Change of course

S. Bilokin

Meanwhile, a sharp change of policies and ideals in general became increasingly apparent. Based on numerous signs, the dates can be approximately established. One sign was the dismissal of General Commissar of State Security Genrikh (Heinrich) Yagoda as U.S.S.R. People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, to which post Nikolay Yezhov was appointed on the very same day, September 26, 1936. Yagoda would be executed on March 15, 1938. It is safe to say that Lenin’s peculiar brand of Communism, known as Bolshevism, was also a victim of the Great Terror. Certainly, for all practical purposes, it was finished in about 1938 – the memorable year whose events also prepared the ground for liquidation of the Comintern which would follow a few years later.

The professional revolutionaries – the old Leninist Bolsheviks who had destroyed the Russian Empire – and the Cheka veterans of Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky and Yagoda were unable to stop. A German Communist who defected from Stalin to Hitler characterized them in these terms:

“These men had no profession. They had never learned to earn an honest living and had no intention of ever going back to such work in the midst of their fellow citizens. For all of their lives they remained destroyers who had never created anything, true professional revolutionaries. [255]”

For a certain time they enjoyed the fruits of their victory, but this could not last forever. Since a world revolution had not worked, the idea of building socialism in a single country looked increasingly appealing to the top hieararchy. The logic of events induced those in charge of the state to regard themselves essentially as successors to the builders of the former empire. This certainly called for many a major change. The pendulum swung the other way. As early as the beginning of 1934 the political scientist Yevhen Onatskyi, who had been watching the developments from Rome, stated: “Stalin stopped believing in the world revolution a long time ago. [256]” But not all Bolsheviks had dreamed about such a revolution from the beginning. In the fall of 1923 Zinovyev confided in Yuriy Annenkov in a train car: “Revolution, International – they’ve been great events, of course. But I’ll break into sobs if they touch Paris! [257]” Apparently, he believed that only Russia could be sacrificed for his party’s experiments. The same was probably true of Trotsky. Expelled abroad, he did not try to fan the flames of a Communist revolution in any of the countries where he lived in exile and where his followers were present in greater or lesser numbers. His undivided attention was riveted to the U.S.S.R.

It is common knowledge that Lenin viewed creation of socialism in an isolated country (without a world revolution) a hopeless undertaking. Therefore, Stalin could only begin to effect his turnabout by refurbishing the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. This was done by the simple expedient of deleting Lenin’s statements to that effect from his published works. One of such statements could be found in a newspaper report about Lenin’s speech on his government’s internal and foreign policies which he delivered at a session of the Petrograd Soviet. As reprinted in the 3rd edition of Lenin’s Works, the report quotes Lenin as saying: “The task of construction wholly depends on how soon a revolution will win in the most important countries of Europe. It is only after such a victory that we will be able to tackle the task of construction in earnest. [258]” The report was duly reprinted in later editions, but there we no longer find these two sentences [259]. In another instance, on November 6, 1920, Lenin addressed a plenary session of the Moscow Soviet. According to the text of the same 3rd edition, he said:

“If we now cast a general glance at the international relation – and we have always stressed that we regard it from an international point of view, and that it is impossible to accomplish such an undertaking as a socialist revolution in one country – and look at the history of wars [… and so forth]. [260]”

Readers perusing any of the subsequent editions, including the so-called Complete Works, did not know what they missed – the subordinate clause in italics was not there anymore [261]. It had last appeared in print in 1929 and 1932. Volume 24 was released after Vol. 25, three years behind schedule, and V. V. Adoratskii replaced Bukharin on its editorial board. Krupskaya could not fail to know that it was Stalin himself who did the censoring. After all, she is known to have remarked grimly that he would think nothing of putting Lenin in jail.

