Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  A horror without precedent was the killing of a group of 830 invalids – 1,160 according to some reports. Given the hopeless overcrowding of the Moscow gaols due to the mass operations, the invalids represented ‘an extremely unpleasant obstacle to the housing of the prisoners who have been brought in for interrogation’, according to the responsible authorities. In February 1938, Leonid Sakovskii, the director of the NKVD administration for the Moscow Region, decided to remove those already sentenced to hard labour from the Moscow gaols. The only reason to have them shot in Butovo was their disability and their inability to work. Among these invalids were people who were deaf or blind, amputees, people with TB or heart disease, and others who had just ‘got stuck’ in gaol and may well have fallen ill there.34

  Even though we may never learn the names and particulars of all those killed between 8 August 1937 and 19 October 1938 – the perpetrators assiduously covered their tracks and destroyed documents and files – the extant information enables us to reconstruct not only the extent of the crimes in numerical terms but also the specific nature of the attacks and the identity of the target groups. Mass graves allow us to read the sociology of the Great Terror. What strikes us about them in this case?

  Representatives of every sector and stratum of Soviet society without exception, as well as foreign nationals and stateless persons, are to be found in the mass graves: aristocrats and proletarians, peasants and intellectuals, children and old people, communists from the ruling strata and completely unpolitical people, the illiterate and the learned, Chinese and Jews, atheists and believers, Latvians and Russians, pillars of Soviet society and harmless outsiders. Based on the assessment of 3,067 biographies of those executed in Butovo, it has been calculated that in 1937–8 the victims can be divided into the following groups.35

  The largest group among the murdered is that of blue-collar and white-collar workers; together with the peasants they represented around two-thirds of the victims. The fact that the number of peasants is no greater and that it deviates so markedly from the national average is undoubtedly connected with the fact that the victims tended to be drawn from the capital, where the administrative organs were concentrated.

  It is striking that so many of the victims come from among the Orthodox clergy, priests and nuns, as well as from other religious denominations.

  Equally striking is the high proportion of other nationalities, above all Poles, Latvians and Germans. Together with the high proportion of foreigners among the murdered communists – up to 80 per cent – this points to a ‘national’ trend in the frenzy of destruction.

  Another clearly defined target group of state violence were the members of the old elites and non-Bolshevik parties and groupings.

  A further large group of victims was to be found among the inmates of Dmitlag who had built the Moscow–Volga Canal, and who were simply killed off once the building works were completed because the authorities were unwilling to release them.

  The same may be said of the group of ‘asocial’ and handicapped people, amounting to around 6,000 in all, who were eliminated in order to make space in Moscow gaols.

  However, actions in Butovo cannot be taken in isolation. The events on the outskirts of Moscow expanded to encompass the whole nation. The fact that the hurricane of destruction cut such a broad swathe through the population while apparently lacking specific aims, when taken together with the presence of certain ‘risk groups’ and the timing of the executions – both their sudden onset and their abrupt ending –- shows that we are looking at a planned and targeted campaign. According to Arsenii Roginskii and Nikita Okhotin, many sources ‘go to make up the picture of total but unsystematic repression. We see the matter in a somewhat different light. It goes without saying that the mass reprisals of 1937–8 were without precedent in their scope and brutality. But they had their own logic, structure and rules which, despite the numerous exceptions, guaranteed a high degree of control over the machinery of repression. Only if we acknowledge this premise will we be able to achieve an accurate reconstruction of the “Great Terror”’.36

  Killing by quota: Order No. 00447

  The leap from 126 shootings in Butovo in July 1937 to 2,327 shootings in August 1937 was like the unleashing of a storm. Something similar can be seen on a national scale: in 1936 there had been 131,168 arrests, in 1937 there were 936,750, and in 1938 there were still 638,509. In both years arrests on the grounds of counter-revolutionary activities were in the overwhelming majority – almost 90 per cent. The number of death sentences actually exploded: in 1936 1,118 people were shot, whereas by 1937 it had risen to 353,074, and in 1938 it was still 328,618.37 Nevertheless, this was no mere natural disaster but the product of a plan whose origins and execution at the level of detail have been well researched, while still remaining mysterious in many respects.38 Nothing appeared to point to the imminent mass operations. True enough, the purges continued in the Party and the state apparatus – in May and June senior members of the military had been arrested and shot – but, with the end of the process of collectivization and the mass deportation of ‘kulaks’ and the expulsion of tens of thousands of ‘socially dangerous elements’ from the big cities in 1935 and 1936, mass operations seemed to be no longer on the agenda. There was no propaganda campaign, nor were there any internal preparations on the part of the Party. On 2 July 1937 an important document on the conduct of the elections to the Supreme Soviet had even been published in Pravda. On 2 July, however, the Politburo also published a decree ‘On anti-Soviet elements’, and this laid the foundations for the mass operations. One day later, on 3 July, a telegram composed by Stalin was sent out to the secretaries of the Party organizations of the regions and republics. It read as follows:

  IT HAS BEEN OBSERVED THAT A LARGE NUMBER OF FORMER KULAKS AND CRIMINALS DEPORTED AT A CERTAIN TIME FROM VARIOUS REGIONS TO THE NORTH AND TO SIBERIAN DISTRICTS AND THEN HAVING RETURNED TO THEIR REGIONS AT THE EXPIRY OF THEIR PERIOD OF EXILE ARE THE CHIEF INSTIGATORS OF ALL SORTS OF ANTI-SOVIET CRIMES, INCLUDING SABOTAGE, BOTH IN THE COLLECTIVE FARMS AND STATE FARMS AS WELL AS IN THE SPHERE OF TRANSPORT AND IN CERTAIN BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU RECOMMENDS TO ALL SECRETARIES OF REGIONAL AND TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND TO ALL REGIONAL, TERRITORIAL AND REPUBLIC REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NKVD THAT THEY REGISTER ALL KULAKS AND CRIMINALS WHO HAVE RETURNED HOME IN ORDER THAT THE MOST HOSTILE AMONG THEM BE FORTHWITH ADMINISTRATIVELY ARRESTED AND EXECUTED BY MEANS OF A 3-MAN COMMISSION [troika] AND THAT THE REMAINING, LESS ACTIVE BUT NEVERTHELESS HOSTILE ELEMENTS BE LISTED AND EXILED TO DISTRICTS [raiony] AS INDICATED BY THE NKVD. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU RECOMMENDS THAT THE NAMES OF THOSE COMPRISING THE 3-MAN COMMISSIONS BE PRESENTED TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE WITHIN FIVE DAYS, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF THOSE SUBJECT TO EXECUTION AND THE NUMBER OF THOSE SUBJECT TO EXILE.39

  The very specific proposals from the regions triggered by this telegram were collated by the NKVD and resulted in a list containing quotas for both categories – shooting and banishment – for the different regions. This document, signed personally by Yezhov – Operational Order 00447 – was sent on 30 July 1937 by the deputy chairman of the NKVD, Mikhail Frinovskii, to Stalin’s personal secretary, Aleksandr Poskrebyshev. From there it went out, marked ‘Strictly Confidential’, to Party secretaries throughout the country as a minute of a Politburo meeting. Its contents detailed not just the mass killings that were planned but also their specific costs and the technical and organizational methods employed to deal with the resulting transport and logistical problems.

  The NKVD’s operational Order No. 00447, ‘Concerning the campaign of punitive measures against former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements, and criminals’, with its instruction to set up three-man commissions whose task it would be to register former kulaks, members of anti-Soviet parties, gendarmes, priests, criminals, returnees, etc., and to prescribe appropriate punishments for them – Category 1: shooting, Category 2: imprisonment up to eight to ten years in corrective labour
camps – became the starting point and the model for further orders and mass operations in the course of the year. Strictly speaking, it was preceded by another one, Order No. 00439 of 25 July 1937, which inaugurated the NKVD’s ‘German operation’, in which Germans – that is, German citizens living in the Soviet Union as émigrés but also Soviet citizens of German origin – were supposed to fall under suspicion as spies, agents and terrorists and to be liable to arrest.40 Order No. 00447 contained basically all the elements that would be found in the other mass operations of the years 1937–8. It reads as follows:

  It has been established by investigative materials relative to the cases of anti-Soviet formations that a significant number of former kulaks who had earlier been subjected to punitive measures and who had evaded them, who had escaped from camps, exile, and labour settlements, have settled in the countryside. This also includes many church officials and sectarians who had formerly been put down and former active participants of anti-Soviet armed campaigns. Large groups of members of anti-Soviet political parties (SRs, Georgian Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Mussavatists, Ittihadists, etc.) as well as former active members of bandit uprisings, Whites, members of punitive expeditions, repatriates, and so on, remain nearly untouched in the countryside. Some of the above elements, leaving the countryside for the cities, have infiltrated industry, transport, and construction enterprises. Besides, significant groups of criminals are still entrenched in both countryside and city. These include horse and cattle thieves, recidivist thieves, robbers, and others who had been serving their sentences and who had escaped and are now in hiding. Inadequate efforts to combat these criminal bands have created a state of impunity promoting their criminal activities. As has been established, all of these anti-Soviet elements are the source of the chief instigators of every kind of anti-Soviet crimes and sabotage in the collective farms and state farms as well as in the transport sector and in certain industries. The organs of state security are faced with the task of mercilessly crushing this entire gang of anti-Soviet elements, of protecting the working Soviet people against their counter-revolutionary machinations, and, finally, of putting an end, once and for all, to their base undermining of the foundations of the Soviet state (ras i navsegda pokonchit). Accordingly, I therefore, ORDER THAT, AS OF AUGUST 1937, ALL REPUBLICS AND REGIONS LAUNCH A CAMPAIGN OF PUNITIVE MEASURES AGAINST FORMER KULAKS, ACTIVE ANTI-SOVIET ELEMENTS, AND CRIMINALS . . .

  THE CAMPAIGN IN UZBEKISTAN, TURKMENISTAN, TADZHIKISTAN AND KYRGYZSTAN IS TO BEGIN ON 10 AUGUST OF THIS YEAR AND IN THE FAR EAST AND KRASNOIARSK REGIONS AS WELL AS THE EAST SIBERIAN TERRITORIES ON 15 AUGUST.41

  Operational Order No. 00447 is a key document for the year 1937 and no doubt also for the twentieth century as a whole, and must therefore be quoted at even greater length. It contains the following sections: 1) the groups to be suppressed; 2) the punishments to be imposed and the numbers to be subjected to punitive measures; 3) the conduct of the operation; 4) the conduct of the investigation; 5) the organization and tasks of the troikas; 6) the procedure for carrying out the sentences; 7) the organization of the operational leadership and the maintenance of records.

  The ‘groups subject to punitive measures’ were subdivided into nine categories:

  1 former kulaks who have returned home after having served their sentences and who continue to carry out active, anti-Soviet sabotage;

  2 former kulaks who have escaped from camps or from labour settlements, as well as kulaks who have been in hiding from dekulakization, and who are engaged in anti-Soviet activities;

  3 former kulaks and socially dangerous elements who were members of insurrectionary, fascist, terrorist and bandit formations, who had served their sentences, who had been in hiding from punishment, or who had escaped from places of confinement and have renewed their anti-Soviet, criminal activities;

  4 members of anti-Soviet parties (SRs, Georgian Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Mussavatists, Ittihadists, etc.), former Whites, gendarmes, bureaucrats, members of punitive expeditions (karateli), bandits, gang abettors, transferees (perepravshchiki), re-émigrés, who were in hiding from punishment, who had escaped from places of confinement, and who continue to engage in anti-Soviet activities;

  5 persons unmasked by investigators and against whom evidence has been verified by materials obtained by investigative agencies and who were the most hostile and active members of Cossack and White Guard insurrectionary organizations slated for liquidation, as well as fascist, terrorist and espionage-saboteur counter-revolutionary formations. In addition, punitive measures were to be taken against elements of this category at present kept under guard, whose cases had been fully investigated but not yet examined by the judicial authorities;

