“Each Member of the Party Must Not Forget That the Party Will Demand a Full Reckoning”
In Vinnitsa, Korablev was forced to deal with the NKVD decree of 26 November 1938 (00762). On 1 December 1938, he promulgated a decree within the Vinnitsa UNKVD in which he announced penalties for a series of investigators for having beaten detainees, fabricated interrogation transcripts, and prevented detainees from meeting with procurators.
Sergeant of State Security Artem Pavlovich Berkut was jailed for three days for the violations he had countenanced. At that very moment, letters, complaints, and petitions regarding the methods of investigation employed within the UNKVD were flowing to various party and state structures from personnel in the state security organs already freed from concentration camp detention.40 In December, expert commissions, staffed by personnel new to the central and oblast NKVD apparatuses, began operating. The chiefs of these groups were tasked with auditing the work of the NKVD administrations from the period of mass repressions.The activity of the organs of state security became a concern for an ever-larger circle of bureaucrats, not to mention the relatives and friends of those victimized by the mass repressions.41 The activity of the leadership of the Vinnitsa UNKVD was being monitored by the Republic-level procurator’s office, the new leadership of the Ukrainian republic NKVD headed by acting NKVD Commissar A. Z. Kobulov, and the Oblast Party Committee. On 26 December, a closed party meeting of the Vinnitsa UNKVD was held under the banner “On the errors and violations in the work of the NKVD administration.” Sixty people participated, including the Secretary of the Vinnitsa Oblast Party Committee, D. Burchenko. The tone of Korablev’s comments remained the same: the collective of the administration had conducted major work “toward the decimation of the counterrevolutionary underground of all stripes.” However, errors had been committed, which enemies were attempting to exploit.
For this reason, 284 members of the NKVD administration had been fired, arrested, or transferred on the basis of incriminating evidence from mid-March to the end of December, and 231 from the oblast police. As such, more than 500 staff were removed, of whom 72 were arrested.42For the first time, Korablev publicly admitted to the beatings of detainees: “There have taken place incidents of the most crude violation of socialist legality, [including the use of] physical methods, employed by certain interrogators toward detainees.... Our oblast administration suffers from the same illnesses as other administrations, which is noted in the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR.” Korablev’s defense strategy was obvious: violations of the law were typical among security organs and therefore verbal condemnation of illegal measures was sufficient. Among these violations, Korablev noted in particular the methods of Kuras, an NKVD operative in the Kalinovskii District NKVD Administration, who had, by then, been fired. Kuras had exploited teachers, the chairmen and secretaries of village councils, and the head of the special section of the District Executive Committee, forcing them to serve as “witnesses” in uncovering “enemies.” These “witnesses” not only wrote contrived witness testimony, but, at the demand of Kuras, also summoned collective farmers and forced them to sign false testimonies.
Korablev spoke out sharply against the fact that, within a week of commencing operations, the investigatory group organized in accordance with the 26 November NKVD decree freed 52 percent of all detainees after examining their incomplete cases. He maintained that those detained were in fact guilty, that the NKVD administration had been wrong to stop arrests, and that the staff was only thinking “how best to avoid trouble.”43
The Secretary of the Oblast Party Committee, Burchenko, summed up the discussion: “The main reason behind all mistakes in the activity of the organs of the NKVD is the lack of Party spirit [partiinost’]....
Every member of the Party must not forget that the Party will demand a full reckoning [sprosit za vse].” He stated that the organs of the NKVD would be subordinated to stringent oversight by party organs. The party leader specifically underscored that cases where Communists had slandered honest people had recently increased, and that the former explained their actions on the basis of orders from the NKVD. But there were also people who denounced everyone around them, and “it is necessary to keep such unmaskers [razoblachiteli] at a far distance from the organs of the NKVD.” Such a practice had to be stopped immediately. In the end, Korablev was forced to conclude that, “with respect to those mistakes and violations that were countenanced in the work of our administration... all of us are guilty.”44A few days later, Korablev was removed from his post and B. Shablinskii, Third Secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk Oblast Party Committee, was appointed to serve as the new chief of the UNKVD.45 On 18 January 1939, Korablev wrote Beria a letter in which he declared that he “worked honorably, as befits a Bolshevik.” In a 28 January letter to Stalin, he noted his confusion at his own removal as well as that of just about all NKVD oblast administration chiefs. He wrote that he considered “the policy pursued by comrade Beria toward long-standing Chekist cadres to be a great mistake.” It was not they but rather the former People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR who bore guilt: “In a word, all the guilt belongs to comrade Ezhov and those bastards who occupied leadership roles in the decisive sectors of Chekist work, including Zakovskii [Leningrad NKVD chief], Uspenskii, and the like, who turned out to be enemies of the people.... I will die an honest man, an honest Communist and Chekist.”46 On the night of 29 January, Korablev attempted to commit suicide with two shots at point-blank range, but survived.47 Beria was immediately made aware of the incident and apprised Stalin while the Bureau of the Vinnitsa Oblast Party Committee discussed Korablev’s suicide attempt on 3 February as a “shameful anti-Party deed.” Korablev was removed from the ranks of the Oblast Party Committee and, after recuperating, left Vinnitsa.48
In January 1939, the party commissions organized to review the work of the NKVD administrations began their work.
Oblast Party committees examined the personnel files of Communist-Chekists, affirming candidates for further work in the organs of state security. On 14 February 1939, the bureau of the Vinnitsa Oblast Party Committee began confirming candidates for leadership roles within the oblast and district NKVD administrations. Far from all staff were confirmed. Many of them had incriminating evidence against them, which made them subject to dismissal. There was no discussion of violations of the law. The fate of those dismissed is largely unknown. However, one NKVD operative—the deputy head of the Fifth Department, A. Reder, who was fired for concealing his social status as the son of an Austrian citizen and a Jew (rather than a Russian as he wrote in his biography)—became a chief actor in subsequent events in Vinnitsa.49