The NKVD in Zhitomir

Serhii Kokin Translated by Aaron Hale-Dorrell

The purge of the Zhitomir UNKVD began with the arrival of Aleksandr Uspenskii in Kiev in early 1938, when he began the systematic removal of NKVD cadres associated with his predecessor Izrail’ Leplevskii.

The Zhitomir Oblast, along with the new Zhitomir Oblast UNKVD, was created on 22 September 1937.¹ Captain of State Security Lavrentii Iakushev, who had previously served as deputy director of the Kiev Oblast UNKVD, was named acting director. Senior Lieutenant of State Security Grigorii Grishin, was transferred from the position of director of the Third Department of the State Security Administration (Upravlenie gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, UGB) of the Odessa Oblast UNKVD, to become Iakushev’s deputy. Both were appointments made by then head of NKVD Ukraine, Leplevskii, who wrote that “Iakushev is weaker than Grishin in operational matters, but has other qualities,” while Grishin was to supply qualified leadership for the operational activities of the UNKVD.²

After Uspenskii’s appointment as the Ukrainian republic People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, on 26 February 1938, Iakushev was removed from his post and, on 15 March, reassigned to the All-Union NKVD. His place was taken by Captain of State Security Grigorii Viatkin, who had been director of the Sixth Section of the Sixth Department of the All-Union NKVD Main State Security Administration in Moscow.

From 21 January 1938, reports of the beatings of detainees, mass shootings, and the looting of property during executions began to trickle in with the proceedings of a Military Tribunal trial of Boris Davidovich, an officer of the Zhitomir Oblast police (militia) administration.⁶ From the trial, it emerged that the Zhitomir UNKVD lacked strict accounting for the personal effects of detainees. UNKVD execution squads had looted with impunity the possessions of their victims. The military lawyers sent the trial proceedings to the Ukrainian republic NKVD. From there, the documents were transferred to the Zhitomir Oblast UNKVD for investigation. UNKVD director Viatkin immediately recognized the danger in the case. On 4 April 1938, he dispatched a note to Uspenskii, telling him that the accusations were unwarranted.⁷

Temporary acting UNKVD special plenipotentiary Sergei Golubev began the internal investigation. He questioned many UNKVD personnel.

On 7 September 1938, Viatkin sent to the Ukrainian republic NKVD a letter that effectively concealed the actual situation. He portrayed widespread looting as “isolated instances of misappropriation of items,” and he made the twenty looters appear to be “a few UNKVD personnel.” The UNKVD boss considered “the specific circumstance of the work” to be a mitigating factor. The execution squad needed to “swap” their clothing and footwear, which was splattered with the blood of the executed, for the clothing and footwear of their victims. He reported that he had issued administrative punishments to those who had stolen goods.¹¹ At the time, colleagues in Kiev met these explanations with understanding, but another opinion about this issue soon materialized.

A letter dated 13 October 1938, from the head of the Novograd-Volynskii city NKVD department, Grigorii Artem’ev, to Viatkin, reported that Vladimir Girich, the driver for the NKVD Special Department of the Red Army’s 12th Mechanized Brigade, had traveled on several occasions since the autumn of 1937 to Zhitomir using an official automobile.

On 31 October 1938, Viatkin made his decision, stating that the looting was a result of the “situation at the time” and sanctioned by the previous UNKVD leadership. Girich received an administrative punishment of fifteen days’ detention without pay.¹³ Thus, for a second time, Viatkin limited himself to insignificant punishments of the guilty, thereby becoming an accomplice in covering up these crimes.

After Viatkin’s own arrest, the Ukrainian republic NKVD demanded the documents from the investigation. Reviewing them, they concluded that the administrative punishments imposed by Viatkin were insufficient, constituting “a sheer glossing over” of crimes defined in Article 207-6 (B) of the Ukrainian republic criminal code. Acting Zhitomir UNKVD director Ivan Daragan was ordered to conduct a thorough investigation, to arrest the culprits, and to hand them over for trial to the Military Tribunal.¹⁴

By this time, the climate in the UNKVD had begun to change. During a closed meeting of the UNKVD Communist Party organization on 16 December 1938 following Stalin’s November directive to curtail the mass operations, NKVD personnel began to level a variety of accusations against Golubev, who had conducted the initial investigations, and Viatkin.

Following this meeting, on 21 December 1938, a preliminary inquiry began in the case of the former UNKVD prison commandant Grigorii Timoshenko, warden Feliks Ignatenko, Vladimir Girich, and other individuals accused of looting.¹⁶ During a search of Ignatenko’s apartment, thirty-seven gold crowns were discovered, some of which were still attached to teeth. The investigation established that in December 1937, Ignatenko, Timoshenko, and inspector of the UNKVD Manasha Sosnov had used pliers to tear “gold teeth and crowns from the mouths of the executed for illicit gain.”¹⁷

In the meantime, on 15 December 1938, the Ukrainian republic NKVD dispatched to Zhitomir its representative, Sergeant Timofei Golubchikov, an agent of the Second Section of the Third Department of the UGB, to take part in the investigation. He familiarized himself with the documents of the investigation and reported on its results to the Ukrainian republic NKVD leadership. In December 1938, investigations into the cases of Zhitomir UNKVD personnel entered a new phase. The Case of Grigorii Grishin (30 May–October 1938)

On 30 May 1938, the former deputy director of the UNKVD, Grigorii Grishin, was arrested in Kiev. Grishin was accused of being an agent of foreign intelligence agencies and of having carried out espionage.¹⁸ Somewhat later, he would also be accused of participating in an “antisoviet Trotskyite organization.”¹⁹ Although this case was pursued after Grishin left Zhitomir and before the November 1938 directive curtailing the mass operations, the accusations would shed further light on the NKVD’s activities in Zhitomir. The case file contained testimony from the director of the Third Section of the Third Department of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, Senior Lieutenant Moisei Detinko.

Under the outward cover provided by the large number of detainees, Grishin tried to extract testimony from them about their individual counterrevolutionary activities and finish up the cases against them, but without revealing all activities of the counterrevolutionary underground, and without unmasking and repressing the fascist agent network. In this respect, Grishin in many instances sent case files against detainees to Moscow five to ten days after their arrest.²⁰

NKVD personnel were required to “uncover” the entire “underground” and “fascist agent network,” but Grishin apparently limited himself to repressing “lone wolves,” an accusation often made during the Uspenskii purge of Leplevskii cadres. He did not see the necessity of artificially creating underground structures.

On 31 July 1938, the deputy director of the Third Department of the UNKVD, Daniil Man’ko, gave testimony about Grishin’s “enemy activities” during the Polish Operation, one of the component parts of the mass operations of the Great Terror. Man’ko stated that Grishin “with hostile intent” ordered the mass arrest of the wives of individuals repressed under All-Union NKVD Order No. 00485, which mandated the Polish Operation. Moreover, Grishin ordered “the rapid sale of the effects of the wives of the repressed and dispersal of the children among the local orphanages.” As a result, more than eight hundred wives and relatives of those repressed under Order No. 00485 were arrested.

