Among other power structures that left a mark on the history of our country, a special place is occupied by the one that was forever imprinted in the people's memory with the letters of the NKVD. The decoding of the USSR, the RSFSR and many other commonly encountered, but obsolete abbreviations does not cause any difficulties for anyone, however, the abbreviated names of individual public services have to be clarified. This is especially necessary for the younger generation. And even more importantly, tell them what the NKVD is.
Creation of a new government body
According to the decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of July 10, 1934, a central body was established to administer all structures involved in the fight against crime and maintaining public order. It was designated by four letters - the NKVD. The abbreviation was as follows: People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs.
Along with the newly formed units, it also included the personnel of the Main Political Directorate, which had lost independence, but was not abolished. So an organization was born that became a symbol of the genocide carried out by the Stalinist regime against its own people.
What is the NKVD?
The newly created structure had an unusually broad sphere of responsibility, but at the same time, incomparable powers. So, her competence included control over the activities of state bodies related to utilities, construction and almost all industries.
In addition, the NKVD officers were engaged in political investigation, foreign intelligence, state border protection, and serving in the penitentiary system and army counterintelligence. For the successful fulfillment of their duties, the NKVD was vested with the right to extrajudicially pronounce any sentences, including the death penalty. According to the decree of the CEC of the USSR, they were not subject to appeal and were enforced immediately.
Arbitrariness of special NKVD triples
Such unprecedented powers that allowed this structure to operate outside the legal field caused one of the most terrible tragedies experienced by our Motherland. In order to fully imagine what the NKVD is, one should recall the mass repressions of the thirties, the main culprit of which was this body. Millions of Soviet citizens who became prisoners of the Gulag and were shot on trumped-up charges were convicted by the so-called special triples.
The structure of this extrajudicial structure included: the secretary of the regional party committee, the prosecutor and the head of the regional or city department of the NKVD. The determination of the guilt of those under investigation, as a rule, was not carried out, and the sentences in the cases under consideration were not imposed on the basis of the current legislation, but only in accordance with their personal desire, which everywhere became the result of arbitrariness.
Deportation of peoples and cooperation with the Gestapo
In addition, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs also tarnished itself with such a form of political repression as deportation of people on a national basis. During the years of Stalinism, entire nations forcibly moved from their places of historical residence to the regions of the Far North and Siberia. According to reports, the NKVD authorities deported ten nationalities. These include: Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Germans, Koreans, Ingermanland Finns, Ingush, Karachais, Meskhetian Turks, Kalmyks and Balkars.
In the fifties, in the wake of exposing the cult of the personality of Stalin and the rehabilitation of many victims of his regime, numerous facts became public, indicating the pre-war cooperation of the NKVD with the Gestapo. The names of dozens of German and Austrian anti-fascists who sought political asylum in the Soviet Union but were recognized as “undesirable elements” and transferred to the German authorities appeared in the press of those years.
The first leaders of the punitive structure
From the first days of the creation of the NKVD (the abbreviation is deciphered above), the head of this body was the newly appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G. G. Yagoda. After serving in this post for two years, he himself became a victim of his system. In September 1936 he was removed from his post and arrested on trumped-up charges. After spending two years under investigation, the first head of the all-powerful commissariat was executed.
Immediately after the dismissal and arrest of G. G. Yagoda, a new commissar was appointed in his place. He became a candidate member of the Politburo of the CPSU (b) N. I. Ezhov. It is with his name that the infamous “great terror” launched by Stalin in 1937-1938 is associated.
However, he did not succeed in overtaking his predecessor by the duration of his career. At the end of December 1938, he was also arrested on the basis of the then standard charge of high treason and, having also spent two years under investigation, lost his life as a result of his death sentence.
