The NKVD in Odessa
Andrei Savin and Aleksei Tepliakov Translated by Simon Belokowsky
In the late autumn of 1938, the new People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Lavrentii Beria, began a far-reaching purge of the NKVD for “violations of socialist legality.” In 1939, 7,372 people were dismissed from the NKVD, which amounted to nearly a quarter (22.9%) of all operative workers.
Among these, 973 were arrested. If those who were arrested in the last months of 1938 (also under the auspices of Beria’s purge) are included, the arrest figures grow to 1,364 people.1 Those destined for the defendant’s bench were mainly leaders of the state security organs—the chiefs of krai and oblast administrations, operative departments, and sections.2 Russian historian Nikita Petrov has characterized this purge as the “first complete cadre revolution in the organs of state security aimed at the radical remaking of its personnel.”3This chapter focuses on the purge of Chekist cadres immediately after the cessation of the NKVD mass operations, with an emphasis on the role that Beria’s purge played within the interrelationships among the Communist Party, the state security police, and state authorities and society as a whole. It is based on materials from the personnel and criminal case files of Odessa Oblast UNKVD workers arrested over the course of 1939 to 1941 as well as the documents of the judicial proceedings against them.