The NKVD in Skvira

Lynne Viola

The Military Tribunal convened from 3 to 8 August 1940 at the NKVD club in the small city of Skvira, some 75 miles from Kiev.¹ Oskar Savel’evich Fleishman and Mikhail Mikhailovich Krivtsov were the defendants, each charged with Article 207-17 of the Ukrainian criminal code, Fleishman with the more serious point “B” and Krivtsov with point “A.”² Fleishman was the former head of the Skvirskii district NKVD office in Kiev Oblast.³ Krivtsov worked in the regular police, but had been mobilized to serve as an NKVD investigator-interrogator during the mass operations, a common phenomenon at this time.⁴ Both were part of a larger interdistrict NKVD operational group, whose headquarters were located in the town of Belaia Tserkov, roughly halfway between Skvira and Kiev.⁵

The charges against the two were the familiar violations of socialist legality.⁶ Both men were charged with the falsification of investigative files and the use of physical methods of influence (torture) against arrested suspects.

Although somewhat less detailed than other cases, the provenance of this case at the district and village levels makes it particularly interesting.

The case of the “39” was the centerpiece in the accusations against Fleishman and Krivtsov. The two were charged with the arrests of a “series of honest communists and collective farmers” in the summer of 1938.⁹ The case originally went directly to the troika for sentencing. The troika sentenced five of the 39 to death, but sent the rest back to the Skvirskii district NKVD. Fleishman then “unsewed” the case—literally (the pages were sewn together into a file) and figuratively—and created a series of new cases based on smaller groups from the original 39 and organized according to the villages where group members lived.¹⁰

Fleishman and Krivtsov’s criminal file contains many of the documents pertaining to the case of the 39, thus permitting a backward glance at the original case. The 39 were caught up in mass operation 00447. The accused, all men, included nine agricultural specialists, seven people from strong kulak farms and/or dekulakized families, and ten men with previous criminal convictions, ranging from anti-collective farm activities during collectivization to famine-related theft or “sabotage” during the famine. Some fell into multiple categories and almost all were tainted by accusations of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism and/or ties to petliurists (members of the anti-Bolshevik army led by Ukrainian nationalist Petliura during the civil war).¹¹ Fleishman also arrested a group of Skvirskii district school teachers who fell outside of the group of 39.¹² The dragnet basically pulled in a combination of technical elites and collective farmers with a suspect past.

Thirty-seven of the 39 confessed to the charges leveled against them.¹⁴ Their confessions were extracted forcibly, either through beatings or prolonged periods of standing. The original charge against the group was both exceedingly general yet somehow all-inclusive, and it reflected a Ukrainian version of the master plot of the Great Terror:

On the assignment of the Ukrainian counterrevolutionary bourgeois nationalist center and through it the participation of the former chair of the Kiev oblast [soviet] executive committee, Vasilenko (arrested), was set up a Ukrainian counterrevolutionary nationalist insurrectionary organization led by the former secretary of the Skvirskii district party committee, Kokhanenko (arrested), and subsequently by the boss of the district land department, Zalevskii (arrested), with the aim of overthrowing the socialist system and government of the USSR and resurrecting capitalism and breaking off Ukraine from the USSR and establishing a fascist dictatorship. The organization united antisoviet petliurists and repressed kulak elements with tasks to prepare insurrectionary-diversionary cadres in the event of war against the USSR [in order] to raise an uprising in the rear; to carry out harmful activities in agriculture; to create material difficulties in order to stimulate unrest among the masses; to be prepared to destroy food warehouses in the event of war; to draw in new members from kulaks, petliurists, antisoviet elements; to carry out antisoviet propaganda among the population in the aim of discrediting the collective farms and breaking Ukraine from the USSR and orienting Ukraine to the fascist countries of Poland and Germany.¹⁵

This relentlessly and sullenly repetitive diatribe represented the worst Fifth Column nightmares of the Communist regime, reflecting fears based on the realities of popular protest during the civil war and collectivization, especially in Ukraine, and the tense international situation of the times, but in no way reflected current realities.

The troika and the NKVD special plenipotentiary who later reviewed the case were dismayed by what they considered to be the overly general nature of these charges and the lack of clear evidence.¹⁶ The case against the medical worker Fedor Mikhailovich Iashchenko was the only one with concrete charges. He was accused of making incorrect diagnoses of illnesses and ignoring the unsanitary conditions of the village, thus creating “possibilities” for contagion among children.¹⁷ Anything could be politicized within the context of the Great Terror, including what perhaps were the negligent actions or unpopular personality of the village medic. The remaining cases, however, were completely fanciful, requiring forced confessions and willing or coerced witness testimony. Fleishman would have had to have been far more resourceful to present a more specific case within the overall fiction of the Great Terror and the targeting of specific political, economic, and social categories of the population in the mass operation.

Fleishman did try. To bolster the case against the former members of the 39, he sought witness testimony to solidify the confessions.¹⁸ He needed damning information not only about his prisoners’ current, vague activities, but, more important, about their social, economic, and political pasts, which virtually determined hostile activities in the Communist worldview of that time. According to the NKVD special plenipotentiary, Fleishman “planted” the fiction of the story of the 39 in his witnesses’ testimony. He provided his investigators, mainly simple policemen, with a text and a standard set of questions and answers. He also instructed his investigators to compile witness testimony in such a way that it was to contain not concrete facts but general phrases designed around the master plot. This would also allow Fleishman to make “corrections” in the witnesses’ testimony. In most cases, witnesses did not read their testimony, but signed blank papers in advance.

