The First Trial

Notwithstanding the efforts of the new UNKVD chief to make his subordinates look good, at the beginning of August 1939 Trushkin and Karamyshev were arrested.⁴² In mid-May 1940, Karamyshev, Trushkin, Garbuzov, and Voronin were indicted.

The actual trial, held six months later, took place over a week, from 27 December 1940 to 4 January 1941. The trial occurred behind closed doors in the UNKVD building in Nikolaev and was presided over by Military Jurist, First Rank, Gur’ev. The other members of the judicial panel were the lay judges, Chepikov and Lyskov, and the court recorder was Technician-Quartermaster, First Rank, Miliakov. Neither the procurator nor defense counsel was admitted to the trial. The indictment cited criminal abuses of office under Article 206-17 Part B of the Ukrainian republic criminal code, that is, serious misconduct for which the death penalty was stipulated.

The tribunal called forty-four witnesses, of whom six could not appear in court. These witnesses were current or former Nikolaev UNKVD personnel and released detainees who had been victims of the NKVD’s methods. Among the latter, however, a careful preliminary selection had been carried out: only those who had worked before their arrest in the enterprises and shipbuilding plants of Nikolaev both before their arrest and, in the main, after their release were called.

The accused were (relatively) young men who, except for Trushkin, had recently joined the NKVD and the party but had quickly achieved career success. Thus, at the time of the court trial, Karamyshev was thirty-five years old. Born in 1905, he was a native of Ekaterinburg, Russian by nationality, and possessed an incomplete high school education. At thirty-three, Karamyshev had become a captain of state security and head of the Nikolaev UNKVD, a post he held from April to December 1938, even though at that time he had served only ten years in the organs, beginning in 1928. In 1928, he had also entered the Communist Party, with his party membership preceded by a six-year stint in the Komsomol. He had one daughter.⁴⁴

Iakov Trushkin was born in 1904 in the city of Kerch’. He had become a party member at fifteen years old and, in 1921 at seventeen, had begun working in various posts in the security organs. However, his career took off only during the years of the Great Terror. From 1 June 1938 through 30 July 1939, Trushkin temporarily filled the post of head of the Fourth (later the Second) Department of the Nikolaev UNKVD, earning the rank of Senior Lieutenant. Of Russian nationality, Trushkin had no previous convictions and no disciplinary measures against him. He was married and had two children.

Mikhail Garbuzov, a Russian, was born in 1909 in Deriugino, a railway junction in Kursk province. At the time of the trial, he was thirty-one years old and the youngest of the accused. Before serving in the state security organs, Garbuzov had worked for three and a half years in industry and had not served in the Red Army. He became a party member in 1931 and, from 1932 through 1940, he worked in the security organs.

Konstantin Voronin was thirty-four years old. He was born in 1906 in Odessa and was a Ukrainian by ethnicity. Before joining the state security organs, he had worked for six years in industry as an engine mechanic. From 1928 through April 1929, he served in the OGPU security troops, from which he was transferred into the OGPU-NKVD. He served there from April 1929 until 1 March 1940. From October 1937 through 17 August 1938, he served as the head of one of the sections of the Secret Political Department of the Nikolaev UNKVD. He held the rank of sergeant and had no previous convictions.

Except for Karamyshev, who grew up in a peasant family, the accused came from working-class backgrounds and had only a primary education. None had previous convictions and, to the contrary, had often been commended for their work. Trushkin had several commendations and citations. In 1938, Garbuzov had been awarded a badge, “Esteemed Agent of the VChK-GPU.” Voronin “several times had been given bonuses for good work in the NKVD organs,” and Karamyshev had even been awarded the Order of Lenin in 1937.⁴⁵

The men had a multipronged defense strategy. First of all, Karamyshev did not for a second allow for doubts about the necessity and correctness of those actions carried out by the oblast UNKVD under his leadership. He continually highlighted its major achievements, as well as the difficulties overcome by the Chekists in solving enormous economic and organizational problems, especially at the shipbuilding plants. Moreover, he claimed, they acted under conditions of constant internal and external threat.

