Now Viktor Abakumov, head of military counterintelligence (at the time called the UOO), or his representative presented the OO cases at OSO hearings. Since Beria was too overwhelmed with various other duties, during the war his deputies Merkulov, Sergei Kruglov, Ivan Serov, and Bogdan Kobulov chaired the OSO meetings.
The memoirs of Nikolai Mesyatsev, who worked from 1942–43 as an investigator at the Investigation Department of the UOO, include a unique description of the OSO bureaucratic procedure:
At the Secretariat of the Investigation Department… I was ordered to fill in on a typewriter a special form of the Special Board, which had several columns.
In the first column I typed in the biographical data of the accused, whom I’ll call ‘N’: his last name, first name, patronymic name; year and place of birth; nationality; matrimonial status; last place of work; date of arrest.
In the next column, I wrote the charges as they were described in the indictment that I’d signed, which was also signed by the head of the Investigation Department [Boris Pavlovsky], and approved by the head of the NKVD Special Departments Directorate [Viktor Abakumov] and a prosecutor.
In this particular case, [it was said that] the accused ‘N’ conducted espionage activity in the Red Army’s rear for German intelligence in such-and-such form, which is punishable under Article 58-6. In the next column I wrote that the accused pleaded guilty to espionage activity and his testimony was confirmed by operational data, documents, testimonies of witnesses, and so on.
Each of such forms (the others were written by investigators from other NKVD departments) was given a number and approximately 250–300 of the filled-in forms were stitched together in a file.36
Mesyatsev also described the OSO meeting:
The meeting of the Special Board took place in an office on the so-called Narkoms’ Floor [i.e., where Commissar Beria’s huge office was located]. The office was small, and the walls were painted a deep crimson color. Curtains on the windows were closed.
To the left from the window, there were two desks positioned perpendicular to each other; on them were desk lamps, turned on. [Sergei] Kruglov, deputy NKVD Commissar, was sitting behind one of the desks, and [Viktor] Bochkov, USSR Chief Prosecutor, was behind the other…
There was a row of chairs in front of the desks occupied by investigators who would make presentations of their cases… Each of them held a sheet of paper (some had several sheets) with a number that corresponded to the number in the files that were lying in front of the two members of the Special Board.
After the Deputy Commissar called my number, I (as well as the other investigators in their turn), was obliged to say the following: ‘“N” is accused under Article 58-6 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code of espionage for German intelligence. He pleaded guilty, which is confirmed by such-and-such investigation materials.’
My presentation took no more than a minute. The Deputy Commissar suggested sentencing ‘N’ to a 10-year imprisonment. The prosecutor agreed, and the fate of the accused ‘N’ was sealed. I left the room.
The cases for OSO meetings were prepared not only by the central NKVD in Moscow, but also sent to Moscow by the NKVD heads (commissars) of the republics, heads of regional UNKVD branches and heads of military district OOs. The decisions were short and were typed on a special form. Here, in the original formatting, is an example of a decision from the Archival Investigation File of the American Communist Isai (Isaiah) Oggins sentenced as a spy in 1940:
Excerpt from the Protocol [transcript] No. 1 of the Special Board under the People’s Internal Affairs Commissar, January 5, 1940
Heard: Case No. 85 of the GUGB Investigation Department of the NKVD, on the accusation of OGGINS Isai Samoilovich, b. 1898 in Massachusetts (USA), an American citizen.
Decided: To sentence OGGINS Isai Samoilovich to EIGHT-year imprisonment as a spy. The term begins from February 20, 1939 [the date of Oggins’s arrest]. The [Investigation] File is to be sent to the [NKVD] archive.
Head of the Secretariat of the Special Board under the People’s Internal Affairs Commissar.
(IVANOV)
NKVD’s seal.37
In fact, since 1928 Oggins spied not against, but for the Soviets—at first for the Comintern (Communist International, the international organization of Communist parties with its headquarters in Moscow), then for NKVD foreign intelligence—in Europe, the United States, and China.38 As for Vladimir Ivanov, who signed the excerpt, he headed the OSO Secretariat of the NKVD/MVD from 1939 until 1946, the OSO Secretariat of the MGB in 1946–47, and then the OSO Secretariat of the new Beria’s MVD from July to November 1953.