Fleishman then sent the cases on to the NKVD Osoboe soveshchanie (the NKVD’s highest sentencing board), where the accused were sentenced to varying lengths of time in the labor camps. Before long, however, many of the accused as well as the witnesses began to retract their confessions and testimony.²⁰ This was a fairly widespread phenomenon following the November 1938 scaling-back of mass operations. By November 1939, the NKVD issued a directive to halt the cases against the former members of the 39, particularly singling out the district party secretary, Kokhanenko, who retracted his confession and told of the “incorrect methods” used during his interrogations. Kokhanenko also reported that he and Fleishman had poor mutual relations and that Fleishman had told an NKVD colleague that he would “ruin” him.²¹ On 16 January 1940, the NKVD called for the re-examination of all of Fleishman’s cases.²² Within months, most of the original 39, minus those no longer alive, were freed, and Fleishman and Krivtsov were behind bars. The Trial

The trial took place at the height of a scorching Ukrainian summer in early August 1940. By this time, Fleishman had sat in prison for six to seven months and Krivtsov for four.²³ At the outset of the trial, Fleishman denied all guilt, retracting a partial admission of guilt from his March interrogations, likely made under torture. Krivtsov pleaded guilty.²⁴

Fleishman was the first to speak before the tribunal. He was an old NKVD operative, having served in the organs for eighteen years, rising to the level of lieutenant.

From Fleishman’s testimony and others, it appears that 1937 was a relatively calm year for the NKVD in Skvirskii district. Repression heated up only in 1938, stimulated by deliberate turnover among the leaders of the interdistrict operational group in Belaia Tserkov and the visits of a series of high-level oblast officials. I. M. Pivchikov was the head of the group until sometime in the summer of 1938 when Ivan Ignat’evich Babich arrived. Ivan Babich then served as leader of the group for about one month, during which time the terror steeply escalated. He was followed by Mikhail Mikhailovich Tsirul’nitskii, who ran the group in August, September, and December 1938.²⁷

In his interrogations and in a handwritten confession, Fleishman documented the escalation of the terror and the role he claimed was played by higher-level officials in the summer of 1938. Still under Pivchikov, Fleishman arrested one Nastevich. In his confession, Nastevich literally implicated the entire district’s rural officialdom—every collective farm chair, every rural soviet secretary, and many communists and district officials. Fleishman said he told Pivchikov that, according to Nastevich’s confessions, he would have to arrest every official in the district. Fleishman also said that he told Pivchikov that they had no compromising evidence on the majority of these people. Pivchikov then told Fleishman to wait for the arrival of Dolgushev, the head of the Kiev Oblast NKVD, who was scheduled to get there that evening.²⁸

As soon as he arrived, Dolgushev called an operational meeting at which Pivchikov reported that the Belaia Tserkov interdistrict operational group had uncovered a branch of a Ukrainian insurrectionary organization in Skvirskii district. According to Ivan Babich, Dolgushev called for their “immediate arrest.”²⁹ He mocked Fleishman, telling him, “You will work, Fleishman, or do you think that the operational group will work for you?” Fleishman later claimed that “Dolgushev harshly cursed me and said if there is not a radical change in work then he would be forced to raise the issue of my loyalty to the party.”³⁰ Then Pivchikov intervened, telling Dolgushev that Fleishman said that they would have to arrest the entire district and village aktiv if they followed Nastevich’s lead. At that point, Dolgushev changed his tune, hesitating somewhat, and asked Fleishman whether they had compromising evidence for all of the newly accused. Fleishman said they had no compromising material on the majority of suspects.³¹ Dolgushev gave Fleishman 48 hours to collect the requisite evidence for the cases to proceed. Fleishman then mobilized all of his cadres, sending them out to gather incriminating evidence. Initially, they only arrested seven people, but from these seven, they received additional names, leading to the arrest of the 39. Fleishman claimed that it was Ivan Babich who had the idea to link the 39 to the already-arrested Vasilenko, the former head of the oblast Soviet executive committee (ispolkom), and to make him the group’s “leader.”³² The arrest list for the troika would be signed by both Fleishman and Ivan Babich.³³

Fleishman also claimed that the orders to press for confessions came from above. Sometime after Dolgushev’s visit, the head of the Fourth Department of the Kiev Oblast NKVD arrived with an order to make use of the infamous stoiki—the process by which prisoners were forced to stand uninterruptedly, sometimes for days at a time, until they “confessed.” The order for forced standing, according to Fleishman, came from Dolgushev.³⁴ At his trial, Fleishman would claim that Ivan Babich gave the order to use physical force on individual suspects.³⁵ Fleishman only admitted to striking someone for what he described as “slander” and another person apparently because he was a priest.³⁶

Fleishman told the tribunal at his trial that he had closely “studied” the district from early 1937 when he became the head of its NKVD branch. He said that he knew that there were many petliurists and remnants of other “bands” in villages. Following the operational meeting with Dolgushev, Fleishman sent out his investigators, mainly local policemen seconded to the NKVD, to collect witness testimony and the political and social profiles—especially from the past (meaning prerevolutionary times and the civil war)—of the villagers under arrest. He admitted to the tribunal that he told his investigators to write that witnesses were rank-and-file collective farmers and not to indicate that they were in fact party members or other village and collective farm officials; otherwise, however, he claimed that he asked them to obtain “truthful testimonies.” He denied that he had used official witnesses—that is, the same select group of witnesses to testify multiple times. And he claimed that he had no idea that his investigators falsified witness testimony.³⁷ As far as the actual interrogations of suspects were concerned, Fleishman said that there was “a standard protocol, according to which the interrogator questioned his suspect. I personally gave the interrogators this form of protocol.”³⁸ When he was questioned in March 1940, he also admitted to giving orders to his investigators to include the following in each of their interrogation protocols of the arrested: antisoviet agitation, defeatist agitation, and terrorist manifestations. He then said, “I gave these instructions on the basis of orders from the oblast.”³⁹ In fact, throughout his trial, he used the excuse that he was following the orders of the various heads of the interdistrict operational group who, he claimed, were really in charge of investigations.⁴⁰

