Scholars of Russia have been committed to unveiling hidden connections between the administrative workings of Soviet law enforcement agencies (OGPU-NKVD) and Joseph Stalin’s mass operations of 1936-1938, i.e., the “Great Terror” (David-Fox 2023). The Great Terror was administered by general decrees enacted by the Soviet political police—the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)[1]—and affirmed by the Politburo and operational directives ordered by Stalin and Nikolay Ezhov (the head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938) (Khlevniyuk and Belokowsky 2021; Junge and Binner 2003; Viola 2017). Starting in August 1937, purges were conducted specifically under the operative order № 00447, which caused many people to face arrest, execution, or repression. To fulfill the order, the NKVD established regional quotas determining the number of people who should be arrested, exiled, or executed.
Before the great purge, changes in the legislature had already prepared the Soviet justice system for the Terror. In particular, various extrajudicial bodies were created to investigate “political crimes,” in complement to the existing Soviet legal structures. In the USSR, political—or “counter-revolutionary”—crimes were defined as those against the state and outlined in Article 58 of the 1922 Soviet penal code. Those crimes were deemed to be different from so-called “ordinary crime,” which were not considered to be directed against the state (Rebitschek 2019). The definition of political crimes was gradually refined, leading to the concept of “prophylactic punishment,” which involved punishing people only on the likelihood that they could be politically disloyal. Thus, people could be indicted based on their political, social, and criminal profiles rather than on the actual facts and circumstances of a particular case. As a consequence, during the mid-1930s, an increasing number of people came to be charged under Article 58, which became one of the most powerful weapons for the Soviet state to prosecute real and imagined “enemies of the state” (Junge, Savin, and Teplyakov 2023).
This article problematizes what separates political from common criminal offenses in the Soviet criminal justice prior to and during the Great Terror. At the time, multiple levels of jurisdiction and courts coexisted, such as provincial people’s courts and prosecutor’s offices. These worked along other institutions such as the central political police (NKVD) and extra-judicial bodies, such as the troikas’ courts. Early in the Stalinist period, penal laws were politically charged but conceptually evasive, which complicated criminal procedures, especially in Soviet provinces outside Moscow. Regional juridical bodies such as the district people’s courts, the NKVD Investigatory Departments, the procuracy, and the troikas’ courts all had conflicting visions about whether a crime should be considered political or common. As a result, courts often conflicted in their verdicts. As an example, in the region of Karelia (KASSR, Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), the judicial administration struggled in applying Moscow’s procedural norms of investigation, which resulted in the constant recategorization of the same crimes from common to political and vice versa. To illustrate this legal uncertainty, I analyze three criminal cases that went in front of the courts in Karelia These three cases were investigated and adjudicated in 1936 and 1937 by various judicial bodies: the investigative department of the forced labor enterprise of the White Sea-Baltic Combine, which was responsible for investigating cases concerning its prisoners and fugitives, local district militia sections (ROMs),[2] troikas’[3] courts, and Soviet district courts. The three cases reflect the different approaches used by the Soviet legal administrations to “cleanse” society and socially control behaviors that were deemed to constitute deviancy.
From “common” to “political” criminal
Throughout the Soviet Union, ROMs and NKVD offices brought a massive number of criminal cases to be tried by the troikas’ courts; many of these cases resulted in a death sentence for the accused. On May 6, 1933, only seven months after the start of his sentence, Afanasy Afinogenovich Taran, a Ukrainian man born in 1893 in the village of Morozovka, (Ukraine), escaped from the White Sea-Baltic Combine (BBK NKVD), a forced labor enterprise created in 1934 to develop the recently constructed White Sea-Baltic Canal and the area adjacent to it. Married with four children, he was a serednyak (middle-income peasant) and a carpenter, and he “had served in the old army as a telephone operator.” In 1932, during the Ukrainian Famine, he had been sentenced under Article 119-67 of the Criminal Code to eight years of imprisonment in the Combine labor camp for anti-Soviet agitation and “resistance to the expropriation of bread from individual peasants” (Arkhiv MVD RK. F. 69. Op. 01. D. 901. L. 3). In April 1937, four years after his escape, he was apprehended in the Vinnitsa Region (Ukraine). After his capture, he was charged as a common criminal, based on the fact that he had lived as a fugitive since his escape although wanted by the authorities. Moreover, while on the run, Taran acquired illegal identification papers. When interrogated, he explained that he had been able to obtain jobs easily, for example working at a sawmill in Kerch; and the case investigator, somewhat sympathetically admitted that Taran had in fact led a decent life since his escape.