A prison official announced the OSO decision to a prisoner while he was still in an investigation prison. The prisoner was obliged to sign a copy of the decision, but it made no difference if he refused to do so. Then the prisoner was transferred to a transit prison, and from there he was sent to a labor camp. As for death sentences, they were carried out within twenty-four hours, with the prisoner learning of his impending execution only a few minutes before it was to take place.
According to the MVD report to Nikita Khrushchev, dated December 1953, in 1940 the OSO convicted 42,912 people under Article 58, and during the war, this number varied.39 For comparison, numbers convicted of Article 58 crimes by the Military Collegium for the same years are given:
Year OSO Military Collegium40
1941 26, 534 28,732
1942 77,548 112,973
1943 25,134 95,802
1944 10,611 99,425
1945 14,652 135,056
Total 243,954 471,988
In fact, the number of the convicted by the OSO, especially during the war, might have been from two to three times higher. The other archival records show that in 1943 alone, SMERSH, NKGB, and NKVD submitted 51,396 cases to the OSO, and 681 of the accused were sentenced to death, while in 1944 the OSO convicted a total of 27,456 prisoners.41 For unknown reason the 1953 MVD report mentions only 10,611 convicted in 1944, and not 27,456. Similarly, the report gives the number 14,652 for 1945, while the historian Nikita Petrov gives the number 26,518 for that year.42
The following numbers, which are for 1945 only, illustrate the enormity of the persecution endured by the Russian populace:
899,613 defendants were sentenced by civilian courts and military tribunals
357,007 were sentenced by military tribunals only (of these, 134,956 were sentenced on counter revolutionary charges)
297 were sentenced by the Military Collegium
26,581 were sentenced by the OSO.43
Like the death sentences pronounced by the Military Collegium in closed sessions, the death sentences pronounced by the OSO remained a state secret. On September 29, 1945 Beria signed an instruction on how to answer inquiries regarding the whereabouts of those who had been convicted by the OSO to death and executed during the war. He ordered the continuation of claims that the prisoner ‘was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment and deprivation of the right to write letters and receive parcels’.44
The OSO within the NKVD/MVD existed until July 1950. However, in November 1946 on Abakumov’s order a second OSO was created within the MGB, which considered political cases from 1947 to 1953.45 It was reorganized after Stalin’s death and finally disbanded in September 1953.
Nikolai Mesyatsev, who had legal training, wrote in 2005: ‘The Special Board… was a mockery of the natural right of every individual to openly defend his innocence and publicly participate in the procedure of establishing the extent of his guilt.’46 Archival materials of the OSO have never been declassified, and the lists of the names of the convicted and the number of sentenced chsiry and foreigners remains unknown. But even if the OSO records are eventually declassified, it will not be easy to examine them: recently all OSO records were moved from the FSB Central Archive in Moscow to its archival branch in the city of Omsk in Siberia.
Notes
1. Paragraph 2 in Part I of the TsIK Resolution, dated July 10, 1934. Doc
ument No. 124 in Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka (2003), 547–8.
2. A 25-year term of imprisonment was introduced by TsIK Resolution dated October 2, 1937. G. M. Ivanova, ‘Zakonodatel’naya baza sovetskoi repressivnoi politiki’, in Kniga dlya uchitelya: Istoriya politicheskikh repressii i soprotivleniya nesvobode v SSSR, edited by V. V. Shelokhaev, 39–82 (Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 2002) (in Russian).
3. Beria’s report to Stalin, dated November 15, 1941, quoted in ibid., 56.
4. In addition to the Military Collegium, from 1923 to 1934, court sessions of three members of the OGPU Collegium that included high-level OGPU functionaries also handed down death sentences. The Collegium considered only important cases under Articles 58 and 59 in the absence of defendants whom it sentenced to long terms of imprisonment or to death. See http://www.memo.ru/memory/preface/martyr.htm (in Russian), retrieved September 4, 2011.
5. TsIK Resolution, dated September 14, 1937. Kniga dlya uchitelya, 70.
6. M. P. Charyev, ‘Deyatel’nost’ voennykh tribunalov vo vremya Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941-1945 gg.,’ Voenno-yuridicheskii zhurnal, no. 8 (2006), 25–30 (in Russian). In 1941, there were 76 tribunals within the NKVD troops.