After the change in the UNKVD leadership and the arrival in Zhitomir of Viatkin, these arrests were halted and more than 350 individuals were freed. The released wives of “enemies of the people” began to appeal to the UNKVD, the procuracy, and other organizations, demanding back their unlawfully confiscated property and their children.²¹

The second part of the accusation against Grishin came from the opposite direction. He was accused of insufficient zeal in carrying out repression. Man’ko stated that when Ezhov arrived in Ukraine in February 1938, he ordered the preparation of documents against so-called Polish-nationalist counterrevolutionary elements in Zhitomir. In Man’ko’s opinion, many such “elements” existed, but Grishin argued instead that in Zhitomir Oblast such elements as indicated by surveillance records (operativnye uchety) were insignificant. When the UNKVD leadership changed, “a large organization of the POV [the Polish Military Organization] was ‘discovered’ in Zhitomir Oblast, numbering more than 3,000 individuals.”²² Man’ko judged that “Grishin, with hostile intent, had attempted to save the POV cadres.”²³

Another witness in the Grishin case was Aleksei Tomin, the temporary acting head of the NKVD Special Department for the 68th Aviation Brigade, which was based in Zhitomir.²⁴ On 14 August 1938, he attested:

Grishin was dissatisfied with the number of arrests carried out, admonishing that the investigations were criminally dragged out in length and that absolutely all wives of those Poles and Germans condemned under Order No. 00485 must be arrested. He gave me the following order: every investigator must bring to the Special Session [of the All-Union NKVD–author] a minimum of 30 cases against wives of traitors to the motherland per day.... Notwithstanding that the special receiving centers for housing the children of those repressed were already overcrowded, Grishin gave the order to arrest the mothers, that is, the wives of traitors to the motherland, and to leave the children in the custody of collective farms.²⁵

The deputy director of the UNKVD, Andrei Luk’ianov, also accused Grishin of “energetic hostile activities.” He clarified that 820 wives of individuals repressed under Order No. 00485 had been arrested.²⁶ The subtext of Luk’ianov’s deposition was that all of this was done with the intent to discredit the actions carried out by the NKVD organs.

The investigation sought to use the friendly relations between Grishin and the arrested former head of the Berdichev city NKVD department, Vsevolod Martyniuk, to reveal the “counterrevolutionary organizational connections” between them. According to Martyniuk’s deposition, Grishin ordered the arrest of “the leadership of counterrevolutionary armies and the bosses of the counterrevolutionary nationalist underground,” but left the rank-and-file participants in these “armies” and “underground” not subject to arrest. These assertions referred to the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Polish Military Organization of the period from 1919 to 1921, which by 1938 were little more than an illusion.

The head of the UNKVD Fourth Department, Matvei Lesnov, added to the portrait of the “hostile activities” of Grishin. Lesnov explained that during the mass operations Grishin required subordinates to close cases more quickly. At the same time, according to Lesnov, “Grishin more than once gave orders to personnel to ‘more carefully’ interrogate the arrested, to not pressure them in demanding confessions, but to scare [them] with criminal liability, which in practical terms demoralized the entire apparat of the oblast administration [i.e., the UNKVD].”²⁷

In testimony about his enrollment by Grishin in the “organization,” Martyniuk conveyed notable details: “In our conversations, Grishin expressed his dissatisfaction with the mass arrests that were being carried out, supporting this with the fact that the policy of the Communist Party was incorrect, as a result of which arose mass dissatisfaction among the working people, and from this, that the arrests and repression [proceeded] without any scrutiny of how and against whom [they were carried out]. I fully shared and approved of the views of Grishin.”²⁸

Subsequently, Grishin became aware of the fact that he could be held accountable for the mass repression. A certain psychological breakdown among the perpetrators of the repressions was associated with this. Many of them understood that they were doing wrong, but they saw no way out. Clearly trying to mollify themselves, they called on their subordinates to be careful and warned them about their responsibility, but at the same time pushed them relentlessly forward in the search for enemies. The psychological pressure on subordinates was a defensive reaction by the leaders. On 13 October 1938, Grishin was informed of the testimony of Martyniuk about his “enrollment” by Grishin in an “organization.” Grishin denied this.²⁹ Then the investigation paused for a period that lasted until the end of December 1938. Expansion of the Investigation (November 1938–May 1939)

In November 1938, the investigation in Zhitomir entered a new phase. Its most important actor was the representative of the Ukrainian republic NKVD Military Procuracy for Border and Internal Troops, Military Judicial Officer, First Class, Morozov, who quickly ascertained the criminal bacchanalia inside the UNKVD. The violations included crimes such as beating detainees, including to the point of death, committed by UNKVD personnel during investigations; violations of the regulations governing the special troika, although the troika’s legitimacy as an extrajudicial organ was not questioned; falsification of UNKVD record-keeping, or “counterfeiting,” on the part of the leadership, operational personnel including investigators, the technical apparatus, and UNKVD medical personnel; and humiliating the condemned prior to their execution, as well as property theft following executions.

During the investigation, many UNKVD personnel were questioned or gave statements. One of these was the head of the UNKVD First Special Department, Nikolai Zub, who was subsequently arrested on 8 January 1939. He stated that Viatkin, after receiving a coded telegram from the Ukrainian republic NKVD on 16 September 1938 about organizing a special troika within the UNKVD for reviewing the case files of arrestees, assigned the responsibilities of secretary of the troika to him (Zub). Beginning with the first troika session on 20 September 1938, however, Viatkin amended the functions of the perpetrators of repression. Zub was not present at the troika sessions. The investigatory files were presented in the sessions primarily by Daniil Man’ko, who was arrested on 8 January 1939. Present at the first session were: Viatkin, as chairman of the troika; second secretary of the Zhitomir Oblast Party Committee Mikhail Grechukha, substituting for the absent first secretary, Maksim Didenko; and the oblast procurator, Vasilii Rasput’ko. Man’ko read aloud to the troika members the indictment in a group case, and then began to present the background reports on the accused. Once he had reported on forty or fifty people, Viatkin proposed ending the readings. Members of the troika then began only to skim the information and pass decisions. The oblast party committee secretary and the oblast procurator, moreover, made no comments on the documents at all. Then, the UNKVD chief personally marked with a pencil on the background reports (on condemned individuals) a note about punishment—the letter “R,” which indicated “rasstreliat’” (to shoot).³⁰

After the troika session, Viatkin ordered Zub not to await completion of the sentencing protocols, which, because the volume for 350 to 500 individuals was so large, the typists had been unable to complete before the troika session. Instead, Zub was to write up orders for UNKVD commandant Mitrofan Liul’kov to immediately implement the troika decisions by executing all those that Viatkin had condemned to death with his “R” in the book of background reports. This practice meant that, by the day of the arrest of Viatkin, on 16 November 1938, out of the thirteen session protocols of the special troika, six remained unsigned by the members of the troika, which included the cases of 2,178 individuals. Of these, 2,114, had been shot. The rulings of the troika had not been implemented in the cases of a mere twenty individuals, who at the time of selection were not in the local jail.³¹

Grechukha took part in the special troika sessions one more time, but still made no notes on the documents. The oblast procurator, Rasput’ko, did the same. During all remaining troika sessions, the first secretary of the oblast party committee, Didenko, along with Viatkin, made notes about the judgments rendered in the books of background reports and in the indictments. However, the oblast party committee secretary and the oblast procurator did not even glance over the cases. Moreover, Didenko signed the minutes of troika sessions in which he, having been on work assignment, did not participate. This was a blatant violation of the special troika operational procedures.

