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72-533: Razgon was born in Belorussia to the family of Mendel Abramovich Razgon and Glika Izrailevna Shapiro. In the 1920s they moved to Moscow and in 1932, he graduated from the history faculty of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute . His career before his arrest in 1938 was in great measure due to his marrying into the new Soviet elite and, in particular, two men: his wife Oksana's father Gleb Boky ,

144-651: A commissariat of the Soviet Union in 1934. During the Great Purge in 1936–1938, on Stalin's orders, the NKVD conducted mass arrests, imprisonment, torture, and executions of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens. The agency sent millions to the Gulag system of forced labor camps and, during World War II, carried out the mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Balts, and Romanians, and millions of ethnic minorities from

216-596: A People's Commissar. However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the Workers' and Peasants' Militias staffed by proletarians were largely inexperienced and unqualified. Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR established (20 December [ O.S. 7 December] 1917)

288-771: A Pioneer leader, he then began to work for the Central Bureau of Young Pioneers and as an editor at Molodaya gvardiya publishers; he worked for the NKVD until Gleb Boky's arrest; and went back to the Children's Literature publishing house (Detizdat). While admitting Boky's bloody past, in Petrograd in 1918 and in Central Asia during the 1920s, Razgon describes the Special Department as a counter-intelligence operation rather than anything to do with arrests and interrogations. "Its job

360-515: A course became known as a kursistka . While still a young doctor, Anton Chekhov paid for his sister Masha to attend Guerrier courses. In 1886, the Ministry of Education prevented the admission of new students to Guerrier's courses, and they ended in 1888. Following the end of the Guerrier courses, public lectures for women were organized systematically, most of them given by the same teachers, and in

432-740: A faculty of 225 professors and over nine hundred assistant professors. Seventeen staff members were full and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Education in 2010. The Prometei publishing house, of Moscow, sometimes spelled Prometey, is attached to the University. NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs ( Russian : Народный комиссариат внутренних дел , romanized :  Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del , IPA: [nɐˈrodnɨj kəmʲɪsərʲɪˈat ˈvnutrʲɪnʲɪɣ dʲel] ), abbreviated as NKVD (Russian: НКВД ; listen ),

504-638: A given region (e.g., the quotas for clergy, former nobles , etc., regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486 . The purges were organized in a number of waves according to decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party . Some examples are the campaigns among engineers ( Shakhty Trial ), party and military elite plots ( Great Purge with Order 00447 ), and medical staff (" Doctors' Plot "). Gas vans were used in

576-631: A high-ranking NKVD officer, and her step-father Ivan Moskvin , a leading figure in the Central Committee . Later in life, Razgon fell into the category of Gulag detainees who rejoined the Communist Party after their release. He did not resign from the Party until 1988. After moving to Moscow Razgon met and married Oksana, the daughter of Gleb Boky and step-daughter of Ivan Moskvin, who were influential friends and patrons until their own arrest in 1937. At Ivan Moskvin's apartment, for instance, Razgon met

648-547: A purge coinciding with Stalin's Great Purge in 1937. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff , General Ma Hushan , Ma Shaowu , Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of Xinjiang province, Huang Han-chang, and Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under Soviet influence. In

720-643: A secret political police, the Cheka , led by Felix Dzerzhinsky . It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions if that was deemed necessary in order to "protect the Russian socialist- communist revolution." The Cheka was reorganized in 1922, as the State Political Directorate , or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR. In 1922 the USSR formed, with the RSFSR as its largest member. The GPU became

792-656: A seizure of state power led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks , who established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The Provisional Government's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), formerly under Georgy Lvov (from March 1917) and then under Nikolai Avksentiev (from 6 August [ O.S. 24 July] 1917) and Alexei Niketan (from 8 October [ O.S. 25 September] 1917), turned into NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) under

