Target selection during the Great Terror has received a lot of attention over the past 20 years as large amounts of material has been released by the FSB’s central and regional archives, as well as the almost total declassification of police materials in Ukraine and Georgia. In the interest of simplicity, I’ll focus on the “Kulak operation”, NKVD Order No. 00447, which was launched in July-August 1937 against a wide variety of different targets across the country.
In this operation regional departments of the NKVD (Hereon written as UNKVD) targeted “kulaks”, criminals, and other enemies based on criteria handed down from Moscow and categorized them as 1 (To be shot) or 2 (To be imprisoned) based on their “danger” to society. After a brief investigation, Troikas composed of the UNKVD chief, regional Party leader, and procurator would sentence victims in absentia without trial, usually judging dozens or hundreds of cases at a time.
From the start, the operation by design regionalized target selection, investigation, and sentencing, as had occurred with the first “kulak operation” launched in early 1930 during collectivization. Moscow gave the Troikas final authority for sentencing without review or appeal, though it continued to give instructions on which population groups to focus on and which to exclude from Troika judgments.
Because of the number of categories sent from Moscow and their vagueness, the NKVD’s local departments chose targets based primarily on local needs and demographics. Some districts focused on petty criminals, others individual farmers who hadn’t joined the collective farm, other industrial and defense enterprises, and others still local religious groups and their followers. The NKVD correctly interpreted the operation as a chance to conduct a broad social cleansing of all “enemies”, resolving social and economic problems using mass repression.
Laying the Groundwork
While the methodological/ideological origins of the “kulak operation” began much earlier, its bureaucratic genesis started in Summer 1937. On July 2, 1937, Stalin sent a telegram to all regional Party and UNKVD leaders to compile lists of "kulaks and criminals", to be shot or exiled by Troikas depending on how inveterately "anti-Soviet" they were: (1)
It has been noticed that most of the former kulaks and criminals who were deported at one time from different regions to the northern and Siberian regions, and then after the expiration of the expulsion period, returned to their regions, are the main instigators of all kinds of anti-Soviet and sabotage crimes, both in collective farms and state farms, as well as in transport and in some areas of industry.
The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks invites all secretaries of regional and krai organizations and all regional, krai and republican representatives of the NKVD to register all kulaks and criminals who have returned to their homeland so that the most hostile of them are immediately arrested and shot in the order of administrative procedure of their cases through troikas, and the rest of the less active, but still hostile elements would be exiled at the direction of the NKVD.
The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks proposes to submit to the Central Committee within five days the composition of the troikas, as well as the number of those to be shot, as well as the number of those to be deported.
Yezhov, People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, sent out his own telegram the following day directing regional NKVD leaders to: (2)
Upon receipt of this, take into account all the kulaks and criminals who have settled in your region, who returned after serving their sentences and fled from the camps and exile.
Further on, he ordered all kulaks and criminals be categorized in the same manner as Stalin's telegram directed. Data collection was supposed to be completed by July 8th.
The telegram immediately received a variety of responses asking that the upcoming repressions be extended to different target groups which were nearly always approved. For example: (3)
Agree with the proposal of the Central Committee of Turkmenistan to include repression and expulsion of members of the [nationalist counterrevolutionary] organizations "Turkmen - Azatlygi", Muslim clergy, etc., instructing the NKVD to determine the number to be shot and deported.
Other approved requests included adding harvest-related sabotage and espionage, Gulag inmates, various “counterrevolutionary and insurgent organizations” and families of gang members, immigrants from the Western border regions, lamas and other minority religious leaders, and many other categories. (4)
Requests to give the UNKVD extensions on the due date for numbers to be repressed in order to collect more data were also received and approved. (5) Leplevsky, People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs for Ukraine, noted in his summary of data from July 10th (2 days late already) that the Donbas and Dnepropetrovsk regions’ numbers of kulaks and criminals to be sentenced were incomplete and would be updated. (6)
On July 16th, the NKVD held a conference in Moscow at which the parameters of the operation were discussed. Regional UNKVD leaders were invited to discuss problems in their areas of responsibility and present plans for the upcoming conduct of the operation. (7) The NKVD of Ukraine, for example, attended the meeting with the following points of clarification: (8)
- Families of kulaks and criminals of the 1st and 2nd category.