Krivtsov was up next before the tribunal. Like many of his fellow policemen, he was a local. He had been born into a Ukrainian family in a village in the district in 1905. Too young to fight in the civil war, he joined the Red Army in 1923. After he left the army in 1933, he returned to Skvirskii district, working first in a Politotdel (Political Department, most probably, in the Skvirskii Machine-Tractor Station), and then in a series of other positions before becoming a policeman in April 1937. In September of the same year, he was seconded to work under Fleishman in the district branch of the NKVD. He worked both in Skvira and Belaia Tserkov until the fall of 1938. He became a member of the Communist Party only in 1938. By October of that year, he had been fired from the regular police on corruption charges. Krivtsov was married with three children.⁴¹

Krivtsov began his testimony by denying any guilt. He told the tribunal that prior to his mobilization into the NKVD, he had no experience in investigative work. He said, “In general, I did everything on Fleishman’s orders,” and he had no idea that he was violating socialist legality. His ignorance could only have been based on sheer stupidity or a justified sense that everything was permitted in the brutal culture of those times. He went on to say that Fleishman taught him, along with three other policemen (Romanov, Beregovoi, and Antonets), how to conduct interrogations at one of their operational meetings. Fleishman told them what to write. According to Kritsman, “all interrogation protocols were one and the same tract.... In general, as a rule, in all cases, I wrote in the interrogation protocol about the defeatism and antisoviet activities of the arrested.”⁴²

Krivtsov denied using physical force during interrogations despite accusations from his colleagues. He did freely admit to making suspects stand for prolonged periods of time, but justified this by saying that everyone in the operational team did the same. Moreover, he was under orders from Fleishman to complete his cases “in not more than 40 to 50 minutes.” As a seeming corroboration of Fleishman’s testimony, he said the arrest of the 39 only occurred after criticism at an operational meeting, “that in Skvira there is nothing,” meaning there had been insufficient arrests up to that time. The arrests began directly after this meeting, he said, on the order of Pivchikov, the head of the Belaia Tserkov interdistrict operative group before Ivan Babich.⁴³

Earlier, at his own interrogation, Krivtsov had presented somewhat more detail on some of the practices used in Skvira and Belaia Tserkov. In particular, he explained to his interrogator how they gathered witness testimony. In the first instance, he claimed “not to remember” falsifying witness testimony; yet all his testimony pointed precisely to falsification. He said that Fleishman ordered them to write the protocols of the witness testimony “in general terms [ne konkretno]” and, most of all, to write about antisoviet agitation, agitation against the Supreme Soviet elections, and rumors about the coming war with Germany. This material, according to Krivtsov, had to figure in all witness statements. Further, Fleishman instructed his investigators “that it was necessary preliminarily to select and converse with [members of] the village aktiv and only afterward to question them formally. In cases when a witness did not want to give testimony, they were to find someone else.” Fleishman then checked each witness statement, making the necessary “corrections.”⁴⁴

Krivtsov then moved on to the actual arrests. These were made at night.⁴⁵ Fleishman “gave an order to write general, non-specific [ne konkretnye] protocols” when writing up cases for arrest.⁴⁶ He would later “correct” them. On one occasion, he cursed Krivtsov “with vulgar words” when the “facts” of a case did not correspond with the suspect’s age. Fleishman yelled at Krivtsov: “What? Don’t you have a brain?” and then “corrected” the suspect’s date of birth.⁴⁷ Krivtsov also said that Fleishman had beaten a priest with a ramrod and another victim with his fists.⁴⁸ Krivtsov said that everyone was afraid of Fleishman. At the same time, he said that he did not understand that “such methods were incorrect.” He explained, “I thought as a member of the party and the organs, Fleishman could not be incorrect.” Fleishman had also told him that their directions came from the center and the oblast. Finally, Krivtsov told his interrogator that he and the other policemen were strictly warned never to talk about these methods of investigation and had to sign a secrecy agreement, a standard practice in the NKVD.⁴⁹

To this point, Fleishman and Krivtsov denied any or almost any personal wrongdoing, attributing their actions to orders from above. Krivtsov had the additional excuse that he lacked experience, not to mention intelligence. At the end of his interrogation, he did volunteer additional testimony, in which he suddenly admitted that he had had doubts about the guilt of a number of the 39 as well as doubts about the methods of interrogation.⁵⁰ However, it would be up to their co-workers and superiors, along with a handful of witnesses and a few victims, to complete the story of what happened in Skvirskii district in 1938. “There is nothing terrible about this”

Fleishman and Krivtsov worked closely with three other former policemen from Skvira: Nikolai Alekseevich Romanov, Ivan Mikhailovich Beregovoi, and Avtonom Sidorovich Antonets, the last of whom was originally supposed to stand trial with Fleishman and Krivtsov.⁵¹ Each of them had been mobilized from the regular police to work in mass operations in 1938. None had more than a primary education, if that. Like Krivtsov, they had no prior experience working in investigative-interrogation work and received no prior training. Antonets told the tribunal that he was sent to Belaia Tserkov to lead the interrogation of those arrested in Skvirskii district on his second day of work.⁵²

They were all afraid of Fleishman. Romanov said, “Fleishman related very crudely to the workers, cursing us with vulgar swear words and threatening arrest and court if we did not fulfill his orders.”⁵³ “Fleishman yelled at everyone,” Romanov told the tribunal, “saying, ‘what, you are sitting surrounded by bands, counterrevolutionaries, and you do nothing.’ ”⁵⁴

They all testified to Fleishman’s use of physical force in his dealings with the prisoners. Romanov said, “Going by Fleishman’s office door, I often heard moans and blows. Besides this, I personally saw how Fleishman beat with a ramrod the arrested Spiridon Gavva while he was lying on the ground.... In my presence, he also beat the arrested Korinnyi.”⁵⁵ Beregovoi admitted that “the beating of prisoners who refused to confess was widely practiced among us in the district branch of the NKVD.” He witnessed Fleishman beating confessions out of prisoners and noted one prisoner who was forced to stand continuously for eight days.⁵⁶ He told the tribunal that Krivtsov also beat a prisoner.⁵⁷ Beregovoi added that Fleishman had arrested a collective farmer with whom Beregovoi had served in the Red Army. Beregovoi said that he knew this man was not a counterrevolutionary and knew at least five others who were also innocent.⁵⁸

Antonets, who said nothing about whether Krivtsov beat anyone, claimed to know of only two cases of prisoners being beaten. He saw Fleishman beat one prisoner “with his fists.” And he saw one Grigorevich, presumably a fellow interrogator, beat someone. When Antonets asked Grigorevich about his actions, Grigorevich responded, “There is nothing terrible about this,” neatly highlighting the tenor of the times.⁵⁹ Another policeman, Fedor Leont’evich Adamchuk, who stood watch over prisoners subject to prolonged standing, remembered Fleishman beating a priest and forcing him to join in.⁶⁰

The collective farmer Petr Pavlovich Gutsalo also testified about the violence in Skvira and Belaia Tserkov. After he was arrested in June 1938, Fleishman and Romanov interrogated him, accusing him of belonging to a counterrevolutionary organization. Gutsalo stood his ground, refusing to confess or sign the interrogation protocols. Fleishman then kicked him in the stomach. After that, Fleishman handed him over to a group of six policemen “and ordered them to do with me what they wanted.” The six men beat him with the “butt of a rifle, a revolver, and with their hands,” then forced him to stand for three days, after which he finally capitulated and signed. Gutsalo said the other people in his cell had also been beaten. He later retracted his confession. He told the tribunal that he had been in his collective farm since its founding in 1929, had received awards for good work, and only fought with Petliura’s forces for five days under duress.⁶¹

Kalistrat Viktorovich Korinnyi was a collective farmer who had been caught up in the group of 39. He told of how Fleishman beat him with the leg of a chair and forced him to stand uninterruptedly when he refused to slander himself. In the end, this simple collective farmer, who had never before been arrested and who fought in the civil war, was forced to incriminate ten innocent people. He said that Fleishman and Krivtsov had also beaten his cellmates. The oblast court freed Korinnyi from prison in March 1939.⁶²

Fedor Grigor’evich Kokhanenko, the district party secretary in Skvira, testified that Fleishman held a grudge toward him because he had refused Fleishman 2,000 rubles to repair his apartment. Soon after this refusal, at a party meeting, Fleishman accused Kokhanenko of traveling drunk to the villages, corruption, and connections with alien elements. Kokhanenko was arrested in Kiev on 5 June 1937 and subsequently turned into the leader of the 39. He told the tribunal, “I consider that testimony about me given by the arrested was obtained under force” and that the real reason for his arrest was his “bad relations with Fleishman.” Fleishman confirmed that he had asked Kokhanenko for money to repair his apartment, but said that when he first came to the district he heard that Kokhanenko was “closely tied to kulak elements.” He continued, “I wrote several reports for the oblast NKVD administration [in Kiev] about the leading composition of the district and their links with unreliable elements, in particular I wrote this about Kokhanenko.” Kokhanenko then told the court that he received a reprimand for his rude relations with several people and connections with alien elements, but that the reprimand was lifted under appeal. When he received the reprimand, he realized “that Fleishman played in this a role of the first order.”⁶³

Beregovoi, Antonets, and Romanov testified to the use of standard forms for prisoner interrogations and witness statements, as well as to standard content. Romanov said he regularly rewrote interrogation protocols under Fleishman’s dictation.⁶⁴ He also said that Fleishman ordered all interrogators to write in their protocols that the prisoner carried out antisoviet agitation and—this was “mandatory”—discussed the defeat of the USSR in war.⁶⁵ Romanov continued that, if they did not write what Fleishman dictated, Fleishman “screamed at us, saying we were playing into the hands of the enemy.”⁶⁶ Beregovoi said that Fleishman threatened to arrest him if he did not provide the correct protocols.⁶⁷ Antonets added that since he knew nothing about conducting an interrogation, he was given a model of a protocol of interrogation and told to question his prisoners according to a standard form.⁶⁸

Ivan Babich, the head of the interdistrict operational group in Belaia Tserkov in the summer of 1938, corroborated the use of a standard pattern, not for the interrogation protocols, but for the indictment of the case (the obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie), compiled after interrogations and used to present the case and charges before the troika. During the trial, Ivan Babich told the tribunal, “In general, they sent from Kiev a standard model form, according to which to write indictments. In this form, they indicated the aims and tasks of the counterrevolutionary organization and in general if I corrected the introduction to the case summary on the group case [of the 39], I took data from the material of the case.”⁶⁹ Mikhail Mikhailovich Tsirul’nitskii, who took over as the head of the operational group from Ivan Babich, told the tribunal that he had initially expressed surprise at how quickly Krivtsov interrogated his prisoners. Krivtsov responded that “he only rewrote or wrote under dictation. And some interrogation protocols were simply signed [forged] by Fleishman.”⁷⁰

Fleishman was surely dictating charges in Skvira and Belaia Tserkov, but the master plot was from Kiev and Moscow. The fiction of the Great Terror was grafted on to the victims of the mass operations, in the best of cases people with some kind of suspect past, in the worst of cases completely innocent individuals. And everyone was forced to play along—the policemen who had known some of the “enemies” from their youth, as well as the village and collective farm officials and activists who were forced or otherwise influenced to tell lies about their neighbors in their capacity as “witnesses.” Witnesses

Witnesses provided two types of evidence for the NKVD investigations in Skvira and Belaia Tserkov. This evidence laid the groundwork for the arrests and interrogations of the 39, although it generally followed rather than preceded the arrests. The first type of document was the kharakteristika, paperwork that provided a political and social profile of the suspects, including information about their activities during the civil war and before the revolution. The second was a spravka, which included the witnesses’ descriptions of a suspect’s antisoviet activities, past and present. In practice, these two types of documents were interchangeable. In almost all cases, the past prevailed over the present in determining a suspect’s guilt. It was a matter of not what he did but who he was. The genealogists of the NKVD were particularly interested in a suspect’s prerevolutionary past and his political affiliations in the civil war.⁷¹

Policeman Beregovoi explained: “As a rule, the district branch of the NKVD required from the rural soviet a form about the social past of each of the arrested.”⁷² As for testimony, he continued, “As a rule, we had permanent official witnesses who testified in multiple cases. Such witnesses gave whatever testimony the interrogator wanted. Generally, in each village, there was a group of witnesses who testified in all cases of [people] arrested from the given village.”⁷³ Beregovoi’s colleagues, Romanov and Antonets, corroborated his testimony on the use of official witnesses.⁷⁴

In many cases, perhaps most cases, all the interrogator needed to do was to call in the rural soviet secretary and order him to bring with him official stationery along with the official stamp and press. Beregovoi admitted to this practice, as did the fire warden and former policeman Adamchuk.⁷⁵ Romanov told the tribunal that once Fleishman told him, “your protocol [of witness testimony] is worthless, you need another one.” Fleishman sent him back to the village two to three times to obtain the “correct” results. Finally, rural soviet secretary Nikolaichuk told Romanov, “I have no time. How about if I just give you a signed blank form and then you can write what you need?”⁷⁶ In order to disguise the fact that he forced village and collective farm officials to serve as witnesses, Fleishman ordered his investigators to describe the witnesses as rank-and-file collective farmers.⁷⁷

The official witnesses followed the script of the Great Terror under the dictation of one or another NKVD investigator. Witnesses testified to antisoviet agitation, conversations about the defeat of the USSR in war, the coming of the fascist order, and so on.⁷⁸ Investigator Antonets went so far as to say that they sent witnesses to Belaia Tserkov to give testimony according to the “standard form,” including information on antisoviet conversations, terrorist moods, and the like.⁷⁹

The witnesses themselves also had an opportunity to testify at Fleishman and Krivtsov’s pre-trial investigation and, in some cases, even at the trial. Nikolai Luk’ianovich Nikolaichuk, who had given Romanov a signed blank form, was the secretary of a rural soviet and, at the time of his testimony, the head of the Skvirskii MTS (Machine-Tractor Station). He testified: “I remember that Fleishman called me into the district-level NKVD two times with my stamp and press in order to provide a certificate for people arrested in [the village of] B. Erchika. Fleishman demanded that I write under his dictation a certificate about the antisoviet activities of these people. However, I refused to do this and wrote about [their] positive activities. Then Fleishman threatened me, declaring that I was defending the enemy. However, I paid no attention to these threats.”⁸⁰ Although it is unlikely that Nikolaichuk both freely offered Romanov blank forms and stood up to Fleishman, the basic thread of the story is clear.

Another rural soviet secretary, Antonina Nikiforovna Matusevich, a people’s judge at the time of her testimony, was also called into the Skvirskii NKVD office in 1938. She told the tribunal, “They called me into the district office of the NKVD and told me to provide a certificate on Tishchenko, where it could be indicated that Tishchenko was an antisoviet individual. I then said that I knew Tishchenko only from the positive side and knew nothing bad about him. After this, they suggested that I give them blank forms with the stamp and press, but I didn’t do this. I went home and told my husband that they had demanded blank forms... my husband answered to me, ‘give them anything they want, if you don’t, they’ll arrest you.’ ” So Matusevich returned to the NKVD where she ran into Beregovoi. She asked him, “can one issue a certificate on Tishchenko if it is not true?” Beregovoi told her to go home, that they no longer needed her. Matusevich added to her testimony: “I knew the Tishchenko family well. They all worked well in the collective farm. Now, Tishchenko leaves behind a family of 8.” Tishchenko had been executed.⁸¹

Andrei Feofanovich Antonik and Domna Mikhailovna Orlova provided witness testimony about Dmitri Ivanovich Ianchuk. Antonik chaired a collective farm. He said he knew nothing about Ianchuk’s antisoviet agitation, but that the interrogator Antonets “persuaded me and urged me to sign and I signed.” He added that he only knew that when Ianchuk returned from exile in 1934, having most probably been exiled as a kulak in 1930 or 1931, “he worked well in the collective farm, he was the best collective farmer.”⁸² Orlova, who was apparently an actual rank-and-file collective farmer, testified that she “had quarreled with Ianchuk’s wife and that Ianchuk’s children did all sorts of harm in the collective farm,” but she said nothing about Ianchuk’s antisoviet activities since she knew nothing about this. “I knew Ianchuk worked well in the collective farm.” She added, “The investigator did not read me the protocol and I could not sign my testimony since I am completely illiterate and don’t know how to write.”⁸³

Another witness, Andrei Andreevich Dieskul’, told the tribunal that Krivtsov did not read the protocol questions to him, but that he signed three blank forms.⁸⁴ The witness M. K. Klimas, a rural soviet secretary, admitted that “part of his testimony did not correspond to reality,” while other witnesses denied their testimony or claimed never to have said what was contained in their interrogation protocols.⁸⁵