These violations were connected to the enormous disproportionality in the severity of the “sentences,” that is, the judgments imposed by the special troika. In accordance with the protocols of sessions between 27 September and 3 November 1938, the following sentences were imposed: first category, that is, execution—2,134 individuals, and second category, imprisonment—42 individuals.³² If the troika members had delved into the substance of each case, the proportions of judgments they imposed might have been different, and many people might have survived. As it turned out, in some of these cases the investigations were not even formally concluded.

In a 17 December 1938 report to the then de facto head of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, Senior Lieutenant Amaiak Kobulov, the representative of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, Timofei Golubchikov, called attention to this fact and charged that the special troika members had exceeded their authority. “The UNKVD special troika chaired by Viatkin,” Golubchikov wrote, “imposed judgments in cases not under its jurisdiction, against Red Army commanders, engineers, agronomists, teachers, and the like, reviewing a whole host of cases without any investigatory documentation, cases of [people] long deceased, and cases of accused [who had been] murdered during interrogation.”³³

Similarly, Zub recounted the case of the former head of the Korosten town police, Vasilii Skrypnik, who was arrested on 27 April 1938, as an “active participant in a counterrevolutionary insurrectionary organization.” The case against him was handled by Maluka. On the night of 26 June 1938, Maluka called Skrypnik in for questioning and beat him. Skrypnik died after returning to his cell. On 16 December 1938, as a result of an investigation into Skrypnik’s murder, military procurator Morozov sanctioned the arrests of Maluka, warden of the UNKVD jail Feliks Ignatenko, and senior jail overseer Daniil Levchenko.³⁴

However, that was all in the future. In September 1938, Maluka stated to Zub that Viatkin had ordered the inclusion of the Skrypnik case in the final protocol of a session of a troika convened by the UNKVD in May 1938. Only later was a document attesting to the implementation of the troika’s decision recorded. To this end, the signed final sheet of the troika session protocol was torn out and retyped with the addition of the case against Skrypnik. At the request of Viatkin, Zub later wrote an order to UNKVD commandant Liul’kov to implement the troika decision to execute Skrypnik as if it were from May. However, according to Zub, he did not complete the document attesting to the implementation of the sentence. Later, Maluka explained to him that Skrypnik had died.

Military procurator Morozov concluded—as was wholly in keeping with investigations carried out in other regions at that time—that “a gang of enemies had insinuated themselves” into the UNKVD leadership.³⁵ He did not, however, stop there. He deemed it necessary to arrest and bring to trial—in addition to Viatkin—Fedorov and Man’ko, who were arrested on 8 January 1939, as well as the first secretary of the oblast party committee, Didenko, and the oblast procurator, Rasput’ko, both of whom were arrested at the end of December 1938. The majority of the violations stipulated were not unique to Zhitomir Oblast. What was unusual was the arrest of the first secretary of the oblast party committee and the oblast procurator, in addition to UNKVD personnel. Nowhere else in Ukraine had this happened.

Fedorov provided his own rationalization of the situation in the UNKVD. In 1938, four inter-district operational-investigatory groups were created: in Zhitomir, Berdichev, Novograd-Volynsk, and Korosten.³⁶ At the end of June 1938, the groups for Korosten and Novograd-Volynsk were eliminated. All case files from these groups, along with the detainees, were transferred to the UNKVD for completion of investigations. Personnel of the UNKVD Third Department composed reports about each person implicated in a case based on the case files received. Subsequently, the reports and the case files on which they had been based were reviewed by personnel from the oblast and military procuracies. They collated the contents of the reports with the investigation documents.³⁷

The case files were then sent to the Ukrainian republic NKVD for verification, after which they were returned to Zhitomir, and protocols—albums—with the reports on the accused and with the proposed punishments were sent to Moscow for approval by a two-member commission, or “dvoika,” comprising the All-Union People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs and the All-Union Procurator. At some later point, the All-Union NKVD returned these albums to the UNKVD with a proposal that the special troika created within the UNKVD review them.³⁸

Fedorov’s explanation exhibits an effort to shift responsibility for violations onto the leaders and personnel of the operational-investigation groups, the oblast and military procuracies, the central apparatus of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, and even the All-Union NKVD. The orders to the perpetrators regarding their further actions, which made possible all that occurred in the oblast, did, indeed, come from Moscow and Kiev.

Maluka disclosed the mechanism in the UNKVD for fabricating case files. Many detainees were held in jail for up to a year without questioning. Accordingly, a bureaucratic conveyor belt of falsified procedural documents was created for more than one thousand case files. From five to eighteen formulaic resolutions on extending the period of detention for the arrestees were inserted into each file, and junior personnel signed these documents with dates predating their service in the NKVD.³⁹ According to Maluka, Lesnov had demanded from each investigator a daily quota of between five and eight “confessions.” Maluka said: “Naturally, to fulfill this norm, the investigators quickly resorted to wholesale beatings of detainees and, by this method, managed to get confessions from them.”⁴⁰ Lesnov offered the excuse that, after the disbanding of the Korosten and Novograd-Volynsk groups, approximately eight hundred detainees wound up in the UNKVD Fourth Department. It had only between fifteen and twenty investigators and temporarily assigned personnel, who were “exclusively junior comrades, recently recruited into the organs [the NKVD].” For this reason, they were unable to keep up with such a large workload.⁴¹

Returning to earlier events, Lesnov recounted how, at the end of January 1938, Uspenskii had called a meeting to brief the heads of oblast NKVD administrations, where he spoke of the existence of a “Ukrainian Military-Insurrectionary Underground,” which must be liquidated as quickly as possible. Returning from Kiev, UNKVD chief Iakushev called a meeting of the NKVD operational staff in the oblast and conveyed to them the commissar’s directive. Carrying out this order, the personnel of the district NKVD organs traversed the villages and established operational records for former “political bandits,” “Petliurists,” members of the Volynsk Insurrectionary Army (VPA), and other individuals with “dark” pasts.⁴² Subsequently, personnel composed operational folios with lists of individuals marked for arrest and then brought these folios to Zhitomir to receive approval for the arrests. Iakushev, Grishin, Luk’ianov, Lesnov, and other UNKVD leaders each received documents from several districts and, on the basis of reports on the individual given by the head of the district department, sanctioned their arrest. “Undoubtedly,” acknowledged Lesnov, “many mistakes were made then.”⁴³

In this way arose a system of arrests carried out according to lists without the existence of incriminating evidence against the individuals. The tragedy both in this situation and in general was that baseless arrests were made, and then they snowballed. Lesnov judged that the earlier arrests were insufficiently justified, but the later ones carried out according to the testimony of “those who had acknowledged their participation in the organizations” had a more substantial basis and were primarily arrests of “actual enemies.” This was far from the case.

Even Lesnov himself understood this. Acknowledging his own guilt, he said, “In meetings in the department, I often warned about taking a critical approach to testimony, that they [investigators] should, prior to arrest, confirm the profile of the person who was to be arrested, his actions, whether they were clearly hostile, and so on.”⁴⁴ The majority of NKVD personnel were realistic about what was happening but continued to play by the rules established by the leadership, either out of hope of ingratiating themselves or as a method of self-preservation. This was the social-psychological situation within Chekist circles at that time.

Lesnov identified the application of unlawful investigation methods, that is, the beating of detainees, as one of the fundamental violations. He explained that Viatkin “introduced a system in which every investigator was required to personally report to him about investigative cases, and he gave orders about how to interrogate, that is, to whom to apply unlawful methods of questioning.” In answer to the question of why this occurred, Lesnov responded, “Because Viatkin always was co-opting everyone, including myself, into error. He—Viatkin—gave instructions to the effect that the party Central Committee and Comrade Ezhov permitted, to enable the quickest crackdown on the enemies, streamlined methods of investigation [i.e., torture] to be sure that it was established that he [the arrested] was an enemy.”⁴⁵ Such an explanation was typical during the investigations then being carried out. Lesnov acknowledged his participation in the beating of detainees in March and April 1938, “but only under orders from Viatkin and only with respect to those clearly established as enemies.” But who were “those clearly established as enemies”?

Lesnov first named Pavel Postoev. Before the revolution, he had been director of the Zhitomir teachers seminary and head of the provincial department of education. At the time of his arrest in November 1937, however, he was head of the Department of Physical and Economic Geography of Ukraine at the Institute of Popular Education in Zhitomir. Postoev was confronted with the accusation that he was one of the leaders of the “Ukrainian counterrevolutionary nationalist military-insurgency organization,” which was supposedly created to sabotage the railway.⁴⁶ Lesnov beat Postoev in order to get from him testimony about the existence of weapons caches, which, he claimed, had been confirmed by other suspects.⁴⁷ On 10 May 1938, the UNKVD troika approved a resolution to execute Postoev, and he was shot.⁴⁸

Lesnov named as the second victim of his beatings the former second secretary of the Chudnovskii District Party Committee, Viktor Voiteru, supposedly an active participant in “a Trotskyite organization” and the POV. Lesnov did not indicate a reason for beating him because he had “already been sufficiently unmasked and had been convicted by the Military Collegium.”⁴⁹ The third individual beaten by Lesnov was the director of the historical archive in Zhitomir and “leader of the Socialist Revolutionary underground,” Vladimir Iur’ev-Byk. Lesnov considered the primary reason for his beating was that he had concealed “the existence of counterrevolutionary literature received from the Kiev Center for the SR underground.”⁵⁰ On 10 May 1938, the Zhitomir UNKVD troika approved the decision to execute him as “an enemy of the people.”⁵¹ Years later, all these people were rehabilitated.

Lesnov similarly related that in two instances detainees in the Fourth Department were murdered. The first was Vasilii Skrypnik, but Lesnov did not remember the surname of the second victim, although he had reported it to Viatkin. Clearly, the murder of a detainee during investigation was not an extraordinary event at a time when the UNKVD daily carried out “legitimate” murders, that is, executions, in which many agents took part. Possibly, among the perpetrators of repression there existed some sort of dual consciousness that psychologically explained both the prosaic character of mass terror and the hidden desire to escape memories of its “unpleasant” and bloody details. Completing the Investigation into the Crimes of the “Iakushevites” (January–May 1939)

In the investigation of UNKVD personnel during Iakushev’s leadership, Vasilii Lebedev, the head of the Fifth Department, was deemed the most brutal of the NKVD investigators. In Grishin’s opinion, when it was necessary to organize mass shootings by the UNVKD, Iakushev “correctly decided the issue.” “Neither of us,” Grishin stated, “knew this work well, and a specialist was needed. Lebedev was named the director [of the execution brigade].” It was said that he was “a veteran Chekist,”⁵² who as early as 1921 had earned the Order of the Red Banner and was known as “a serious agent.”⁵³

The investigation established that the “specialist,” Lebedev, systematically beat those sentenced to execution and introduced into the system the expropriation and resale of personal items by members of the execution teams. In December 1937 and January 1938, Lebedev, in collaboration with the former UNKVD commandant, Grigorii Timoshenko, sold to the jail (in the name of another organization) six truckloads of the clothing of the executed. The money they received, some 37,000 rubles, was spent on their apartments, with the rest distributed among the brigade members. Lebedev ordered that those to be executed—they did not know their fate until the penultimate moment—sign a voucher for the storage of money and valuables.⁵⁴

Lebedev was subject to criminal prosecution. At that time, he was head of the Third Department of the Krasnodar Oblast UNKVD. The documentation on him was diverted into a separate case file and dispatched to the Ukrainian republic NKVD. It has been impossible to document his subsequent fate. However, in 1939, Lebedev was not arrested and was not one of the main suspects in the cases against Zhitomir UNKVD personnel.⁵⁵

The head of the UNKVD auto park, Ivan Panshin, testified that under Lebedev’s leadership virtually the entire operational staff took part in the UNKVD commandant’s “operations,” that is, the executions. UNKVD boss Iakushev “proposed that this be a test of the fortitude of personnel.” There were two permanent brigades: one was composed of operational agents and the second of technical staff.⁵⁶ Clearly, participation in the shootings was “to temper” the personnel and connect them to a bloody circle of collective responsibility.

The head of the UNKVD Department of Corrective Labor Colonies, Nikolai Klimov, recounted what the “test of fortitude” meant to him:

In the final days of December 1937 or else early in January 1938, I don’t now recall precisely, [Mitrofan] Liul’kov called me into the garage at night, telling me that the call was made on the orders of UNKVD deputy chief Grishin. When I entered the garage, I saw sitting on the floor fifty or sixty people sentenced to VMN [acronym for “supreme measure of punishment,” i.e., the death penalty]. When I entered the next room, there was Grishin, and in the same room about thirty or forty detainees were restrained, having been prepared for execution. It was suggested that I take off my coat, and at that time they led eight individuals into the next room. Operational Agent Blank gave me a small caliber rifle, with which I carried out the sentences.⁵⁷ When I left following the implementation of the sentences, Blank stated that “I had passed the exam.”⁵⁸

Panshin recounted the consequences of an escape by eleven prisoners sentenced to execution from the UNKVD jail on the night of 11–12 February 1938: “All were captured within 15 days and they were delivered to the garage for implementation of their sentences. This operation was directed by Iakushev, Lebedev, Timoshenko, and Grishin alone.” Panshin was struck by the fact that after the implementation of the sentences, “no signs of bullets” were visible on the escapees’ bodies: “the bodies were undressed and burned, with their necks scorched and blackened.”⁵⁹ The UNKVD commandant, Liul’kov, confirmed the words of Panshin. The burns on the victims struck him as abnormal.⁶⁰ The group escape from the UNKVD jail carried enormous danger for the leadership. If even one of the escapees had not been caught, the leaders themselves would be under threat of arrest. This explains the executioners’ unusual cruelty toward the escapees.

Instances of humiliation of prisoners of a sexual nature also occurred. According to the testimony of Feliks Ignatenko, “There were many instances when, prior to the execution of women, especially those on the younger side, they stripped them naked to humiliate them, to ogle their bodies. Others did this pretending to prepare them for a medical examination or for bathing in ‘the bathhouse,’ most often this was done by Grishin and Lebedev.”⁶¹ Grigorii Timoshenko confirmed the fact of this practice of stripping the prisoners, recalling other instances of sadistic, sexual humiliations of prisoners.⁶²

In face-to-face confrontations, Grishin strove to counter almost all the accusations against him by former subordinates.⁶³ Grishin had developed some hope of a favorable outcome of his case. He declared that he was not a participant in an antisoviet Trotskyite organization and had committed no hostile deeds.⁶⁴ He explained that he had confirmed the false testimony he had previously given because he saw no exit from the situation: “From conversations with a host of leading Ukrainian republic NKVD personnel, I could see that they did not believe me, and therefore I had to stand by my testimony about participation in an antisoviet organization.”⁶⁵

This is a very important detail. Anonymous leaders of the Ukrainian republic NKVD were conversing with Grishin. Although there is no documentary confirmation in the case file, it suggests that someone had hinted to him how to conduct himself during the investigation: namely, not to confess to anything. Grishin disavowed his own previous testimony about espionage for foreign intelligence agencies.⁶⁶ The account of his membership in “an antisoviet Trotskyite organization” faded after the addition to the case file of a report that the former head of the Third Department of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, Arkadii Ratynskii, had been convicted in Moscow but had not given testimony against Grishin.⁶⁷

Nonetheless, on 26 April 1939, Ukrainian republic NKVD personnel completed the indictment, charging Grishin under Article 54-4 (B) and Article 54-11 of the Ukrainian republic criminal code for “actively participating in an antisoviet Trotskyite terrorist organization,” “carrying out espionage for Romanian intelligence,” “hostile, subversive activities within the NKVD organs,” and for “enrolling Martyniuk in the organization.”⁶⁸ On 4 May 1939, the indictment was confirmed by the Ukrainian republic deputy commissar for internal affairs, Amaiak Kobulov. The contents of the indictment did not correspond to the investigation documentation. The case had no prospects in a criminal court, but nonetheless, on 31 May 1939, the Ukrainian republic NKVD approved its transfer to the courts. The Case of Mikhail Gluzman (16 July 1938 to 8 February 1940)

Mikhail Gluzman was the head of the UNKVD jail between February and October 1937; from November 1937, he was the temporary acting director of the Department of Sites of Imprisonment of the UNKVD. On 16 July 1938, he was arrested on an accusation of participating in a Trotskyite organization and of recruiting other individuals into it.⁶⁹ The real reason for Gluzman’s arrest, however, was that he had proved an embarrassment to the UNKVD leadership.

Within the Zhitomir UNKVD, Gluzman was responsible for a broad range of duties related to the functioning of the jails. This was a relatively exacting job, requiring attention to a great many details, as well as initiative, perseverance, and autonomy in making decisions. According to Gluzman’s testimony, the jail was designed for eight hundred individuals; because of the mass operations, the number of prisoners had skyrocketed to as many as twenty thousand.

The UNKVD leadership did not know how the jail’s financial and managerial mechanism functioned, but they sought to resolve many issues in their own way. Gluzman quickly understood that the UNKVD leaders broke the law with ease. He did not want to be a participant in these violations and strove to ensure his own safety whenever possible.

In December 1937, Gluzman paid 27,594 rubles to UNKVD commandant Timoshenko for clothing for the prisoners, but this money was embezzled by Lebedev, Timoshenko, and the UNKVD leadership. Therefore, in the annual report for 1937, dispatched to the finance department of the Ukrainian republic NKVD Administration for Sites of Imprisonment, Gluzman highlighted “the purchase for cash of the clothing of executed individuals,” but, in his words, “nothing was received.”⁷⁰

Gluzman acted differently the next time. On 2 January 1938, he was called in by Iakushev, who said that the UNKVD could again sell the clothing of executed individuals to the jail. Gluzman was pleased because he had to deport to the north ten thousand prisoners, who lacked suitable clothing. The jail again bought several truckloads of things, but this time Gluzman refused to pay Iakushev in cash, instead transferring 27,000 rubles to the UNKVD account through the State Bank.⁷¹

Iakushev similarly ordered prisoners taken from the jail to the UNKVD—most to be executed—to bring their personal funds with them. Inasmuch as no directives from Moscow or Kiev appeared to exist on the issue of what to do with the money of prisoners when dispatching them in groups, Gluzman was required to follow the orders from the UNKVD boss. After individuals subject to execution arrived in the UNKVD, their money and valuables were given over to UNKVD Commandant Timoshenko and UNKVD chief Iakushev, who distributed the money among the members of the execution teams and spent it on the leadership’s everyday needs.⁷² The fact that the director of the UNKVD auto park, Ivan Panshin, on seven occasions received sums ranging from 350 to 500 rubles for participation in the “operations” speaks to how the money taken from the victims of repression and received from the sale to the jail of their personal effects and clothing was distributed.⁷³

After the February 1938 change in the UNKVD leadership, Gluzman became a witness to new crimes committed by his colleagues. When he began to express dissent on some issues, he was quickly scolded by Viatkin. Gluzman did not retreat and, on those issues where he could prove the correctness of his stance, he continued to stand his ground, resorting to extreme measures. In April 1938, he addressed a statement to Uspenskii in Kiev, in which he wrote, among other things: “They have filled the prison, having taken two stories in two separate wings for interrogations, and the methods of interrogation violate prison operating procedures.”

He later explained what he meant by “methods of interrogation”: “I reported to Viatkin that the detained cannot sleep in the cells because the interrogators are beating those under interrogation in the interrogation rooms, and their cries are heard in the cells. Viatkin responded, ‘Well, they can go to hell, let them not sleep.’ I gave my statement about this to Kiev, to Uspenskii.”⁷⁴

Gluzman requested to be released from the NKVD. He understood that by reporting to the people’s commissar about investigatory methods in violation of prison operating procedures, he had overstepped corporate boundaries. Later, he explained the situation thus: “Seeing all this abnormality and that they were forcing me to commit crimes, I... gave a statement with a request to be released. The natural reason provoking me to give the request to be released was that... I could not cope with the work.”⁷⁵

Viatkin did not like the obstinacy of his subordinate. The final straw for Viatkin was something that occurred during a visit by Gluzman to the NKVD prison in the town of Berdichev. Here, he received a complaint from a detainee that money had been taken from him, but no voucher for it had been given. The money had been taken by the operational plenipotentiary of the jail, Aleksandr Fadeev. A commission in Kiev called for by Gluzman established that Fadeev had embezzled 6,000 rubles. Gluzman also became aware that Fadeev had embezzled valuable gold items from detainees, including watches and coins. Gluzman reported this to Viatkin, but the latter, in the words of Gluzman, “Cursed [me] out and told [me] not to stick my nose in others’ business.” It was then that Gluzman wrote his anonymous denunciation to Uspenskii.

A few days later, the acting UNKVD special plenipotentiary Sergei Golubev showed Gluzman a large number of gold watches confiscated from Fadeev.⁷⁶ Regardless, sometime later Gluzman was arrested, and Fadeev gave testimony as a witness in Gluzman’s case. He strove to portray Gluzman as an accomplice of “an important Polish woman spy,” who was imprisoned in the Vinnitsa industrial colony, the name given to the local prison. At one time, Gluzman had been an aide to the colony’s warden.⁷⁷

The zealous party members among the UNKVD personnel considered Gluzman’s weakness to be that he had not steered clear of the detainees. In Zhitomir, he had petitioned the Kiev oblast court to free an individual of German nationality who, sentenced for “espionage and sabotage” to a ten-year imprisonment, had become ill with tuberculosis in prison. A former colleague of Gluzman, Riva Liubarskaia, portrayed Gluzman’s efforts as anti-party activities.⁷⁸

It is clear from the investigation documents that Gluzman was not pursuing financial interests. Moreover, as a Jew he had tried to save from certain death a German, notwithstanding the presence among his colleagues of the stereotype that “If he’s a German, that means he’s a fascist agent.” Observation of the detainees’ suffering in this and in other instances may have elicited in Gluzman a desire to ease their burdens. In the inhumane conditions of imprisonment and investigation in the UNKVD, the efforts of one person were too little, yet these efforts were not fruitless.

