NKVD
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The NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del listen ) (Russian: НКВД, Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел, Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for political repression during the Stalinist era. It conducted mass extrajudicial executions, ran the Gulag system of forced labor, conducted mass deportations of nationalities and peasants labeled as "Kulaks" to unpopulated regions of the country, guarded state borders, conducted espionage and political assassinations abroad, was responsible for subversion of foreign governments, and enforced Stalinist policy within Communist movements in other countries.
The NKVD was also known for its Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB), which eventually became the Committee for State Security (KGB). In addition to its state security and police functions, however, some of its departments handled other matters, such as fire guards, border guards (NKVD Border Troops) and archives.
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[edit] History and structure
After the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks dissolved the old police and sought the creation of Workers' and Peasants' Militsiya under the supervision of the NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by functions inherited directly from the Imperial Russian MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the new proletarian workforce was largely inexperienced. Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR created a secret political police, the Cheka, led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions, if that was deemed necessary in order to "protect the revolution".
The Cheka was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate or GPU of the NKVD of the RSFSR. Upon the formation of the Soviet Union in 1923, the GPU was transformed into the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya, as well as various other responsibilities.
In 1934, the OGPU was incorporated into the newly-created NKVD of the USSR, becoming the Main Directorate for State Security; the NKVD of the RSFSR ceased to exist and was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR). As a result, the NKVD also became responsible for all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the Gulag) as well as for the regular police.[1]
Since its creation in 1934, the NKVD of the USSR underwent many organizational changes; between 1938 and 1939 alone, the NKVD's structure changed three times.[2]
On February 3, 1941, the Special Sections of the NKVD (responsible for counterintelligence (CI) in the military) became part of the Army and Navy (RKKA and RKKF, respectively). The GUGB was separated from the NKVD and renamed the "People's Commissariat for State Security" (NKGB). Following the outbreak of World War II, the NKVD and NKGB were reunited on 20 July 1941 and CI was returned to the NKVD in January 1942. In April 1943, CI was again transferred to the People's Commissariats (Narkomat) of Defense and the Navy, becoming SMERSH (from Smert' Shpionam or "Death to Spies"); at the same time, the NKVD was again separated from the NKGB.
In 1946, the NKVD of the USSR was renamed as the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), while the NKGB was renamed as the Ministry of State Security (MGB). According to a 1996 radio documentary by the Russian Service of Radio Liberty, the MGB was reduced from being a ministry to a committee because of the fear held by the Soviet leadership (of that era) of the role the MGB might play if the purges were to resume.[citation needed] In 1953, after the arrest of Lavrenty Beria, the MGB was merged back into the MVD. The police and security services were finally split in 1954 to become:
- the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), responsible for the criminal police and correctional facilities; and
- the USSR Committee for State Security (KGB), responsible for the political police, CI, intelligence, personal protection (of the leadership), and confidential communications.
[edit] NKVD activities
The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union. This function was successfully accomplished through massive political repression.
[edit] Repressions and executions
See Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union for detailed articles on the issue.
In implementing Soviet internal policy with respect to perceived enemies of the state ("enemies of the people"), the agency conducted arrests and executions of Soviet and foreign citizens. Millions were rounded up and sent to GULAG camps and hundreds of thousands were executed by the NKVD. Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas ("triplets") — special courts martial. Evidential standards were very low; a tip off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Usage of "physical means of persuasion" (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD itself. Hundreds of mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Documented evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret "plans". Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "public enemies") in a given region (e.g. the quotas for clergy, former nobles etc, regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486.
The purges were organized in a number of waves according to the decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party (e.g. the campaigns among engineers ("Shakhty Case"), party and military elite ("fascist plots"), and medical staff ("Doctors Plot"). Distinctive and permanent purging campaigns were conducted against non-Russian nationalities (including Ukrainians, Poles, Tatars, Germans and many others, who were accused of "bourgeois nationalism", "fascism", etc.) and religious activists.
A number of mass operations of the NKVD were related to the prosecution of whole ethnic categories. Whole populations of certain ethnicities were forcibly resettled. Despite this, ethnic Russians still formed the majority of NKVD victims.
NKVD agents became not only executioners, but also one of the largest groups of victims. The majority of 1930s agency staff (hundreds of thousands), including all commanders, were executed.
