November 23, 2016 on the website of the human rights society "Memorial" access to the directory was opened A. N. Zhukova “Personnel composition of state security bodies of the USSR. 1935-1939". Included in the reference book brief information O 39,950 NKVD employees who received special ranks of the state security system from the moment of their introduction in 1935 until early 1941 Particular attention is paid to the period from autumn 1935 to mid-1939 An important source of information when creating the directory was NKVD orders USSR by personnel. The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the conferment of special ranks and dismissal from the NKVD, information about the position held at the time of dismissal, as well as materials about received state awards and the awarding of badges "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU". The information is supplemented with biographical information from other sources - documents about dead And missing during the Second World War, as well as repressed.

The directory will be useful to people interested in the history of the Soviet period, as well as descendants of those repressed. With its help it will be possible to find out more complete biographical information about state security employees of the time " Great Terror ", known so far only by last name, personal signature and mentions of other people. The appearance of such a reference book is an important step towards a more in-depth and correct understanding tragic story our state in the 1930s of the twentieth century.

The basis of the reference book was information about NKVD workers collected in libraries and archives Andrey Nikolaevich Zhukov. Because the until the 1990s archives were closed, and documents from the period were obtained " Great Terror" was practically impossible, the main source of information for the directory became periodicals XX century, which published information about awards for NKVD workers and brief biographical information when electing NKVD-UNKVD leaders to deputies of the Supreme Soviets. In the 1990s Archival documents on awards to employees of state security agencies and the deprivation of their orders and NKVD personnel orders - on the transfer of workers and the assignment of personal titles - became available. A. N. Zhukov dedicated to the study of these documents many years.

Structure of the NKVD of the USSR in the second half 1930s was quite complicated. The Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) and its local bodies - the Directorate of State Security (UGB) occupied a special place. It was the GUGB and the UGB that were entrusted with the responsibility to combat “ enemies of the people" It is also known that during “ mass operations» 1937-1938 Various units of the NKVD took part in arrests and sometimes investigations: border and internal troops, police, and economic units. But the main role in carrying out the repression was played by employees of the GUGB-UGB. It lies on them main responsibility for the implementation of repression by the Soviet leadership.

The compiler of the reference book studied printed collections of NKVD orders on personnel for the period 1935-1940(GARF. F. 9401. Op. 9a. D. 1-65). For a period of from December 1935 to mid-1939 The directory contains an almost complete list of state security employees who had special ranks. The directory also contains information about employees of other structures of the NKVD, in particular, the administrative and economic management. In archival materials of the Central Election Commission and Supreme Council USSR (GARF. F. 7523. Op. 7, 44) the cases of NKVD employees were studied, awarded the order Lenin. Personal information from these files (full name, year and place of birth, information about party affiliation and place of work, awards) is also included in the directory. Included in the directory and information about repressions to which NKVD workers were subjected. This data is mainly taken from Books of memory of victims of political repression, published in many regions former USSR, as well as from the consolidated database of the Memorial Society.

Note that after the publication of data about NKVD employees, the Memorial website was overloaded, which is a consequence great interest people to the reference book by A. N. Zhukov “Personnel composition of state security bodies of the USSR. 1935-1939".

The Kremlin does not comment in any way on the posting on the Memorial website of information about NKVD employees during the Stalinist repressions 1935-1939 “I’ll probably leave this question without comment”, said the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov. “The topic is very sensitive, it is obvious that many people have different opinions here, they exist diametrically opposite points point of view, and both of them sometimes speak out quite convincingly", said the Kremlin representative.

IN last years Interest in the Soviet era has increased. Many people try find information about their repressed ancestors. The story of a resident of Tomsk caused great resonance, Denis Karagodin, who conducted an investigation into the massacre committed in Tomsk in 1938. In 1938 was shot his great-grandfather, Stepan Ivanovich Karagodin, and a few more people. Denis Karagodin set everyone's names, who participated in falsifying charges against his great-grandfather and seven other people arrested under " Harbin case", and traced the criminal chain - from the Kremlin initiators " Great Terror" to ordinary performers in Tomsk, right down to drivers " black funnels"and typists.

As is known, the FSB archives are reluctant to share information, but Denis Karagodin managed to find a large number of documents indicating how it worked machine of Stalin's repressions, which destroyed innocent people. “Now we have the entire chain of killers: from the Politburo to the specific executioner”, says Denis Karagodin.