  6 the most active anti-Soviet elements from among former kulaks, members of punitive expeditions, bandits, Whites, sectarian activists, church officials, and others, currently held in prisons, camps, labour settlements and colonies, who continue to engage actively in anti-Soviet sabotage in these places;

  7 criminals (bandits, robbers, recidivist thieves, professional contraband smugglers, recidivist swindlers, cattle and horse thieves) who engaged in criminal activities and who were associated with the criminal underworld. In addition, punitive measures were to be taken against people in this category currently kept under guard, whose cases have been fully investigated but not yet examined by the judicial authorities;

  8 criminal elements in camps and labour settlements, engaging in criminal activities in them;

  9 punitive measures were also to be applied to members of all the above groups, now employed in the countryside – i.e. in collective farms, state farms, or agricultural enterprises, as well as in the city – i.e. in industrial and trade enterprises, in transport, in Soviet institutions, and in construction.

  Part II defines the two categories of punitive measures and establishes quotas for each type of punishment.

  1 All kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements subject to punitive measures are to be divided into two categories. a) The first category includes all the most active of the above elements. They are to be arrested immediately and, after consideration of their case by the troikas, to be shot (k rasstrelu). b) The second category includes all the remaining, less active but nonetheless hostile elements. They are to be arrested and imprisoned for 8 to 10 years, while the most malevolent and socially dangerous among them should be detained in confinement for similar terms as determined by the troikas.

  2 Based on the registration data presented by the People’s Commissars of the republican NKVD and by the heads of territorial and regional NKVD boards, the order has established the following numbers of persons against whom punitive measures are to be taken:

  3 The above figures are indicative. However, the People’s Commissariats of the Republican NKVD and the directors of the regional offices of the NKVD are not authorized to increase them on their own initiative. In no circumstances may the quotas be increased.

  In cases where the situation calls for an increase in the quotas, the People’s Commissars of Republican NKVDs and the directors of the territorial and regional offices of the NKVD administrations must submit reasoned requests to that effect to me.

  The quotas may be reduced, and individuals transferred from the first category to the second and vice versa.

  4 The families of those sentenced under the first or second category will not as a rule be subject to punitive measures. Exceptions to this include: a) families whose members are capable of anti-Soviet actions. Members of such families will be transferred to camps or labour settlements under special decrees issued by the three-man commissions; b) the families of persons in the first category, living in border areas, will be expelled beyond the republican or regional border zone; c) the families of those in the first category who live in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Baku, Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, and in the districts of Sochi, Gagry and Sukhumi, will be expelled from those centres to other regions of their choice, except for districts in the border zone.


  5 The families of all persons punished in accordance with the first and second categories are to be registered and placed under regular observation.

  Order No. 00447 also contains instructions for the conduct of the operation. It was due to begin on 5 August and to be completed within four months. It was concerned primarily with the suppression of people in the first category. Each territory was subdivided into sectors to enable the operation to be carried out in an efficient manner. It was presided over by the NKVD, which formed operational groups that could be reinforced where necessary by the militia or military units. NKVD leaders were responsible for the conduct of the operation in their territory.

  For every person to be punished it is essential to gather precise information and compromising materials. Such information will form the basis of lists of those to be arrested [spiski na arrest], to be signed by the head of the Operational Group and forwarded in two copies to the NKVD for inspection and confirmation, and to the head of the administrative or territorial division of the NKVD. The People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, the director of the administration or the territorial division of the NKVD must inspect the lists and sanction the arrest of the persons named in them . . .

  The order goes on to state:

  7 Based on the approved lists, the head of the Operational Group will carry out the arrests. Each arrest will require a formal order. A meticulous search is to be carried out during the arrest. The following items must be confiscated: weapons, munitions, military equipment, explosives, poisons and other dangerous materials, counter-revolutionary literature, precious metals in the form of coins, bars and others, foreign currency, duplicating machines and correspondence. All confiscated materials are to be entered into the records of the search.