“In Ukraine, Entire Antisoviet Ukrainian Nationalist Divisions... Roam Underground”

The early stages and mechanisms of mass repression in 1937 are now relatively clear. By the beginning of 1938, some 159,573 people had been arrested in Ukraine.⁷ The Soviet leadership, however, was unsatisfied with the scale of repression in Ukraine.

In November 1937, Ezhov sent Uspenskii a secret wire (shifrovka): “If you think that you are going to be sitting in Orenburg for five years or so, then you are mistaken. It will most likely be necessary to promote you to a position of greater responsibility in the near future.” Later on, Uspenskii recounted under interrogation that “in January 1938 I traveled to a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Moscow. Ezhov summoned me unexpectedly. I came to see him at his office. He was completely drunk. A bottle of cognac stood on his desk. Ezhov said to me: ‘Well, you are going to Ukraine.’ ” It was subsequently explained to Uspenskii that Leplevskii had lost the trust of the Central Committee of the Communist Party on account of “crude, clumsy actions [grubye, neumelye deistviia].”⁸ On 25 January 1938, Leplevskii was appointed to lead the Transportation Department of the Main Administration of State Security of the USSR; he was arrested on 26 April and shot on 28 July.⁹

In 1937, nearly the entire membership of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine was repressed.

In mid-February 1938, Ezhov traveled to Kiev in order to jump-start this new wave of repression in Ukraine. At an NKVD operational meeting, he announced that it was necessary to execute 30,000 people in Ukraine, an initiative approved by Stalin. On 17 February 1938, the Politburo sanctioned the new target as well as extending still further the work of the extrajudicial troikas.¹³ Ezhov encouraged the heads of oblast NKVD administrations (UNKVDs) in Ukraine to submit petitions for further increases in “quotas.” One attendee at the meeting in Kiev, the head of the Poltava UNKVD, A. Volkov, later recalled that Ezhov “characterized all previous work as superficial and [limited to] individual arrests, and noted the failure to uncover the supposed antisoviet underground. He emphasized in particular the extremely weak efforts aimed at the uncovering of the Ukrainian, Polish, and German antisoviet nationalist undergrounds, and talked about how in Ukraine there remained Petlurists and Makhnovites [remnants of the opposing sides from the Russian civil war] and other antisoviet cadres.”¹⁴

On 26 February and 3 March 1938, Ezhov promulgated decrees removing all heads of oblast NKVD administrations in Ukraine.

In November 1920, Korablev began his service in the state security organs, in the Cheka in Tiumen. He later served as a plenipotentiary in the counterespionage department of the Transvolga Military District. After graduation from the Higher Border Service School of the OGPU USSR, he served in various senior positions in the OGPU in the Middle Volga Krai. Following the murder of Sergei Kirov in late 1934, he was transferred to the Leningrad Oblast NKVD Administration. In 1937, he was assistant to the Chief of the Third (Counterespionage) Department of the Leningrad UNKVD. Ivan Korablev’s report to Nikolai Ezhov dated 16 May 1937 testifies to the manner in which he operated. Within it, Korablev notes bitterly that a series of cadres within the Leningrad NKVD Administration had received promotions, but the author had been “skipped over” even though he had “uncovered” a multiplicity of cases of espionage and sabotage in the city in 1935. Korablev declared that he deserved a promotion.¹⁶ Naturally, such an ambitious “specialist” caught Ezhov’s attention.

On 3 March 1938, the decree appointing Korablev to Vinnitsa was formally promulgated.¹⁷ Ezhov received Korablev in Moscow. Ezhov’s attention to the new Vinnitsa UNKVD boss was no accident. On 5 March, the Politburo had discussed NKVD matters in Ukraine.

Fig. 1.1 I. M. Korablev, from March 1938 to January 1939 head of the Vinnitsa Oblast NKVD. Prison photo from 1940, HDA SBU, f. 5, spr. 66927, tom 1, ark. 11. By exclusive permission of the State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine.