English, German, Japanese, and Polish intelligence—especially Polish—were actively engaged here.... It was difficult to get oriented. In 1938, these same large plants, especially the shipbuilding ones, were infested with class-alien elements. This was the home turf of Trotsky.... We had a huge amount of work here to destroy the enemies, yet all the same their intelligence networks functioned such that no sooner had we managed to set up a machine at the Andre Marty plant than [news of] it was already published in the foreign press.⁴⁶

All the accused emphasized that they had a sufficient amount of revelatory testimony from their agents as well as the testimony of witnesses to proceed against their victims. Moreover, they repeatedly argued that they had worked in direct contact with, and even with the active participation of, party organizations and the procuracy, especially in instances relating to individuals of high political or administrative status.⁴⁷

All four of the NKVD operatives claimed that the material in the agent dossier of “Retivye,” which was opened in August 1939, was incontrovertible proof of the actual participation of their victims in the antisoviet counterrevolutionary Trotskyite group, which, in turn, fully justified in hindsight the subjects’ arrest in the summer of 1938. More than once they underscored that they made use of this agent dossier with the active support of the acting director of the Nikolaev UNKVD, I. T. Iurchenko. They characterized the witnesses in the case (from among shipbuilding plant workers, primarily those who had been arrested) as unreliable witnesses. They argued that some had a suspect past and some had been expelled earlier from the party and were thus embittered by their arrest and detention.

The accused considered the damaging testimony of the majority of their former colleagues as a desire to settle “personal scores” with them, inasmuch as both Karamyshev and Trushkin had more than once punished them because they had, through their unwarranted actions, broken the law.

Of all the Chekists on trial, Karamyshev especially distinguished himself in demonstrating, both in the course of the preliminary investigation and in court, his impeccable devotion to party and state. Consequently, he disputed all accusations against himself and underscored that both in the past and the present he had done everything to oppose violations of socialist legality. His first action in the post of Nikolaev UNKVD boss in April 1938 had been to liquidate “a special chamber for beating detainees” that had been established by his predecessor, I. B. Fisher.⁴⁹

During the trial, Karamyshev tried to use to his advantage the conclusions of two commissions that, under orders from the Ukrainian republic NKVD and led by N. D. Gorlinskii, had inspected the activities of the Nikolaev UNKVD, including the UNKVD troika at the end of September 1938 and again in January 1939. Moreover, in January 1939, Gorlinskii was already acting in the role of Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian republic. According to Karamyshev’s statement, the Gorlinskii commission characterized him, in his role as UNKVD boss, as “one of the best in the oblast cities of Ukraine” and said it had “no complaints” about him.⁵⁰ The Secret Political Department under Trushkin’s leadership similarly received exclusively good marks.⁵¹ All mistakes in the work of the UNKVD noted by the commission—and in this Karamyshev was supported by Trushkin—were acknowledged and corrected by the Chekists. According to Trushkin, this was above all about improving the work of the agent network, which was required by the 17 November 1938 directive of the All-Union Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the Communist Party.⁵²

According to Karamyshev’s individual testimony, after the September 1938 inspection and, subsequently, after 17 November 1938, he worked tirelessly to carry out a whole host of disciplinary inquiries into the UNKVD personnel, determining the “abnormalities” in their work or their violations of socialist legality.