Once we are at it, we cannot fail to mention that Lenin had not been more averse to a little editing now and then than his disciple. Only it was Marx whom he censored. It is common knowledge that Marx had believed there existed only two classes – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which were to divide the stratifying peasantry between themselves. Striving to seize power in a country where three quarters of the population were peasants, the Marxist Lenin had no choice but to revise Marx’s doctrine. He spoke of a “workers’ and peasants’ power” and appropriated the program of his competitors the SRs calling for repartition of the landlords’ estates among the peasants [262]. So we cannot but share the opinion of one of the leading anti-Communists, A. Avtorkhanov, who devoted several of his books to the political career of Stalin:

“Both the intriguers and Stalin struggled not only for power but also for a certain course of the Kremlin’s internal and external policy. Stalin did not kill anyone for the love of killing. Nor was he a sadist and much less a paranoiac. […] all deeds, actions and crimes of Stalin were purposeful, logical and strictly principled. […] Stalin was a politician using criminal means to achieve his ends. […] Purpose-oriented and justified actions with a genius’s gift of foresight. [263]”

Certain works by Marx and Engels were banned in the U.S.S.R.

It is not a matter of dispute that in the early 1930’s the Soviet Union’s internal policy underwent basic changes. That turning point has been neither adequately described nor properly understood by the posttotalitarian society. Sovietologists of the older generation (Hans Koch) defined the change of course of 1932–34 as a “switch to nationalism. [264]”

What is meant here is, as a rule, the Russian imperial nationalism. Paradoxically, archive records indicate that the regime at least paid lip service to the Ukrainian national sentiment. At an interrogation conducted on August 19, 1937 Senior Lt. Meyerovich of Dept. 4, DSS, Ukr.S.S.R. NKVD hurled this accusation at Lev Krayniy: “The prosecution has evidence that while you worked at the Ukr.S.S.R. Procurator’s Office you tried to hound out Ukrainian cadres: Havrysh, Lazarenko, Blantyuk, Berehulko, Rybalko. [265]” And Krayniy had to defend himself as best he could. Denouncing Postyshev [266] at the 13th Congress of the CPU, Kosior [267] said things that he was sure would be received with favor upstairs:

“Comr. Postyshev got a dressing-down from Comrade Stalin more than once. What for? For his improper attitude to the Ukrainian cadres, for failure to understand that the way of bringing these cadres closer to Bolshevism, to himself, is somewhat different, and that one must not just give it to them from the shoulder – here’s how and that’s it. [268]”

A former member of the Kiev city nomenklatura, one P. H. Marchenko, wrote a highly revealing letter to Stalin from a camp on the Kolyma River:

“In 1936, as a result of your persistent demand for advancement of Ukrainian Bolshevist cadres, I was nominated, on Comr. Postyshev’s proposal, for department head of the City Party Committee, and in October 1936 was elected second secretary of the Kiev City Party Committee. After arrival to Kiev of Kudryavtsev, who wanted to transfer Bondarenko [269] from Kharkov as secretary of the City Party Committee, I was appointed head of the propaganda department of the CPU(B) Regional Committee. Dear Iosif Vissarionovich! I have never belonger to any counterrevolutionary organizations. I have never been a Trotskyist and never will be […]. I was brought up in the spirit of utter devotion to the Fatherland, the Party, and you. My whole conscious life I have been fighting against all enemies of socialism. You opened up brilliant prospects for advancement before me. [270]”

Marchenko had begun to make a career at an early age, and his rise had been fast – thanks to the purges. Apparently, he knew which way the wind was blowing and was undoutedly familiar with Stalin’s memorable letter.

“I am all for reinforcing the composition of the Secretariat and Politburo of the CPU(B) CC, and also the top Soviet leadership by Ukrainian elements, [271]”

the Leader had written to Kaganovich, his man in Ukraine. On the other hand, Marchenko was informed of the resolutions of the CPU(B) 13th Congress [May–June 1937] and took them very seriously. These resolutions spoke of

“insufficient as yet Ukrainianization of the Party, Soviet, and particularly labor and Komsomol organizations, insufficient advancement of Bolshevik Ukrainian cadres to high Party, Soviet, managerial, and labor union positions. [272]”

Most people, however, will find it strange that one Petro Marchenko, writing to Stalin from the Kolyma River and pleading for mercy, should seriously think that his being Ukrainian may be viewed as an asset. (Stalin was probably the last man to be moved by that kind of argumentation.)