7. Biography of V. V. Ulrikh (1889–1951) in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 52–55.
8. Ulrikh’s letter to Stalin, dated April 2, 1938, quoted in Kudryavtsev and Trusov, Politicheskaya yustitsiya, 282.
9. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 231, 424. This novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1968.
10. Yefimov, Desyat’ desyatiletii o tom, chto videl, 315–7.
11. On January 17, 1940 the Politburo approved the death sentence for Koltsov as a German and French spy, and on February 2, 1940 he was executed. Koltsov’s former wife, Maria Osten-Gressgener, also described by Hemingway, was executed on September 16, 1942.
12. The NKVD formed Special Departments (OOs) within the Republican Army and organized killing squads that committed numerous atrocities. Additionally, NKVD agents participated in the transfer of the Spanish gold reserve to the Soviet Union. Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panné, ‘17. The Shadow of the NKVD in Spain,’ in Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repressions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 333–52.
13. Beria’s report to Stalin, a photo in Nikita Petrov and Marc Jansen, ‘On khvastalsya rasstrelami,’ Novaya gazeta. ‘Pravda GULAGa,’ no. 11, December 4, 2008 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/gulag11/01.html, retrieved September 4, 2011.
14. Yakov Aizenshtat, Zapiski sekretarya voennogo tribunala (London: Overseas Publishing Interchange Ltd., 1991), 19–20 (in Russian).
15. Petrov and Jansen, ‘On khvastalsya rasstrelami.’
16. Obukhov, Pravovye osnovy organizatsii, 79–81.
17. Ibid., 36, 41-43.
18. N. F. Chistyakov, Po zakonu i sovesti (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1979) (in Russian), http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/chistyakov_nf/04.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
19. Aizenshtat, Zapiski sekretarya, 15–19. During the war, the Military Collegium included V. V. Ulrikh (chairman), V. V. Bukanov, A. A. Cheptsov, I. V. Detistov, L. D. Dmitriev, B. I. Ievlev, D. Ya. Kandybin, F. A. Klimin, I. O. Matulevich, A. M. Orlov, M. G. Romanychev, A. G. Souslin, V. V. Syuldin, V. A. Uspensky, and I. M. Zaryanov.
20. In these cases, the verdict usually stated: ‘The sentence is final and not open to appeal. According to the TsIK decision dated December 1, 1934, it should be carried out immediately.’ This decision included the following orders: terrorist acts must be investigated within 10 days; there will be no prosecution and defense representatives at the trial; convicted parties are prohibited from making appeals; and death sentences must be carried out immediately after the trial. See http://stalin.memo.ru/images/1934.htm, retrieved September 4, 2011.
21. GKO decision No. 634e-ss, dated September 6, 1941. Document No. 198 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘SMERSH.’1939–1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 314 (Moscow: Materik, 2006) (in Russian).
22. Page 496 in A. B. Roginsky, ‘Posleslovie,’ in Rasstrel’nye spiski. Moskva, 1937–1941.’Kommunarka,’ Butovo. Kniga pamyati zhertv politicheskikh repressii, edited by L. S. Yeremina and A. B. Roginsky, 485–501 (Moscow: Zven’ya, 2000) (in Russian).
23. Figures from Charyev, ‘Deyatel’nost’ voennykh tribunalov.’
24. For instance, documents in ‘Kto utverdil smertnye prigovory N. I. Vavilovu i G. D. Karpechenko,’ in Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov i stranitsy sovetskoi genetiki, edited by I. A. Zakharov, 124–5 (Moscow: IOGEN RAN, 2000) (in Russian).
25. Quoted in Vladimir Pyatnitsky, ‘Khronika poslednego puti,’ Novaya gazeta ‘Pravda GULAGa,’ no. 3, April 3, 2008 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/gulag03/05.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
26. Olga Bobrova, ‘Nado znat’ vysshuyu meru,’ Novaya gazeta. ‘Pravda GULAGa,’ no. 6, July 7, 2008 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/gulag06/02.html, retrieved September 4, 2011.
27. Yan Rachinsky, ‘Byvshii dom Voennoi kollegii Verkhovnogo suda’ (in Russian), http://www.memo.ru/2011/05/17/rachinsky.htm, retrieved September 4, 2011.