During the Spanish Civil War, NKVD agents, acting in conjunction with the Communist Party of Spain, exercised substantial control over the Republican government, using Soviet military aid to help further Soviet influence. The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around Madrid, which were used to detain, torture and kill hundreds of the NKVD's enemies. In June 1937, Andres Nin, the secretary of the anti-Stalinist POUM, was tortured and killed in an NKVD prison.
Cooperation between the NKVD and the Gestapo: In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and the Gestapo meet for one week in Zakopane, for the coordination of the pacification of resistance in Poland; see Gestapo–NKVD Conferences. The Soviet Union delivered hundreds of German and Austrian communists to Gestapo, as unwanted foreigners, together with their documents.
During German-Soviet War, NKVD units were used for rear area security, including stopping desertion. In liberated territory, the NKVD and (later) NKGB carried out mass arrests, deportations and executions, including prosecutions of anti-Nazi resistance movements like the Polish Armia Krajowa. They were also responsible for executing thousands of Polish political prisoners.
The NKVD's intelligence and special operations (Inostrannyi Otdel) unit organized overseas assassinations of ex-Soviet citizens and foreigners who were regarded as enemies of the USSR by Josef Stalin. Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were:
- Leon Trotsky, a personal political enemy of Stalin and his most bitter international critic;
- Boris Savinkov, Russian revolutionary and terrorist (Trust Operation of the GPU);
- Yevhen Konovalets, prominent Ukrainian political and military leader.
- Guy Leland, French anti-Soviet underground poet
After the death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev began a campaign against the NKVD purges. Between the 1950s and 1980s, thousands of victims were legally "rehabilitated" (i.e. acquitted and had their rights restored). Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation due to fear or lack of documents. Still, the rehabilitation was ineffective: in most cases the formulation was "due to lack of evidence of the case of crime", a Soviet legal jargon that effectively said "there was a crime, but unfortunately we cannot prove it". Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation "cleared of all charges".
Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of the particular violation of anybody's rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also "purged" without legitimate criminal investigation and court decision. In the 1990s and 2000s, a small number of ex-NKVD agents living in the Baltic states were convicted of crimes against the local population.
At present, living former agents receive generous pensions and privileges established by the government of the USSR and later confirmed by all of the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. They have not been persecuted in any way, although some have been identified by their victims.
[edit] Intelligence activities
These included:
- Establishment of a widespread spy network within the Comintern;
- Successful infiltration of Richard Sorge, the "Red Orchestra" and other agents who alerted Stalin of the forthcoming Nazi invasion of the USSR and later assisted the Red Army during World War II;
- Recruitment of dozens of other agents who proved their worth in the Cold War-era intelligence operations of the MGB–KGB;
- Espionage concerning the nuclear weapons activities of the USA and Great Britain (Manhattan Project)
- Disruption of several confirmed plots to assassinate Stalin.
[edit] The NKVD and the Soviet economy
The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas. Colonization of Siberia, the North and Far East was among the explicitly stated goals in the very first laws concerning Soviet labor camps. Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of the labor camps were part of the Soviet planned economy, and the NKVD had its own production plans.[citation needed]
The most unusual part of the NKVD's achievements was its role in Soviet scientific and arms development. Many researchers and engineers arrested and tried for political crimes were placed in privileged prisons (much more comfortable than the GULAG), which were colloquially known as sharashkas, where they were forced to work within their speciality. Continuing their studies there and later released, some of them became world leaders in science and technology. Among such sharashka members were Sergey Korolev, the head designer of the Soviet rocket program and first human space flight mission in 1961, and Andrei Tupolev, the famous airplane designer.
After the end of World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry, under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov. Scientists were not prisoners, but the work was coordinated by the NKVD because it was closely connected with the intelligence service and it was needed to ensure security and secrecy of the project.
[edit] See also
- Bykivnia
- Great Purge
- Holodomor
- Katyn massacre
- Kurapaty
- Mass operations of the NKVD
- NKVD buildings
- NKVD prisoner massacres
- Population transfer in the Soviet Union
- Special Council of the NKVD
- USSR Border Troops
- Vinnytsia massacre
[edit] Notes
- ^ At various times, the NKVD had the following Chief Directorates, abbreviated as "ГУ" — главное управление, glavnoye upravleniye.