The entire district bore witness against Fleishman. His non-local status, perhaps his Jewish background, may have contributed to his lack of popularity. At the same time, the entire district was implicated in the Great Terror, whether by force or not.⁸⁶ Within the villages of the Soviet Union, the terror was, by necessity, far more public. It was simply not possible to make arrests without the village’s knowledge. Furthermore, the machinery of the mass operations required widespread participation beyond the closed corridors of the NKVD. In part, such participation was based on a feeble and perverse show of socialist legality that sought to highlight its “evidence” beyond the all-important confession and assumed the aspect of a legal, or, more accurately, administrative fetishism carried to the extreme. In part, the NKVD needed local witnesses who knew the social and political profile of the village, for, after all, there were a handful of witnesses—mainly those called by Fleishman—who stuck with their stories about petliurists and former kulaks in the village.⁸⁷ Above all, the witnesses—whether coerced or not—played a key role in the elaboration of the fiction of the Great Terror’s master plot. Back to Fleishman

On the face of it, all roads in this trial lead back to Fleishman and, to a much lesser degree, to Krivtsov. Yet Fleishman also claimed that he was only following orders—the orders of the successive heads of the interdistrict NKVD group, Pivchikov, Ivan Babich, and Tsirul’nitskii, and the head of the Kiev Oblast NKVD, Dolgushev.

Fleishman told the tribunal that all arrests occurred only on the orders of the oblast NKVD.⁸⁸ He said that the group of 39 was sent to the troika not by him but by Ivan Babich, something Babich immediately denied.⁸⁹ When the troika returned the case to him, Fleishman claimed that Dolgushev ordered him to “unsew it” (take apart the file) and form new cases based on eight to ten people each, and to direct these cases to the Osoboe Soveshchanie. When Fleishman asked Dolgushev if he should free several of the group’s members, Dolgushev said, “do not free even one person.”⁹⁰ Fleishman also claimed that Ivan Babich had indicated to him that it was permitted to use physical force in interrogations and that the permission to use forced standing came down from the oblast NKVD in Kiev.⁹¹

Fleishman insisted that he had warned his underlings to carefully check the evidence provided by witnesses.⁹² He called his own witness—fire inspector Illiarion Iosifovich Levakovskii, who worked in the NKVD in 1938—to back him up on this point.⁹³ Fleishman admitted to falsifying only one case, the case of an individual named Dement’ev. He said that he did this out of fear that “they” would tie him to Dement’ev, for reasons left unclear, and arrested Dement’ev to “convince” the oblast NKVD. He knew the information gathered on Dement’ev was not true.⁹⁴

Still, he held firm in his protestations of innocence. He declared, “I do not admit guilt in the creation of a counterrevolutionary nationalist insurrectionary organization, since all of the arrested confessed”—a rather circular argument. He did admit that he had used “illegal methods in conducting interrogations” and had instructed his subordinates to make use of forced standing. He also admitted to telling his underlings the fictive content of the case, although he added that the interrogators soon learned how to write their protocols on their own. However, he said, “In general, I received orders from the [oblast] NKVD to implement everything that occurred in the district-level NKVD.”⁹⁵

Fleishman’s final statement to the tribunal began on the usual revolutionary autobiographical note, proceeded to his defense, and ended with an appeal for mercy. He said:

I want first of all to talk about myself. I came from a working-class family. I grew up in poverty and hunger. Already in 1914, I went to work for hire since my father was away in the army.

In 1917, I was among the first to enter the ranks of the Red Guard, and then the Red Army and on 4 January 1921 I was sent to work in the Osobyi otdel [“Special Department” of the internal security police]. Thus I worked uninterruptedly in the organs of the NKVD until 1939. In this time, I had not one reprimand, always honestly relating to my work....

After I was fired from the NKVD organs, I was directed by the party committee to responsible work as the director of the state factory Dietfabrika in Odessa, where I also worked honestly, and for good results in work, I, together with the factory’s collective, was awarded 10,000 rubles.

I didn’t think I was committing a crime. Being at the operational meeting, they gave us various orders, how to lead investigations and whom to arrest. If I committed a mistake, then this did not depend on me, but on other circumstances.

I indisputably committed a series of gross mistakes but individual facts are the inventions of the investigators and not my orders.

For seven months, I have been under guard... this is for me a big punishment.

I ask that you take into account all circumstances in the determination of my fate.

Dependent upon me are my father and mother and two small children who will remain without any means of existence.

And therefore I again plead for a just sentence.⁹⁶

Krivtsov followed Fleishman to the stand to give his final statement to the tribunal. Initially, Krivtsov had denied all guilt. Over the course of the trial, however, he admitted that he had fabricated several interrogation protocols, but added, significantly, that “all this I did only on the orders of Fleishman.”⁹⁷ His final statement was brief in comparison to Fleishman’s. He said, “I request [the tribunal] take into account that I never in my life had to carry out an investigation. Completely not knowing the methods of work and considering the orders of Fleishman to be correct, I see now that I committed a crime.... I violated revolutionary legality not because I wanted to, but because they forced me.”⁹⁸ Krivtsov based his defense on ignorance and orders from above.