I was driven to escape because I had a big family, and my wife was sick; so I was forced to run away out of necessity in order to materially support my family… In my home village I got a job at a peat extraction site, and it is there that I met a worker, Ponomarchuk, and for a bottle of vodka bought a passport using his name… I completely admit I am guilty of escaping. But after I escaped I worked honestly, in good faith, and never betrayed the Soviet values, which I respect deeply.
Soon, however, the captured fugitive was sent from Ukraine back to the Combine for trial, in application of Article 78 of the Penal Code on prison break that mandated that cases concerning escapees must be heard by a court in the district where fugitives had been incarcerated. There, the investigation became political in nature based on a report by the BBK Criminal Investigation Department where elements of the case that portrayed Taran in a positive light were removed. Instead, the report mentioned that “In the course of the investigation, it has transpired that Taran is a politically unreliable person; while living as a clandestine, he periodically visited the village of Morozovka and took part in criminal, counter-revolutionary conversations and intentions with his wife” (L. 8). However, the case notes do not specify what precisely constituted the “criminal” aspect of the conversations, and no other information is provided in support of the statement. It appears that Taran’s secret meetings with his wife were reinterpreted as engagements in a “counter-revolutionary” plot. The case was thus handed over to the Combine’s troika, which, according to transcripts dated August 26, 1937, sentenced Taran to death for being an experienced “counter-revolutionary” and an “anti-Soviet element.” He was executed on the same day (L. 7).
The case of Afanasy Taran shows how an individual who was first charged as a common criminal offender was arbitrarily later charged and executed as a political criminal in spite of a lack of proof and any new element in the case. At the time, the BBK NKVD investigators were generally pressured to transfer and increased number of cases to the troika’s court, and it is likely that Taran’s case was part of this trend. In the late 1950s, Taran’s daughter desperately tried to learn about the fate of her father. In response, she was told that he had died of pneumonia on September 4, 1941 while serving his term in a penal institution (L. 14). This was the standard lie provided to the relatives of victims of political repression at that time. However, years later, Taran’s name appeared in the local “memory book” listing those victims of political repressions who were executed during the Great Terror. (Chukhin and Dmitriev 2002).
Another case showing how a common crime was transformed into a political offense is that of Musa Kurban Gadjiev, who was moved from a correctional labor facility in Makhachkala, Dagestan, to the same White-Sea Baltic forced labor camp as Taran. Gadjiev was an ethnic Avar, born in the Dagestani village of Korota in 1905. The archival documents about his indictment reveal that he was an “unspecialized laborer” and a descendant of a landowner. Moreover, he was not a party member, was literate, and never served in the army. He had a remarkable career in various state administrations, for example as a criminal investigator. For several years he even worked as Chief of Police at the district level and served in the NKVD from 1925 to 1934. On August 1, 1937, he was arrested by that same NKVD for murdering his wife. In September 1937, the murder was redefined as a political crime, and he was sentenced to ten years in a NKVD correctional labor camp by the Dagestani NKVD troika for being a “counter-revolutionary element” (Arkhiv MVD RK. F. 72. Op. 01. D. 88. L. 1). In addition to being charged for the murder of his wife, he was also charged for attempting “to undermine a campaign by the USSR Defense Loan for the collection of funds by withholding a government telegram about it on August 1, 1937.” The troika also vaguely accused him of attempting “to propagate a counter-revolutionary slogan.” However, there was no actual evidence to support this charge.