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864-622: A series of name changes since its establishment in 1872. The university originates in the Moscow Higher Courses for Women founded by Vladimir Guerrier in 1872. It was subsequently reconstituted several times. In 1918 it admitted men and became the Second Moscow State University, then was reformed without its Medical and Chemical Technology schools as the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, which for

936-734: A small number of ex-NKVD agents in the Baltic states were convicted of crimes against the local population. These included: The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas. Colonization of Siberia , the Far North , and the Far East were among the explicitly stated goals in the first laws concerning Soviet labor camps . Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of

1008-634: A time was known as the Moscow State V. I. Lenin Pedagogical Institute. In 1990, the Institute regained the status of university and thus its present name. In May 1872 the Russian Minister of Education, Count Dmitry Tolstoy , consented to the opening by Professor Guerrier of " Higher Women's Courses " as a private educational institution and approved Regulations for this purpose. In November 1872,

1080-786: A victim of Stalin's Great Purge , "disappearing" in 1937 to a Gulag labour camp . In 1930, the Second Moscow University was divided into three separate institutions: the Second Moscow State Medical Institute (now the Russian State Medical University ; the Moscow State Institute of Fine Chemical Technology (now the Moscow State University of Fine Chemical Technologies ) and the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, based on

1152-907: Is now the main building of the Moscow State Pedagogical University. In 1908 came the Anatomical Theatre, now the Russian State Medical University, and the Physical Chemistry Building, now the Moscow Academy of Fine Chemical Technology. In 1915-1916, the Moscow Higher Women's Courses, sometimes called the Moscow University for Women, received the right of issuing diplomas. By 1918, the institution had 8,300 thousand students. In 1918,

1224-659: Is one of the most detailed sources there is: it contains a unique chapter, for instance, describing various camp bosses he observed and worked under. There are almost as many references to his memoirs in Anne Applebaum 's Gulag: A history of the Soviet Camps (2003), as there are to Alexander Solzhenitsyn 's Gulag Archipelago (1974). Razgon describes the respect he received for being the son-in-law of Gleb Boky (shot in November 1937) and an existence in which he usually worked in

1296-598: The Battle of Stalingrad and the Crimean offensive . to stem desertions under Stalin's Order No. 270 and Order No. 227 decrees of 1941 and 1942, which aimed to raise troop morale through brutality and coercion. At the beginning of the war, the NKVD formed 15 rifle divisions, which grew by 1945 to 53 divisions and 28 brigades. Unlike the Waffen-SS , the NKVD did not field any armored or mechanized units. In enemy-held territories,

1368-587: The Caucasus , to remote areas of the country, resulting in millions of deaths. Hundreds of thousands of NKVD personnel served in Internal Troops divisions in defensive battles alongside the Red Army , as well as in " blocking formations ," preventing retreat. The agency was responsible for foreign assassinations, including that of Leon Trotsky . Within 1941 and from 1943 to 1946, secret police functions were split into

1440-583: The Eastern Front of World War II . The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR , the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as

1512-558: The OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya and various other responsibilities. In 1934, the NKVD of the RSFSR was transformed into an all-union security force, the NKVD (which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders soon came to call "the leading detachment of our party"), and

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1584-505: The Ogonyok weekly. Subsequently, they were published as a book True Stories (Nepridumannoe, 1988), and it was only in a separate and slightly later publication in the Ogonyok library series that Razgon first admitted he had worked for Gleb Boky's organisation. A 2005 handbook detailing The Most Secret Relatives of Soviet writers and other public figures summarises Razgon's biography as follows:

1656-824: The People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). In March 1946, the People's Commissariats were renamed to Ministries; the NKVD became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), and the NKGB became the Ministry of State Security (MGB). After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsarist police and set up the People's Militias . The subsequent Russian October Revolution of 1917 saw

1728-692: The Russian Orthodox Church , the Ukrainian Orthodox Church , the Roman Catholic Church , Greek Catholics , Islam , Judaism , and other religious organizations, an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov . During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed opposed him. Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as Pavel Sudoplatov and Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including