“The second part of the investigation project is to bring to justice all persons guilty of the murder of Stepan Ivanovich Karagodin. Absolutely the entire chain, from the organizers of this particular murder - members of the Politburo in Moscow (led by citizen Dzhugashvili Joseph Vissarionovich, born in 1878, better known under the pseudonyms “Koba”, “Stalin”), to specific executioners in the city of Tomsk (citizens: Zyryanova Nikolai Ivanovich, born in 1912; Sergei Timofeevich Denisov, born in 1892 and Ekaterina Mikhailovna Noskova, born in 1903). The chain of murderers is quite long - more than 20 people: organizers, leaders, executors, accomplices - everyone. The accusation is factual: a group of people, by prior conspiracy, committed a mass murder. Scenarios for this legal procedure (on bringing to responsibility) have already been developed.”, writes Denis.

The granddaughter of one of the executioners of the Tomsk NKVD found out about D. Karagodin’s investigation - N. I. Zyryanova- Julia. Julia wrote a letter to D. Karagodin. Below are quotes.

The father of my grandmother (mother’s mother), my great-grandfather, was taken from home, following a denunciation, in the same years as your great-grandfather and he never returned home, and 4 daughters remained at home, my grandmother was the youngest... That’s how it turned out now , that in one family there are victims and executioners... It’s very bitter to realize this, it’s very painful... But I will never renounce the history of my family, no matter what it is. All this will help me survive the knowledge that neither I nor all my relatives, whom I know, remember and love, were in any way involved in these atrocities that occurred in those years...” “The grief that such people brought cannot be redeemed... The task of the next generations is simply not to hush it up, all things and events must be called by their proper names. And the purpose of my letter to you is simply to tell you that I now know about such a shameful page in the history of my family and am completely on your side.” “But nothing in our society will ever change unless the whole truth is revealed. It’s not for nothing that Stalinists and monuments to Stalin have appeared again now; it just doesn’t fit in my head, it defies any comprehension.

Quotes from the letter are taken from the website: stepanivanovichkaragodin.org

Recently, the Russian human rights organization Memorial posted on the Internet a database of employees of the NKVD, a Stalin-era punitive structure that carried out mass repressions.

This news caused a huge scandal in Russia, which has not subsided for a week. The heirs of the Soviet security officers, as well as the few living persons on the lists, sent an open letter to the President of Russia, demanding that access to Memorial information be closed. Descendants of state security agents fear for their own safety! “Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can take revenge for their repressed ancestors,” say the authors of the open letter.

The database is directly related to Ukraine - it contains information about 987 NKVD employees of the Ukrainian SSR who worked in the central apparatus of the punitive department in Kyiv, as well as seven regions (Vinnitsa, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkov and Chernigov). However, the publication of the names of the Ukrainian NKVD members did not cause any noticeable reaction in our country. Why such a difference in perception?

Title holders

First of all, we should clarify what we are talking about. No “secret NKVD database,” as many believe (and as some media present), has never existed. We are talking about the directory “Personnel composition of state security bodies of the USSR. 1935−1939", compiled on his own initiative by the modern Russian researcher Andrei Nikolaevich Zhukov. He drew information from the orders of the leadership of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel: who was awarded, who was promoted in rank, who was transferred to a new position, and who was dismissed from the authorities or imprisoned. Over 15 years of work, information on almost 40,000 people has been accumulated.

The database covers not only investigators who directly tortured people and forced their victims to incriminate themselves and others through beatings. It also included other NKVD personnel - quartermasters, military veterinarians, military doctors, police officers (not to be confused with state security agents), border guards (they were also formally part of the NKVD), that is, people who were not directly related to the repressions.

Thus, the directory “Personnel composition...” is not “Wikipedia of executioners” at all, as the Russian “Novaya Gazeta” effectively recommended the result of Zhukov’s many years of work. And the author himself did not pursue such a goal. “The task that A. N. Zhukov set for himself,” we read in the description “About the project,” “was to provide a complete list of persons who were awarded special ranks in the state security system in the period from December 1935 to June 1939.” . And no more!