- Should the troikas judge all those arrested in categories 1 and 2.
- On the procedure for filing cases (in the usual manner, with the sanction of the prosecutor).
- On the order of dispatch (in general trains, in prison cars, according to the orders of the Gulag, from prisons).
- If the family is exiled, then at the same time and in the same direction as the head of the family?
- What is the minimum property families can take with them if they are deported?
- How to [deal] with families that include military personnel and law enforcement?
- Whether persons with obvious signs of disability are included in the second category.
- Should kulaks who at one time evaded exile be included?
- How to [deal with] priests who have returned from exile and are demontsrating counterrevolutionary activity.
No minutes of this meeting have been found, but testimony from participants as well as what was repeated in subsequent meetings between UNKVD leaders and their own subordinates in late July and early August suggests a broad outline. Along with presentation of operational plans and clarification of key questions, which outlined the procedure for the operation, Yezhov likely also approved the use of torture at the conference. Regional meetings of the UNKVD over the following weeks repeated that physical coercion was sanctioned. (9)
Again quoting Leplevsky, local NKVD leaders were expected to have complete data of target groups brought to Moscow by this point: (10)
You must arrive in Moscow for the meeting by 7/16, having the plan of operation and all accounting materials in your hands.
However, as the operational plan for Ukraine drawn up before the conference notes, full accounting of all targets was still incomplete. It also provides a useful window into how initial targets were determined: (11)
When preparing an operation against kulaks and criminals, widely use materials on kulaks, members of various religious sects, contacts of foreign consulates, persons sued for espionage, recipients of "Hitler aid" [Nazi food aid to ethnic German farmers in the USSR during the 1931-33 famine], former political bandits.
Thus, for the first wave of arrests, the UNKVD intended to use their existing card catalogue of enemies to carry out mass arrests of those they already had registered. This is confirmed by materials from other regions, discussed later.
Sources:
(1) Khaustov, V.N., Naumov, V.P., and Plotnikova, N.S., Лубянка. Сталин и Главное управление госбезопасности НКВД. Архив Сталина. Документы высших органов партийной и государственной власти. 1937—1938, pages 234-235.
(2) Junge, Mark, «Через трупы врага на благо народа». «Кулацкая операция» в Украинской ССР 1937-1941 гг. Т. 1: 1937 г., pages 61-62.
(3) Khaustov, Лубянка, 240, original request in Petrov, N.V. *Сталинский План По Уничтожению Народа: Подготовка и реализация приказа НКВД № 00447 «Об операции по репрессированию бывших кулаков, уголовников и других антисоветских элементов» *, document 6, accessed here.
(4) Ibid., pages 241-242 and Junge M., Bordyugov G. A., and Binner R., Вертикаль большого террора: история операции по приказу НКВД Но 00447, pages 89-90.
(5) Ibid., 239.
(6) Junge, Кулацкая операция, 70-71.
(7) Danilov, V.P., Трагедия советской деревни. Коллективизация и раскулачивание Документы и материалы Том 5 1937 -1939 Книга 1. 1937, page 327.
(8) Ibid., 83.
(9) Jansen, Mark, and Petrov, N.V., * «Сталинский питомец» - Николай Ежов*, 83-85 provides a summary of what we know about the conference. It should be cautioned that the specific details come from the interrogation of arrested participants in 1939-40, so what they say should be viewed skeptically. The approval of torture is corroborated in a meeting of the UNKVD of the West Siberian Territory on July 25th, 1937.
(10) Junge, Кулацкая операция, 40.
(11) Ibid., 74-81.