Gadjiev was sent to Segezhlag, a prison camp in Karelia. According to the record, while in that camp, he behaved “in a satisfactory manner, incurring no penalties, worked as a digger and then as a concrete maker, and he met his production quota by 113%” (L. 39, 55). On multiple occasions he unsuccessfully attempted to be reassigned from general works to an administrative position and appeal his sentence. His appeals were rejected “for lack of grounds” (L. 59). Both Taran’s and Gadjiev’s cases illustrate what scholars of the Great Terror have asserted, i.e., that people were sentenced neither based on established legal norms nor on the facts of their cases. While legal norms did exist, they were fluid and loosely interpreted by judges who gained power.
From “political” to “common” criminal
The vagueness, fluidity, and arbitrariness of the Soviet criminal justice at the dawn of and during the “Great Terror” manifested not only when common crimes became infused with political meaning, but also when people initially charged with having committed a political crime saw their offenses transformed into common crimes by various courts and prosecutors’ offices. The latter scenario is illustrated by the case of Fyodor Kalinin and Ivan Tsvetkov, both residents of Soviet Karelia in the 1930s. On January 6, 1937, after a preliminary investigation, the Pryazhinsky District NKVD Department (RO NKVD) reclassified a criminal case involving Kalinin and Tsvetkov based on Article 58 part 10 of the Soviet penal code (pertaining to counter-revolutionary propaganda). Originally, the two defendants were accused of hooliganism, which was considered to be a common crime under the law (74 part 2 of the RSFSR Penal Code). Such crime called for a sentence of two to three years of imprisonment in a correctional labor camp (Arkhiv MVD RK. F. 72. Op. 01. D. 1149. L. 4). Both defendants had been trained as tractor drivers and worked at the Syamozero tractor station. They were of peasant origin, had not finished the fifth grade, and were not members of the Communist Party. Although they were initially accused of hooliganism, they were later charged for sabotage, considered to have disturbed an event at a local community center where 200 workers were to meet to discuss Stalin’s constitution on November 28, 1936. According to the charge, the two defendants caused the event to be canceled. The record shows that in fact the event had been announced as a movie showing, to which people had bought tickets. When it became clear that there would be no movie, Kalinin and Tsvetkov, along with everyone else, voiced their discontent and the event was canceled. Kalinin and Tsvetkov were arrested because they were considered to be especially instrumental in the cancellation: they were shouting the loudest. In fact, it is likely that they were selected randomly as scapegoats for the government’s failure to organize a propaganda event. The defendants denied any premeditated plot and claimed that they had simply come to watch the movie, like all other workers present that night. When Kalinin was interrogated about what unfolded that night, he responded that
When the station’s party organizer Fomichev started a meeting to discuss Stalin’s report on the new constitution, the audience rumbled. Immediately, Tsvetkov spoke up and demanded that the discussion be postponed and rescheduled for the next day. After some time, I spoke up and said that I would watch the picture because I had bought a ticket, but that I would not listen to constitutions [sic] for money.
Documents in the archive show that only three people spoke out against the cancellation of the political discussion: Ivan Fomichev (the party organizer, or partyinyi organizator, charged with transmitting messages from the Communist Party to the masses), a cultural officer, and one worker (L. 18).
In this case, the NKVD investigator was primarily set on exposing the incident as a counter-revolutionary crime committed against the Soviet state and to prosecute the offenders. NKVD officers were indeed well trained ideologically to operate a “cleansing” of Soviet society by eliminating individuals deemed to be “enemies of the people.” What really happened on that night was that two events had been planned, a workers’ meeting to discuss the constitution and the viewing of a commercial movie. According to a party organizer involved in the event, the workers had been poorly informed about the time and purpose of the meeting, as no announcement had been posted anywhere (L. 32), hence the confusion.