Karamyshev’s line of argumentation was based on a strategy he had worked out even before the investigation. It boiled down to portraying the investigation as tendentious, while at the same time portraying the Chekists in the best light. Karamyshev made repeated assertions about the narrow-minded, “unprincipled, and inflammatory approach to the case” and about the selection of witnesses. He told the court: “The evidence on the work of the troika included in the protocol of the commission drawn up by investigator Burdan conceals the essence of the case and falsifies the state of things.”⁵⁸ Further, he argued: “The investigation’s comments on the All-Union NKVD Directive No. 00606 are arbitrary and based on a tendentious selection of evidence.”⁵⁹

Karamyshev was actively supported by Trushkin, who repeatedly complained during the preliminary investigation and in court about the pressure put on him, about falsification of witness testimony, and even about being beaten.⁶⁰ Trushkin did not perceive the large number of released former detainees as a sign that the members of his department had been mistaken. For him, the wave of releases was only a sign that the authorities had swung from one extreme to the other. In turn, Karamyshev expressed dissatisfaction that the investigation and the court had not referenced his high-level political positions and honors, concealing his “self-sacrificing execution of important government tasks.” Karamyshev considered all of this, whatever it was, as “not the objective, party-minded way.”⁶¹

Fully in keeping with the spirit of the 17 November 1938 directive, Karamyshev explained to himself and to the tribunal the dishonest nature of the preliminary investigation and the overblown accusations formulated by the investigators about the pervasiveness in the NKVD organs of “enemies of the people” who continued to carry out their evil deeds. In Ukraine, such “enemies of the people” were the proteges of former Ukrainian republic People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Uspenskii and included the investigators who had carried out the preliminary inquiry into Karamyshev’s case. The suggestion of links to Uspenskii was a serious accusation. Karamyshev declared, “All of these Tverdokhlebtsy, all this lot from Kaluga are proxies of Uspenskii, who have knocked off a good half of the NKVD cadres, and they did the same to me, while giving false information to the bosses.”⁶²

By sorting out the good from the bad NKVD operatives, Karamyshev opened up for himself and the others accused the possibility of, first, putting themselves on the right side and, second, explaining all the mistakes and excesses in the actions of the state security organs. Thus, in relation to themselves, Karamyshev, Trushkin, Garbuzov, and Voronin acknowledged only the existence of “certain shortcomings,” but in no instance the commission of crimes.⁶³ If these mistakes and excesses had nonetheless existed, then this was, according to Karamyshev, also the fault of “enemies” who had wormed their way into the organs and whose hostile activities had made these mistakes unavoidable. “One must keep in mind that at that time,” he stated, “there were in the NKVD organs a large number of enemies who along with the correct leadership acted according to a hostile line, and, as a result, there were many mistakes not only here, but also in other locales.”⁶⁴ Further, he asked, rhetorically, “What could I do in these actual situations? It is known that the subjective will of specific personnel here was without effect. But nonetheless I did everything I could to eliminate the possibility of these mistakes and to correct those mistakes made.”⁶⁵

To rehabilitate himself as much as possible, Karamyshev disputed every article in the indictment. Responding to the charge that he had created within the UNKVD a general climate making possible the application of physical force, that is, torture, he initially referred to authorization from the Moscow bosses to apply measures of physical force toward specific “enemy elements.”⁶⁶ In addition, he claimed that he gave his subordinates sanction to apply these measures only five times, and each time he had a substantive basis for this, for example, when Derevianchenko assaulted an investigator.⁶⁷ As far as incidents of applying “unlawful methods of investigation” without his sanction were concerned, Karamyshev accounted for this oversight by noting he was overburdened with work and had not been informed about the beatings by his deputy or other subordinates. Specifically, Karamyshev testified:

My frequent absences were exploited in the departments and [Karamyshev’s former deputy A. F.] Poiasov possibly knew more about unlawful methods of investigation, but he did not tell me. If we also add to this my duties as a deputy [in the soviet] and duties as a member of the oblast party committee, then I was often absent.⁶⁸

The former UNKVD boss also rejected the accusations of unjustified arrests, referring in the more important instances to direct orders from Moscow or Kiev. Karamyshev altogether denied any violation of the instructions of Directive No. 00606. The investigation, however, possessed documentary attestation to the fact that Karamyshev acted in violation of the directive and a supplementary circular, No. 189, according to which only individuals arrested prior to 1 August 1938 were subject to trial by the so-called national troikas. Furthermore, the national troika was a punitive body designated exclusively for extrajudicial sentencing of members of national diasporas, but in Nikolaev Oblast it was used to sentence a significant number of Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews, as well as members of other nationalities. The restrictions by which these troikas were banned from sentencing highly qualified specialists were likewise not observed.