28. A. B. Roginsky, ‘Posleslovie,’ in Rasstrel’nye spiski. Moskva, 1937–1941, 485–501.
29. Nikita Petrov and Marc Jansen, ‘Stalinskii pitomets’—Nikolai Yezhov (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008), 208–10 (in Russian).
30. Joint orders of the Justice Commissar and chief USSR Prosecutor, dated March 20 and May 9, 1940. A. I. Muranov and V. Ye. Zvyagintsev, Dos’e na marshala (Moscow: Andreevskii flag, 1996), 266 (in Russian).
31. S. Yu. Ushakov and A. A. Stukalov, Front voennykh prokurorov (ot repressii do rasstrelov) (Moscow: Synov’ya, 2000), 88–9 (in Russian).
32. On the OSO in 1934, see O. B. Mozokhin, Pravo na repressii. Vnesudebnye polnomochiya organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (1918–1953) (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2006), 138–40 (in Russian).
33. Beria’s report to Stalin, dated November 15, 1941. Document No. 203, in Lubyanka: Stalin i NKVD, 318–20.
34. GKO Order No. 903-ss, dated November 17, 1941, in Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka (2003), 77.
35. NKVD Order No. 001613 from November 21, 1941, in ibid.
36. Nikolai Mesyatsev, Gorizonty i labirinty moei zhizni (Moscow: Vagrius, 2005), 146–7 (in Russian).
37. On Isai Oggins, see Vadim Birstein, The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 132–9. Andrew Meier, the author of a detailed biography of Oggins The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2008), gives a fictional scene of Oggins’s court trial (pp. 129–32). In fact, defendants were not present at the OSO sessions.
38. The Comintern had its own international intelligence network. See Iosif Linder and Sergei Churkin, Krasnaya pautina. Tainy razvedki Kominterna 1919–1943 (Moscow: Ripol-Klassik, 2005) (in Russian).
39. Document No. 13, in Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo. Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie materialy. Mart 1953–fevral’ 1956, edited by A. Artizov et al., 72-74 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2000) (in Russian).
40. Data from Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 736–7.
41. Page 127 in Aleksandr Kokurin and Nikita Petrov, ‘NKVD–NKGB–SMERSH: struktura, funktsii, kadry. Stat’ya tret’ya (1941–1943),’ Svobodnaya mysl’, no. 8 (1997), 118–28 (in Russian).
42. Nikita Petrov, Istoriya imperii ‘Gulag.’ Glava 12 (in Russian), http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava12.htm, retrieved September 4, 2011.
43. Ibid.
44. A. S. Kuznetsov’s report to Beria, dated Sepember 18, 1942, and signed by Beria on September 29, 1945. Document No. 40 in GULAG (Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei), 1917–1960, edited by A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, 133–4 (Moscow: Materik, 2000) (in Russian). From 1955 until 1963, all dates, places of and causes of death of the executed were falsified; see Document No. 46 in ibid.,
163–4. Real information about the executions started to be released only after 1990.
45. Politburo decision P53/39, dated August 20, 1946 and MGB Order No. 00496, dated November 2, 1946. Petrov, Kto rukovodil organami bezopasnosti, 62.
46. Mesyatsev, Gorizonty i labirinty, 147.
CHAPTER 5
Division of Europe
The period from mid-1939 to mid-1941 was the time of mutual understanding between two dictators, Stalin and Adolf Hitler, and their division of Europe. As a result, Germany acquired part of Poland and most of Western Europe, while the Soviet Union included another part of Poland and occupied the Baltic States, part of Romania and tried to conquer Finland. Soviet propaganda called the Soviet annexations ‘the acts of assistance’ to the supposedly oppressed Ukrainians, Belorussians and other working people. Even now most of the Russians do not consider these occupations part of World War II and think that the war began only on June 22, 1941, the day of the German attack against the Soviet Union.
During this period of Soviet expansion, military counterintelligence in general and Viktor Abakumov in particular gained valuable experience. Techniques developed by the NKVD and its Special Department (OO) to eliminate all opposition in the new territories were later continued and refined by SMERSH.
Secret Agreement
In May 1939 Stalin replaced Maxim Litvinov, the Jewish, pro-British Foreign Affairs Commissar, with Vyacheslav Molotov.1 Beria’s man Vladimir Dekanozov became deputy Commissar. These were steps toward making a deal with Hitler.
Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII Page 13