The Fire

The fire at the enormous shipbuilding plant, which was located on the edge of the city of Nikolaev on the banks of the Southern Bug River, began on 2 August 1938, at approximately 7 p.m.

The embers of the fire had not yet burned out when the Nikolaev UNKVD leadership arrived at the scene. The head of the UNKVD, Karamyshev, later reported with pride that “through enormous efforts we were able to liquidate the fire and save the plant, with the aid of the local communists as well as military formations and units summoned by us.”⁴

Setting up their operation in the office of the plant director, the Chekists quickly initiated interrogations and a search for the guilty. Late in the evening, Karamyshev was already taking part in an emergency session of the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Nikolaev Oblast Party Committee, where he intended to secure the party leadership’s support for taking action via the UNKVD. The evaluation of the fire presented at the Orgburo session stated, “The bureau of the oblast party committee considers... that the fire was an act of sabotage by enemies, carried out as a result of the loss of class vigilance and a criminal lack of discipline by the management and party committee of the plant.”⁵

From the beginning, Karamyshev was convinced that this was not an ordinary fire caused by carelessness, but an act of sabotage, a certainty he maintained to the end.

The investigation into the case was assigned to the Secret Political Department, that is, to the Fourth Department of the Nikolaev UNKVD (reclassified as the Second Department at the end of 1938),⁸ which was then the sector “serving” the defense industry enterprises. This sector was headed by P. S. Voloshin.⁹

In the end, eleven of the arrested workers at the plant were brought to trial. On the initiative of the head of the UNKVD Secret Political Department, Iakov Luk’ianovich Trushkin, eight of the main suspects in the apparent arson attack on the wharf were transferred into the hands of a military tribunal, while three more secondary suspects were sent by the investigators for trial in the Special (Osobaia) Troika.¹⁰ The trial of the main suspects was delayed, but the Special Troika sentenced all three accused to death on 26 October 1938, two months after the incident. The sentences were swiftly implemented.¹¹

Within a few days of the fire, the Nikolaev UNKVD again entered into a state of frantic activity. First, Konstantin Efremov,¹² who was, like Voloshin, a onetime head of the defense sector of the Secret Political Department, went around with the inspectors to verify the fire safety measures of the two large shipbuilding plants: No. 200, “Communard,” and No. 198, “Andre Marty.”¹³ The inspection uncovered a catastrophic fire safety situation. Inside Plant No. 200, alongside the railroad tracks were located petroleum storage tanks, which at any moment could go up in flames from the sparks of steam locomotives passing by. Inside Plant No. 198, wood was stored everywhere.

Karamyshev soon became involved in the investigation. After carefully studying the case files in detail, he reported to the oblast party committee. On the basis of Karamyshev’s report, the committee adopted a resolution, “On the purging of the plants,” and authorized additional arrests, which were later carried out by UNKVD personnel.¹⁵

The state security organs had had the shipbuilding plants in their sights even before the fire. According to Efremov, Karamyshev visited the wharves in person many times and he succeeded, with the aid of the arrested engineers, who were not listed by name here, “to take measures” for improving the organization of the labor process.¹⁶ Karamyshev himself reported a whole host of problems. Year after year, the Andre Marty Shipbuilding Plant had not fulfilled its plan, while fires and accidents occurred regularly. The plant, according to Karamyshev, had deteriorated to such a degree that NKVD personnel were stationed there permanently. Moreover, if it had not been for the UNKVD, supported by the Oblast Party Committee, the fire would have completely destroyed the enterprise’s docks.¹⁷

In his final analysis, Karamyshev considered the arrests, along with the UNKVD efforts to oversee the situation in the factories, to be a major success: “As a result of our measures, carried out by the troika, we initiated and achieved the situation that the defense plants began not only to fulfill, but even to overfulfill, state orders and plans for finished products.”¹⁸ The UNKVD chief saw another key to success in the Chekists’ operational initiatives. In particular, Karamyshev wrote, “As a result of our operational measures, the replacement of the enemy management... and also the more energetic involvement of the party organizations, the plants quickly began to move on from the breakdowns.”¹⁹

The NKVD had become not only a political police force targeting ideological opponents of the regime, but also an organization responsible for solving economic problems by way of punitive methods.

Fig. 3.1 P. V. Karamyshev, from March 1938 to January 1939 head of the Nikolaev Oblast NKVD. Photo from 1938, HDA SBU, f. 12, spr. 31017, tom 1 (convert). By exclusive permission of the State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine.