Mass Operations of the NKVD, 1937–8: A Survey

Abstract

The “embarrassment of riches” observed by John Arch Getty in respect of the archival material made accessible in Russia since 19911 can also be applied to new insights into the mechanisms of the “new Red terror of 1937”2 on an operational scale: the so-called massoperatsii (mass operations) of the Ezhovite secret police targeting putative enemies throughout the population on the basis of crude social or national criteria. This tidal wave of terror, unannounced and unprecedented in its scope when it broke, should be seen as a specific form of mass repression distinct from the arrest and annihilation campaigns against the nomenklatura dit the fulcra of central and local state power. Investigations into the mass terror in the localities in 1937–8, largely an initiative of native scholars and public bodies in the former USSR, have not found their rightful place among Soviet studies in the English language, mainly because the archival sources are closed to foreigners or due to the fact that the publications appear in low editions, often in regions far from Moscow. Even harder to obtain are local studies on the Great Terror in the form of remembrance books (knigi pamiati), which are not sold but distributed to the families of the victims.3 Taking account of this new literature may induce scholars to re-think their theses on how the mass repression of the late 1930s originated, how the arrest sweeps proceeded, why some ethnic or social segments suffered more than others and, finally, why the bloodbath was curtailed.KeywordsCentral CommitteeDeath SentenceLeningrad RegionMilitary CollegiumSecret PoliceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.