At a meeting with Ezhov, Korablev asked for a cancellation of the decree appointing him to Vinnitsa. The Commissar asked why, to which Korablev responded that he was afraid that he was not up to the task. Ezhov consoled him: “There is no sense in discussing it; go and start your work. There, in Ukraine, entire antisoviet Ukrainian nationalist divisions created by Liubchenko and Balitskii roam underground; you must go and destroy these detachments.” In Kiev, Uspenskii gave instructions to Korablev, declaring that “all Germans and Poles living on the territory of Ukraine are spies and saboteurs” and “75–80 percent of Ukrainians are bourgeois nationalists.”¹⁹

On 7 September 1938, Uspenskii appointed Anton Iakovlevich Prishivtsyn as Korablev’s deputy.²⁰ Born in 1905 in Mariupol to a Ukrainian family, Prishivtsyn graduated from a railroad school with a primary education. In 1927, he became an apprentice, serving as assistant operative plenipotentiary of the Informational Department of the Active-Investigatory Department of the Lugansk Okrug Department of GPU Ukraine. This same year he entered the party. It is entirely plausible that he excelled in his work because he was quickly appointed plenipotentiary and then head of the Rovenki District Division of the GPU.

Another colleague of Korablev in Vinnitsa was Aleksandr Mikhailovich Zaputriaev, whom he had come to know through their service together in Leningrad. In 1935, this particular Chekist had been suspected of Trotskyite connections, for which two of his acquaintances had been arrested. Zaputriaev filed a report concerning the incident, but he was expelled from the party and only reinstated after his transfer to Ukraine.²⁵ Compromised politically, he was ready to fulfill any assignment from Korablev.

In May 1938, Nikolai Stepanovich Butenko—who in 1930 had gained significant experience uncovering “counterrevolutionary kulaks” in Velikii Tokmak District (in the Dnepropetrovsk area)—also worked with Korablev. Between 1934 and 1938, he served as Chief of the Teplik District Department of the Vinnitsa UNKVD. In 1937, he demonstrated great zeal in unmasking “enemies of the people” and especially “the uncovering” of group cases. He became an indispensable assistant for Korablev as he desired to “make good” on the trust placed in him and to distinguish himself in the eyes of the leadership.

These individuals carried out mass repressive operations throughout 1938 in Vinnitsa. In order to facilitate mass arrests, NKVD investigatory groups were created in March 1938 in a series of districts; elsewhere, the responsibility for mass operations fell to the NKVD District Administrations. From March 22, the number of confessions from detainees began to skyrocket. On April 7, Korablev reported to Uspenskii that 2,500 people had been arrested in the oblast, but that repressions against Poles, Romanians, and other national groups were only beginning. The oblast troika (consisting of Ivan Korablev; the Secretary of the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party, I. Spivak; and the Oblast Procurator, Ia. Ternivskii) met on a daily basis between 19 and 28 April. Korablev requested an increase in the repression quota by three hundred to five hundred people. In response, he received an increased quota of four hundred people in the first category (those who were to be shot).²⁷

In April and May 1938, one of the most important mass operations targeted the so-called Polish Military Organization (POV). Groups of Chekists were sent into the districts to implement this campaign. They compiled lists of people to arrest based on information from the district NKVD administrations or information invented by the Chekists themselves. For example, upon his arrival at the Zhmerinka District NKVD Department, Korablev demanded a list of all the Poles living in the district. He made a note on the list to arrest all Poles of middle age. In addition, he issued a directive to the special sections of industrial enterprises and institutions to compile lists of Poles, Germans, and Latvians. The Third Department of the UNKVD then carried out arrests based on these lists. From the outset, the Chekists applied measures of physical and psychological coercion in order to elicit confessions regarding “hostile [vrazheskoe] activity.” The leadership goaded their subordinates on, saying: “We are not going to joke around with enemies. If two or three kick the bucket, nothing will come of it; none of you will answer for it, I will answer with my own head and my own party card.”²⁸

Group interrogations featuring inhuman torture and humiliation became a regular practice. The operative group working in Zhmerinka District arrested more than one hundred people from April to May 1938 against whom there was no incriminating evidence whatsoever.²⁹ A similar practice was utilized at the Vinnitsa UNKVD. Each evening Korablev received a report on the number of “confessions” received. He would take these to the meetings of the troika, which would then confirm the death sentences. Victims were executed immediately in the garage of the UNKVD, where the sounds of bullets and victims’ screams were drowned out by the hum of running truck engines. These trucks were then loaded up with corpses, which would be concealed in a park located 383 yards away or at the cemetery on Lesnaia Street, 1.24 miles away. The numerical goal for repression in Vinnitsa Oblast was fulfilled by 11 May 1938. Ivan Korablev sent a report to Uspenskii in which he recounted the results of “investigatory activity.”

From 26 March to 10 May, 3,448 people were repressed in the various mass operations. On 26 May, the Politburo extended the nationalities operation until 1 August. On 15 September, a new Politburo decision transferred the investigation of so-called album (al’bomnye) cases from the central apparatus of NKVD USSR to the Oblast “special troika.”³⁰ Analysis of surviving reports indicates that in Vinnitsa Oblast between 1937 and 1938 the troika and “high duumvirate [vyshaia dvoika]” convicted 19,851 people, of whom 16,806 were shot.³¹

According to Korablev, some Chekists began to sense a change in the political winds in the second half of 1938. One of the first signs of this was the 22 August appointment of L. P. Beria as first deputy to Ezhov. Beria had been the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia and had taken part in the repression of party cadres in the Caucasus.³² On 11 September, he received the title of Commissar of State Security of the First Rank, and, on 29 September, the Main Administration of State Security was restored within the NKVD with Beria at the helm.³³ Decrees 00701 and 00702 promulgated on 23 October 1938 by the NKVD of the USSR spoke to the responsibility of cadres to adhere strictly to the rules of investigatory work.³⁴ The staff of the Vinnitsa UNKVD was familiarized with the decrees at an operational meeting held on 31 October. The Commissar of the Ukrainian republic NKVD, Uspenskii, sensed the looming threat sooner than others. On 14 November, he staged his own suicide.³⁵

Three days later, Stalin and Molotov signed a joint decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and Central Committee of the Communist Party, “Regarding arrests, prosecutorial oversight, and the conduct of investigations” in accordance with which the NKVD and procurator organs were forbidden from conducting operations of mass arrests and the troikas were liquidated. The organs of the NKVD were required to strictly adhere to all rules of the criminal-procedural codices when carrying out investigations.³⁶ On the same day, Ivan Korablev led a meeting in Vinnitsa on matters of operational work.³⁷

On 25 November, Beria acceded to the leadership of the NKVD. On the same day, an operational meeting was held in the Vinnitsa UNKVD at which the 17 November 1938 decree was read and discussed. Korablev announced that at the 19 November meeting of the heads and deputy heads of the NKVD and central committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, “various chiefs of NKVD [oblast] administrations and their deputies somewhat misapprehended the substance of the decree and spoke nonsense.” For example, the leaders from Nikolaev stated that two thousand detainees had been subjected to beatings. In Odessa Oblast, state security staff had beaten fifteen hundred inmates. Noted Korablev, “The Secretary of the Central Committee, comrade Khrushchev, spoke very abruptly on this score, [and] declared that the guilty should be prosecuted for taking such an incorrect approach.” Tellingly, in the presence of the Secretary of the Vinnitsa Oblast Party Committee, G. Mishchenko, Korablev did not mention the “nonsense” regarding mass beatings of detainees in Vinnitsa.

At the meeting, Party Secretary Mishchenko stated that he did not wish to speak about violations of the law, but about party oversight: “Apparently your departmental discipline puts itself above party discipline, and this is very bad.... To brief secretaries of district party committees regarding active-investigatory work is inadequate, work must be advanced with thorough communication. No one has given district party committee secretaries the right to personally direct NKVD workers and give them orders at the expense of fundamental Chekist work, in the same way that the Chief of the District NKVD Department [cannot] direct the cadres of the district [party] committee.” Korablev fully acknowledged the leading role of the Oblast Party Committee: “At present the situation with the hiring in the NKVD is entirely different from before. The hiring, firing, and transfer of Chekist cadres is carried out solely in consultation with the Oblast Party Committee.”³⁸

On 26 November 1938, NKVD USSR promulgated decree 00762, signed by Beria, “On the course of the implementation of the Council of People’s Commissars and Central Committee of the VKP(B) decree of 17 November 1938,” which defined the work of agents of state security in accordance with extant legislation and demanded, under the leadership of the party and government, the “achievement of the swift and decisive eradication of all inadequacies and violations in work and the essential improvement of the ongoing battle for the complete destruction of all enemies of the people and the purging of our motherland from agents of foreign intelligence services, guaranteeing in this way the further successes of socialist construction.”³⁹ This decree set in motion the purge of the NKVD.