It also makes sense to clarify that the information collected for each person cannot be called a dossier. Still, the dossier, according to the Dictionary foreign words“, this is “a collection of documents (certificates, characteristics, certificates, etc.) relating to some business, issue, person, as well as a folder with such documents.” However, the directory only takes into account personal information about a particular person: full name, year and place of birth, nationality, party affiliation, start of service in the authorities, positions, titles, awards, whether he was subjected to repression, year and place of death.

Moscow is lagging behind

Vsevolod Balitsky headed the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR in 1934-1937, is present in the database

Why did the publication of the directory create such a sensation in Russia? Yes, because the archives of the special services (and not only the special services!) are still locked there. The country still lives within the framework of the Soviet historical myth, slightly adjusted by love for the imperial house of the Romanovs and the stupid glorification of Stalin.

It has gotten to the point where too frank publications from the times of “perestroika” about Stalin's repressions are now seen as a denigration of a glorious past.

Against this background, the clarification of the personalities of the NKVD employees certainly looks like a sensation. Already on the first day of work, the project website opened intermittently, barely coping with the flow of people wanting to find out the names of the creators of the Great Terror.

Does the published information threaten the lives of the descendants of those featured in the directory? Hardly. Based on the dry personal data given in it, it is impossible to understand whether this or that person took part in the interrogation and torture of people. And what should the descendants of the NKVD fear in the country of the victorious NKVD?

There are several reasons why Zhukov's reference book did not become a sensation in Ukraine. The first and obvious one is that this kind of book was published in Kyiv back in 1997. It is called “Chka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine: individuals, facts, documents.” Its authors, Yuri Shapoval, Vladimir Prystaiko and Vadim Zolotarev, presented on 608 pages the biographies of Chekist-NKVD officers of various ranks and ranks, published previously classified documents, and so on. So Moscow, stuck in its Soviet past, is two decades behind Kyiv.

Nikolai Yezhov, one of the most terrible symbols of Stalin's terror. Headed the NKVD of the USSR in 1936-1938

The second reason is that the historical memory of Ukrainian society is much larger than that of Russian society. Over the past decade, we have addressed (and made public discussion of) many of the pain points of recent Ukrainian history— Holodomor, “golden” September 1939, Carpathian Ukraine, the Holocaust, UPA, deportation of the Crimean Tatars, persecution of the sixties, and so on.

And the process of decommunization, with all its costs, prompted us to rethink the role of certain episodes and personalities of our recent history. And Russia just has to learn the lessons of history - the real one, and not the one set out in modern Russian bestsellers, like “The Truth about the Soviet Union. What country have we lost?

Where did the spies come from?

Of course, the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR was an integral part of the NKVD of the USSR, and many events were carried out on orders from Moscow. For example, in May 1938, the NKVD sent out an orientation that in all regions of Ukraine there was an anti-Soviet White Guard officer underground, which, on the instructions of the Russian Combined Arms Union, was carrying out counter-revolutionary work and had connections with Socialist Revolutionary organizations.

It is easy to understand that the directive regarding the organization with this name was received from the capital Soviet Union. And the working methods of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR in in this case was no different from other republics. In particular, the Poltava regional department arrested former generals tsarist army Dobryansky and Yakovlev, as well as former colonels Kapustin, Zembalevsky, Tolkushin. These were elderly people who had long retired from politics and did not have any anti-Soviet intentions. However, under torture they were forced to admit that an extensive White Guard underground allegedly operated in the region. “punishing sword” of state security. Hence the different working methods.

Here are just a few “original” tasks assigned and carried out by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR: the deportation of Poles from the Kyiv and Vinnitsa regions to Kazakhstan in 1936, the fight against the OUN underground in 1940-1941, carrying out four waves mass deportations from what became Soviet Galicia, the creation of operational security groups to “clean up” Bukovina, etc.

Actually, a deep understanding of the mechanisms of such events gives an idea of ​​the behavior of a totalitarian state that destroys its own citizens. This is a guarantee that this should not happen again in the future. The publication of the names of punitive authorities is only the first step on this long path. Last names by themselves do not give anything. During the years of perestroika, such information indeed aroused considerable interest. But now we have gone much further. And Russia remained at approximately the same point where perestroika ended.

The coordinator of the “Handbook of Chekists” said that his site was attacked by worms and bots

The detective story develops around the so-called “Handbook of Chekists of the Great Terror” (officially, this Internet resource created by the Memorial society is called more politically correct: “Personnel composition of the state security bodies of the USSR 1935−1939”). In just a week of existence, this site crashed twice, and then information appeared in the media about open letter descendants of NKVD employees demanding that the resource be closed “to avoid revenge from the descendants of the repressed.”