Gluzman had his shortcomings, but he was one of only a few who did not fear objecting to what he saw as wrong—a violation of the Cheka corporate pseudo-ethical code. During the investigation he was cruelly beaten, threatened via a staged execution, and assured that his wife would be summoned to the UNKVD and raped in his presence.⁷⁹ Gluzman was convinced of the extreme degree of the moral degradation of his colleagues, who had lost their final shreds of humanity.

On 8 January 1939, the new UNKVD leadership approved a directive to close the investigation into the accusations against Gluzman about his belonging to “an antisoviet Trotskyite organization.” He was, however, indicted under Ukrainian republic Criminal Code Article 206–17 (A) for having committed workplace abuses of a financial nature.⁸⁰ As a result of the court session of the Military Tribunal for the NKVD Troops of Kiev Military District on 4 July 1939, Gluzman was found guilty of abuses of his office. In his guilty verdict, the “pressure from the criminal UNKVD leadership” and the lack of personal interest in the financial violations committed were extenuating circumstances. From this resulted a light sentence: two years’ imprisonment in a general prison without deprivation of rights. The sentence was considered conditional, with the possibility of early release.⁸¹

On 9 October 1939, the Military Collegium of the All-Union Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of Gluzman without amendment.⁸² He left Zhitomir and worked as the deputy director of the cadre department at a factory in the city of Nikolaev. On 8 February 1940, by a decision of the Military Tribunal for the NKVD Troops of Kiev Military District, the conditional sentence of Gluzman was considered to have “lapsed early” and his sentence was annulled.⁸³ The Final Act: The Case of Grigorii Grishin

On 19 June 1939, the Military Tribunal for NKVD Troops of the Kiev Military District brought a new indictment, combining the cases against Grigorii Grishin and the looters. The accusations against Grishin were expanded on the basis of specific details of the case, and he was charged with “cultivating among UNKVD personnel [a culture of] looting and humiliation of the convicted, and taking part in these humiliations” out of counterrevolutionary motives.⁸⁴

During the judicial proceedings of the Military Tribunal from 27 June to 4 July 1939, Grishin presented himself as a politically sophisticated and experienced professional in contrast to his colleagues and the prevailing disorder. Grishin explained that his transfer to the central apparatus of the Ukrainian republic NKVD was, according to Viatkin, because Uspenskii wanted to promote him to “important work.” However, Grishin painted an unflattering portrait of Uspenskii, accusing him of antisemitism.⁸⁵

Grishin denied participating in the crimes outlined in his case, at times even denying that the crimes took place. On 4 July 1939, the military tribunal session wrapped up by concluding that systematic abuses had taken place within the Zhitomir UNKVD, first under the leadership of Iakushev and his deputy, Grishin, and then later under the leadership of Viatkin and his deputy, Luk’ianov.⁸⁶ Yet some of the charges against Grishin did not hold up. Grishin rationalized his initial testimony and confession, arguing that he had been set up by “the enemy leadership of the NKVD in the person of Uspenskii,” and a “fictive report” delivered to the Ukrainian republic NKVD by Andrei Luk’ianov, who was arrested on 1 July 1939. The military tribunal judged that the accusations of “hostile acts” were based on false testimony against Grishin by UNKVD personnel arrested later, and that these accusations were unproven.⁸⁷

Most of the charges against Grishin were dropped for a variety of reasons. First, Uspenskii’s ultimately unsuccessful escape played into the hands of Chekists who had been arrested during his tenure. They could present themselves as victims of lawlessness, pointing to the intrigues of the previous “enemy leadership.” Second, the testimony of Man’ko and the report of Luk’ianov about the arrest of the wives of the repressed were completely accurate, as was the testimony of Lesnov about Grishin’s order to more quickly complete investigations so as not to slow the pace of repression. However, the fact of these witnesses’ arrest for the crimes they had committed overrode their earlier reports of their former boss’s criminal activities. Their testimony given during the preliminary investigation was now viewed as false. Third, accusations of espionage required serious verification. This was not done during the preliminary investigation. The confession or lack of confession by the accused to participating in espionage therefore became the decisive argument in the courtroom.

The military tribunal found Grishin guilty only of having taken part in the torture of people sentenced to execution, “allowing a system of abuses by UNKVD personnel during the completion of operational assignments for the commandant, that is plunder and humiliation of those sentenced to VMN [the death penalty].”⁸⁸ The military tribunal ignored evidence from the preliminary investigation that former UNKVD boss Iakushev and Grishin had created a criminal system of abuses that went far beyond the bounds of “completion of operational assignments for the commandant,” ranging from groundless arrests to torture during investigation and outrages against the remains of the victims.

In accordance with the military tribunal’s decision, Grishin was sentenced under Article 206-17 (A) of the Ukrainian republic Criminal Code to ten years’ imprisonment in a corrective labor camp and was stripped of his rank as captain of state security. He was acquitted of charges under Article 51-1 (B) and 54-11.⁸⁹ On 9 October 1939, however, the Military Collegium of the All-Union Supreme Court overturned the sentence. It came to the conclusion that the judicial investigation had established that the looting, the beating of detainees during investigations and of the convicted before their execution, and the humiliation of convicted women prior to execution had occurred with Grishin’s knowledge and sanction. The Supreme Court decided to return the case for further judicial review to the same tribunal (in Kiev), but with a different configuration of judges.⁹⁰

From 16 to 18 November 1939, Grishin underwent a second trial by Military Tribunal. The new configuration of the court reached the same verdict.⁹¹ The case was again sent to Moscow. In this instance, examination of the files sent was completed on 22 April 1940, and this time the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court confirmed the verdict.⁹²

While Grishin awaited the decision of the Military Collegium, he served as a witness in the court proceedings of the Military Tribunal of the NKVD Troops of the Kiev Military District in the cases of Maksim Didenko, Vasilii Rasput’ko, Mikhail Fedorov, Daniil Man’ko, Matvei Lesnov, Daniil Maluka, Nikolai Zub, and Mitrofan Liul’kov, which took place between 13 April and 23 April 1940. His testimony facilitated death sentences for Maluka and, later, Lesnov.

On 4 May 1940, Grishin was read the decision of the Military Collegium of the All-Union Supreme Court in his case. He was held for a further two months in the NKVD prison in Zhitomir. On 9 July 1940, he was transferred to serve the remainder of his sentence at the Northern Railway Corrective Labor Camp (Sevzheldorlag) of the All-Union NKVD.⁹³

During December 1938, the First Deputy All-Union People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrentii Beriia, and the All-Union Procurator, Andrei Vyshinskii, regularly reported to Stalin about all important cases in the investigation process within the NKVD and procuracy. The “Zhitomir Affair,” however, stood out, thanks to the report by Military Procurator Morozov to Vyshinskii. In the files of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, a copy of this report is dated 17 December 1938. However, the report itself had been prepared somewhat earlier. On 16 December a memorandum based on it and addressed to Stalin and Chairman of the All-Union Council of People’s Commissars, Viacheslav Molotov, had been composed in the All-Union Procuracy, where the crimes committed by the Zhitomir UNKVD personnel had been discussed.⁹⁴

Thanks to the efforts of the procurators, the case against the Zhitomir UNKVD became one of the largest cases in the oblast organs of the NKVD of Ukraine. In just the investigation files in the cases against Fedorov, Man’ko, Lesnov, and others, thirty-four UNKVD personnel fell under suspicion of having committed crimes.⁹⁵ In total, this number ultimately exceeded fifty individuals. A major stroke of luck for Sergei Golubev and others was that they avoided arrest and expulsion from the NKVD.