While he initially denied any political purpose, in the course of subsequent interrogations, Kalinin was pressured into changing his testimony and confessed that his speech at the meeting was a conscious attempt at political “counter-revolutionary agitation” (L. 18), which made his case fall under Article 58 part 10 of the Soviet penal code. However, he did not admit to having participated in a conspiracy with Tsvetkov, which would have allowed the state to also charge Tsvetkov under the same law. A further investigation revealed that Kalinin also recently refused to perform in an amateur play organized by local Communist Party officials as a “cultural service to workers”, which Kalinin explained as a protest against the insufficient wages he was receiving that left him unable to even buy food (L. 19). But the NKVD investigator interpreted this refusal and the fact that Kalinin had discussed his pay with others as acts of counter-revolutionary propaganda. Altogether, these cumulated charges constituted enough grounds for the investigators to charge him for “counter-revolutionary” propaganda under Article 58 part 10.
However, after the investigation was completed, the case was remanded to the NKVD chief of the AKSSR for further consideration, then in turn remanded to the assistant prosecutor of the AKSSR. When the latter reviewed the case on February 9, 1937, he surprisingly did not rule in support of the counter-revolutionary charge: he reclassified Kalinin’s and Tsvetkov’s charges as hooliganism. The case was finally heard during the session of the People’s Court of the Pryazhinsky District of the Karelian oblast, which agreed with the latest classification, rejecting a politicized reading of the case. In March 1937, Kalinin was sentenced to three years in prison without parole, while Tsvetkov was sentenced to two years—the usual sentences in cases of hooliganism. Both defendants appealed their respective verdicts (L. 91, 92), and the appellate court that heard the case in Petrozavodsk later that month overturned the sentence, freeing Kalinin and Tsvetkov and closing the case. However, the Prosecutor’s Office overruled that decision at the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Karelian ASSR, invoking that by overturning the initial ruling, the court of appeals disregarded the dangerousness of Kalinin’s and Tsvetkov’s actions and their prior disciplinary violations. The Presidium thus ruled to uphold the initial sentence. This case is an example of how during the Great Terror, different judicial authorities could qualify and requalify the same offense as either a common crime or a political crime, based on different interpretation of the facts.
Mass repression was rampant in Russia in the late 1930s, which was also a time of transition for Soviet law enforcement agencies. This repression often led to the fusion of political and common crimes in provincial legal discourses, which led to confusion in the justice system. Moreover, increasing pressure was placed by the state on judicial officials to accuse people of political charges whenever possible. However, conflicts often arose between this state mandate and local prosecutors and people’s courts, which did not always support this witch-hunt and chose to follow the normal course of criminal procedures. In addition, the refashioning of criminal cases had a territorial component, as cases that were moved from one Soviet republic to another could be recast as political locally to fulfil quotas.
This text is the result of a research project supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Dusseldorf, Germany.
Oksana Ermolaeva has a PhD in the history of Eastern and Central Europe from the Central European University, Budapest. She is a visiting researcher at the Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, and a grantee of the Scholars-at-Risk Research Fellowship from Gerda Henkel Stiftung, 2023-2025, Dusseldorf, Germany.
[1] Established in 1917 under the authority of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, this agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country’s prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions were dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934.
[2]The Soviet “militsiia” functioned as criminal police and reported to the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD); the NKVD supervised the Central Militsiia Administration, GUM. They carried out preliminary investigations and assisted investigations by the procuracy.
[3]NKVD troika in Soviet history, were the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD ) court made up of three officials who issued sentences to people after simplified, speedy investigations and without a public trial. In summer 1937 troikas were created throughout the USSR on the levels of republic, krai and oblast.
References
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Junge, Mark, Andrei Savin, and Aleksei Teplyakov. 2023. “The Extrajudicial Special Assembly.” In Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations, ed. Michael David-Fox, 24-48. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press.
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Published on August 15, 2024.