The tribunal found both of the defendants guilty. Fleishman was sentenced to eight years in a corrective labor camp. Krivtsov received a lesser sentence of six years. The documents do not say whether they served out their terms or were released to fight in the war, nor is the subsequent fate of Fleishman known. Krivtsov, however, lived long enough to petition for his rehabilitation in the late 1950s. Then and again in the late 1990s, the courts confirmed the original sentence.⁹⁹ The fate of Pivchikov, Ivan Babich, and Tsirul’nitskii is not clear; Dolgushev was arrested in early 1939 and stood trial roughly one week after Fleishman and Krivtsov.¹⁰⁰

Fig. 5.1 M. M. Krivtsov, police officer, in 1937 and 1938 NKVD investigator-interrogator in Skvirskii district, Kievan Oblast NKVD. Prison photo from 1940, HDA SBU, f. 5, spr. 57637, kontrol’no-nagliadova sprava (KNS), ark. 50. By exclusive permission of the State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine. Following Orders

Fleishman and Krivtsov were following orders. There is no doubt about that, nor about the role of senior NKVD officers like Dolgushev in pushing the terror forward. The orders came from Moscow through Kiev. Yet Fleishman in particular certainly believed there were enemies. He not only believed, he knew there were enemies. He had fought in the civil war and knew it still cut a swath through Soviet territory. And he knew, or thought he knew, or lied that he knew who the enemies were. This is not to say that the enemy was real. In almost all cases, the civil war had ended long ago for the defeated; moreover, many had had no choice regarding which side they served in the civil war, being the objects of forced conscription by all sides. For the victors, however, the civil war remained very real, perhaps nowhere more so than in the small and isolated outposts of “Soviet power” in the countryside like Skvira.

Whether out of fear or vengeance, Stalin and the NKVD leadership also believed in the enemy.¹⁰¹ In the countryside, people knew who had fought on which side during the civil war and collectivization. The logic of the mass operations was such that it did not matter what former enemies had done in the interval between the end of the civil war and the start of mass operations. When witnesses in the Fleishman case told of neighbors who were good collective farm workers, this did not matter for the NKVD. Their very existence (or survival) remained a threat. Political and social profiles were unchanging in the minds of the executors of the mass operations.

The master narrative of the Great Terror reflected the paranoia of the top leadership. It also captured the fears of a generation of NKVD officials, like Fleishman, who had fought in the civil war and understood enmity. Their fears were not just based on the civil war—indeed, many were in territories far from where they fought—but also on their actions in the years since then. Many of these NKVD officials and policemen had served in the violent collectivization and dekulakization campaigns. In Ukraine, they remembered well the famine of 1932–1933. Guilt and memory may have consolidated their fears, thereby helping to shape their actions during the Great Terror. A combination of orders from above and local creativity, not to mention ignorance, however, were requisite conditioning factors in Skvira. Notes

HDA SBU, f. 5, spr. 57637 (sledstvennoe delo Fleishmana, O. S. i Krivtsova, M. M.), ark. 50. Unless otherwise noted, all archival references will be from this fond and spravka, and identified further only by the volume (tom) and page numbers (ark).

Tom 3, ark. 50, 52 (Protokol sudebnogo zasedaniia—further, PSZ).

Tom 1, ark. 2 (Postanovlenie na arrest. 1 February 1940); tom 3, ark. 50 zv (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 50 zv (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 52–53, 67 (PSZ).

Tom 1, ark. 33 (Zakliuchenie. 16 January 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 34 (Zakliuchenie. 16 January 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 35 (Zakliuchenie. 16 January 1940); tom 2, ark. 227–36 (Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie. 27 June 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 33 (Zakliuchenie. 16 January 1940).

Tom 2, ark. 198–9 (Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie po obvineniu zhitelei sela Kalennaia Skvirskogo raiona Kievskoi oblasti. November 1938); ark. 205–6; ark. 227–28 (Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie. 27 June 1940); tom 3, ark. 107 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 112–13 (Spravka po sledstvennomu delu no 146430. n.d.); ark. 114–52 (Povestka zasedaniia Osoboi troiki Kievskogo oblastnogo upravleniia NKVD Ukraine. Belotserkovskaia opergruppa. Raion Skvirskii. n.d.); ark. 153–70 (Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie. July 1938).

Tom 2, ark. 27–28 (Protokol dopros Sverinenko, Z. E., Jan. 1940); tom 3, ark. 76–78 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 112–13 (Spravka po sledstvennomu delu no 146430, n.d.).

Tom 2, ark. 112–13 (Spravka po sledstvennomu delu no 146430, n.d.); ark. 114–52 (Povestka zasedaniia Osoboi troiki Kievskogo oblastnogo upravleniia NKVD Ukraine. Belotserkovskaia opergruppa. Raion Skvirskii, n.d.).

Tom 2, ark. 112–13 (Spravka po sledstvennomu delu no 146430. n.d.).

Tom 2, ark. 227–36 (Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie. 27 June 1940).

Tom 2, ark. 124 (Povestka zasedaniia Osoboi troiki Kievskogo oblastnogo upravleniia NKVD Ukraine. Belotserkovskaia opergruppa. Raion Skvirskii, n.d.).

Tom 3, ark. 81, 107 (PSZ). (He had not sought witnesses before the case was returned by the troika.)

Tom 2, ark. 228–29 (Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie. 27 June 1940).

Tom 2, ark. 174–79 (Postanovlenie o prekreshchenii sledstviia. 29 November 1939); 181–85 (Zaiavlenie Zalevskogo. 19 August 1939); 188 (zaiavlenie Chetverika. 16 January 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 39 (Zakliuchenie. 16 January 1940); tom 2, ark. 174–79 (Postanovlenie o prekreshchenii sledstviia. 29 November 1939).

Tom 1, ark. 43 (Zakliuchenie. 16 January 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 32 (Postanovlenie. 1 June 1940); tom 3, ark. 2, 32 (PSZ). Fleishman was arrested on 1 February 1940—tom 1, ark. 2 (Postanovlenie na arrest); and Krivtsov on 29 March 1940—tom 1, ark. 17 (Postanovlenie na arrest).

Tom 1, ark. 30 (Postanovlenie. 25 March 1940); tom 3, ark. 52 (PSZ).

Tom 1, ark. 2–3 (Postanovlenie na arrest. 1 February 1940); tom 3, ark. 50 zv (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 52 (PSZ).