In the course of the reorganization of the UNKVD, the pendulum of justice swung in different directions. A tendency to lighten the punishment of the four UNKVD bosses is evident. For a start, on 22 February 1939, Viatkin was convicted by the Military Collegium of the All-Union Supreme Court as “a participant in a conspiratorial organization,” sentenced to death, and shot. Then, on 20 June 1939, Iakushev was sentenced by the same military collegium to twenty years’ imprisonment in a corrective labor camp.⁹⁶ Grishin was twice—on 4 July and 18 November 1939—sentenced by the Military Tribunal for NKVD Troops of the Kiev Military District to ten years’ imprisonment in a corrective labor camp. On 1 February 1940, Luk’ianov was also sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in a corrective labor camp.

In this way, justice began with the death sentence of one boss—Viatkin—after which the punishment was lightened to a twenty-year prison term for the second—Iakushev—and then further lightened to ten-year prison terms for their deputies. Moreover, after the first conviction of Grishin, the Military Collegium of the All-Union Supreme Court justifiably considered the sentence incommensurate to the severity of the crimes committed by him. Only on the second time around did the Supreme Court confirm the evidently “liberal” sentence.

A different picture is apparent for the mid-level UNKVD leaders. Sentenced on 1 July 1939, Ignatenko received ten years’ imprisonment in a corrective labor camp and Timoshenko, eight years. As a result of the session of the Military Tribunal for NKVD Troops of the Kiev Military District from 19 to 22 August 1939, the former head of the Fifth Department, Naum Remov-Poberëzkin,⁹⁷ was the first among the mid-level leadership to be sentenced to death and, on 29 November 1939, was executed.⁹⁸

Fig. 6.1 N. A. Remov-Poberëzkin, from November 1937 to February 1938 assistant and then head of the Fifth Department of the Zhitomir Oblast NKVD. Photo from 1930, HDA SBU, f. 12, spr. 31602, chastina 5, ark. 3 (convert). By exclusive permission of the State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine.

On 23 April 1940, the Military Tribunal for NKVD Troops of the Kiev Military District sentenced Man’ko and Maluka to death, and they were shot on 28 August 1940.⁹⁹ It sentenced Fedorov and Lesnov to ten years, Zub to five years, and Liul’kov to three years’ imprisonment in a corrective labor camp.¹⁰⁰ However, the Military Collegium of the All-Union Supreme Court overturned the sentences in the cases of Fedorov and Lesnov because the Military Tribunal had underrated the severity of their crimes.¹⁰¹ As a result of a second court proceeding by the Military Tribunal from 27 to 29 September 1940, both were sentenced to death.¹⁰² On 18 October 1940, the Military Collegium approved the sentences and, on 4 November 1940, the men were shot.¹⁰³

Fig. 6.2 M. S. Liul’kov, from November 1937 to February 1938 plenipotentiary (operupolnomochennyi) of the Eleventh Department of the Zhitomir Oblast NKVD, from March 1938 prison commandant in Zhitomir. Photo from 1936, HDA SBU, f. 5, spr. 67839, tom 4, ark. 170 (convert). By exclusive permission of the State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine.

In this way, the harshest justice was visited on the mid-level leadership of the UNKVD: five implemented sentences to death in the cases of the directors of the three main operational departments, the Third, the Fourth, and the Fifth. Although they were certainly the main “violators of socialist legality” in the UNKVD in practice, the role of their four leaders as agents and perpetrators of mass repression was far more serious.

During the campaign to unmask “violators of socialist legality,” no one questioned the mass repression of 1937–1938, one of the most serious crimes of the twentieth century. For that reason, NKVD personnel were convinced that in the majority of cases they had repressed “actual enemies.” To prove the opposite was not part of the task of Soviet justice of that time. The incoherence and unsystematic nature of the discovery of crimes committed in 1937 and 1938 by NKVD personnel, and not only by them, did not provide a reckoning with the crimes of the times and, indeed, could not have considering who was most fundamentally to blame. However, the documentation from these early investigations were used once again, between 1954 and 1956, when the Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev began a partial de-Stalinization and, significantly, approved the first wave of mass rehabilitations of victims of Stalinist terror. Notes

Previously, the territory of the Zhitomir Oblast had formed part of the Kiev and Vinnitsa oblasts. The new Zhitomir Oblast included all districts and towns of Korosten, Novograd-Volynskii, and Zhitomir counties, eight other districts of Kiev Oblast, as well as four districts and the town of Berdichev from Vinnitsa Oblast. Reabilitovani istoriieiu: Zhitomyrs’ka oblast’, tom 1 (Zhitomir: Polissia, 2006), 655–56. The document collection Reabilitirovannye istoriei includes seven volumes on Zhitomir Oblast. These volumes shed light on the basic trajectory of the terror and on its victims, and also contain some information about the perpetrators of the repressions. For further information on this region, also see Iu. Shapoval, G. Kuromiia, et al., Ukraina v dobu “Velikogo teroru”: 1936–1938 roki (Kiev: Lybid’, 2009), 143–45; V. A. Zolotar’ov, O. G. Bazhan, and E. R. Timiriaiev, “ChK-GPU-NKVD Zhitomyrshchiny u 1919–1941 rokakh: struktura ta kerivnyi sklad,” in Reabilitovani istoriieiu: Zhitomyrs’ka oblast’, tom 3 (Zhitomir: Polissia, 2010), 9–23.

Along with the appointment of Iakushev, the new heads of the main operational departments of the UNKVD were Senior Lieutenant of State Security Abram Maslovskii of the Third Department (Counterintelligence), Lieutenant of State Security Andrei Luk’ianov of the Fourth Department (Secret-Political), and Senior Lieutenant of State Security Vasilii Lebedev of the Fifth Department (Special). On 12 October 1937, the post of chief of the Fourth Section of the Third Department was filled by Sergeant of State Security Daniil Man’ko, who on 15 July 1938 became temporary acting deputy director of the Third Department. At the same time, Lieutenant of State Security Matvei Lesnov became the deputy director of the Fourth Department, and Lieutenant of State Security Daniil Maluka became chief of the Third Section of the Fourth Department. On 28 November 1937, Lieutenant of State Security Naum Remov-Poberëzkin was appointed temporary acting aide to the director of the Fifth Department of the Zhitomir Oblast UNKVD. On 20 December 1937, Sergeant Sergei Golubev was appointed operational plenipotentiary in the apparatus of the special plenipotentiary for the UNKVD. After the formation of Zhitomir Oblast, the county NKVD departments were transformed into town departments. Senior Lieutenant of State Security Vsevolod Martyniuk became the director of the Berdichev town department, Sergeant of State Security Moisei Gilis the director of Korosten department, and Junior Lieutenant of State Security Grigorii Artem’ev the director of the Novograd-Volynskii department. In January 1938, Lebedev was reassigned to the Ukrainian republic NKVD and then, later, to the All-Union NKVD. On 26 February 1938, Remov-Poberëzkin was named temporary acting director of the Fifth Department, but in August 1938 he too was reassigned to the Ukrainian republic NKVD. HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 149–50; f. 12, op. 1, spr. 31602, tom 1, ark. 16 and f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 4.