1800-645: The Spanish Civil War , the NKVD ran Section X, coordinating the Soviet intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans . NKVD agents acting in conjunction with the Communist Party of Spain exercised substantial control over the Republican government, using Soviet military aid to further Soviet influence. The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around Madrid, used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of

1872-471: The sharashka were Sergey Korolev , head designer of the Soviet rocket program and first human space flight mission in 1961, and Andrei Tupolev , the famous airplane designer. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also imprisoned in a sharashka and based his novel The First Circle on his experiences there. After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov . The scientists were not prisoners, but

1944-650: The 1st category were tortured to secure confessions that they were secret Trotskyists, agents of foreign powers and so on. After show trials of the kind mounted in Moscow from 1936 to 1938 , the accused were shot. Boky's confession was not good enough and, according to NKVD records examined by Razgon in the late 1980s, his father-in-law was shot on 15 November 1937 shortly after being found guilty. Others were executed almost immediately. In his chapter about "Niyazov", whom he met in 1977 at Moscow's Cardiology Institute, Razgon tells what that former NKVD executioner had to say concerning

2016-782: The Clemency Commission created by Boris Yeltsin and worked to secure the commutation of all death sentences to terms of imprisonment, arguing for the abolition of death penalty in Russia and reform of the judicial system. In October 1993, during the confrontation between President Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet, Razgon was one of the signatories of the Letter of Forty-Two . Razgon's memoirs (Непридуманное, Nepridumannoe, 1988) have been translated into French, Italian and English and five other languages In 1998, to mark Razgon's 90th birthday, he

2088-448: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union before beginning to publish excerpts from his memoirs in a variety of Soviet literary magazines. In 1988, the Ogonyok magazine published Lev Razgon's memoir about "The President's Wife", an "unbelievable but true" story about the wife of the first Soviet's head of state Mikhail Kalinin , Ekaterina Kalinina , who was imprisoned in the labour camps of

2160-713: The German Gestapo . In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and the Gestapo met for a week in Zakopane to coordinate the pacification of Poland. The Soviet Union allegedly deported hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to Nazi territories as unwanted foreigners. According to the work of Wilhelm Mensing , no evidence that which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as "anti-fascists" for deportations to Nazi Germany. Furthermore, many NKVD units later fought

2232-556: The Gulag. The memoirs were not sent abroad to be published during the Brezhnev years nor did they circulate in samizdat, unlike the memoirs of Evgenia Ginzburg or Olga Adamova-Sliozberg. It is evident, nevertheless, that Roy Medvedev had access to what he had written and incorporated some incidents they describe in his Let History Judge , first published in an English edition in 1972. Razgon waited until Gorbachev became General Secretary of

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2304-531: The Gulag; his famous Bolshevik/Red Army father was executed during the Great Purges of the late 1930s. Razgon was an "honoured provocateur", in Antonov-Ovseyenko's words, and was arrested and sentenced together with a group of "too assiduous torturers"; he did not push a wheelbarrow in a camp, he did not fell wood in the taiga , and he was not dying of starvation. Instead he worked as a norm setter, and helped

2376-569: The NKVD carried out numerous missions of sabotage. After the fall of Kiev , NKVD agents set fire to the Nazi headquarters and various other targets, eventually burning down much of the city center. Similar actions took place across the occupied Byelorussia and Ukraine . The NKVD (later the KGB ) carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and members of non-communist resistance movements such as

2448-605: The NKVD's enemies, first focusing on Spanish Nationalists and Spanish Catholics , then after late 1938 increasingly anarchists and Trotskyists as objects of persecution. In 1937, Andrés Nin , the secretary of the Trotskyist POUM , and his colleagues were tortured and killed in an NKVD prison in Alcalá de Henares. Before the German invasion, to accomplish its own goals, the NKVD was prepared to cooperate even with such organizations as

2520-441: The NKVD. The military CI was also upgraded from a department to a directorate and put in the NKVD organization as the Directorate of Special Departments , or UOO NKVD USSR. The NKVMF, however, did not return to the NKVD until January 11, 1942. It returned to NKVD control on January 11, 1942, as UOO 9th Department controlled by P. Gladkov. In April 1943, Directorate of Special Departments was transformed into SMERSH and transferred to

2592-487: The OGPU was incorporated into the NKVD as the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB); the separate NKVD of the RSFSR was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR). As a result, the NKVD also took over control of all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the gulag ), as well as the regular police. At various times, the NKVD had the following Chief Directorates, abbreviated as ""ГУ"ГУ"—Главное управление, Glavnoye upravleniye . Until

2664-439: The People's Defense and Commissariates. At the same time, the NKVD was reduced in size and duties again by converting the GUGB to an independent unit named the NKGB. In 1946, all Soviet commissariats were renamed "ministries." Accordingly, the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the USSR became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), while the NKGB was renamed the Ministry of State Security (MGB). In 1953, after

2736-518: The Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army , which were trying to separate from the Soviet Union, among others. The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1940–1941, including at the Katyń massacre . On November 26, 2010, the State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin's responsibility for the Katyn massacre and the execution of intellectual leaders and 22,000 Polish POWs by Stalin's NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material "not only unveils

2808-476: The Soviet Union during the Great Purge in the cities of Moscow , Ivanovo , and Omsk A number of mass operations of the NKVD related to persecution of entire ethnic categories. For example, the Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles. Whole populations of certain ethnicities were forcibly resettled . Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention. When disillusioned American citizens in

2880-476: The Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U.S. passports to leave the USSR (their original U.S. passports had been taken for 'registration' purposes years before), none were issued. Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested the Americans, who were all taken to Lubyanka Prison and later shot. American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being 'poisoned' by Western influences, were dragged off with

2952-423: The Soviet Union's Yiddish language primary and secondary schools. In 1927, day care nurseries for the children of students were in place, and in 1928 new buildings to provide accommodation for 1,000 students were built at a cost of one million Roubles . From 1924 to 1930, the University's rector was Albert Petrovich Pinkevich , an educationist and author of The New Education in the Soviet Republic , who became

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3024-423: The Soviet state (" enemies of the people "), untold multitudes of people were sent to GULAG camps, and hundreds of thousands were executed by the NKVD. Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas ("triplets") – special courts martial . Evidence standards were very low: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Use of "physical means of persuasion" (torture)

3096-488: The USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of Joseph Stalin . Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were: Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Walter Krivitsky , Lev Sedov , Ignace Reiss , and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg . Pro-Soviet leader Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang received NKVD assistance to conduct

3168-521: The United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as Martha Dodd . Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business , where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated. The NKVD's intelligence and special operations ( Inostranny Otdel ) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of

3240-422: The University was renamed the Second Moscow State University and was often called also the Second Moscow University, beginning to admit men as well as women. During this period, the staff of the University included Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, the father of Andrei Sakharov . From 1926, the University included a Department of Yiddish Language and Literature, the primary purpose of which was to train teachers for

3312-425: The Wehrmacht, for example the 10th NKVD Rifle Division , which fought at the Battle of Stalingrad . After the German invasion, the NKVD evacuated and killed prisoners . During World War II, NKVD Internal Troops were used for rear area security, including preventing the retreat of Soviet army divisions. Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used at the front, for example during

3384-638: The arrest of Lavrenty Beria , the MGB merged back into the MVD. The police and security services finally split in 1954 to become: In 1935–1945, the Main Directorate of State Security of NKVD had its own ranking system before it was merged into the Soviet military standardized ranking system. The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union through massive political repression , including authorized murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations, and mass deportations. In implemention of Soviet internal policy towards perceived enemies of

