Outrageous interrogation protocols. The sex life of an executioner

An interesting protocol of the interrogation of the former People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov, which more than clearly illustrates the reasons why almost the entire top of the NKVD, who carried out the repressions of 1937, was shot. In addition, it can be noted that Yezhov in his testimony quite clearly shows where “tens of thousands of Polish spies” came from, why proper prosecutorial supervision was not carried out, and what the loss of control over repression by the state leads to.

From "4" August 1939 Yezhov N. I., born in 1895, ex. member of the CPSU (b) since 1917. Before the arrest People's Commissar Water Transport USSR.

Question: The investigation is aware that the Soviet NKVD bodies carried out in 1937-1938. mass operations to repress former kulaks, kr. you used the clergy, criminals and defectors of various countries adjacent to the USSR in the interests of the anti-Soviet conspiracy. How true is this?

Answer: Yes, this is entirely true.

Question: Did you achieve your provocative conspiratorial goals in carrying out the mass operation?

Answer: The first results of the mass operation were completely unexpected for us, the conspirators. Not only did they not create dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the population, but, on the contrary, caused a great political upsurge, especially in the countryside. Mass cases were observed when the collective farmers themselves came to the UNKVD and the district departments of the UNKVD demanding the arrest of one or another fugitive, White Guard, merchant, and so on.
In the cities, theft, stabbing and hooliganism, from which the working-class districts especially suffered, were sharply reduced.
It was quite obvious that the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks had correctly and timely decided to hold this event. Despite the provocative measures taken by us to carry out the mass operation, it met with the unanimous approval of the working people.

Q: Did that make you give up your villainous intentions?

Answer: I don't want to say that. On the contrary, we, the conspirators, used this circumstance in order to expand the mass operations in every possible way and, by intensifying the provocative methods of their conduct, in the end to achieve the implementation of our treacherous conspiratorial plans.

Question: How did you manage to use the sympathy of the working people for the repressions against the kulaks, k.-r. clergy and criminals, in order to achieve the goals set by the conspiratorial organization?

Answer: When the so-called "limits" set for them in the regions for the repression of former kulaks, White Guards, K.-R. clergy and criminals, we, the conspirators, and I, in particular, again raised the question of prolonging the mass operations and increasing the number of repressed people before the government. As proof of the expediency of continuing mass operations, we cited the extreme infestation of this kind of elements of the collective farms in the countryside, factories and factories in the cities, emphasizing the interest and sympathy for this measure of the working people of the city and countryside.

Question: Did you manage to get the government's decision to extend the mass operations?

Answer: Yes. We achieved the government's decision to extend the mass operation and increase the number of repressed people.

Question: Have you deceived the government?

Answer: It was certainly necessary to continue the mass operation and increase the contingent of the repressed. This measure, however, had to be stretched out in time and real and correct accounting should be established so that, having prepared, it was necessary to strike at the organizing, most dangerous top of the counter-revolutionary elements. The government, of course, had no idea about our conspiratorial plans and in this case proceeded only from the need to continue the operation, without entering into the essence of its conduct. In this sense, we, the government, of course, deceived in the most brazen way.

Question: Were there any signals from the local workers of the NKVD and the population about the existing perversions during the conduct of the mass operation?

Answer: There were a lot of signals about perversions on the part of ordinary workers of the local NKVD. Even more such signals were from the population. However, these signals were jammed both in the UNKVD and in Central Office, the apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and signaling workers of the NKVD were often arrested for this.

Question: How did you manage to jam the signals of perversions from local workers and the population?

Answer: We managed to jam the signals relatively easily, bearing in mind that all leadership was concentrated in the hands of the conspirators. In the centre, the whole matter of mass operations was concentrated entirely in the hands of the conspirators. Many of the NKVD Directorates were also headed by conspirators who were fully aware of our conspiratorial plans. Such “concrete” leadership came from the center on these issues that we pushed all the heads of the UNKVD to expand mass repression and provocative conduct. After all, they got used to the fact that mass operations are the most mild form operational work, all the more so since these operations were actually carried out without control, extrajudicially.

Question: After you managed to prolong the mass operations, did you achieve the goals set by the conspiratorial organization to arouse dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the population?

Answer: Yes, by stretching out the mass operations for many months, we finally managed to arouse misunderstanding and dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government in certain sections of the population in a number of areas.

Question: In what specific areas did you succeed in carrying out your conspiratorial plans, and in what way was this expressed?

Answer: This applies mainly to the regions of Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian republics, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, West Siberian, Leningrad, Western, Rostov, Ordzhonikidze regions and DVK2. This is explained, firstly, by the fact that our attention was most focused on them, and, secondly, by the fact that almost all the heads of the NKVD of these regions were conspirators. In all these areas, there were the most gross anti-Soviet facts of repression of essentially innocent people, which caused legitimate discontent among the working people.

Question: Please elaborate on each area separately, informing the investigation of the facts known to you of deliberately carried out provocative methods of repression.

Answer: I'll start with Ukraine, the People's Commissariat of the Ukrainian SSR at the beginning was headed by Leplevsky, a member of the anti-Soviet organization of the right, and then, by the conspirator Uspensky, recruited by me. A mass operation began under Leplevsky, but Uspensky had already accounted for no less of the repressed.

Question: Was Leplevsky aware of your conspiratorial plans?

Answer: No, Leplevsky hardly knew our true conspiratorial plans. In any case, I personally did not recruit him into the conspiratorial organization and did not inform him of our plan for a provocative operation. None of the leading conspirators also told me that he had contacted Leplevsky on a conspiracy. Carrying out a mass operation, Leplevsky, like most other heads of the NKVD who were not conspirators, spread it over a wide front, leaving almost untouched the most malicious and active organizers from the kulaks, the White Guards, the Petliurists, the K.-R. the clergy, etc., at the same time focusing the entire blow on the less active elements and partly on the layers of the population close to Soviet power.

Question: Was Uspensky aware of your conspiratorial plans for the provocative conduct of mass operations?

Answer: Yes, Uspensky was fully aware of our conspiratorial plans, and I personally informed him of them. Personally, I gave him specific tasks on this issue. So, Uspensky not only continued Leplevsky's sabotage practice, but also significantly expanded it. Having received additional “limits” after my arrival in Ukraine, Uspensky, on my instructions, did not limit himself only to the repression of former kulaks, clergy and criminals, but expanded the category of the repressed, including nationalists, former prisoners of war and others. He even insisted to me that all former members of the CPSU(b) should be included under the category of the repressed. However, I forbade him to make arrests, on this basis only, as it was too obvious and overt a provocation.

Question: What is the result of the wrecking, provocative practice of conducting a mass operation?

Answer: I must say that the entire blow of the mass operation in the regions of Ukraine was in many respects dealt provocatively and offended a significant part of the close sections of the population of the Soviet government. All this caused bewilderment and discontent among the working people in many regions of Ukraine. This discontent was especially strong in the border regions, where the families of the repressed remained. From the regions of Ukraine, the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office received many signals about this, but no one reacted to them in any way. These signals from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the government were hidden.

Question: Were you aware of the facts, in what concrete way the discontent of the population was expressed?

Answer: Of course, these facts are completely unknown to me. I knew about them only from Ouspensky's information.
From the words of Uspensky, I know that as a result of the provocative conduct of mass operations, especially in the border regions of Ukraine, escapes across the cordon to Poland intensified. The families of the repressed began to be expelled from the collective farms, in connection with which robberies, arson and theft began. There were even several cases of terrorist acts against workers of village councils and collective farms. Complaints began to be written not only by the families of the repressed, but also by ordinary collective farmers and even party members.
Dissatisfaction with the punitive policy was so great that local party organizations began to insist on the immediate eviction of all family members repressed from Ukraine to other regions.
Those are in in general terms the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in Ukraine. We managed to achieve approximately the same results in Belarus. When conducting mass operations, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs Byelorussian SSR led by Berman B.

Question: Was Berman a member of the NKVD conspiratorial organization?

Answer: Berman was not a member of our conspiratorial organization, but I, Frinovsky and Velsky knew already at the beginning of 1938 that he was an active participant in Yagoda's anti-Soviet conspiratorial group.
We did not intend to involve Berman in our conspiratorial organization. He was already quite a compromised person and subject to arrest. With the arrest, however, we pulled. Berman, in turn, fearing arrest, tried with might and main. It was enough for him to have my general instructions that Byelorussia was heavily littered and that it needed to be thoroughly cleaned, and he carried out mass operations with the same result as Uspensky.

Question: Namely, what is the result?

Answer: Endlessly demanding an increase in "limits", Berman, following the example of Uspensky, summed up the "nationalists" under the category of the repressed, carried out completely unfounded arrests and created the same discontent in the border regions of Belarus, leaving the families of the repressed on the ground. There were even more signals of discontent among the population of the border regions of Belarus, in the NKVD and the Prosecutor's Office, than in Ukraine. All of them also remained without consequences and were hidden from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the government.

Question: How was the situation in the other areas you mentioned?

Answer: In other areas that I listed in my testimony, similar results were achieved and we also managed to achieve discontent among certain segments of the population.
These results differed only in the conduct of massive national operations, as I will testify below. We should only highlight the results of mass operations in the Far East, Donbass and the Central Asian republics.

Question: Why exactly do you consider it necessary to single out the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in the Far East, Donbass and the Central Asian republics?

Answer: We attached great importance to these areas in terms of the possibility of wrecking, provocative conduct of mass operations. We believed that in these regions remote from the center with weak Party organizations, we would be able to apply provocative methods more decisively and without special caution, while at the same time achieving more tangible results in realizing the tasks set by the conspiratorial organization. We said bluntly that if the operation was carried out skillfully, it would be possible to reduce coal production in the Donbass, reduce crops and the cotton harvest in Central Asia, apart from the fact that here it was easiest to cause discontent among the population.
It was only for these reasons, for example, that my deputy for the NKVD, the conspirator Velsky, was specially sent to the Donbass and Central Asia, to whom the leadership of the mass operation was entrusted.

Question: What is the result of Velsky's trip?

Answer: Velsky thus instructed the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Central Asian republics and personally carried out mass operations in the republics of Central Asia and in the Donbass in such a way that he completely and completely fulfilled our conspiratorial tasks. So, for example, as a result of the operation he carried out, he achieved dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the workers of Donbass, a huge turnover of labor and a decrease in coal production. In the Central Asian republics, and especially in Turkmenistan, the NKVD, which was headed by a conspirator recruited by Velsky, it seems Kondakov (I don’t remember my last name now), caused great discontent and unrest among the population, in connection with which emigrant moods intensified and there were many cases organized crossing over the cordon large groups of people.

Question: Above, you classified DVK in the group of districts that you considered necessary to dwell on. Give evidence, what are the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in the Far East?

Answer: I considered it necessary to dwell on the conduct of the mass operation in the DVK, not only in connection with the importance of this area, but also in connection with the conspiratorial assignments that Frinovsky received when he left for the DVK in June 1938.

Question: What kind of conspiratorial assignments to Frinovsky are you referring to?

Answer: I mean only the task of carrying out a provocative mass operation to repress former kulaks, k.r. clergy, White Guards, etc.

Question: Wasn't this operation on the DVK completed in June 1938?

Answer: It was already completed at the DVK, but we agreed with Frinovsky that after his arrival at Far East he will send a telegram with a request to increase the "limits" of the repressed, motivating this measure by the extreme contamination of the DVK k.-r. elements that remained almost intact. Frinovsky did just that. Arriving at the DVK, a few days later he asked to increase the "limits" by fifteen thousand people, to which he received consent. For the DVK, with its small population, this figure was impressive.

Question: Why did you need to resume the mass operation in the Far East?

Answer: We considered that the most convenient and effective form sabotage, capable of quickly causing discontent among the population. Since there was a rather tense situation at the DVK at that time, we decided to aggravate it even more with a provocative continuation of the mass operation.

Question: What are the results of the provocative mass operation in the Far East?

Answer: Upon his arrival from the Far East, Frinovsky reported to me that he had succeeded in carrying out this operation entirely according to the provocative plans of the conspirators, taking into account the complex and acute situation of the conflict with the Japanese that had developed in the Far East.

Question: Interested in the investigation concrete facts, what exactly Frinovsky reported to you about the provocative conduct of the operation in the Far East?

Answer: According to Frinovsky, the mass operation we continued came in handy. Having created the impression of a broad rout of the anti-Soviet elements in the DVK, he actually managed to successfully use the mass operation in order to retain the more leading and active cadres of the counter-revolution and the conspirators. By concentrating the entire blow of the mass operation on sections of the population close to us and on passive, declassed elements, Frinovsky, on the one hand, aroused legitimate discontent among the population of many districts of the Far East and, on the other hand, preserved the organized and active cadres of the counter-revolution. He especially boasted that from the formal point of view, one could not find fault with the operation he had carried out. He smashed the Kolchak, Kapelev and Semyonovites, who, however, were mostly old men and many of them only for this reason did not emigrate to China, Manchuria and Japan at one time. Frinovsky jokingly called the operation in the DVK - "old man's".

Question: You are talking about a mass operation carried out in those areas on which your attention was focused. And in other areas, did things get better and did you not use your wrecking and provocative practices?

Answer: It was no better in other areas. However, the contingent of the repressed was smaller there, and therefore the results of our provocation did not affect the population so much.
Now, in general terms, I have told everything about the provocative conduct of a mass operation to repress former kulaks, k.-r. clergy and criminals. I can only specify and supplement them with a number of available numerous facts, which, however, do not change the overall picture.

Question: Above you touched on the issue that mass operations to repress people foreign origin you also provocatively used the capitalist states adjacent to us (defectors, political emigrants, etc.) in the interests of carrying out your conspiratorial plans. Give detailed evidence on this matter.

Answer: Mass operations to repress persons of foreign origin, with the aim of destroying the foreign intelligence base in the USSR, took place simultaneously with a mass operation against kulaks, criminals, and so on.
Naturally, we, the conspirators, could not pass by these operations without trying to use them for our conspiratorial purposes. We, the conspirators, also decided to carry out these operations broad front, hitting possible large quantity people, especially since there were no maximum limits for these operations, and, therefore, they could be expanded arbitrarily at our discretion.

Question: What goals did you pursue in carrying out these operations?

Answer: The goals that we pursued by provocative conduct of these operations also consisted in causing discontent and unrest among the population of the USSR belonging to these nationalities. In addition, by provocative conduct of these operations, we wanted to create public opinion in European states about the fact that in the USSR people are repressed only on ethnic grounds, and provoke protests from some of these states.
I must say that all this also coincided with our conspiratorial plans to focus on the seizure of power during the war, since certain prerequisites were created for this. These prerequisites in this case were expressed in the creation of an atmosphere of discontent not only punitive, but also national politics Soviet power.

Question: Did you manage to achieve the treacherous goals you had outlined in carrying out these operations?

Answer: Yes, it succeeded, and to a certain extent with greater effect for the conspirators than when carrying out a mass operation against the kulaks, the K.-R. clergy and criminals. As a result of the provocative conduct of this kind of mass operations, we managed to achieve that among the population of the USSR of repressed nationalities, we created great anxiety, misunderstanding of what caused these repressions, discontent Soviet power, talk about the proximity of the war and strong emigrant sentiment. All these facts took place everywhere, but they were especially developed in the Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian republics, that is, in the regions to which we paid special attention.
In addition, as a result of the provocative conduct of these operations, there were many protests from the governments of Germany, Poland, Persia, Greece and other states, and in a number of newspapers European countries there were protest articles.

Question: What kind of protests do you mean? Give more detailed evidence.

Answer: The most energetic protests were from the Iranian government. It protested against the ongoing repressions of Persian subjects, their deportation from the USSR to Iran, and against the confiscation of their property. They raised this question even before the diplomatic representatives of other countries with the proposal of a joint protest. In Iran, a special society was even created to protect Iranian citizens from persecution in the USSR, which arranged money collections throughout the country in favor of Iranians repressed in the USSR. In addition, a number of retaliatory repressions were undertaken in Iran against citizens of the USSR.
The government of Greece protested against the repressions and expulsion of Greek subjects, and defiantly did not issue visas to enter Greece for Greeks who wanted to go there.
The Finnish government also protested against the arrests among the Finns, insisted on their release and deportation to Finland.
The governments of England, Germany, Poland and France protested against the arrests of individual foreign nationals.
In addition, as I have already said, a number of protesting articles appeared in the European press and even caused bewilderment and requests from friends Soviet Union.

Question: Namely?

Answer: I mean first of all Roman Rolland. He sent a special letter in which he asked him to inform him whether it was true that repressions against foreigners had begun in the USSR, only on this one ground, regardless of his attitude towards the Soviet Union. He motivated this request by saying that foreign press a number of articles of protest appeared, and then many turn to him as a friend of the Soviet Union public figures Europe on this issue.
In addition, Romain Rolland already asked for individual arrested persons whom he knew personally and for whom he vouched in the sense of their sympathy for the Soviet regime.

Question: By what provocative methods of carrying out these mass operations did you manage to achieve the conspiratorial goals you set?

Answer: As I have already said, we decided to carry out these operations on a broad front, capturing as many people as possible through repression. Our main pressure on the chiefs of the UNKVD, whether they were conspirators or not, went exactly along this line in order to force them to expand their operations all the time. As a result of this pressure, the practice of repressions was widely spread without any compromising materials, only on the basis of one sign that the person being repressed belongs to such and such a nationality (Pole, German, Latvian, Greek, etc.). This, however, is not enough. Enough mass phenomenon, especially in some areas, there was a practice when under the category of Poles, Finns, Germans, etc. they let down Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc. In particular, the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of such republics as Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, and the heads of the UNKVD of such regions as Sverdlovsk, Leningrad and Moscow were distinguished by this. For example, former boss UNKVD Sverdlovsk region Dmitriev summed up a lot of Ukrainians, Belarusians and even Russians under the category of repressed Poles defectors. In any case, for every arrested Pole there were at least a dozen Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. There were many such cases when Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were generally made Poles on falsified documents. The same practice was in Leningrad. Zakovsky, instead of the Finns, arrested many indigenous inhabitants of the USSR - Karelians and "turned" them into Finns.
Ouspensky, under the guise of Poles, arrested many Uniate Ukrainians, that is, he took them not on the basis of national origin, but on the basis of religion. Such facts can be multiplied in many ways. They are typical for most areas.

Question: How did you manage to carry out such obvious and gross criminal machinations?

Answer: The judicial procedure for considering this type of cases has been simplified to the extreme. It was simpler and, in that sense, even more uncontrolled than the procedure for considering cases of a mass operation of former kulaks and criminals. There were still judicial troikas, which included the secretaries of the regional committees. For these national or so-called "album operations" and this summary judicial order did not exist. List of those repressed summary cases in the "album" and with the intended punishment was signed by the head of the UNKVD and the Prosecutor of the region, and then sent for approval to Moscow to the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office. In Moscow, a case was decided only on the basis of a brief landscape reference. The protocol (list) was signed by me or Frinovsky from the NKVD and Vyshinsky from the Prosecutor's Office, after which the sentence entered into force and was reported for execution to the head of the UNKVD and the Prosecutor of the corresponding region.
This simplistic court order consideration of cases completely guaranteed us from control and allowed us to carry out in full measure our wrecking provocative conspiratorial plans.

Question: Was it only the summary judicial procedure that made it possible to carry out your provocative plans?

Answer: Basically, of course, this allowed us to carry out sabotage with impunity.As a result of such an oversimplified judicial procedure, in the regions, for example, the practice of falsifying investigative data, forgery and deceit was widely developed. In particular, again, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Sverdlovsk, Moscow and Leningrad, the heads of the UNKVD, who were entirely either members of our conspiratorial organization or members of Yagoda's anti-Soviet group, were distinguished by this. By committing forgeries and falsifying investigative data, the heads of those UNKVD: the conspirators Uspensky, Vakovsky and members of the anti-Soviet group Yagoda - Dmitriev and Berman repressed many innocent people who were not involved in counter-revolutionary crimes, creating a base of discontent among certain sections of the population.

Question: Give evidence, how, by carrying out this obviously obvious and criminal practice of repression, did you manage to deceive the bodies of prosecutor's supervision?

Answer: I can't say that here we had any deliberate plan to deliberately deceive the organs of the Prosecutor's Office. The prosecutors of the regions, territories and republics, as well as the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, could not fail to see such an obvious criminal practice of mass provocative repressions and falsification of investigative data, since they, together with the NKVD, were responsible for considering these cases. This inaction of prosecutorial supervision is explained only by the fact that in In many regions, territories and republics, members of various anti-Soviet organizations headed the Prosecutor's Office, which often carried out the practice of even wider provocative repressions among the population.
The other part of the prosecutors, who were not involved in participation in anti-Soviet groups, were simply afraid to argue on these issues with the heads of the UNKVD, especially since they did not have any instructions on this from the center, where all the falsified investigative Inquiries were made without any delay or comment.

Question: Are you talking about local authorities Prosecutors. Didn't they see these criminal machinations in the USSR Prosecutor's Office?

Answer: The Prosecutor's Office of the USSR could not, of course, fail to notice all these perversions. I explain the behavior of the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and, in particular, the Prosecutor of the USSR Vyshinsky, by the same fear of quarreling with the NKVD and showing himself no less "revolutionary" in the sense of carrying out mass repressions. I also come to this conclusion because Vyshinsky has repeatedly told me personally about the tens of thousands of complaints received by the Procurator's Office, to which he pays no attention. In the same way, during the entire period of the operations, I do not remember a single case of Vyshinsky's protest about mass operations, while there were cases when he insisted on harsher sentences against certain individuals.
These are the only reasons I can explain the virtual absence of any kind of prosecutorial supervision over mass operations and the absence of their protests against the actions of the NKVD to the government. I repeat that we, the conspirators, and, in particular, I did not have any well-thought-out plans to deceive the Prosecutor's Office.

Question: It is known that among those repressed for all mass operations - a large number of was sentenced to serving sentences in the camps. Were you not afraid of exposing your criminal practices, knowing that many were convicted on falsified materials?

Answer: We had no fear that our criminal machinations might be exposed by the prisoners of the camp contingent, and, in particular, I did not have. All the camps were not only subordinate to the NKVD, but were also led by conspirators from the GU GAG. Under these conditions, we could always take appropriate preventive measures. Moreover, sending this contingent to the camps, we had our own special considerations in this regard. These considerations and plans consisted in the fact that we, sending the repressed to the camps on the basis of insufficiently substantiated materials, thought to use their discontent during the war and, in particular, when seizing power.

Question: How else can you add your testimony about enemy work in mass operations?

Answer: Basically, I told everything, maybe I did not indicate only some small details of our enemy work on mass operations, but they do not change the general picture of our criminal actions.

The testimony is correct, I have read it - (Yezhov)
Interrogated: St. Investigator of the Investigative Department of the NKVD of the USSR Art. lieutenant state security: (Esaulov)

CA FSB. Archival and investigative file of Frinovsky M. P. No. N-15301. T. 10. L. 241, 249-275. Certified copy.

Source: Petrov N., Jansen M. "Stalin's pet" - Nikolai Yezhov. M., 2008. S.367-379

Archive: CA FSB. Archival and investigative file of Frinovsky M. P. No. N-15301. T. 10. L. 241, 249-275. Certified copy.

From "4" August 1939 Yezhov N. I., born in 1895, ex. member of the CPSU (b) since 1917. Before his arrest - People's Commissar of Water Transport of the USSR.

Question: The investigation is aware that conducted by the organs of the NKVD of the USSR in 1937-1938. mass operations to repress former kulaks, kr. you used the clergy, criminals and defectors of various countries adjacent to the USSR in the interests of the anti-Soviet conspiracy.

How true is this?

Answer: Yes, this is entirely true.

Question: Have you achieved your provocative conspiratorial goals in carrying out the mass operation?

Answer: The first results of the mass operation were completely unexpected for us conspirators. Not only did they not create dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the population, but, on the contrary, caused a great political upsurge, especially in the countryside. Mass cases were observed when the collective farmers themselves came to the UNKVD and the district departments of the UNKVD demanding the arrest of one or another fugitive, White Guard, merchant, and so on.

In the cities, theft, stabbing and hooliganism, from which the working-class districts especially suffered, were sharply reduced.

It was quite obvious that the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks had correctly and timely decided to hold this event. Despite the provocative measures taken by us to carry out the mass operation, it met with the unanimous approval of the working people.

Question: Did it make you give up your villainous intentions?

Answer: I don't want to say this. On the contrary, we, the conspirators, used this circumstance to expand the mass operations in every possible way and, by intensifying the provocative methods of carrying them out, in the end to achieve the implementation of our treacherous conspiratorial designs.

Question: How did you manage to use the sympathy of the working people for repressions against the kulaks, k.-r. clergy and criminals, in order to achieve the goals set by the conspiratorial organization?

Answer: When the so-called "limits" established for them in the regions for the repression of former kulaks, White Guards, K.-R. clergy and criminals, we, the conspirators, and I, in particular, again raised the question of prolonging the mass operations and increasing the number of repressed people before the government.

As proof of the expediency of continuing mass operations, we cited the extreme infestation of this kind of elements of the collective farms in the countryside, factories and factories in the cities, emphasizing the interest and sympathy for this measure of the working people of the city and countryside.

Question: Did you manage to get the government's decision to extend the mass operations?

Answer: Yes. We achieved the government's decision to extend the mass operation and increase the number of repressed people.

Question: Have you deceived the government?

Answer: It was certainly necessary to continue the mass operation and increase the contingent of the repressed. This measure, however, had to be stretched out in time and real and correct accounting should be established so that, having prepared, it was necessary to strike at the organizing, most dangerous top of the counter-revolutionary elements.

The government, of course, had no idea about our conspiratorial plans and in this case proceeded only from the need to continue the operation, without entering into the essence of its conduct.

In this sense, we, the government, of course, deceived in the most brazen way.

Question: Were there any signals from the local NKVD workers and the population about the existing perversions during the mass operation?

Answer: There were a lot of signals about perversions on the part of ordinary workers of the local UNKVD. Even more such signals were from the population. However, these signals were jammed both in the NKVD and in the Central Office, the apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and signaling workers of the NKVD were often arrested for this.

Question: How did you manage to jam the signals of perversions from local workers and the population?

Answer: We managed to jam the signals relatively easily, bearing in mind that all leadership was concentrated in the hands of the conspirators. In the centre, the whole matter of mass operations was concentrated entirely in the hands of the conspirators. Many of the NKVD Directorates were also headed by conspirators who were fully aware of our conspiratorial plans.

Such “concrete” guidance came from the center on these issues that we pushed all the heads of the UNKVD to expand mass repressions and carry them out provocatively.

In the end, they got used to the fact that mass operations are the easiest form of operational work, especially since these operations were virtually uncontrolled, extrajudicial.

Question: After you managed to prolong the mass operations, did you achieve the goals set by the conspiratorial organization to arouse dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the population?

Answer: Yes, by stretching out mass operations for many months, we eventually managed to cause misunderstanding and dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government in certain sections of the population in a number of areas.

Question: In what specific areas did you succeed in carrying out your conspiratorial plans, and in what way was this expressed?

Answer: This applies mainly to the regions of Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian republics, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, West Siberian, Leningrad, Western, Rostov, Ordzhonikidze regions and DVK2. This is explained, firstly, by the fact that our attention was most focused on them, and, secondly, by the fact that almost all the heads of the NKVD of these regions were conspirators.

In all these areas, there were the most gross anti-Soviet facts of repression of essentially innocent people, which caused legitimate discontent among the working people.

Question: Dwell in more detail on each area separately, informing the investigation of the facts known to you of deliberately carried out provocative methods of repression.

Answer: I'll start with Ukraine, the People's Commissariat of the Ukrainian SSR at the beginning was headed by Leplevsky, a member of the anti-Soviet organization of the right, and then, the conspirator Uspensky recruited by me. A mass operation began under Leplevsky, but Uspensky had already accounted for no less of the repressed.

Question: Was Leplevsky aware of your conspiratorial plans?

Answer: No, Leplevsky hardly knew our true conspiratorial plans. In any case, I personally did not recruit him into the conspiratorial organization and did not inform him of our plan for a provocative operation. None of the leading conspirators also told me that he had contacted Leplevsky on a conspiracy.

Carrying out a mass operation, Leplevsky, like most other heads of the NKVD who were not conspirators, spread it over a wide front, leaving almost untouched the most malicious and active organizers from the kulaks, the White Guards, the Petliurists, the K.-R. the clergy, etc., at the same time focusing the entire blow on the less active elements and partly on the layers of the population close to Soviet power.

Question: Did Ouspensky know your conspiratorial plans for the provocative conduct of mass operations?

Answer: Yes, Ouspensky was fully aware of our conspiratorial plans, and I personally informed him about them. Personally, I gave him specific tasks on this issue. So, Uspensky not only continued Leplevsky's sabotage practice, but also significantly expanded it.

Having received additional “limits” after my arrival in Ukraine, Uspensky, on my instructions, did not limit himself only to the repression of former kulaks, clergy and criminals, but expanded the category of the repressed, including nationalists, former prisoners of war and others.

He even insisted to me that all former members of the CPSU(b) should be included under the category of the repressed. However, I forbade him to make arrests, on this basis only, as it was too obvious and overt a provocation.

Question: What is the result of the wrecking, provocative practice of conducting a mass operation?

Answer: I must say that the entire blow of the mass operation in the regions of Ukraine was in many ways provocative and hurt a significant part of the close sections of the population of the Soviet government.

All this caused bewilderment and discontent among the working people in many regions of Ukraine. This discontent was especially strong in the border regions, where the families of the repressed remained.

From the regions of Ukraine, the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office received many signals about this, but no one reacted to them in any way. These signals from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the government were hidden.

Question: Were you aware of the facts, what specifically expressed the dissatisfaction of the population?

Answer: These facts are completely unknown to me. I knew about them only from Ouspensky's information.

From the words of Uspensky, I know that as a result of the provocative conduct of mass operations, especially in the border regions of Ukraine, escapes across the cordon to Poland intensified. The families of the repressed began to be expelled from the collective farms, in connection with which robberies, arson and theft began. There were even several cases of terrorist acts against workers of village councils and collective farms. Complaints began to be written not only by the families of the repressed, but also by ordinary collective farmers and even party members.

Dissatisfaction with the punitive policy was so great that local party organizations began to insist on the immediate eviction of all family members repressed from Ukraine to other regions.

These are, in general terms, the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in Ukraine.

We managed to achieve approximately the same results in Belarus.

When carrying out mass operations, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Byelorussian SSR was headed by Berman B.

Question: Was Berman a member of the NKVD conspiratorial organization?

Answer: Berman was not a member of our conspiratorial organization, but I, Frinovsky and Velsky knew as early as the beginning of 1938 that he was an active participant in Yagoda's anti-Soviet conspiratorial group.

We did not intend to involve Berman in our conspiratorial organization. He was already quite a compromised person and subject to arrest. With the arrest, however, we pulled. Berman, in turn, fearing arrest, tried with might and main. It was enough for him to have my general instructions that Byelorussia was heavily littered and that it needed to be thoroughly cleaned, and he carried out mass operations with the same result as Uspensky.

Question: Namely, what is the result?

Answer: Endlessly demanding an increase in "limits", Berman, following the example of Uspensky, summed up the "nationalists" under the category of the repressed, carried out completely unfounded arrests and created the same discontent in the border regions of Belarus, leaving the families of the repressed on the ground.

There were even more signals of discontent among the population of the border regions of Belarus, in the NKVD and the Prosecutor's Office, than in Ukraine. All of them also remained without consequences and were hidden from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the government.

Question: How was the situation in the other areas you listed?

Answer: In other areas that I have listed in my testimony, similar results have been achieved and we have also managed to achieve discontent among certain segments of the population.

These results differed only in the conduct of massive national operations, as I will testify below.

We should only highlight the results of mass operations in the Far East, Donbass and the Central Asian republics.

Question: Why exactly do you consider it necessary to highlight the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in the Far East, Donbass and the Central Asian republics?

Answer: We attached great importance to these areas in terms of the possibility of wrecking, provocative conduct of mass operations.

We believed that in these regions remote from the center with weak Party organizations, we would be able to apply provocative methods more decisively and without special caution, while at the same time achieving more tangible results in realizing the tasks set by the conspiratorial organization. We said bluntly that if the operation was carried out skillfully, it would be possible to reduce coal production in the Donbass, to reduce the crops and the cotton harvest in Central Asia, apart from the fact that here it was easiest to arouse discontent among the population.

It was only for these reasons, for example, that my deputy for the NKVD, the conspirator Velsky, was specially sent to the Donbass and Central Asia, to whom the leadership of the mass operation was entrusted.

Question: What is the result of Velsky's trip?

Answer: Velsky thus instructed the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Central Asian republics and personally carried out mass operations in the republics of Central Asia and in the Donbass in such a way that he completely and completely fulfilled our conspiratorial tasks.

So, for example, as a result of the operation he carried out, he achieved dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the workers of Donbass, a huge turnover of labor and a decrease in coal production. In the Central Asian republics, and especially in Turkmenistan, the NKVD, which was headed by a conspirator recruited by Velsky, it seems Kondakov (I don’t remember my last name now), caused great discontent and unrest among the population, in connection with which emigrant moods intensified and there were many cases organized transition for the cordon of large groups of people.

Question: Above, you attributed the DVK to the group of districts, which you considered necessary to dwell on. Give evidence, what are the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in the Far East?

Answer: On the conduct of the mass operation in the DVK, I considered it necessary to dwell separately, not only in connection with the importance of this area, but also in connection with the conspiratorial assignments that Frinovsky received when he left for the DVK in June 1938.

Question: What kind of conspiratorial assignments to Frinovsky are you referring to?

Answer: I mean only the task of carrying out a provocative mass operation to repress former kulaks, k.r. clergy, White Guards, etc.

Question: Wasn't this operation on the Far Eastern Military District completed in June 1938?

Answer: It was already completed at the DVK, but we agreed with Frinovsky that after his arrival in the Far East, he would send a telegram with a request to increase the "limits" of the repressed, motivating this measure by the extreme infestation of the DVK k.-r. elements that remained almost intact.

Frinovsky did just that. Arriving at the DVK, a few days later he asked to increase the "limits" by fifteen thousand people, to which he received consent. For the DVK, with its small population, this figure was impressive.

Question: Why did you need to resume the mass operation on the DVK?

Answer: We believed that the most convenient and effective form of sabotage, capable of quickly causing discontent among the population. Since there was a rather tense situation at the DVK at that time, we decided to aggravate it even more with a provocative continuation of the mass operation.

Question: What are the results of the provocative conduct of the mass operation on the DVK?

Answer: Upon his arrival from the Far East, Frinovsky reported to me that he was able to carry out this operation in full according to the provocative plans of the conspirators, taking into account the complex and acute situation of the conflict with the Japanese that had developed in the Far East.

Question: The investigation is interested in specific facts, what exactly did Frinovsky report to you about the provocative operation in the Far East?

Answer: According to Frinovsky, the mass operation we continued came in handy. Having created the impression of a broad rout of the anti-Soviet elements in the DVK, he actually managed to successfully use the mass operation in order to retain the more leading and active cadres of the counter-revolution and the conspirators. By concentrating the entire blow of the mass operation on sections of the population close to us and on passive, declassed elements, Frinovsky, on the one hand, aroused legitimate discontent among the population of many districts of the Far East and, on the other hand, preserved the organized and active cadres of the counter-revolution. He especially boasted that from the formal point of view, one could not find fault with the operation he had carried out. He smashed the Kolchak, Kapelev and Semyonovites, who, however, were mostly old men and many of them only for this reason did not emigrate to China, Manchuria and Japan at one time. Frinovsky jokingly called the operation in the DVK - "old man's".

Question: You are talking about a mass operation carried out in the areas that you have been focusing on. And in other areas, did things get better and did you not use your wrecking and provocative practices?

Answer: It was no better in other areas. However, the contingent of the repressed was smaller there, and therefore the results of our provocation did not affect the population so much.

Now, in general terms, I have told everything about the provocative conduct of a mass operation to repress former kulaks, k.-r. clergy and criminals. I can only specify and supplement them with a number of available numerous facts, which, however, do not change the overall picture.

Question: Above, you touched on the fact that you also provocatively used mass operations to repress people of foreign origin in capitalist states neighboring us (defectors, political emigrants, etc.) in the interests of implementing your conspiratorial plans.

Give detailed evidence on this matter.

Answer: Mass operations to repress persons of foreign origin, with the aim of destroying the base of foreign intelligence in the USSR, took place simultaneously with a mass operation against kulaks, criminals, and so on.

Naturally, we conspirators could not pass by these operations without trying to use them for our conspiratorial purposes.

We, the conspirators, also decided to carry out these operations on a broad front, hitting as many people as possible, especially since there were no maximum limits for these operations, and, consequently, they could be expanded arbitrarily at our discretion.

Question: What were your goals in carrying out these operations?

Answer: The goals that we pursued by the provocative conduct of these operations were also to cause discontent and unrest among the population of the USSR belonging to these nationalities. In addition, by provocative conduct of these operations, we wanted to create public opinion in the European states that in the USSR people are repressed only on ethnic grounds, and to provoke protests from some of these states.

I must say that all this also coincided with our conspiratorial plans to focus on the seizure of power during the war, since certain prerequisites were created for this. These prerequisites in this case were expressed in the creation of an atmosphere of dissatisfaction not only with the punitive, but also with the national policy of the Soviet government.

Question: Did you manage to achieve your treacherous goals in carrying out these operations?

Answer: Yes, they succeeded, and to a certain extent with greater effect for the conspirators than during the mass operation against the kulaks, the K.-R. clergy and criminals. As a result of the provocative conduct of this kind of mass operations, we managed to achieve that among the population of the USSR of the repressed nationalities, we created great anxiety, misunderstanding what caused these repressions, dissatisfaction with the Soviet government, talk about the imminence of war and strong emigre moods.

All these facts took place everywhere, but they were especially developed in the Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian republics, that is, in the regions to which we paid special attention.

In addition, as a result of the provocative conduct of these operations, there were many protests from the governments of Germany, Poland, Persia, Greece and other states, and protest articles appeared in a number of newspapers in European countries.

Question: What kind of protests are you referring to? Give more detailed evidence.

Answer: The most vigorous protests were from the Iranian government. It protested against the ongoing repressions of Persian subjects, their deportation from the USSR to Iran, and against the confiscation of their property. They raised this question even before the diplomatic representatives of other countries with the proposal of a joint protest.

In Iran, a special society was even created to protect Iranian citizens from persecution in the USSR, which arranged money collections throughout the country in favor of Iranians repressed in the USSR.

In addition, a number of retaliatory repressions against citizens of the USSR were undertaken in Iran.

The government of Greece protested against the repressions and expulsion of Greek subjects, and defiantly did not issue visas to enter Greece for Greeks who wanted to go there.

The Finnish government also protested against the arrests among the Finns, insisted on their release and deportation to Finland.

The governments of England, Germany, Poland and France protested against the arrests of individual foreign nationals.

In addition, as I have already said, a number of protesting articles appeared in the European press and even caused bewilderment and requests from the friends of the Soviet Union.

Question: Namely?

Answer: I mean first of all Roman Rolland. He sent a special letter in which he asked him to inform him whether it was true that repressions against foreigners had begun in the USSR, only on this one ground, regardless of his attitude towards the Soviet Union. He motivated this request by the fact that a number of protesting articles appeared in the foreign press, and then, as a friend of the Soviet Union, many European public figures turned to him on this issue.

In addition, Romain Rolland already asked for individual arrested persons whom he knew personally and for whom he vouched in the sense of their sympathy for the Soviet regime.

Question: By what provocative methods of carrying out these mass operations did you manage to achieve your conspiratorial goals?

Answer: As I already said, we decided to carry out these operations on a broad front, capturing as many people as possible by repression.

Our main pressure on the chiefs of the UNKVD, whether they were conspirators or not, went exactly along this line in order to force them to expand their operations all the time.

As a result of this pressure, the practice of repressions was widely spread without any compromising materials, only on the basis of one sign that the person being repressed belongs to such and such a nationality (Pole, German, Latvian, Greek, etc.).

This, however, is not enough. Quite a mass phenomenon, especially in some areas, was the practice when under the category of Poles, Finns, Germans, etc. let down Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc.

In particular, this was distinguished by the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of such republics as: Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, and the heads of the UNKVD of such regions as Sverdlovsk, Leningrad and Moscow.

So, for example, the former head of the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk region, Dmitriev, summed up a lot of Ukrainians, Belarusians and even Russians under the category of repressed Poles, defectors. In any case, for every arrested Pole there were at least a dozen Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.

There were many such cases when Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were generally made Poles on falsified documents.

The same practice was in Leningrad. Zakovsky, instead of Finns, arrested many indigenous inhabitants of the USSR - Karelians and "turned" them into Finns.

Ouspensky, under the guise of Poles, arrested many Uniate Ukrainians, that is, he took them not on the basis of national origin, but on the basis of religion. Such facts can be multiplied in many ways. They are typical for most areas.

Question: How did you manage to carry out such obvious and gross criminal machinations?

Answer: The judicial procedure for considering this type of cases has been simplified to the extreme. It was simpler and, in that sense, even more uncontrolled than the procedure for considering cases of a mass operation of former kulaks and criminals. There were still judicial troikas, which included the secretaries of the regional committees. For these national or so-called "album operations" and this summary judicial order did not exist. The list of the repressed with a summary of the case in the "album" and with the intended punishment was signed by the head of the UNKVD and the Regional Prosecutor, and then sent for approval to Moscow to the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office. In Moscow, a case was decided only on the basis of a brief landscape reference. The protocol (list) was signed by me or Frinovsky from the NKVD and Vyshinsky from the Prosecutor's Office, after which the sentence entered into force and was reported for execution to the head of the UNKVD and the Prosecutor of the corresponding region.

This simplified judicial procedure for the consideration of cases completely guaranteed us from control and allowed us to carry out our wrecking provocative conspiratorial plans in full.

Question: Was it only a simplified judicial procedure that allowed your provocative plans to be carried out?

Answer: Basically, of course, this allowed us to carry out sabotage with impunity.

As a result of this oversimplified judicial procedure, in the regions, for example, the practice of falsifying investigative data, forgery and deceit was widely developed.

In particular, again, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Sverdlovsk, Moscow and Leningrad, the heads of the UNKVD, who were entirely either members of our conspiratorial organization or members of Yagoda's anti-Soviet group, were distinguished by this. By committing forgeries and falsifying investigative data, the heads of those UNKVD: the conspirators Uspensky, Vakovsky and members of the anti-Soviet group Yagoda - Dmitriev and Berman repressed many innocent people who were not involved in counter-revolutionary crimes, creating a base of discontent among certain sections of the population.

Question: Give evidence, how, by carrying out this obviously obvious and criminal practice of repression, did you manage to deceive the bodies of prosecutor's supervision?

Answer: I can't say that we had any deliberate plan of deliberate deception of the Prosecutor's Office here.

The prosecutors of the regions, territories and republics, as well as the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, could not fail to see such an obvious criminal practice of mass provocative repressions and falsification of investigative data, since they, together with the NKVD, were responsible for considering these cases.

This inaction of prosecutorial supervision can only be explained by the fact that in many regions, territories and republics the Prosecutor's Office was headed by members of various anti-Soviet organizations, which often carried out the practice of even wider provocative repressions among the population.

The other part of the prosecutors, who were not involved in participation in anti-Soviet groups, were simply afraid to argue on these issues with the heads of the UNKVD, especially since they did not have any instructions on this from the center, where all the falsified investigative Inquiries were made without any delay or comment.

Question: You are talking about the local bodies of the Prosecutor's Office. Didn't they see these criminal machinations in the USSR Prosecutor's Office?

Answer: The Prosecutor's Office of the USSR could not, of course, fail to notice all these perversions.

I explain the behavior of the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and, in particular, the Prosecutor of the USSR Vyshinsky, by the same fear of quarreling with the NKVD and showing himself no less "revolutionary" in the sense of carrying out mass repressions.

I also come to this conclusion because Vyshinsky has repeatedly told me personally about the tens of thousands of complaints received by the Procurator's Office, to which he pays no attention. In the same way, during the entire period of the operations, I do not remember a single case of Vyshinsky's protest about mass operations, while there were cases when he insisted on harsher sentences against certain individuals.

These are the only reasons I can explain the virtual absence of any kind of prosecutorial supervision over mass operations and the absence of their protests against the actions of the NKVD to the government. I repeat that we, the conspirators, and, in particular, I did not have any well-thought-out plans to deceive the Prosecutor's Office.

Question: It is known that among those repressed in all mass operations, a large number were sentenced to serving sentences in camps.

Were you not afraid of exposing your criminal practices, knowing that many were convicted on falsified materials?

Answer: We had no fear that our criminal machinations might be exposed by the prisoners of the camp contingent, and, in particular, I did not have. All the camps were not only subordinate to the NKVD, but were also led by conspirators from the GU GAG. Under these conditions, we could always take appropriate preventive measures.

What's more, when we sent this contingent into the camps, we had our own special considerations in this regard.

These considerations and plans consisted in the fact that we, sending the repressed to the camps on the basis of insufficiently substantiated materials, thought to use their discontent during the war and, in particular, when seizing power.

Question: How else can you add your testimony about enemy work in mass operations?

Answer: Basically, I told everything, perhaps I did not indicate only some small details of our enemy work on mass operations, but they do not change the overall picture of our criminal actions.

The testimony is true, I have read it - (Yezhov)

Interrogated: St. Investigator of the Investigative Department of the NKVD of the USSR

Art. lieutenant of state security: (Esaulov)

____________________________________________

1 A fragment of the interrogation protocol of Yezhov has been omitted, where he speaks of a “conspiracy” in the NKVD and its participants.

2 Far East region

In December 1937, the Land of Soviets vigorously celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. It was the peak of the fame of People's Commissar Nikolai Yezhov. However, before the disgrace of one of the most sinister figures Soviet history there wasn't much time left.

Ezhov Nikolay Ivanovich(April 19 (May 1), 1895 - February 4, 1940), member of the Bolshevik Party since 1917, since 1921 in party work. In 1930-1934. - Head of the Distribution Department and the Personnel Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, since 1934 - Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Chairman of the Control Party Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, since 1935 - Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In 1937-1939. candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee. From September 26, 1936 to November 25, 1938 - People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, General Commissar of State Security. Until April 9, 1939 - People's Commissar for Water Transport. Arrested April 10, 1939, shot February 6, 1940.

Stalin and Beria initially wanted to arrest Yezhov's wife as an "English spy" and force her to testify against her husband. Evgenia Yezhova was especially vulnerable, as she had many lovers.

Lovers of Evgenia Yezhova

One of them, apparently, was the writer Mikhail Sholokhov. As Zinaida Glikina, an employee of the Foreign Commission of the Writers' Union, an expert on the United States and a close friend of Evgenia, who sometimes visited the Yezhovs, showed, they met in the spring of 1938. Sholokhov was then in Moscow, and Yezhov invited him to his dacha. In the summer of the same year, Sholokhov again came to Moscow and visited Yevgenia at the editorial office of the USSR at a Construction Site magazine under the pretext of participating in the issue of the magazine, and then took her home. Returning to Moscow in August, he and Fadeev again went to Evgenia's office, after which the three of them dined at the National Hotel.

The next day, Sholokhov again visited Evgenia at the editorial office and this time invited her to his room in the same hotel, where she stayed for several hours. The next day, returning to the dacha late in the evening and having drunk heavily, Yezhov, in a state of noticeable intoxication and nervousness, took out some document from his briefcase and angrily asked his wife: “Did you live with Sholokhov?” It was a shorthand record of what happened in Sholokhov's room during Yevgenia's stay in it: on Yezhov's instructions, all conversations were eavesdropped. Glikina wrote that Evgenia was very excited reading this document... Having lost his temper, Yezhov jumped up to Evgenia and, according to Glikina, "began to beat her with his fists in the face, chest and other parts of the body." Obviously, the marital quarrel soon ended, since a few days later Evgenia told Glikina that her husband had destroyed the transcript. According to Glikina, Yezhov told her in October that Sholokhov went to see Beria1 and complained that Yezhov had arranged for him to be followed, and as a result, Stalin himself was handling the case.

A little time passed, and Yezhov began to think about the need for a divorce. On September 18, 1938, he announced his decision to Eugenia. She was completely at a loss and the next day turned to Stalin for "help and protection" ... Stalin did not answer the letter.

In July 1938, almost two years after his arrest, the former husband of Evgenia A.F. was shot. Gladun. In the same month, one of Evgenia's alleged lovers, Semyon Uritsky, was arrested. Previously, he was the editor of the Krestyanskaya Gazeta, in which Evgenia once worked, then he became the director of the All-Union Book Chamber. Without a doubt, Yezhov himself organized his arrest. It is striking that, unlike Gladun, Yezhov did not manage to bring him under execution before Beria joined the NKVD, and Uritsky was thus able to give interesting evidence against the Yezhovs. He testified that Evgenia was in a close relationship with Isaac Babel, which Yezhov found out about when he found Love letters Babel in his wife's things.

Since the autumn of 1938, a series of arrests of people from Evgenia's entourage began. Yezhov's nephew and roommate, Anatoly Babulin, subsequently testified that at the end of October 1938, Frinovsky2 brought a document to Yezhov's dacha, which greatly alarmed the latter. The next day, Yezhov called his wife in the Crimea and asked her to immediately return to Moscow. From that moment on, he became completely discouraged, drank more than before and became very nervous. According to Yezhov's sister Evdokia, in the fall of 1938, Evgenia received an anonymous letter accusing her of espionage and passing secret information abroad.

After the return of Evgenia and Glikina from the Crimea, Yezhov settled them in a dacha; he visited them twice, hardly spoke to Evgenia and whispered something to Glikina. A little later, on October 29, Evgenia was admitted to the Vorovsky sanatorium, a small hospital on the outskirts of Moscow for people suffering from nervous disorders, where the best Moscow doctors were assigned to her. On November 15, Glikin was arrested along with another close friend of Evgenia, Zinaida Koriman, who worked as a technical editor for the magazine USSR in Construction. This, apparently, was the intrigues of Beria. It was logical to assume that it was Evgenia's turn.

After the arrest of the “two Zin”, Evgenia again writes to Stalin in despair. Yevgenia Yezhova assured Stalin of her loyalty and asked that at least someone from the Central Committee be sent to speak with her. She still hoped to prove her innocence to the "enemies"...

And this time, Stalin left her letter unanswered. On November 19, Evgenia lost consciousness as a result of an overdose of Luminal; she died two days later at the age of thirty-four.

During interrogation, V.K. Konstantinov3 testified that Yezhov, having received a letter from Evgenia from the hospital, sent her sleeping pills (as Dementyev4 told Konstantinov4). Then he took a trinket and ordered the maid to take it to Evgenia; shortly thereafter, Evgenia poisoned herself. Dementiev thought that the transfer of this trinket was " symbol that she must be poisoned." When Konstantinov later asked Yezhov why Evgenia committed suicide, he replied: “You think it was easy for me to part with Zhenya! She was a good woman, but she had to be sacrificed, because she had to save herself.

It must be assumed that Yezhov and his wife agreed that she would be poisoned upon receiving a signal. Yezhov gave such a signal on November 8, but Evgenia was in no hurry, and only the arrest of two "Zins" - Glikina and Koriman pushed her to action, since it clearly meant that now her turn had come.

The drunkard and the libertine

After the death of his wife, on the eve of his inevitable arrest, Yezhov returned to his youthful habits and inclinations. In a statement of 24 April 1939 regarding his homosexual affairs, he describes the period from November to December 1938 as follows:

“In 1938 there were two cases of pederastic connection with Dementiev, with whom I had this connection, as I said above, back in 1924. The connection was in Moscow in the autumn of 1938 at my apartment after I was removed from the post of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Dementiev lived with me then for about two months.

Somewhat later, also in 1938, there were two cases of pederasty between me and Konstantinov. I have known Konstantinov since 1918 in the army. He worked with me until 1921. After 1921, we almost never met. In 1938, at my invitation, he began to visit me often at my apartment and was at the dacha two or three times.
Dementiev testified that on his first visit to Moscow, he and Yezhov "engaged in pederasty", or, as he also put it, "Yezhov engaged in the most perverted forms of debauchery with me." Yezhov also asked him to become his bodyguard, preferring to have confidant, not the people of Beria.

Vladimir Konstantinov also described this period in his testimony... According to him, from October to December 1938, Yezhov often invited him to drink in his Kremlin apartment. Once he asked Konstantinov to come with his wife Katerina and began to solder them. Having drunk, Konstantinov fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up at about one or two in the night, the servant told him that his wife was in the bedroom with Yezhov; the bedroom door was closed. Soon she came out of the bedroom all disheveled, and they went home. At home, she cried and told him that Yezhov behaved like a pig.

The next evening, Yezhov again called Konstantinov for a drink and, by the way, said to him: “I still spent the night with your Katyukha, and although she is an old woman, she is not a bad woman.” Konstantinov, who was afraid of Yezhov, swallowed his resentment. This time Yezhov got drunk worse than usual. They listened to the gramophone, and after dinner they went to bed. As Konstantinov said: “As soon as I undressed and went to bed, I look - Yezhov climbs up to me and offers to engage in pederasty. It stunned me and I pushed him away, he rolled onto his bed. As soon as I fell asleep, I felt something in my mouth. Opening my eyes, I see - Yezhov puts a member in my mouth. I jumped up, scolded him and threw him away with force, but he again climbed up to me with vile suggestions.

Yezhov continued intimate relations with women. From the end of 1938, his nephew Anatoly brought "girls" to him for the night: Tatyana Petrova, an employee of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade, whom Yezhov courted back in 1934; an employee of the Machine-Tool Plant named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze Valentina Sharikova (on the New Year, 1939) and an employee of the People's Commissariat for Water Transport Ekaterina Sycheva (at the end of February 1939).

Arrest and execution

On April 10, Yezhov was arrested. A search of the apartment and office revealed traces of drunkenness and depression. AT desk and bookcases (filled for the most part with the works of his victims) were found hidden in various places loaded pistols and bottles of vodka. In the drawer of the table was a package with bullets that were used to shoot Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, each bullet was wrapped in a separate piece of paper with the name of the executed.

On June 10, 1939, he was officially charged with many years of espionage ties with circles in Poland, Germany, England and Japan; in the leadership of the conspiracy in the NKVD; in the preparation of a coup d'etat, the organization of a series of murders, in sexual intercourse with men (“sodomy”). He was interrogated by employees of the NKVD investigative department A.A. Esaulov and B.V. Rhodes. As was customary, interrogations were carried out mostly at night. Yezhov could not endure the torture and signed all the testimonies.

Of Yezhov's close associates, Sergei Schwartz, Yezhov's assistant in the Central Committee, was also arrested on November 20, 1938; personal secretary Serafima Ryzhova - December 17; bodyguard Vasily Efimov - January 13, 1939. His sexual partners Ivan Dementyev and Vladimir Konstantinov were arrested no later than April 1939, their predecessor Yakov Boyarsky on July 5, 1939, and Yevgenia's brother Ilya Feigenberg on June 18, 1939. Eugenia's first husband, Gladun, had already been executed by this time; her second husband, Khayutin, was also repressed ... Speaking during interrogations about suspicious persons with whom his wife maintained relations, Yezhov mentioned Isaac Babel, Mikhail Koltsov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (until May 1939) Maxim Litvinov, writer Ivan Kataev ( who was shot on August 19, 1937), actor Topchanov and polar explorer Otto Schmidt, and he called Babel and Schmidt her lovers.

As for the case of Yezhov, his investigation ended on February 1, 1940, with the indictment, exposing him as the head of a conspiracy in the NKVD system; a spy who worked for the intelligence services of Poland, Germany, England and Japan; a conspirator who was preparing a coup d'état; the culprit of attempts on the life of Stalin, Molotov and Beria and a pest. Yezhov was accused of falsifying the case of mercury poisoning and of organizing the murders of a number of people, including his own wife, who had allegedly been an English spy since the mid-1920s. He was not charged with pederasty or gross violations legality. The next day, Yezhov was brought to Beria's office in Sukhanovskaya prison, and there he heard what he himself had said many times to other doomed people. Beria promised to save his life in exchange for a confession in court: “Do not think that you will definitely be shot. If you confess and tell everything honestly, your life will be spared.”
Closed court session of the Military Collegium Supreme Court under the chairmanship of Vasily Ulrikh on the Yezhov case took place on February 3. Yezhov was allowed to make a statement in which he denied being a spy, terrorist or conspirator, saying that his confessions had been torn out by severe beatings. Mentioning the promise given by Beria the day before, he stated that he preferred death to lies. However, Yezhov confessed to his other crimes: “I cleared 14,000 Chekists. But my great fault lies in the fact that I did not clean them enough ... All around me were the enemies of the people, my enemies. He did not expect that his life would be saved, but he asked that he be shot "calmly, without suffering" and that his nephews not be repressed; he also asked that his mother (if she was still alive) and his daughter be taken care of. Last words Yezhov were intended for Stalin: “I ask you to tell Stalin that everything that happened to me is just a coincidence and the possibility is not ruled out that the enemies also put their hands, which I overlooked. Tell Stalin that I will die with his name on my lips.

After the execution of the sentence, Yezhov's body was placed in a metal box and taken to the crematorium ... Yezhov's cremated remains were thrown into a common grave at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow, where the ashes of the executed Babel were previously buried. Evgenia Yezhova rests in the same cemetery next to her three brothers. In the press and on the radio, nothing was reported about the trial of Yezhov and his execution.
Nikita Petrov is the Deputy Chairman of the Scientific Information and Educational Center "Memorial", the author of works on the history, structure and personnel policy of the VChK-KGB bodies.
Mark Jansen - history teacher Eastern European countries at the University of Amsterdam, scientific papers on repressions in the USSR.
_______________
1 At that time the first deputy people's commissar of internal affairs.
2 From April 1937 - 1st Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, one of Yezhov's closest employees. Arrested on April 6, 1939, shot on February 4, 1940.
3 An old acquaintance of Yezhov, a political worker of the Red Army with the rank of divisional commissar.
4 Yezhov's old friend.

N. I. Ezhov

Stalin and the conspiracy in the NKVD

Foreword

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was born in 1895 in St. Petersburg in the family of a Russian foundry worker.

Since 1911, Nikolai Yezhov worked as an apprentice locksmith at the Putilov factory, and in 1915 he volunteered for the army.

After training in the 76th reserve infantry battalion, he was sent to Northwestern Front, in the 172nd Lida infantry regiment. On August 14, Yezhov, who fell ill and was also slightly wounded, was sent to the rear.

In early June 1916, Yezhov, declared unfit for military service, was sent to the rear artillery workshop in Vitebsk. Here, on May 5, 1917, Nikolai Yezhov was accepted into the RSDLP (b).

In the autumn of 1917, Yezhov fell ill, ended up in the hospital, and upon returning to the unit, on January 6, 1918, he was dismissed on sick leave for a period of six months. In April 1919 he was called up for service in the Red Army. From October 1919 to April 1921, Yezhov was the commissar of a number of Red Army units.

Since 1921, Nikolai Yezhov was at party work, and in 1930 he was appointed head of the Orgraspreddepartment of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In the same year Yezhov met Stalin.

In 1933-1934. Yezhov was a member of the Central Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the purge of the party. In February 1934, he was elected a member of the Central Committee, the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and Deputy Chairman of the Party Control Commission (CPC) under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. From February 1935, Yezhov was the chairman of the CPC, secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

//__ * * * __//

At the end of 1934, Yezhov, on behalf of Stalin, actually headed the investigation into the murder of Kirov. Ya. Agranov, one of the deputies of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs E. Yagoda, reported at a meeting in the NKVD:

Yezhov called me to his dacha. It must be said that this meeting was of a conspiratorial nature. Yezhov conveyed Stalin's instructions about the mistakes made by the investigation into the case of the Trotskyist center, and instructed to take measures to open the Trotskyist center, to reveal the obviously undiscovered terrorist gang and Trotsky's personal role in this case. Yezhov put the question in such a way that either he himself would convene an operational meeting, or I would intervene in this matter. Yezhov's instructions were specific and gave the correct starting thread for solving the case.

On September 25, 1936, I.V. Stalin and A.A. Zhdanov sent a cipher telegram to Moscow with the following content:

"Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Tt. Kaganovich, Molotov and other members of the Politburo of the Central Committee. First. We consider it absolutely necessary urgent matter appointment of Comrade Yezhov was promoted to the post of People's Commissar. Yagoda was clearly not up to the task of exposing the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc of the OGPU, he was 4 years late in this matter. All party workers and the majority of regional representatives of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs speak about this. Agranov can be left as Yezhov's deputy in the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs ...

As far as the CPC is concerned, Yezhov could be left as a part-time job, and Yakovlev Yakov Arkadyevich could be nominated as Yezhov's first deputy for the CPC.

Yezhov agrees with our proposals...

It goes without saying that Yezhov remains secretary of the Central Committee.

September 26, 1936 N.I. Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, replacing Heinrich Yagoda in this post. On October 1, 1936, Yezhov signed the first order for the NKVD on his entry into the duties of People's Commissar.

Like his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda, Yezhov was subordinate to both the state security agencies (GUGB NKVD of the USSR), and the police, and support services, such as highways and fire departments.

//__ * * * __//

On March 2, 1937, Yezhov, in a report at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, sharply criticized his subordinates, pointing out failures in intelligence and investigative work. The plenum approved the report and instructed Yezhov to restore order in the organs of the NKVD. Of the state security officers, from October 1, 1936 to August 15, 1938, 2,273 people were arrested. As a result, the internal affairs and state security agencies were completely cleared of the employees of Heinrich Yagoda, and Yagoda himself was brought to trial in 1938 and was shot.

In May 1937, the NKVD uncovered a military conspiracy led by Marshal Tukhachevsky; in March 1938, members of the “right-wing Trotskyist” bloc headed by N. Bukharin appeared before the court.

At the same time, the repressions carried out by Yezhov in the country began to take on an uncontrollable character, as a result of which thousands of innocent people suffered. Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and personally I.V. Stalin repeatedly pointed out to Yezhov about serious excesses in the implementation of repressions, as well as failures in personnel work, but he did not heed these warnings. Moreover, since 1938 Yezhov became involved in political adventures.

As a result, in August 1938, Lavrenty Beria was appointed Yezhov's first deputy in the NKVD and head of the Main Directorate of State Security, whom Stalin was preparing to replace Yezhov.

On November 23, 1938, Yezhov wrote to the Politburo and personally to Stalin a letter of resignation. In the petition, Yezhov took responsibility for the wrecking activities of the enemies of the people who "inadvertently" infiltrated the NKVD and the prosecutor's office, as well as for the flight of a number of NKVD officers abroad.

Yezhov's successor was Beria, who from the end of September 1938 to January 1939 carried out large-scale arrests of Yezhov's people in the NKVD, the prosecutor's office and the courts.

//__ * * * __//

N.I. Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport, and on April 10, 1939, when new circumstances in his case were revealed, he was arrested and placed in Sukhanovskaya special prison NKVD USSR.

According to the indictment, “preparing a coup d'état, Yezhov trained terrorist cadres through his like-minded conspirators, intending to put them into action at the first opportunity. Yezhov and his accomplices Frinovsky, Evdokimov and Dagin practically prepared a putsch for November 7, 1938, which, according to the plan of his inspirers, was to result in terrorist acts against the leaders of the party and government during a demonstration on Red Square in Moscow.

During the investigation, Yezhov admitted his guilt and gave detailed testimony about the conspiracy in the NKVD in 1938. Among other things, he admitted the fact of his moral decay: drunkenness and pederasty, persecuted under Soviet laws. However, at the trial, Yezhov denied the charge of conspiracy and explained his confession by the “severe beatings” to which he was allegedly subjected during the preliminary investigation.

The court did not take into account these explanations of Yezhov, and on February 3, 1940 Military Board The Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced N.I. Yezhov to be shot. The sentence was carried out the next day.

Instead of introducing "The fight is not over yet..."

An interesting protocol of the interrogation of the former People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov, which more than clearly illustrates the reasons why almost the entire top of the NKVD, who carried out the repressions of 1937, was shot. In addition, it can be noted that Yezhov in his testimony quite clearly shows where "tens of thousands of Polish spies" came from, why proper prosecutorial supervision was not carried out, and what the loss of control over repression by the state leads to.

From the protocol of the interrogation of the accused Ezhov Nikolai Ivanovich dated August 4, 1939

From "4" August 1939 Yezhov N. I., born in 1895, ex. member of the CPSU (b) since 1917. Before his arrest - People's Commissar of Water Transport of the USSR.

Question: The investigation is aware that the Soviet NKVD bodies carried out in 1937-1938. mass operations to repress former kulaks, kr. you used the clergy, criminals and defectors of various countries adjacent to the USSR in the interests of the anti-Soviet conspiracy. How true is this?

Answer: Yes, this is entirely true.

Question: Did you achieve your provocative conspiratorial goals in carrying out the mass operation?

Answer: The first results of the mass operation were completely unexpected for us, the conspirators. Not only did they not create dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the population, but, on the contrary, caused a great political upsurge, especially in the countryside. Mass cases were observed when the collective farmers themselves came to the UNKVD and the district departments of the UNKVD demanding the arrest of one or another fugitive, White Guard, merchant, and so on.
In the cities, theft, stabbing and hooliganism, from which the working-class districts especially suffered, were sharply reduced.
It was quite obvious that the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks had correctly and timely decided to hold this event. Despite the provocative measures taken by us to carry out the mass operation, it met with the unanimous approval of the working people.

Q: Did that make you give up your villainous intentions?

Answer: I don't want to say that. On the contrary, we, the conspirators, used this circumstance to expand the mass operations in every possible way and, by intensifying the provocative methods of carrying them out, in the end to achieve the implementation of our treacherous conspiratorial designs.

Question: How did you manage to use the sympathy of the working people for the repressions against the kulaks, k.-r. clergy and criminals, in order to achieve the goals set by the conspiratorial organization?

Answer: When the so-called "limits" set for them in the regions for the repression of former kulaks, White Guards, K.-R. clergy and criminals, we, the conspirators, and I, in particular, again raised the question of prolonging the mass operations and increasing the number of repressed people before the government. As proof of the expediency of continuing mass operations, we cited the extreme infestation of this kind of elements of the collective farms in the countryside, factories and factories in the cities, emphasizing the interest and sympathy for this measure of the working people of the city and countryside.

Question: Did you manage to get the government's decision to extend the mass operations?

Answer: Yes. We achieved the government's decision to extend the mass operation and increase the number of repressed people.

Question: Have you deceived the government?

Answer: It was certainly necessary to continue the mass operation and increase the contingent of the repressed. This measure, however, had to be stretched out in time and real and correct accounting should be established so that, having prepared, it was necessary to strike at the organizing, most dangerous top of the counter-revolutionary elements. The government, of course, had no idea about our conspiratorial plans and in this case proceeded only from the need to continue the operation, without entering into the essence of its conduct. In this sense, we, the government, of course, deceived in the most brazen way.

Question: Were there any signals from the local workers of the NKVD and the population about the existing perversions during the conduct of the mass operation?

Answer: There were a lot of signals about perversions on the part of ordinary workers of the local NKVD. Even more such signals were from the population. However, these signals were jammed both in the NKVD and in the Central Office, the apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and signaling workers of the NKVD were often arrested for this.

Question: How did you manage to jam the signals of perversions from local workers and the population?

Answer: We managed to jam the signals relatively easily, bearing in mind that all leadership was concentrated in the hands of the conspirators. In the centre, the whole matter of mass operations was concentrated entirely in the hands of the conspirators. Many of the NKVD Directorates were also headed by conspirators who were fully aware of our conspiratorial plans. Such “concrete” guidance came from the center on these issues that we pushed all the heads of the UNKVD to expand mass repressions and carry them out provocatively. In the end, they got used to the fact that mass operations are the easiest form of operational work, especially since these operations were virtually uncontrolled, extrajudicial.

Question: After you managed to prolong the mass operations, did you achieve the goals set by the conspiratorial organization to arouse dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the population?

Answer: Yes, by stretching out the mass operations for many months, we finally managed to arouse misunderstanding and dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government in certain sections of the population in a number of areas.

Question: In what specific areas did you succeed in carrying out your conspiratorial plans, and in what way was this expressed?

Answer: This applies mainly to the regions of Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian republics, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, West Siberian, Leningrad, Western, Rostov, Ordzhonikidze regions and DVK2. This is explained, firstly, by the fact that our attention was most focused on them, and, secondly, by the fact that almost all the heads of the NKVD of these regions were conspirators. In all these areas, there were the most gross anti-Soviet facts of repression of essentially innocent people, which caused legitimate discontent among the working people.

Question: Please elaborate on each area separately, informing the investigation of the facts known to you of deliberately carried out provocative methods of repression.

Answer: I'll start with Ukraine, the People's Commissariat of the Ukrainian SSR at the beginning was headed by Leplevsky, a member of the anti-Soviet organization of the right, and then, by the conspirator Uspensky, recruited by me. A mass operation began under Leplevsky, but Uspensky had already accounted for no less of the repressed.

Question: Was Leplevsky aware of your conspiratorial plans?

Answer: No, Leplevsky hardly knew our true conspiratorial plans. In any case, I personally did not recruit him into the conspiratorial organization and did not inform him of our plan for a provocative operation. None of the leading conspirators also told me that he had contacted Leplevsky on a conspiracy. Carrying out a mass operation, Leplevsky, like most other heads of the NKVD who were not conspirators, spread it over a wide front, leaving almost untouched the most malicious and active organizers from the kulaks, the White Guards, the Petliurists, the K.-R. the clergy, etc., at the same time focusing the entire blow on the less active elements and partly on the layers of the population close to Soviet power.

Question: Was Uspensky aware of your conspiratorial plans for the provocative conduct of mass operations?

Answer: Yes, Uspensky was fully aware of our conspiratorial plans, and I personally informed him of them. Personally, I gave him specific tasks on this issue. So, Uspensky not only continued Leplevsky's sabotage practice, but also significantly expanded it. Having received additional “limits” after my arrival in Ukraine, Uspensky, on my instructions, did not limit himself only to the repression of former kulaks, clergy and criminals, but expanded the category of the repressed, including nationalists, former prisoners of war and others. He even insisted to me that all former members of the CPSU(b) should be included under the category of the repressed. However, I forbade him to make arrests, on this basis only, as it was too obvious and overt a provocation.

Question: What is the result of the wrecking, provocative practice of conducting a mass operation?

Answer: I must say that the entire blow of the mass operation in the regions of Ukraine was in many respects dealt provocatively and offended a significant part of the close sections of the population of the Soviet government. All this caused bewilderment and discontent among the working people in many regions of Ukraine. This discontent was especially strong in the border regions, where the families of the repressed remained. From the regions of Ukraine, the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office received many signals about this, but no one reacted to them in any way. These signals from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the government were hidden.

Question: Were you aware of the facts, in what concrete way the discontent of the population was expressed?

Answer: Of course, these facts are completely unknown to me. I knew about them only from Ouspensky's information.
From the words of Uspensky, I know that as a result of the provocative conduct of mass operations, especially in the border regions of Ukraine, escapes across the cordon to Poland intensified. The families of the repressed began to be expelled from the collective farms, in connection with which robberies, arson and theft began. There were even several cases of terrorist acts against workers of village councils and collective farms. Complaints began to be written not only by the families of the repressed, but also by ordinary collective farmers and even party members.
Dissatisfaction with the punitive policy was so great that local party organizations began to insist on the immediate eviction of all family members repressed from Ukraine to other regions.
These are, in general terms, the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in Ukraine. We managed to achieve approximately the same results in Belarus. When carrying out mass operations, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Byelorussian SSR was headed by Berman B.

Question: Was Berman a member of the NKVD conspiratorial organization?

Answer: Berman was not a member of our conspiratorial organization, but I, Frinovsky and Velsky knew already at the beginning of 1938 that he was an active participant in Yagoda's anti-Soviet conspiratorial group.
We did not intend to involve Berman in our conspiratorial organization. He was already quite a compromised person and subject to arrest. With the arrest, however, we pulled. Berman, in turn, fearing arrest, tried with might and main. It was enough for him to have my general instructions that Byelorussia was heavily littered and that it needed to be thoroughly cleaned, and he carried out mass operations with the same result as Uspensky.

Question: Namely, what is the result?

Answer: Endlessly demanding an increase in "limits", Berman, following the example of Uspensky, summed up the "nationalists" under the category of the repressed, carried out completely unfounded arrests and created the same discontent in the border regions of Belarus, leaving the families of the repressed on the ground. There were even more signals of discontent among the population of the border regions of Belarus, in the NKVD and the Prosecutor's Office, than in Ukraine. All of them also remained without consequences and were hidden from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the government.

Question: How was the situation in the other areas you mentioned?

Answer: In other areas that I listed in my testimony, similar results were achieved and we also managed to achieve discontent among certain segments of the population.
These results differed only in the conduct of massive national operations, as I will testify below. We should only highlight the results of mass operations in the Far East, Donbass and the Central Asian republics.

Question: Why exactly do you consider it necessary to single out the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in the Far East, Donbass and the Central Asian republics?

Answer: We attached great importance to these areas in terms of the possibility of wrecking, provocative conduct of mass operations. We believed that in these regions remote from the center with weak Party organizations, we would be able to apply provocative methods more decisively and without special caution, while at the same time achieving more tangible results in realizing the tasks set by the conspiratorial organization. We said bluntly that if the operation was carried out skillfully, it would be possible to reduce coal production in the Donbass, to reduce the crops and the cotton harvest in Central Asia, apart from the fact that here it was easiest to arouse discontent among the population.
It was only for these reasons, for example, that my deputy for the NKVD, the conspirator Velsky, was specially sent to the Donbass and Central Asia, to whom the leadership of the mass operation was entrusted.

Question: What is the result of Velsky's trip?

Answer: Velsky thus instructed the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Central Asian republics and personally carried out mass operations in the republics of Central Asia and in the Donbass in such a way that he completely and completely fulfilled our conspiratorial tasks. So, for example, as a result of the operation he carried out, he achieved dissatisfaction with the punitive policy of the Soviet government among the workers of Donbass, a huge turnover of labor and a decrease in coal production. In the Central Asian republics, and especially in Turkmenistan, the NKVD, which was headed by a conspirator recruited by Velsky, it seems Kondakov (I don’t remember my last name now), caused great discontent and unrest among the population, in connection with which emigrant moods intensified and there were many cases organized transition for the cordon of large groups of people.

Question: Above, you classified DVK in the group of districts that you considered necessary to dwell on. Give evidence, what are the results of the provocative conduct of mass operations in the Far East?

Answer: I considered it necessary to dwell on the conduct of the mass operation in the DVK, not only in connection with the importance of this area, but also in connection with the conspiratorial assignments that Frinovsky received when he left for the DVK in June 1938.

Question: What kind of conspiratorial assignments to Frinovsky are you referring to?

Answer: I mean only the task of carrying out a provocative mass operation to repress former kulaks, k.r. clergy, White Guards, etc.

Question: Wasn't this operation on the DVK completed in June 1938?

Answer: It was already completed at the DVK, but we agreed with Frinovsky that after his arrival in the Far East he would send a telegram with a request to increase the "limits" of the repressed, motivating this measure by the extreme contamination of the DVK k.-r. elements that remained almost intact. Frinovsky did just that. Arriving at the DVK, a few days later he asked to increase the "limits" by fifteen thousand people, to which he received consent. For the DVK, with its small population, this figure was impressive.

Question: Why did you need to resume the mass operation in the Far East?

Answer: We considered it the most convenient and effective form of sabotage, capable of quickly causing discontent among the population. Since there was a rather tense situation at the DVK at that time, we decided to aggravate it even more with a provocative continuation of the mass operation.

Question: What are the results of the provocative mass operation in the Far East?

Answer: Upon his arrival from the Far East, Frinovsky reported to me that he had succeeded in carrying out this operation entirely according to the provocative plans of the conspirators, taking into account the complex and acute situation of the conflict with the Japanese that had developed in the Far East.

Question: The investigation is interested in specific facts, what exactly did Frinovsky report to you about the provocative conduct of the operation in the Far East?

Answer: According to Frinovsky, the mass operation we continued came in handy. Having created the impression of a broad rout of the anti-Soviet elements in the DVK, he actually managed to successfully use the mass operation in order to retain the more leading and active cadres of the counter-revolution and the conspirators. By concentrating the entire blow of the mass operation on sections of the population close to us and on passive, declassed elements, Frinovsky, on the one hand, aroused legitimate discontent among the population of many districts of the Far East and, on the other hand, preserved the organized and active cadres of the counter-revolution. He especially boasted that from the formal point of view, one could not find fault with the operation he had carried out. He smashed the Kolchak, Kapelev and Semyonovites, who, however, were mostly old men and many of them only for this reason did not emigrate to China, Manchuria and Japan at one time. Frinovsky jokingly called the operation in the DVK - "old man's".

Question: You are talking about a mass operation carried out in those areas on which your attention was focused. And in other areas, did things get better and did you not use your wrecking and provocative practices?

Answer: It was no better in other areas. However, the contingent of the repressed was smaller there, and therefore the results of our provocation did not affect the population so much.
Now, in general terms, I have told everything about the provocative conduct of a mass operation to repress former kulaks, k.-r. clergy and criminals. I can only specify and supplement them with a number of available numerous facts, which, however, do not change the overall picture.

Question: Above you touched upon the fact that you also provocatively used mass operations to repress persons of foreign origin in capitalist states neighboring us (defectors, political emigrants, etc.) in the interests of carrying out your conspiratorial plans. Give detailed evidence on this matter.

Answer: Mass operations to repress persons of foreign origin, with the aim of destroying the foreign intelligence base in the USSR, took place simultaneously with a mass operation against kulaks, criminals, and so on.
Naturally, we conspirators could not pass by these operations without trying to use them for our conspiratorial purposes. We, the conspirators, also decided to carry out these operations on a broad front, hitting as many people as possible, especially since there were no maximum limits for these operations, and, consequently, they could be expanded arbitrarily at our discretion.

Question: What goals did you pursue in carrying out these operations?

Answer: The goals that we pursued by provocative conduct of these operations also consisted in causing discontent and unrest among the population of the USSR belonging to these nationalities. Besides, By provocative conduct of these operations, we wanted to create public opinion in the European states that in the USSR people are repressed only on ethnic grounds, and provoke protests from some of these states.
I must say that all this also coincided with our conspiratorial plans to focus on the seizure of power during the war, since certain prerequisites were created for this. These prerequisites in this case were expressed in the creation of an atmosphere of dissatisfaction not only with the punitive, but also with the national policy of the Soviet government.

Question: Did you manage to achieve the treacherous goals you had outlined in carrying out these operations?

Answer: Yes, it succeeded, and to a certain extent with greater effect for the conspirators than when carrying out a mass operation against the kulaks, the K.-R. clergy and criminals. As a result of the provocative conduct of this kind of mass operations, we managed to achieve that among the population of the USSR of the repressed nationalities, we created great anxiety, misunderstanding what caused these repressions, dissatisfaction with the Soviet government, talk about the imminence of war and strong emigre moods. All these facts took place everywhere, but they were especially developed in the Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian republics, that is, in the regions to which we paid special attention.
In addition, as a result of the provocative conduct of these operations, there were many protests from the governments of Germany, Poland, Persia, Greece and other states, and protest articles appeared in a number of newspapers in European countries.

Question: What kind of protests do you mean? Give more detailed evidence.

Answer: The most energetic protests were from the Iranian government. It protested against the ongoing repressions of Persian subjects, their deportation from the USSR to Iran, and against the confiscation of their property. They raised this question even before the diplomatic representatives of other countries with the proposal of a joint protest. In Iran, a special society was even created to protect Iranian citizens from persecution in the USSR, which arranged money collections throughout the country in favor of Iranians repressed in the USSR. In addition, a number of retaliatory repressions were undertaken in Iran against citizens of the USSR.
The government of Greece protested against the repressions and expulsion of Greek subjects, and defiantly did not issue visas to enter Greece for Greeks who wanted to go there.
The Finnish government also protested against the arrests among the Finns, insisted on their release and deportation to Finland.
The governments of England, Germany, Poland and France protested against the arrests of individual foreign nationals.
In addition, as I have already said, a number of protesting articles appeared in the European press and even caused bewilderment and requests from the friends of the Soviet Union.

Question: Namely?

Answer: I mean first of all Roman Rolland. He sent a special letter in which he asked him to inform him whether it was true that repressions against foreigners had begun in the USSR, only on this one ground, regardless of his attitude towards the Soviet Union. He motivated this request by the fact that a number of protesting articles appeared in the foreign press, and then, as a friend of the Soviet Union, many European public figures turned to him on this issue.
In addition, Romain Rolland already asked for individual arrested persons whom he knew personally and for whom he vouched in the sense of their sympathy for the Soviet regime.

Question: By what provocative methods of carrying out these mass operations did you manage to achieve the conspiratorial goals you set?

Answer: As I said before, we decided to carry out these operations on a broad front, capturing as many people as possible by repression. Our main pressure on the chiefs of the UNKVD, whether they were conspirators or not, went exactly along this line in order to force them to expand their operations all the time. As a result of this pressure, the practice of repressions was widely spread without any compromising materials, only on the basis of one sign that the person being repressed belongs to such and such a nationality. and (Pole, German, Latvian, Greek, etc.). This, however, is not enough. Quite a mass phenomenon, especially in some areas, was the practice when under the category of Poles, Finns, Germans, etc. let down Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc. In particular, this was distinguished by the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of such republics as: Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, and the heads of the UNKVD of such regions as Sverdlovsk, Leningrad and Moscow. For example, the former head of the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk region, Dmitriev, summed up a lot of Ukrainians, Belarusians and even Russians under the category of repressed Poles, defectors. In any case, for every arrested Pole there were at least a dozen Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.There were many such cases when Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were generally made Poles on falsified documents. The same practice was in Leningrad. Zakovsky, instead of Finns, arrested many indigenous inhabitants of the USSR - Karelians and "turned" them into Finns.
Ouspensky, under the guise of Poles, arrested many Uniate Ukrainians, that is, he took them not on the basis of national origin, but on the basis of religion. Such facts can be multiplied in many ways. They are typical for most areas.

Question: How did you manage to carry out such obvious and gross criminal machinations?

Answer: The judicial procedure for considering this type of cases has been simplified to the extreme. It was simpler and, in that sense, even more uncontrolled than the procedure for considering cases of a mass operation of former kulaks and criminals. There were still judicial troikas, which included the secretaries of the regional committees. For these national or so-called "album operations" and this summary judicial order did not exist. The list of the repressed with a summary of the case in the "album" and with the intended punishment was signed by the head of the UNKVD and the Regional Prosecutor, and then sent for approval to Moscow to the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office. In Moscow, a case was decided only on the basis of a brief landscape reference. The protocol (list) was signed by me or Frinovsky from the NKVD and Vyshinsky from the Prosecutor's Office, after which the sentence entered into force and was reported for execution to the head of the UNKVD and the Prosecutor of the corresponding region.
This simplified judicial procedure for the consideration of cases completely guaranteed us from control and allowed us to carry out our wrecking provocative conspiratorial plans in full.

Question: Was it only the summary judicial procedure that made it possible to carry out your provocative plans?

Answer: Basically, of course, this allowed us to carry out sabotage with impunity. As a result of this oversimplified judicial procedure, in the regions, for example, the practice of falsifying investigative data, forgery and deceit was widely developed. In particular, again, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Sverdlovsk, Moscow and Leningrad, the heads of the UNKVD, who were entirely either members of our conspiratorial organization or members of Yagoda's anti-Soviet group, were distinguished by this. By committing forgeries and falsifying investigative data, the heads of those UNKVD: the conspirators Uspensky, Vakovsky and members of the anti-Soviet group Yagoda - Dmitriev and Berman repressed many innocent people who were not involved in counter-revolutionary crimes, creating a base of discontent among certain sections of the population.

Question: Give evidence, how, by carrying out this obviously obvious and criminal practice of repression, did you manage to deceive the bodies of prosecutor's supervision?

Answer: I can't say that here we had any deliberate plan to deliberately deceive the organs of the Prosecutor's Office. The prosecutors of the regions, territories and republics, as well as the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, could not fail to see such an obvious criminal practice of mass provocative repressions and falsification of investigative data, since they, together with the NKVD, were responsible for considering these cases. This inaction of prosecutorial supervision is explained only by the fact that in In many regions, territories and republics, members of various anti-Soviet organizations headed the Prosecutor's Office, which often carried out the practice of even wider provocative repressions among the population.
The other part of the prosecutors, who were not involved in participation in anti-Soviet groups, were simply afraid to argue on these issues with the heads of the UNKVD, especially since they did not have any instructions on this from the center, where all the falsified investigative Inquiries were made without any delay or comment.

Question: You are talking about the local bodies of the Prosecutor's Office. Didn't they see these criminal machinations in the USSR Prosecutor's Office?

Answer: The Prosecutor's Office of the USSR could not, of course, fail to notice all these perversions. I explain the behavior of the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and, in particular, the Prosecutor of the USSR Vyshinsky, by the same fear of quarreling with the NKVD and showing himself no less "revolutionary" in the sense of carrying out mass repressions. I also come to this conclusion because Vyshinsky has repeatedly told me personally about the tens of thousands of complaints received by the Procurator's Office, to which he pays no attention. In the same way, during the entire period of the operations, I do not remember a single case of Vyshinsky's protest about mass operations, while there were cases when he insisted on harsher sentences against certain individuals.
These are the only reasons I can explain the virtual absence of any kind of prosecutorial supervision over mass operations and the absence of their protests against the actions of the NKVD to the government. I repeat that We, the conspirators, and, in particular, I did not have any well-thought-out plans to deceive the Prosecutor's Office.

Question: It is known that among those repressed in all mass operations, a large number were sentenced to serving sentences in camps. Were you not afraid of exposing your criminal practices, knowing that many were convicted on falsified materials?

Answer: We had no fear that our criminal machinations might be exposed by the prisoners of the camp contingent, and, in particular, I did not have. All the camps were not only subordinate to the NKVD, but were also led by conspirators from the GU GAG. Under these conditions, we could always take appropriate preventive measures. What's more, when we sent this contingent into the camps, we had our own special considerations in this regard. These considerations and plans consisted in the fact that we, sending the repressed to the camps on the basis of insufficiently substantiated materials, thought to use their discontent during the war and, in particular, when seizing power.

Question: How else can you add your testimony about enemy work in mass operations?

Answer: Basically, I told everything, maybe I did not indicate only some small details of our enemy work on mass operations, but they do not change the general picture of our criminal actions.

The testimony is true, I have read it - (Yezhov)
Interrogated: St. Investigator of the Investigative Department of the NKVD of the USSR Art. lieutenant of state security: (Esaulov)

CA FSB. Archival and investigative file of Frinovsky M. P. No. N-15301. T. 10. L. 241, 249-275. Certified copy.