities as the only salient aspect of their identity, sufficient proof of their disloyalty and sufficient justification for their arrest and execution" (Martin, 2001: 338). This work emphasized Stalin’s paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of “Old Bolsheviks”, and analyzed the carefully planned and systematic destruction of the Leninist party leadership as the first step toward terrorizing the entire population. That morning, we were given our last “coffee” and a piece of bread.

On estime que le NKVD est à l'origine de plus de 3.5 millions de morts. Pendant des décennies, la propagande soviétique a attribué la responsabilité de ces exécutions aux Nazis. Le NKVD avait pour but de contrôler la population soviétique, afin de détruire toute opposition au régime et d'appliquer la terreur sur tout le pays afin qu'encore une fois l'opposition ne se fasse pas entendre. According to the memoirs of former prisoners of the remand prison, known as the “Sukhanovka” or sensitive sites No. With one-fifth of its total group repressed, Soviet citizens of Polish origin paid the heaviest toll of all ethnic minorities forming the "Great Soviet family". Among the common methods of extermination were shooting the prisoners in their cells, killing them with grenades thrown into the cells or starving them to death in the cellars. Sous l'ordre de Joseph Staline, en 1940, le NKVD exécute 22 000 officiers Polonais, près du village de Katyń. As the fate of the arrested depended entirely on the zeal of local NKVD bosses, the chance of being caught and the probability of being sentenced "in the first category" (death penalty) varied considerably: in Armenia, 31% of those trapped in National Operations were shot; in the Vologda region, 46%; in Bielorussia, 88%; Krasnodar territory, Novossibirsk and Orenbourg regions had the highest rate of "first category" victims: respectively 94%, 94.8% and 96.4%! The Electronic archive of the liberation movement avr.org.ua is a joint project of the Center for Research of the liberation movement, Lviv University, and National Museum “Prison on Lontskoho.” Today, the E-archive contains copies of 23543 documents. Bessarabia and other parts of the Soviet Union from which the Red Army was retreating following the Nazi Germany attack on the Soviet positions in occupied Poland, known as Operation Barbarossa. The Global Domain News is an online news portal providing daily news, events and latest headlines from Fairview Kersey, Pennsylvania. All persons involved in the work of transporting the bodies and excavating or filling in the pits have to sign a document certifying that they are sworn to secrecy" (McLoughlin, 2003). The memory of the Great Terror survived only in the private sphere. The main characteristic of the mass operations was their absolute secrecy: no more than a hundred high party and NKVD officials received a copy of the NKVD secret operational orders; all the other executants were given oral instructions on how to proceed with the operation. Each case examined by the local dvoïka was summed up in a few lines giving a minimal information on the identity of the accused, their alleged crime, and the proposed punishment. With over twenty years of experience in the field of journalism, He is the ideal man to write for our site. Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS, mart 1953-fevral’ 1956 (Rehabilitation: as it happened.