Rehabilitated Chekists
The Soviet regime generally displayed a permissive attitude toward the crimes committed by those considered svoi (their “own”), serving in the fight against “enemies of the people.” Chekists were traditionally seen as paragons of political loyalty, and for this reason punishment was usually lenient.
The quintessential nonjudicial punishment of Chekists at this time was transfer to work in the Gulag and, later, mobilization to the front or to work in the newly annexed western part of Ukraine.69The war presented Chekists who had escaped execution in the years 1939–1941 with significantly greater possibilities for rehabilitation than the camp system. The mass amnesty for former state security workers conducted over 1941 and 1942 came as a kind of idiosyncratic response to the unprecedented purge of “the organs” at the end of the 1930s. Already from the very first days of the war, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR began to alter Chekists’ sentences, even those subject to execution, to orders to the front. Convicted NKVD workers were freed according to decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the USSR adopted on Beria’s initiative. The releases apparently proceeded in two waves: at the end of 1941 and the end of 1942. In December 1941, Beria appealed to Stalin about the lack of cadres at the front, asking him to free 1,610 NKVD workers serving sentences largely for violating legality.70 Over the autumn of 1942, another large group of former Chekists was released from prison or the camps; others were released individually in the years leading up to 1945. Over the entirety of the war years, nearly two thousand Chekists were amnestied. After release, many of them were sent into reconnaissance-sabotage squads and special divisions as well as penal companies. A significant share ended up in combat units and did not engage in Chekist work.
However, hundreds of amnestied former NKVD workers managed to restart their Chekist careers by working in special investigatory units during the war. They sought to rehabilitate themselves once and for all in the eyes of the state, employing their usual practice of fabricating large-scale cases and beating testimony out of detainees. For their part, the leadership of the NKVD-NKGB demanded the same uncovering of “counterrevolutionary organizations” and mercilessness toward “enemies of the people” as before. In response to these orders, the classic methods of Stalin’s security services were used at the front: the use of provocations (provokatsii), informers, lies, extortion, and torture.71 During the war years, the NKGB organs alone uncovered nearly five thousand “antisoviet counterrevolutionary organizations.”72 At the same time, it cannot be denied that a share of amnestied Chekists contributed to military successes at the front lines through sabotage-reconnaissance activity.The fate of Gaponov and the “Gaponovites” was in many ways typical of amnestied NKVD workers. The Novosibirsk Oblast UNKVD put Gaponov to work “as an agent for investigating people inclined to antisoviet moods.” For a certain time, the Novosibirsk Chekists were even able to sabotage the decision of superiors in Moscow who decreed on 21 January 1944 that, “taking into account the crimes committed by Gaponov,” he was to be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Novosibirsk Oblast Military Committee to be sent to the front.73 Still, Gaponov was only sent to the Oblast Military Committee two months later, on 25 March 1944, citing “operational necessity.”74 Judging by the information available from Gaponov’s case file, he did not participate in fighting. On 23 May 1944, Quartermaster of the Second Rank Gaponov entered into the service of the commandant of the city of Rostov.75
Mashkovksii returned to the Chekist path. Following his release, he participated in battle on the Western and Third Belarusian Fronts and suffered two concussions.
By the spring of 1944, he was already working as the secretary of the frontline NKVD Prisoner of War Transfer (priemno-peresylochnyi) Camp No. 24, where he served as an interrogator. According to his 26 April 1945 commendation for the medal “for battle deeds [Za boevye zaslugi], Mashkovskii “uncovered crimes committed by those performing their military service at the camp.”76Gnesin received the same award in August 1946. From August 1943 until September 1945, he had served as a sniper in the First Artillery Company of the 386th Artillery Regiment of the 60th Artillery Division of Internal NKVD Troops. He arrived at the front in May 1943 as a part of the 219th Artillery Guard Regiment of the 71st Artillery Guard Division, participated in battle on the Third Ukrainian Front, was lightly wounded, suffered shell shock, and after his convalescence was sent to serve in the 386th Artillery Regiment of Internal NKVD Troops.
Less fortuitous was the military fate of Abramovich. He was deployed at the front from 13 June 1943 to 22 September 1945, serving as a private in the 262nd Infantry Division of the 43rd Army on the First Baltic Front. Abramovich suffered a serious head wound in fighting on the night of 18 September 1943; however, prior to this, he managed to rescue two wounded soldiers from the field. Upon his demobilization, Abramovich was classified an Invalid of the Fatherland War of the Second Rank and on 6 November 1947 was honored with the Order of the Red Star.
The subsequent fates of Kordun and Berenzon are currently unknown.