3456-411: The camp director and its "godfather", i.e. the supervisor of the NKVD department for internal security. In 1955, Razgon was released. Unlike many others, Razgon did not have to wait long for rehabilitation , after which he could settle in Moscow again and resume his writing. Between the 1960s and 1980s (see Publications, below) he published a number of books while privately writing about his years in

3528-402: The death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev halted NKVD purges. From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of victims were legally "rehabilitated," i.e., acquitted with their rights restored. Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation, either out of fear or a lack of documents. The rehabilitation was not complete; in most cases, the formulation

3600-424: The elements. On 3 February 1941, the 4th Department (Special Section, OO) of the GUGB NKVD security service responsible for the Soviet Armed Forces military counterintelligence, consisting of 12 sections and one investigation unit, was separated from the GUGB NKVD USSR. The official liquidation of OO GUGB within NKVD was announced on 12 February by joint order No. 00151/003 of NKVD and NKGB USSR. The rest of GUGB

3672-427: The far northern Komi : this was confirmation that Stalin made hostages of his closest colleagues' family members (another was Yelena Zhemchuzhina, the wife of Vyacheslav Molotov ) to ensure they behaved as he wanted. Those arrested during the Great Purges of the late 1930s were either "first category arrests", i.e. listed for execution, or "second category arrests", listed for imprisonment and exile. Some of those in

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3744-436: The first building of the Moscow Higher Women's Courses was opened at Volkhonka, ushering in the era of higher education for women in Russia. Initially, courses were for two years and were in humanities and natural sciences . At first, there were two departments, History & Philology and Physics & Mathematics. In Moscow alone, 1,232 women were admitted to the courses between 1872 and 1886. A female student attending

3816-460: The future head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov . With a pass supplied by Moskvin he attended the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) , the "1934 Congress of Victors" at which, he reports, Stalin received many more negative votes than Sergei Kirov when the Congress members voted to re-appoint members to the Central Committee. Razgon's account of these years began to appear in printed form during perestroika , serialised in issues of

3888-462: The hundreds and thousands of victims of such operations, despatched with a bullet to the back of the head and buried at concealed locations all over the Soviet Union. In 1988, Razgon and many others (e.g. Bulat Okudzhava ) left the CPSU. For a while he joined the Italian Radical Party. In 1989, Razgon was among the founders of the Memorial Society . He was also a member of the International PEN Club. With many other prominent writers Razgon joined

3960-525: The labor camps were part of the Soviet planned economy , and the NKVD had its own production plans. The most unusual part of the NKVD's achievements was its role in Soviet science and arms development . Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the gulag, colloquially known as sharashkas . These prisoners continued their work in these prisons and were later released. Some of them became world leaders in science and technology. Among

4032-435: The office as a norm-setter, not out in the forest with the rest of the convicts, felling trees. At one point in his memoirs he takes issue with Solzhenitsyn and speaks out on behalf of "trusties" like himself, and the camp medical service, who together made things easier for ordinary inmates. A less flattering account has been offered by Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko , Razgon's junior by 11 years. Antonov-Ovseyenko also spent time in

4104-532: The others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps. Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at Yuzhnoye Butovo District , near Moscow. However, the people of the Soviet Republics were still the majority of NKVD victims. The NKVD also served as an arm of the Russian Soviet communist government for lethal mass persecution and destruction of ethnic minorities and religious beliefs, such as

4176-468: The project was supervised by the NKVD because of its great importance and the corresponding requirement for absolute security and secrecy. The project also used information obtained by the NKVD from the United States. The agency was headed by a people's commissar (minister). His first deputy was the director of State Security Service (GUGB). Note: In the first half of 1941 Vsevolod Merkulov transformed his agency into separate commissariat (ministry), but it

4248-429: The reorganization begun by Nikolai Yezhov with a purge of the regional political police in the autumn of 1936 and formalized by a May 1939 directive of the All-Union NKVD by which all appointments to the local political police were controlled from the center, there was frequent tension between centralized control of local units and the collusion of those units with local and regional party elements, frequently resulting in

4320-428: The same premises, as before. The public lectures lasted until 1892, when they were closed by the government. From 1886 there were also collective lessons. In 1900 the name Moscow Higher Women's Courses was instituted, and in 1906 a School of Medicine was launched. Courses were taught by scholars. In 1907, educational buildings by the architect Soloviev opened in Little Tsaritsyn Street, now Small Pirogovskay Street. This

4392-404: The scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders." NKVD units were also used to repress the prolonged partisan war in Ukraine and the Baltics , which lasted until the early 1950s. NKVD also faced strong opposition in Poland from the Polish resistance movement known as the Armia Krajowa . After

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4464-455: The teaching faculty. By the mid-1930s the Yiddish department, now part of the Institute and headed by Meir Wiener , had become one of the world's leading centres of Yiddish scholarship. In 1960 it was combined with the Moscow City Pedagogical Institute. In 1967, a Western writer on Russia called the Institute "...probably the most prestigious pedagogical institute in the USSR". Its student body then numbered 10,500. The Institute regained

4536-432: The thwarting of Moscow's plans. During Yezhov's time in office, the Great Purge reached its height. In the years 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were executed for 'crimes against the state'. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and

4608-485: The title of a University in 1990. In the year 1996-97, it had 12,000 students and six hundred academic staff. During that time, a Bachelor's degree was awarded after four years of academic study, while the degree of Qualified Specialist, permitting a graduate to teach, was awarded after five years. The Seventh International Bakhtin Conference took place at the University in June 1995. The University now has eighteen faculties and 103 departments, some 20,000 students, and

4680-401: Was "due to lack of evidence of the case of crime." Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation "cleared of all charges.". Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of a particular violation of anyone's rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also "purged" without legitimate a criminal investigation or court decision. In the 1990s and 2000s,

4752-459: Was abolished, and staff were moved to the newly created People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). Departments of former GUGB were renamed directorates. For example, the foreign intelligence unit known as the Foreign Department (INO) became the Foreign Directorate (INU); the GUGB political police unit represented by the Secret Political Department (SPO) became the Secret Political Directorate (SPU), and so on. The former GUGB 4th Department (OO),

4824-568: Was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland of the fourth class for his personal contribution to Russian literature and his active participation in the country's democratic reforms. Razgon also received the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Writer's Civic Courage . Moscow State Pedagogical Institute Moscow State Pedagogical University or Moscow State University of Education is an educational and scientific institution in Moscow, Russia, with eighteen faculties and seven branches operational in other Russian cities. The institution had undergone

4896-407: Was merged back to the people's commissariat of Interior soon after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union . In 1943 Merkulov once again split his agency this time for good. Andrei Zhukov singlehandedly identified every single NKVD officer involved in 1930s arrests and killings by researching a Moscow archive. There are just over 40,000 names on the list. See also: Bibliography of Stalinism and

4968-462: Was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD themselves. Hundreds of mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret "plans." Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "public enemies") in

5040-418: Was split into three sections. One section, which handled military counterintelligence in NKVD troops (former 11th Section of GUGB 4th Department OO) became the 3rd NKVD Department, or OKR (Otdel KontrRazvedki). The chief of OKR NKVD was Aleksander Belyanov. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941), the NKGB USSR was abolished, and on July 20, 1941, the units that formed the NKGB became part of

5112-432: Was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin , as well as counterintelligence and other operations on

5184-653: Was to protect the secrets of the Soviet State and try to find out those of others," he wrote, and suggested it had some parallel in its functions and purpose with the US National Security Agency . On 18 April 1938, Razgon was arrested and spent the next 17 years in prisons, camps, and exile. He began his service in Ustvymlag , Komi ASSR . Razgon's account of life (and death) in the Gulag in True Stories (1988)

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