It is not clear who ran the group in October. Tom 1, ark. 152 (Dopolnitel’noe-ob”iasnenie o metodakh vedeniia sledstviia v 1937–38 gg. 14 January 1940, from Krivtsov); tom 2, ark. 78–79 (Protokol doprosa Tsirul’nitskogo. 16 December 1939); tom 3, ark. 152, 161–62 (PSZ). My thanks to Vadym Zolotar’ov for information on Pivchikov. Note also that there were two NKVD officers named Babich—Ivan Ignat’evich (who is noted here) and Isai Iakovlevich, a much more senior NKVD officer.

In Dolgushev’s sledstvennoe delo (spr. 38237, tom 3, ark. 42. (Protokol sudebnogo zasedaniia. 10–13 August 1940), NKVD operative L. M. Pavlychev, who worked as deputy head of the Kiev NKVD, said that Dolgushev went to Belaia Tserkov several times to deal with the “lipa” (falsification, forgery) and as a result several prisoners were freed.

Tom 3, ark. 61 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 63 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 156 (Vypiska iz protokola doprosa Fleishmana. 18 June 1940).

Tom 3, ark. 52–53 (PSZ); tom 3, ark. 155 (Vypiska. Sobstvennoruchnye pokazaniia Fleishman).

Tom 2, ark. 114–52 (Povestka zasedaniia osoboi troiki Kievskogo oblastnogo Upravleniia NKVD Ukraine. Belotserkovskaia opergruppa. Raion Skvirskii).

Tom 3, ark. 54 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 64 (PSZ). Babich denied this and also said Dolgushev did not give such an order.

Tom 3, ark. 54 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 54–55 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 53, 56 (PSZ).

Tom 1, ark. 72–73 (Protokol doprosa. 9 March 1940).

Tom 3, ark. 153 (Protokol doprosa. 2 March 1940); tom 3, ark. 154 (Vypiska iz protokola doprosa Fleishmana. 9 March 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 17 (Postanovlenie na arrest. 29 March 1940), ark. 18 (Postanovlenie. 29 March 1940), 121 (Protokol doprosa. 10 December 1939); tom 3, ark. 50 zv (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 56–59 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 56–59 (PSZ. 3–8 August 1940); on Pivchikov, see tom 3, ark. 61 (PSZ).

Tom 1, ark. 121–23 (Protokol doprosa. 10 December 1939); ark. 139–41 (Ob”iasnital’naia zapiska po voprosu metodov vedeniia sledstviia v 1937–1938 gg. ot byvshego sotrudnika militsiia Krivtsova M. M. 13 January 1940.)

Tom 1, ark. 139 (Ob”iasnital’naia zapiska...).

Tom 1, ark. 122 (Protokol doprosa. 10 December 1939).

Tom 1, ark. 123 (Protokol doprosa. 10 December 1939).

Tom 1, ark. 121 (Protokol doprosa. 10 December 1939), l. 141 (Ob”iasnitel’naia zapiska...).

Tom 1, ark. 139–41 (Ob”iasnitel’naia zapiska...).

Tom 1, ark. 146–52 (Dopolnitel’noe-ob”iasnenie o metodakh vedeniia sledstviia v 1937–38 gg. ot Krivtsova. 14 January 1940).

Tom 1, ark. 32 (Postanovlenie. 1 June 1940); tom 1, ark. 49–51 (Zakliuchenie, 14 June 1940)

Tom 3, ark. 67 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 3 (Protokol doprosa Romanova. 13 January 1940); tom 3, ark. 75 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 75 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 1 (Protokol doprosa Romanova. 13 January 1940).

Tom 2, ark. 9a–11 (Protokol doprosa Beregovogo. 13 January 1940).

Tom 3, ark. 78 (PSZ). Antonets and Romanov said nothing about Krivtsov beating anyone.

Tom 3, ark. 77 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 68 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 25 (Protokol doprosa Adamchuka); tom 3, ark. 79 (PSZ). Also see the testimony of policeman, Z. E. Sverinenko in tom 2, ark. 27–8 (Protokol doprosa), where he describes the torment unleashed upon a series of teachers during stoiki.

Tom 2, ark. 60–61 (Protokol doprosa Gutsalo. 13 January 1940); tom 3, ark. 85 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 56–75 (Protokol doprosa Korinnogo. 13 January 1940); tom 3, ark. 84–85 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 72–74 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 2 (Protokol doprosa Romanova. 13 January 1940); tom 3, ark. 75 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 75 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 9–11 (Protokol doprosa Romanova. 11 January 1940).

Tom 2, ark. 16–17 (Ob”iasnitel’naia zapiska from Beregovoi to the deputy of the oblast procurator. 12 January 1940).

Tom 3, ark. 67 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 61 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 65 (PSZ).

On this type of evidence, see M. Iunge and R. Binner, “Spravki sel’soveta kak faktor v osuzhdenii krest’ian,” Stalinizm v sovetskoi provintsii, 1937–1937 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2009), 613–23. On the use of village “genealogy” to purge collective farmers (or to settle scores), see Lynne Viola, “The Second Coming: Class Enemies in the Soviet Countryside, 1927–1935,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 65–98.

Tom 2, ark. 11 (Protokol doprosa Beregovogo. 13 January 1940).

Tom 2, ark. 10 (Protokol doprosa Beregovogo. 13 January 1940).

Tom 3, ark. 68–69, 75 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 11 (Protokol doprosa Beregovogo. 13 January 1940); tom 3, ark. 80 (PSZ).

Tom 3, ark. 76–77 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 3 (Protokol doprosa Romanova. 13 January 1940); tom 3, ark. 77 (PSZ).

Tom 2, ark. 10 (Protokol doprosa Beregovogo. 13 January 1940).

Tom 3, ark. 69 (PSZ).

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