L.P. Beria and S.N. Kruglov
LP P. Beria spent the longest time at the head of the NKVD. Having entered this post on December 25, 1938, he only in 1946 ceded it to his successor - S. N. Kruglov. Having gone to work in the Politburo of the USSR, Beria, until the death of Stalin, remained one of the key figures in the government. However, the sad fate of his predecessors and he could not be avoided. Arrested in 1953, he soon received, by the verdict of the Supreme Court, his well-deserved bullet.
Of all four leaders of the NKVD, abolished in March 1946, only S. N. Kruglov was relatively lucky . Fate granted him to live to old age. However, he did not die his death. As a participant in mass repressions, in 1959, by a court decision, the former general was deprived of his pension and an elite apartment in the center of the capital. Living on the Pravda station near Moscow, on July 6, 1977, he ended his life under the wheels of a train.
The role of the NKVD in the fight against fascism
However, in order to fully answer the question of what the NKVD is, one cannot confine oneself to the grim role that this structure played in the history of our country. It would be an unforgivable mistake to discard her merits in the fight against criminal crime, as well as with the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War.
According to archival data, in June 1941, the NKVD troops included fourteen divisions, eighteen brigades, as well as more than twenty regiments of various purposes. From the first days of the war, these forces were thrown into battle and played a significant role in defeating the enemy.
It should also be noted that the Victory over fascism was served not only by the employees themselves, but also by almost a million of our fellow Gulag prisoners, guarded by them and amnestied at the request of the NKVD leadership with a view to being sent to the front. This measure was especially effective in the first - most difficult years of the war.
Border and internal troops
The role of the NKVD in protecting the state border of our country cannot be underestimated. At the end of the thirties, the composition of the border troops subordinate to him totaled 167 thousand people. Their task included both the suppression of the penetration of various kinds of spies, saboteurs and smugglers into the territory of the USSR, as well as the fight against violators of the border regime. The names of many border guard heroes entered the history of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union forever .
The statistics reflecting the work carried out during the war years by the internal troops of the NKVD look very impressive. According to available data, only in terms of the fight against banditry, they carried out more than 9.5 thousand operations, which made it possible to neutralize about 150 thousand criminals. Along with them, the border troops were able to eliminate 829 various gangs, which included 49 thousand criminals.
The role of the NKVD in the economy of the war years
Modern researchers and a number of public organizations are trying to assess the impact that the work of the Gulag prisoners had on the development of the country's economy. As the well-known human rights organization Memorial points out, the NKVD launched such a vigorous activity at the end of the thirties that as a result of it, about 1,680,000 able-bodied men were imprisoned at the beginning of the war, which amounted to 8% of all the country's labor resources for that period.
As part of the mobilization plan adopted by the government, enterprises established in places of detention produced a significant amount of ammunition and other products necessary for the front. This, of course, affected the provision of the army, but at the same time it should be recognized that the productivity of such forced labor was very low.
Post-war years
As for the post-war years, even in this period the role of the NKVD in raising the country's economy can hardly be considered noticeable. On the one hand, the placement of GULAG camps in the sparsely populated areas of the north of the country, Siberia and the Far East, contributed to their development, but on the other, the ineffective work of prisoners became an obstacle to the implementation of many economic projects.
This fully applies to attempts to use the forced labor of scientists and designers, who in many cases became victims of mass repressions of the Stalin period. It is known that the NKVD bodies created special prisons, popularly known as "scarabs". In them, representatives of the scientific and technological elite, convicted on the basis of trumped-up charges by the very “special triples” discussed above, were obliged to engage in scientific development.
Among the former prisoners of such “sharashka” there were such famous Soviet design scientists as S. P. Korolev and A. N. Tupolev. The result of attempts to introduce forced technical creativity was very small and showed the complete inexpediency of this venture.
Conclusion
In the fifties, after the death of Stalin, a wide process of rehabilitation of the victims of the regime created by him in the country began. Crimes issued earlier for the struggle against the enemies of the people have been duly appreciated by both government bodies and public opinion. The activity of the structure called the NKVD was also exposed, the decryption, history and activity of which became the topic of this article. In 1946, this notorious department was transformed into the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.