The Odessa Oblast UNKVD during the Great Terror
Experienced, long-serving workers predominated in the Odessa Oblast UNKVD leadership. At the outset of the Great Terror, the Odessa UNKVD was composed largely of those installed by the long-tenured head of the OGPU-NKVD in Ukraine, V.
A. Balitskii. During the Great Terror, the Odessa Oblast UNKVD was managed by an entire procession of experienced Chekists who replaced one another in rapid succession. This personnel turnover was connected with the mass purges taking place within the administrative apparatus of the Ukrainian republic NKVD following the arrests, after roughly equal intervals, of the Republic’s Commissars of Internal Affairs, V. A. Balitskii in July 1937 and I. M. Leplevskii in April 1938, and the flight of A. I. Uspenskii in November 1938.8 In the eighteen months beginning in summer 1937, the following people served as chiefs of the Odessa Oblast UNKVD: A. B. Rozanov, G. A. Grishin-Klivgant (acting), N. N. Fedorov, D. D. Grechukhin, P. P. Kiselev, and S. I. Gaponov (acting).From July 1937 to February 1938, the Odessa Oblast UNKVD was headed by the former Chief of the Border Detachment in Leningrad Oblast, Lieutenant, then Colonel, N. N Fedorov. Fedorov turned out to be such an energetic perpetrator of terror that, upon the arrival of Uspenskii, he was transferred from Odessa to lead the Kiev UNKVD and was soon engaged by Ezhov to work in the central apparatus of the NKVD, where, on 20 November 1938, he was arrested and in February 1940 executed.9 The experienced Chekist D. D. Grechukhin, a former colleague of Uspenskii’s in Siberia, replaced Fedorov in Odessa when the latter went to Kiev. By accelerating the terror, Grechukhin earned the favor of Uspenskii. In May 1938, he was promoted to deputy chair of the Ukrainian republic NKVD. P. P. Kiselev, a typical vydizhenets of the time and the former head of the Department of Operative Technology at the republic NKVD, took his place. From 28 May 1938, he headed the Odessa UNKVD and proved himself among the more productive perpetrators of terror. On 15 November 1938, immediately after Uspenskii’s flight, Kiselev was arrested and, shortly thereafter, executed. From November 1938 to January 1939, S. I. Gaponov headed the UNKVD. Among all the leaders of the Odessa Oblast UNKVD during the Great Terror, only Gaponov would avoid execution and live to see freedom.
Fig. 2.1 S. I. Gaponov, from November 1938 to January 1939 head of the Odessa Oblast NKVD. Prison photo from 1941, HDA SBU, f. 5, spr. 67987, tom 5, ark. 5. By exclusive permission of the State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine.