The People's Commissariat of Defense and the NKVD During the Prewar Years

Abstract

In June 1934, the USSR People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs was transformed into the People's Commissariat of Defense (NKO), headed by K.E. Voroshilov, and on July 10 of that same year the USSR People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was formed, with G.G. Iagoda as people's commissar. Relations between these two departments played an important role in the fate of the Red Army from the moment of its establishment. At the end of July 1918, a military department of the VChK [All-Russian Extraordinary Commission To Combat Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation; the Cheka] was formed to supervise the front and army Cheka units, which were converted into special departments in January 1919 and were retained after the Civil War as well. In the mid-1920s, they actively took part in purging the army of command and political personnel suspected of sympathizing with the Trotskyite opposition and then with "right-wing deviation." According to Voroshilov, a total of 5,000 former oppositionists were dismissed from the army in the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s.