- ГУГБ — государственная безопасность, of State Security (GUGB, gosudarstvennaya bezopasnost’)
- ГУРКМ — рабоче-крестьянская милиция, of workers and peasants militsiya (radoče-krest'yanskaya militsiya)
- ГУПВО — пограничная и внутренняя охрана, of border and internal guards (pograničnaya i vnytrennyaya okhrana)
- ГУПО — пожарная охрана, of fire guards (požarnaya okhrana)
- ГУШосдор — шоссейные дороги, of highways (šosseyniye dorogi)
- ГУЖД — железные дороги, of railways (železniye dorogi)
- ГУЛАГ — GULAG (Главное Управление Исправительно—Трудовых Лагерей и колоний, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey i kolonii)
- ГЭУ — экономика, of economics (ekonomika)
- ГТУ — транспорт, of transport (transport)
- ГУВПИ — военнопленных и интернированных, of POWs and interned persons (voyennoplennikh i internirovannikh)
- ^
NKVD Organization in 1939
- NKVD management
- People's Commissar for Internal Affairs — Lavrenty Beria
- First Deputy and the head of Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) — Vsevolod Merkulov
- for NKVD troops — Ivan Maslenikov
- for Militsiya — Vasyli Chernyshov
- for Staff — Sergei Kruglov
- NKVD Secretariat — Stepan Mamulov
- Secretariat of Special Council of the NKVD — Vladimir Ivanov
- Special Technical Bureau — Valentin Kravchenko
- Special Bureau — Pyotr Scharia
- NKVD Inspection Group — Nikolai Pavlov
- Special Plenipotentiary — Aleksei Stefanov
- Secretariat of the First Deputy for GUGB Task — Vsevolod Merkulov
- Inspection Group — Vsevolod Merkulov
- Special Secretariat — Vasyli Chernyshov
- Section for Organization of Labor Force — Vsevolod Merkulov
- Permanent Technical Committee — ?
- Section for Repair Work — Pyotr Vainschtein
- Supply Section — M. Mituschyn
- Department of Railroad Transportation and Water — ?
- Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) — Vsevolod Merkulov
- 1st Special Department — Leonid Baschtakov
- 2nd Special Department — Evgeny Lapishin
- 3rd Special Department — Dmitry Shadrin
- 4th Special Department — Mikhail Filimonov
- 5th Special Department — Vladimir Vladimirov
- Department of Mobilization — Ivan Scherediega
- Department of Staff — Sergei Kruglov
- The Chief Directorate of Economics (GEU) — Bogdan Kobulov
- The Chief Directorate of Transportation (GTU) — Solomon Milshtein
- The Chief Directorate of Prison (GTU) — Aleksandr Galkin
- The Chief Directorate of Administration (AČU) — J.Schumbatov
- The Chief Directorate of Archive (GAU) — Yosif Nikitynsky
- The Chief Directorate of fire guards (GUPO) — Nikolay Istomin
- The Chief Directorate of Militsiya (GURKM) — Pavel Zujev
- The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies (GULAG) — Vasyli Chernyshov
- The Chief Directorate of Highways (GUŠOSDOR) — Vsevolod Fedotov
- Directorate of Kremlin Commander — Nikolai Spyrydonov
- The Chief Directorate of Border Troops (GUPW) — Grigori Sokolov
- The Chief Directorate of NKVD Troops for Railroad Protection — Aleksandr Guliev
- The Chief Directorate of NKVD Troops for Escort — Vladimir Sharapov
- The Chief Directorate of NKVD Troops for Protection of Industrial Enterprise — I. Kozik
- The Chief Directorate of NKVD Operative Troops — P. Ariemyev
- The Chief Directorate of Military Provision — Aleksandr Wurgaft
- The Chief Directorate of Military Construction — Ivan Luby
- Directorate for Prisoners of War — Pyotr Soprunienko
- Directorate for Construction in the Far East — Ivan Nikishev
- Main Fanacial Department — Lazar Bierienzon
- Main Department for Civil Status — Fyedor Sokolov
- ^ The Gulag Collection: Paintings of Nikolai Getman.
[edit] External links
- NKVD.org: information site about the NKVD
- (Russian) MVD: 200-year history of the Ministry
- (Russian) MEMORIAL: history of the OGPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB
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