Memorial stated that they do not intend to delete this database, and the project coordinator, board member international society Memorial Jan Raczynski told us that no letter actually exists.

The last statement seems quite logical. If relatives of NKVD employees are truly afraid of revenge, then signing an open letter and drawing additional attention to themselves is all the more dangerous. And the text of this letter has not been published in full anywhere; only individual anonymous quotes are given. But let's return to the conversation with Jan Rachinsky.

- For what purpose did you open the resource, which has already been dubbed the “Directory of the Chekists of the Great Terror”?

There is a certain truth in this name: not all NKVD employees are included in this database: there are no police or border guards there. The main content of the resource is people who had internal departmental special ranks and insignia of the state security department.

A separate system of ranks in the period from 1935 to 1943 in this department assumed that the state security major was on par with or above the general military colonel.

The purpose of this publication is to provide historians reference material to identify the actors. In addition to the purely scientific side, there is a social one. The study of the tragic period of mass repression has so far been somewhat one-sided: attention has been paid to the victims of crimes, while the perpetrators of the crimes and perpetrators have remained behind the scenes. You need to know the names of these people. They are contained in the directory.

Of course, to say that it contains only the names of executioners, as some do, is not sufficiently thorough. But for the most part, these are still people who worked inside the mechanism of the executive machine of Stalin’s criminal policies. Among them are executors of criminal orders, and those who tortured prisoners and falsified their testimony. The publication of such data can help society develop immunity against state criminal policies and give an understanding that the names of those who participated in the execution of lawlessness will not be forgotten either.

- Why is the site unstable, is it subject to cyber attacks?

The resource does not always cope with the volume of downloaded information: as a rule, it is more than a gigabyte per hour. In the first days there was a peak load that he could not withstand. Then the traffic became less, but “worms” and “bots” appeared, and the resource could not stand it again. We have now strengthened our protection.

– How many relatives of the NKVD employees listed on the list contacted Memorial with various demands?

There is no official appeal yet. I saw reports in the press about some kind of open letter, but it did not come to us. We tried to find the text of this letter on the Internet, but in vain.

There are several dissatisfied comments on our website, but they do not contain demands to close the resource. Therefore, publications that “the descendants of the executioners from the NKVD demand that the database be deleted”, in my opinion, do not correspond to reality. They don’t like the wording “descendants of the executioners”, I don’t like it either, why hang labels, but this is not our wording, it was invented by the media and bloggers.

And some of the descendants of the people listed on our resource begin correspondence with us, maintain telephone contacts and provide Additional information about your ancestors. First of all, these are, of course, those who are sure that they were not associated with repression.

But a correspondence also began with the head of a large construction company, whose ancestor, undoubtedly, was associated with the repressions. And it is conducted in a benevolent scientific manner. The discussion is not by searching for who to shift the blame to today, but by understanding why this happened, how relatively ordinary employees of the system were forced to carry out criminal orders, and it was impossible not to carry them out, and how to prevent this from happening in the future.

Previously, members of the Memorial board put forward the version that it is not the descendants of NKVD employees who are fighting against their resource, but rather their spiritual heirs who do not want to condemn Stalin’s repressions.

https://www.site/2016-11-24/dvizhenie_memorial_opublikovalo_bazu_dannyh_na_pochti_40_tys_sotrudnikov_nkvd

The era of the Great Terror

The Memorial movement published a database of almost 40 thousand NKVD employees

The Memorial movement on its official website has opened access to Andrei Zhukov’s database “Personnel composition of state security bodies of the USSR. 1935-1939”, which provides brief information about 39 thousand 950 NKVD employees. As stated in the project description, the reference book will be useful to those interested in Soviet history.

“So, in particular, with the help of the directory it will be possible to attribute many state security employees of the era of the Great Terror, hitherto known only by last name (as a rule, without even indicating the first and patronymic) - from signatures in investigative files or from mentions in memoir texts. The appearance of the reference book is a significant step towards a more in-depth and accurate understanding of the tragic history of our country in the 30s of the twentieth century,” Memorial notes.