New, utterly fantastic charges were concocted to get rid of those members of the Bolshevik nomenklatura who were unable or unwilling to change with the official Party line. For example, Robert Birgel, a section cheif of Department 2, SSD, Ukr.S.S.R. NKVD, was charged with high treason [273] (“treason of the Motherland” in official terminology). The previous personnel of the punitive services had not made such accusations. Their ideology and, in a way, psychology can be inferred from the typical code names they used for their “operations”: “The proud ones” (1927) [274], “Novices” (1931; a case of a group of students) [275], “Moles” (1936) [276], “Splinters” (1938) [277], “The Resurrected,” “Disseminators,” [278] “Renegades. [279]” Suddenly, in 1938 there appeared a wholly new kind of designation: “Enemies of Ukraine [280]” a sinister variation of the good, old “enemies of the people. [281]”

We have already noted that the Communist authorities carried out the reprisals in full accordance with the Marxist-Leninst theory, targeting the “remnants of the former, destroyed hostile classes – former nobles, landowners, bourgeois, czarist officials, officers, and their children.” The murderous Communist ideology produced mountains of “special registration” cards, files and lists that doomed the upper strata of civil society to wholesale extermination with an increasingly large portion of the new, Soviet intelligetsia thrown in for good measure. The author Mykhaylo Romanenko, writing in 1951, summed it up:

“A new type of criminal – ‘enemy of the people’ – was fabricated in 1937. Hundreds of thousands of the state, party, managerial and labor apparatuses of all ranks and every stripe, from members of collective farm boards and village Soviets to people’s commissars and party magnates inclusive. [282]”

A. Avtorkhanov remarked wryly that Stalin’s

“alchemical laboratory […] established a new category of a wholly different nature […] – ‘persons holding anti-Soviet views or potential enemies of Soviet power’.” This broad definition could cover “second-generation proletarians, collective farmers of the Stakhanovite brand, inveterate Bolsheviks, the reddest of professors, renowned heroes of the Civil War, […] prostitutes from the Intourist […]. [283]”

Yevgeniya Ginzburg described the atmosphere:

“After every trial things took an increasingly tough turn. The horrible term ‘enemy of the people’ became part of our lives. By some monstrous logic every region and national republic had to have ‘enemies’ of their own not to lag behind the center. It was as in any campaign, like, say, grain procurement or deliveries of milk. [284]”

After changes in ideology, the leadership had to be replaced to switch the train to the new track. Before his death, Molotov told sensational things about those who had come to power as a result of all those changes:

“All the three of us had been singers in church – Stalin, Voroshilov, and myself. In different places, of course. Stalin in Tbilisi, Voroshilov in Lugansk, and I in my Nolinsk. This wasn’t when we were in the Politburo but much earlier. (Laughter.) Stalin sang quite well.

“In the Politburo, too, we had to sing when Zhdanov played the piano and we were sitting at table…

“The piano came after we’d had a little to drink. Voroshilov sang. He had a good ear. So the three of us sang: ‘May Thine prayer be uttered…’ and so on. Very good music, church singing. […] I must say Stalin wasn’t a militant atheist. […]. That’s true, we sometimes sang church songs. After dinner. We used to sing White Guards’ songs, too. Stalin had a pleasant voice… [285]” Here the interviewer noted: “Our military leaders told me that when Stalin wished them success before major battles he would usually say: ‘Well, God grant!’ or ‘Well, God help you!’” [286]

To be sure, Stalin’s propensity for church fraseology had been noticed before. O. Semenenko observed discerningly in connection with the infamous “Law of the Ears [287]”: “Sacred socialist property as Stalin called it with that seminary-student style of his was placed under special close guard. [288]” On September 29, 1936 the Moscow Politburo decreed that the “counterrevolutionary Trotskyist-Zinovyevist elements” be treated as foreign agents, spies, and saboteurs. The Tatar historian Bulat Sultanbekov noted:

“The very style of this document and its ‘catechismal’ phrases indicate that most probably it was dictated by Stalin, maybe right there during the session. [289]”

The program for removal of the “Old Bolsheviks” was aimed at their eventual physical liquidation. Before they could be shot, however, they had to be vilified, and their special Bolshevik morals, supposed to be “subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle,” called in question. At a closed Party meeting of the Kiev Regional Militia Department, held over Saturday the 17th and Monday the 19th of July, 1937, a woman named Krauklis did the usual penance:

“I just can’t imagine how we failed to see that we’d gotten into such a gang. Both my husband [290] and I are of course guilty of not having understood it before and not having reported what we knew. The following people used to attend Balitskii’s parties at his dacha: Rubinshteyn, the right hand of Balitskii; Bachinskii, the inspirer of those parties; Sharov, Slovinskii, Pysmennyi, Tsiklis, Kozelskii, Aleksandrovskii, Kupchik, Yakir, Postyshev; Comr. Kosior came sometimes. Staffers who used to come there were department heads of the People’s Commissariat and higher. Also, Yevgenyev, who lived beyond his means, often came.”

This inexplicit whining of Krauklis was then deciphered in the speech of her formal superior, Olexandr Ryabotenko: [291]

“[…] at Balitskii’s dacha they staged orgies and drinking bouts, made women drunk and reduced them to such a state that they wouldn’t even know with whom they did it. Postyshev, Yakir, and others came there. Tsiklis was the procurer, and Bachinskii the organizer. What Comr. Krauklis said was no less disgusting; over a glass of vodka, in state of drunkenness they engaged, in fact, in counterrevolutionary conversations… […] Comr. Krauklis and his wife are old Party members who must answer for themselves in full measure, but they’ve only now begun to speak, and they couldn’t tell about it before. [292]”

On Monday, July 19, the meeting heard a more colorful version from Naum Rubinshteyn:

“Every five days [293] lavish carousals were staged at the “Dedovshchina” recreation center and on the pleasure boat Dnieper. Those who took part in these drinking sprees as an active nucleus included Balitskii, Kantselson, myself, Chirskii, Krauklis, Semenov, Tsiklis, Bachinskii, Pysmennyi, and others. Sometimes we appeared in the city in state of drunkenness. In 1936 all this company, already drunk, went by car to Chernihiv, where the drinking continued at Timofeyev’s place. There were women present during those carousals and drinking bouts – officials’ wives and invited ones. Balitskii himself openly ‘lived’ with the wives of Yevgenyev, Sharov, Timofeyev, Chirckii, and others. Rides on the Dnieper turned into true orgies. […] It is characteristic that the [NKVD] Operations Department protected the brothel of Arenshteyn, nicknamed ‘granmother of Russian prostitution.’ Arenshteyn is a close relative of the executed Trotskyist Akhmatov. That brothel was visited by very highly placed officials, and it could obtain any kind of women. [294]”

Further names and details have been revealed in memoirs. A maid of Lazar Kaganovich complained in the Butyrka jail to her fellow prisoners:

“Well, I’ve surely seen enough of their living. A lot of them would come to my boss by car, every one would bring a broad along, and they’d drink, sing songs and kiss all night long. And they were so shameless it was just disgraceful. One couldn’t be more depraved than those people. And after’d gone away before morning who was there to clean their spit and vomit – me, who else. [295]”

Russian historians treat evidence of Cheka/GPU/NKVD operatives recorded in investigation files as a legitimate source of information. Thus, in the journal Voprosy Istorii (Questions of History) we find a charming expose of “personnel management methods,” so to say. An NKVD operative, I. Ya. Ilyin, testified:

“A roughly similar system was used for handling high provincial officials: as a rule, not a single one of the operational conferences called quite often in Rostov was held without throwing, after the conference and often during it, a huge drinking party with absolute debauchery that sometimes lasted for 24 hours and longer. There were occasions when some officials were found only on the 3rd or 4th day in taverns or with prostitutes. This system of moral and political degradation was thus transferred onto the provincial staff as well. [296]”

Elimination of the “old Leninist Guard” was clearly in the offing. As the Russian emigre writer Ivan Solonevich said, the said “guard”

“was being washed away from below by waves of young scoundrels and liquidated organizationally from above by Stalin as he handpicked new cadres of intrepid ‘hard-boiled villains’. [297]”

Nobody has yet been able to give a satisfactory answer to the question what Stalin needed this change of course for, after all. Viktor Kravchenko, manager of a factory in Nikopol who had been making a highly promising career until the NKVD took an active interest in him, wondered: “Why don’t they leave me alone? All I want is to work, to give them all my best. Why pick on me? Why? [298]” This is indeed an interest question, considering the fact that plenty of people of unquestionable loyalty who were only too willing to collaborate with the regime were brutally exterminated by the very same regime. One of them, a well-known Ukrainian prose writer K., wrote to a GPU operative F. Khymochka, on December 5, 1929.

“Get me back to my pen (by the way, I would like to keep the pen you gave me, so I can use it to ‘quash’ all nationalism in my early works), but apart from my pen, I am always ready to serve you anyway, whenever my services are needed for the good of Soviet power. This is my ultimate goal after which I was striving back in Lviv and which so far I have not been able to achieve.”

The writer who was “ready to serve” the regime ended up in the Solovetsky concentration camp and was duly executed on November 3, 1937 [299]. Volkogonov mused:

“[…] As he was preparing the new Constitution, Stalin was simultaneously preparing a huge bloody purge in the country. Many people cannnot understand even now what he needed it for. His power had become unshakeable. All overt opposition had been crushed. Society had hushed up, gaping, in fear and admiration (sic) at portraits of the shortish Leader […] who had created the ‘most’ powerful state, the ‘most’ formidable army, and the ‘most’ advanced science and culture, and was now busy building a life in which everybody would feel ‘nice and happy.’ Why did Stalin decide on staging a nationwide bloodbath? How did he bring himself to that decison? [300]”

Let us leave this big question unanswered for the time being and formulate a narrower one – why did Stalin liquidate the Old Bolsheviks and the men of the Cheka?

Notes

255. Cf. K. I. Albrecht, Vlast Stalina, p. 44.

256. Ye. Onatskyi, U Vichnomu misti: Zapysky ukr. zhurnalista, Vol. IV, 1934, Toronto, Novyi Shlyakh, 1989, pp. 37(38.

257. Yu. Annenkov, Dnevnik moikh vstrech: Tsikl tragediy, Vol. 2, New York, 1966, p. 270.

258. V. I. Lenin, Doklad o vneshney i vnutrenney politike Soveta narodnykh komissarov v Petrogradskom sovete 12 marta 1919 g., V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 3rd ed., Vol. XXIV, Moscow, 1932, p. 33.

259. See, e.g.: V. I. Lenin, Doklad o vneshney i vnutrenney politike Soveta narodnykh komissarov, V. I. Lenin, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy, Vol. 38, Moscow, 1963, pp. 1(7.

260. V. I. Lenin, Rech na torzhestvennom zasedanii Plenuma Moskovskogo soveta […] 6 noyabrya 1920 g., V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 3rd edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, Leningrad, 1929, p. 474. Library censors had to black out with ink the name of editor N. I. Bukharin on the title page of this volume (the names of the other two editors, V. M. Molotov and M. A. Savelyev, were left unexpunged).

261. Cf.: V. I. Lenin, Rech na torzhestvennom zasedanii Plenuma Moskovskogo soveta […] 6 noyabrya 1920 g., V. I. Lenin, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, Vol. 42, 1981, p. 2. Also note that the expression "international relation" has been correctly changed to "international relations." Sentences which the Party high priests could interpret as no longer valid, as something belonging to the past, have not been deleted. ("Then we realized that our victory would be a safe victory only when our cause would win in the whole world, because we had begun our struggle on the expectation of a world revolution […] we had staked on an international revolution, and this stake had been unquestionably correct." ( pp. 1(2)

262. Cf.: Kommunisticheskiy rezhim i narodnoye soprotivleniye v Rossii, p. 18.

263. A. Avtorkhanov, Zagadka smerti Stalina: Zagovor Beriya, 3rd ed., Frankfurt am Main, Posev, 1979, pp. 131(132. Alongside this bold assertion, the timidity of General Volkogonov looks somewhat miserable: "Maybe we have so far failed to gain an insight into the schozofrenia of the Leninist-Stalinist system?" (D. Volkogonov, Sem vozhdey, Book 1, p. 208).

264. H. Koch, Sovetovedeniye, sovetoznaniye ili sovetologiya, VI konferentsiya Instituta po izucheniyu SSSR, p. 15.

265. CSAPAU, No. 46122 FP, Box 773, Vol. 1, Sh. 43.

266. POSTYSHEV, Pavel Petrovich (1887(1939) ( Russian Bolshevik, filled several Party and govenrmental positions in Ukraine since 1923, Stalin's plenipotentiary in 1933, secretary of the CPU CC in 1933(37, one of principal organizers of the Great Famine. Arrested in 1938, liquidated.

267. Kosior, Stanislaw (1889(1939) ( Sov. Party and state figure, Pole by birth. General Secretary of the CPU in 1928(38. Liquidated.

268. CSAPAU, F. 1, Rec. 1, No. 491, Sh. 97.

269. BONDARENKO, Mykhaylo Illich (Sept. 8, 1903, Yelysavethrad ( Feb. 10, 1938, Moscow) ( 2nd Secretary of Kharkiv City Committee (1936(37), 2nd Secretary of Kiev City Committee (confirmed by resolution of the CPU(B) Politburo of Feb. 3, 1937), chairman of Radnarkom (resolution of the Politburo of Aug. 30, 1937). Arrested Oct. 1937, executed (CSAPAU, No. 32099 FP, Box 217; F. 1, Rec. 6, No. 438, Sh. 47; No. 455, Sh. 3).

270. CSAPAU, No. 31629 FP, Box 197, Sh. 46(47. Marchenko, Petro Hryhorovych (June 29, 1909, vill. of Chupakhivka, Okhtyrka Dist. ( July 31, 1943) ( head of Party propaganda dept. of Kiev Regional Committee of the CPU(B). Joined the Party at 18 (1927). Arrested July 18, 1937, sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. Died on the Kolyma. The machine was merciless.

271. I. V. Stalin, Tov. Kaganovichu i drugim chlenam PB TsK KP(b)U, I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 8, Moscow, OGIZ, 1948, p. 154.

272. Komunistychna partiya Ukrayiny v rezolyutsiyakh i rishennyakh z'yizdiv, Vol. I, Kiev, 1976, pp. 874(875.

273. CSAPAU, No. 31089 FP, Box 178, Sh. 2. This formula can also found in the warrant of Feb. 20, 1938 sanctioning the arrest of his wife. The warrant was signed by assistant operative State Security Sgt. Belyayev and approved by Kudryavtsev.

274. Meaning Ukrainians proud of their ethnic identity ( CSAPAU, No. 56788 FP, Box 1373, Sh. 111.

275. CSAPAU, No. 58369 FP, Box 1468, Vol. 1, Sh. 145, 152, 180.

276. CSAPAU, No. 36396 FP, Box 316, Sh. 137.

277. CSAPAU, No. 45915 FP, Box 753, Vol. 1, Sh. 142(143.

278. CSAPAU, No. 30499 FP, Box 154, Sh. 2.

279. CSAPAU, No. 31137 FP, Box 180, Sh. 135.

280. CSAPAU, No. 51231 FP, Box 35, Sh. 102. Ironically, the case was initiated by the NKVD division of the Kzyl-Orda Region, Kazakhstan.

281. As is known, the expression was first used as a legal definition in the ordnance of the TsIK and the Sovnarkom "On the Protection of Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms and Cooperatives and the Consolidation of Public (Socialist) Property" of August 7, 1932, although it can be found in Lenin's first decrees.

282. M. Romanenko, Zavoyevateli belykh pyaten, Posev, 1951, p. XXXI. Podp.: M. Rozanov.

283. A. Avtorkhanov, Tekhnologiya vlasti, 3rd ed., Posev, 1983, p. 405. The first editionof this work appeared in Munich in 1959 (published by the Central Association of Political Emigrants from the U.S.S.R. ( Tsentralnoye obyedineniye politicheskikh emigrantov iz SSSR ( TsOPE).

284. Ye. Ginzburg, op. cit., p. 19.

285. Sto sorok besed s Molotovym, pp. 123, 270.

286. Ibid, pp. 269(270. At the same time, the members of the new Politburo handpicked by Stalin can hardly be suspected of harboring any truly religious sentiments. On December 9, 1982 the same Molotov showed no sign of remorse speaking about the demolition of Christ the Savior's Cathedral in Moscow: "It was destroyed deliberately. The cathedral, I mean. Some objected. Personally, I didn't. What would we keep a church in the center for? That wasn't some ancient rarity. That was our idea. It just didn't agree with Soviet power ( some church in the very center." (p. 265).

287. Providing for stiff penalties, including prison terms, for "stealing collective farm property." In practice, this was interpreted to cover such "offenses" as picking up uncollected ears in the fields.

288. O. Semenenko, Kharkiv, Kharkiv…, p. 18.

289. B. Sultanbekov, Stalinskii zheleznyi narkom, p. 194.

290. KRAUKLIS, Yan (Jan) (1895(1938) ( chief of Directorate of Penitentiaries, Ukr.S.S.R. NKVD (1935(June 1937, before Novakovskyi). Metalworker, employed in that capacity for 7 years. Member of the RSDLP from 1913. According to one questionnaire, "education: elementary" (the latter word misspelt in Russian), by another "education: secondary, unfinished." In 1915(17 was in prison, then was exiled to the Irkutsk Province. Cheif of GPU depts. in Kryvyi Rih, Stalino, and Kharkiv. Executed (CSAPAU, F. 1, Rec. 1, No. 441, Sh. 77; Rec. 20, No. 3461, Sh. 4, 11; F. 263, Rec. 1, No. 49013 FP, Box 919, Sh. 28; S. Zolotaryov, p. 494).

291. RYABOTENKO, Olexandr Ivanovych (1896 ( ?) ( chief of Kharkiv (from 1931) and Kiev (1937) militia departments. Party member since April 1920. Education: secondary. Delegate to the 12th and 13th CPU(B) congresses. (CSAPAU, F. 1, Rec. 1, No. 442, Sh. 82; No. 512, Sh. 140.)

292. CSAPAU, No. 44539 FP, Box 676, Sh. 365(366.

293. The U.S.S.R. then had a legal five-day week ( transl.

294. Ibid., Sh. 59(60.

295. Notes of a Political Prisoner, p. 28.

296. M. A. Tumshis, "Yeshcho raz o kadrakh chekistov 30-kh godov," Voprosy Istorii, 1993, No. 6, p. 190.

297. I. Solonevich, Rossiya v kontslagere, 5th ed., Washington, P. R. Vaulin, 1958, Col. 209.

298. V. Kravchenko, Ya vybrav volyu, p. 244.

299. M. Rozhenko and E. Bohatska, op. cit., Book 1, p. 347.

300. D. Volkogonov, Sem vozhdey, Book 1, pp. 202(203.