HDA SBU, f. 12, op. 1, spr. 31601, ark. 3–4, 35 zv.

The post of director of the Fourth Department was taken by Matvei Lesnov. On 9 September 1938, Luk’ianov was appointed director of the Special Department of the NKVD for the Odessa Army Group. Zolotar’ov, Bazhan, and Timiriaiev, “ChK-GPU-NKVD Zhitomirshchiny,” 3:18–19.

The director of the Special Department of the Zhitomir Army Group, Senior Lieutenant of State Security Ivan Daragan, began to fulfill the duties of UNKVD director, followed by Sergei Mashkov in January 1939 and Vladimir Trubnikov in August 1940. They became witnesses to the investigation into the crimes of their predecessors, Lavrentii Iakushev and Grigorii Viatkin, as well as of other UNKVD personnel.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 130–32.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 146.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 153–53 zv, 159, 165.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 173.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 177–78.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 180.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 169–71.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 172.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 184–88.

HDA SBU, f. 12, op. 1, spr. 31601, ark. 46 (cover), 47, 64, 65.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 3.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 43, 73.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 31.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 15.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 137–38.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 245–46.

The Polish Military Organization (POV) existed in the territory of Ukraine until 1921. In 1937 and 1938, the POV became one of the phantoms against which NKVD organs were ordered to combat.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 246–46 zv.

He was the brother of Aleksandr Tomin. For more on him, see Lynne Viola, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), chap. 5.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 253–53 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 258–59 zv, 19–21.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 248–48 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 160–67.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 106.

E. Bednarek, V. V’iatrovych, et al., eds., Pol’sha ta Ukraïna u tridtsiatykh–sorokovykh rokakh XX stolittia: nevidomi dokumenty z arkhiviv spetsial’nykh sluzhb, tom 8, Velykyi teror: Pol’ska operatsiia 1937–1938, Kniga 2 (Kyiv and Warsaw: HDA SBU; Institut natsional’noi pam’iati—Komisiia z peresliduvannia zlochyniv proti pol’skogo narodu; Instytut politychnykh i etnonatsional’nykh doslidzhen’ Natsional’noï akademiï nauk Ukraïny, 2010), 1718.

Ibid., 1626–32.

Ibid., 1716.

Ibid., 1712.

Ibid., 1708.

Ibid., 1724–26.

Arkhyv Upravlinnia Ministerstva vnutrishnikh sprav (UMVS) Ukrainy v Zhitomirs’kiy oblasti (Departmental Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Zhitomir Oblast), f. 2, op. 1, spr. 6751, tom 1, ark. 393.

Bednarek, et al., eds., Pol’sha ta Ukraïna u tridtsiatykh—sorokovykh rokakh, tom 8, kn. 2, 1728.

Ibid., 1728–30.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 2, ark. 288 zv and ark. 351.

Bednarek et al., eds., Pol’sha ta Ukraïna u tridtsiatykh, tom 8, kn. 2, 1736.

Ibid., 1750. Previously, this document was published in Shapoval, Kuromiia, et al., Ukraïna v dobu “Velikogo Teroru,” 316–22.

In the fall of 1922, the Volynskaia Povstancheskaia Armiia, or VPA, had prepared an armed attack on the Bolshevik regime with the goal of restoring the Ukrainian government. Two days before the planned attack, agents of the Cheka arrested the majority of the command structure of the organization, although the command staff and its protective detachment successfully crossed the border into Poland.

Bednarek et al., eds., Pol’sha ta Ukraïna u tridtsiatykh, tom 8, kn. 2, 1748.

Ibid., 1748–50.

Ibid., 1744.

M. Iu. Kostrytsia, “Geograf, kraenavets’, pedagog (Postoev, P. G.),” in Reabilitovani istorieiu: Zhitomirs’ka oblast’, tom 1, 190–92.

Bednarek et al., eds., Pol’sha ta Ukraïna u tridtsiatykh, tom 8, kn. 2, 1750–52.

Kostrytsia, “Geograf, kraenavets’, pedagog,” 193.

Bednarek et al., eds., Pol’sha ta Ukraïna u tridtsiatykh, tom 8, kn. 2, 1752.

Ibid., tom 8, kn. 2, 1752.

Reabilitovani istoriieiu: Zhitomirs’ka oblast’, tom 3 (Zhitomir: Polissia, 2010), 60.

Conversational term for a member of the secret police, derived from an acronym for the civil war–era predecessor to the NKVD, the Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counterrevolution and Sabotage, or Cherezvychainaia kommissia (Che-Ka). —Trans.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 5, ark. 84 zv, 85.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 83–84.

According to the Ukrainian researcher Vadym Zolotar’ov, on 14 May 1940, Vasilii Lebedev was expelled from the Communist Party “for use of depraved methods during the implementation of death sentences and unlawful arrests in Zhitomir.” He was arrested and sentenced to a five-year prison term. In 1941, his sentence was overturned and he was released from prison and, on 25 August 1941, re-admitted to the party. During World War II, he was employed in the front-line activities of the NKVD-NKGB organs, twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner, in 1943 and 1945, the Order of the Patriotic War, Second Class, in 1944, and the Order of Lenin, in 1945. In 1945, he was a NKGB colonel and the head of one of the sub-departments of the All-Union NKGB.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 208.

In 1937 and 1938, Miron Blank was an Operational Agent of the NKVD Special Department for the Fifth Cavalry Division, Second Cavalry Corps, Kiev Military District, in the city of Zhitomir.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 200–1.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 27, 209.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 170.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 178.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 195.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 293–300, 301–9, 318–21, 322–27, 328–30, 331–38, 339–43, 344–48.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 109–10, 118–19.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 111–12, 121.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 128–30, 131–34.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 353.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 3, ark. 358.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 4, 5.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 278–79.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 85 zv–86.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 76.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 80.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 5, ark. 86 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 280, 282.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 209.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 218–20.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 213–14.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 5, ark. 87 zv–88.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 17.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 5, ark. 202–2 zv, 209–11.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 279 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 384–84 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 4.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 78 and 315 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 198 and 205.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 199 zv, 200, 207.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 20, 208.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 202–2obv, 210.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 279–79 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 336–37 zv, 338–40.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 390–90 zv.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67841, tom 1, ark. 485.

State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF), f. R-8131, op. 37, d. 118, ll. 19–20.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 4, ark. 108–9.

N. V. Petrov and K. V. Skorkin, eds., Kto rukovodil NKVD, 1934–1941: Spravochnik (Moscow: Zven’ia, 1999), 462–63.

Remov-Poberëzkin was deputy director of the Third Department of the Turkmen republic NKVD. On 16 January 1939, he was arrested and, in February 1939, transported under guard to the custody of the Ukrainian republic NKVD. HDA SBU, f. 12, op. 7, spr. 135, tom 2, ark. 75, 85.

Arkhiv UMVC Ukrainy po Zhitomirskyi oblasti, f. 2, op. 1, spr. 6751, tom 1, ark. 646.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 5, ark. 429a, 429b.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 5, ark. 329–30, 337–38.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 5, ark. 427–28.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 5, ark. 512–16, 518–21.

HDA SBU, f. 5, op. 1, spr. 67839, tom 5, ark. 537–37 zv.