The Technology of NKVD Political Repressions 1939–1941
Remembrance and Justice, Vol. 23 No. 1 (2014), pages: 267-292
Publication date: 2014-06-30
Abstract
The article lays down the analysis of the scope and methods of operation of the
Soviet state security bodies in 1939–1941. It describes the technology of political
search as the main profile of Stalin’s special services. On the basis of documents
of NKVD of the USSR the categories of the so-called “anti-Soviet element” are
described. Some features of the secret service work, field surveillance, mail cover
check, the use of provocative methods in the struggle with “enemies of the people”
are revealed. The arrests procedure, investigations organization and the system
of imprisonment functioning, the use of offence methods and in-ward agents by
interrogation officers are investigated. Considerable attention is paid to the
activity of the Special conference at NKVD of the USSR, which was the key organ of
extra-judicial punishment of the political prisoners. The article is written based
on the original actual material, first of all based on the documents of the National
Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, Branch National Archives of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, the Russian State Archives of Social and
Political History, the Russian State Archives of the Contemporary History, the State
Archives of Russian Federation.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Wołodymyr Baran, Soviet security services in Ukraine: June–December 1941. Outline of the issues , Remembrance and Justice: Vol. 30 No. 2 (2017)
- Wołodymyr Baran, Wasyl Tokarski, The Soviet Judiciary in the Volhynia and in East Galicia in 1939–1941 , Remembrance and Justice: Vol. 25 No. 1 (2015)
- Wołodymyr Baran, Economic transformations in Western Ukraine in the years 1939–1941 , Remembrance and Justice: Vol. 19 No. 1 (2012)
- Wołodymyr Baran, Western Ukraine – the beginning of the Sovietisation (September–December1939). From the Perspective of the Ukrainian Historician , Remembrance and Justice: Vol. 18 No. 2 (2011)