In his own defense, Karamyshev confirmed that these violations had occurred in exceptional cases, but often with approval from Kiev or Moscow. According to him, Uspenskii had given approval for up to 30 percent of troika victims to consist of representatives of “non-profiled” nationalities.⁶⁹ In instances where the troika sentenced Russians, Ukrainians, or Jews, at issue were border violations or individuals included in group cases. These groups supposedly could not in any instance be divided, “due to state interests.”⁷⁰ In sum, Karamyshev underscored, “I considered and still consider that the troika acted completely correctly and in the interests of state security.”⁷¹

It was very important for Karamyshev and Trushkin to distance themselves from “enemy of the people” Uspenskii. In their testimony, the former people’s commissar figured exclusively as a proponent of radical measures, while these Chekists strove to “dilute” his orders, and therefore always felt that they were under the sword of Damocles. Moreover, Karamyshev did not miss the opportunity to put forth his own former deputy, Poiasov, as an individual in Uspenskii’s confidence:

From Uspenskii came a directive to arrest 1,000 individuals, which I did not fulfill. He hated me and called Poiasov in for a conference, but not me.... The issue of punishing via the troika was put to us in strong terms, because the directive indicated that the troika might impose sentences either to VMN [the death penalty] or 10 years imprisonment, and only in a few instances to 8 years, but we in no way took the responsibility for it. For this, Uspenskii called me up and said over the phone: “You must stop playing the liberal, get your hard tack ready for boarding.” [The reference here is to arrest, sentencing, and transport to a camp.]⁷²

According to Karamyshev, under his leadership the Nikolaev UNKVD on the whole “worked through” some five or six times fewer cases than other regions of Ukraine, which attested to the fact that “we approached the arrests more carefully, and only according to the evidence we had.”⁷³

Still another article in the indictment stated that Karamyshev had treated his subordinates poorly and likewise had neglected party work. In response to this, he argued: “Despite the fact that I had a reward fund of 12,000 rubles, I expended 18,000 rubles monthly. This speaks to the fact that I listened alertly to the needs of personnel and never heard any reproach from them.”⁷⁴ The party organization never had any issues with him, as even “in the very heat of an operation I proposed setting aside a special day for political instruction.”⁷⁵ In his “last words” before the court, Karamyshev offered his final defense:

Over the course of ten years I worked in reality doing low-level operational work, working day by day, night by night, for years never using time off to get out into nature... and never lost the revolutionary outlook... because I never lost my pure motives: the interests of the party and the state. I had no personal interests, there were none and there could have been none!... I am not a criminal and never engaged in criminal activity; quite the opposite, I have for my entire conscious life struggled against criminals and enemies, defending the positions of the party and soviet power.... For what other reason could I have been elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet and awarded the highest of honors: the Order of Lenin... for selfless execution of government assignments? I am a sacrificial offering, and the party does not need such a sacrifice, and therefore I ask that you acquit me.⁷⁶

Karamyshev’s strategy turned out to be successful. On 4 January 1941, the Military Tribunal acquitted him. Garbuzov was also released. His two-year camp sentence was replaced by a three-year suspended sentence and, moreover, the court noted that Garbuzov represented no danger to society. His “partner in crime,” Voronin, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Garbuzov and Voronin were sentenced under criminal code Article 206-17 Part A, for official misconduct, even though they had been initially charged with crimes punished under the more serious Part B of that article. Trushkin received the harshest punishment of all, but even he was able to get off relatively lightly. Under Article 206-17 Part B, he was sentenced to the death penalty—to be shot—but in light of his continuous service in the state security organs and the Red Army from an early age, as well as the fact that he did not commit his crimes out of venal self-interest, the tribunal granted Trushkin a pardon, substituting eight years’ imprisonment for his death sentence.⁷⁷