The directory provides data on NKVD employees who received special ranks of the state security system from the moment of their introduction in 1935 until the beginning of 1941. The main source of information was the orders of the NKVD of the USSR regarding personnel. The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special ranks and dismissal from the NKVD, information about the position held at the time of dismissal, as well as information about received state awards and the awarding of the “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU” badges.

Information from the orders is supplemented by biographical data from other sources - first of all, about the dead and missing during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War, as well as about those subjected to repression.

Who and how compiled a reference book about the security officers of the era of the Great Terror, and why it is important
Thorough work by Andrei Zhukov “Personnel composition of state security bodies of the USSR. 1935-1939" (nkvd.memo.ru) contains brief information about more than 40,000 NKVD employees who received special ranks of the state security system. These “awards” were awarded for the persecution of “enemies of the people,” and the vast majority of those “awarded” were related to the organization and execution of repression. The source of the information in the directory was NKVD orders on personnel, indicating the numbers and dates of assignment of special ranks, positions held or dismissal from the NKVD. They are supplemented by biographical data from other sources - primarily from documents of victims of repression. Andrei Zhukov's directory was published in May of this year on CD. By the time the electronic version appeared, information had already been added to 4500 biographical information. The creators of the project are confident that Internet users will also be actively involved in the process of studying and adding to the history of the era of the Great Terror.

Yan Rachinsky, member of the board of the Moscow Memorial:

— A reference book about the security officers of the era of the Great Terror is the work of an independent researcher Andrei Nikolaevich Zhukov. For more than 15 years, he painstakingly collected information and compiled card files when there were no computers and databases. Ultimately, he set himself the task of collecting information about everyone who received the special state security ranks introduced in 1935, shortly before the Great Terror. These were not only employees of the Main Directorate of State Security, but representatives of other structures for the prosecution of so-called “enemies of the people.”

The directory covers the period from 35 to 41 and contains the names of more than 40,000 people, the main creators and perpetrators of the Great Terror. But not only them. Almost all the executioners are in this directory, but everyone who is there is an executioner.

This is a huge undertaking and a starting point for refinement and further research. The directory helps to find a specific person and associate him with specific events described in memoirs or archival documents, where sometimes initials were not even indicated.

I consider the main idea of ​​this project to be a reminder of everyone’s personal responsibility for their actions. And the message for the future - hopes of keeping crimes secret - is not justified. For me, an important task has long been the desire to make people think about that scary story what our country went through in the 20th century.

The response was very great. For many years, the conversation was mainly about victims of repression. We are, of course, far from naming all their names, but a lot of work has been done, and it does not stop. And it so happened that there were victims of crimes, but it was as if there were no criminals. There were reference books by Nikita Vasilyevich Petrov about the leaders who directed and commanded the process, but no one knew the performers. Now we know and can find out even more. Many people feel this need - to know not only the victims, but also those who caused this suffering. Of course, there is practically no one to punish, but the fact that the figures and deeds are named accordingly is extremely important.

We were counting on this response, but did not even suspect its scale. Within a few hours of the directory’s operation, users had already appeared on the Internet, actively making suggestions and clarifications from published sources or family archives. This once again confirms that the reference book is a starting point for further work.

By now (as of November 15, 2016) this investigation evidence base has been collected regarding :

• Absolutely all the persons (employees of the NKVD structure, the USSR prosecutor's office, the Communist Party and the Communist Youth Union) guilty of the murder of Stepan Ivanovich KARAGODIN have been identified - the entire chain: from the Politburo in Moscow to specific executioners in Tomsk (including the drivers of the "black funnel" and the typists of Tomsk city ​​department of the NKVD)


• The principle and procedure of arrest according to which Stepan Ivanovich KARAGODIN was arrested and “brought in” was revealed (i.e., “anonymity” was excluded, all grounds for suspicion were removed from all “civilian” suspects being processed in this part).


• Materials have been identified in part (in full) of the entire range of materials (documents) relating to the execution case of Stepan Ivanovich KARAGODIN (from Tomsk to Moscow).


• Materials [secret internal orders and directives] were identified regarding the concealment of traces of mass murders by employees of the NKVD - MGB - KGB of the USSR (in terms of falsification of civil registration records in the registry office of the city of Tomsk, and in the USSR in particular)


• Information has been revealed about the use of torture by employees of the Tomsk City NKVD to those under investigation in order to extract the “necessary” testimony...................................... .. ..........