Case Study:

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 B. Instigators and perpetrators

According to various scholars, Stalin was the prime instigator of the Terror as he provided direct input in the decision making process of the mass repression. The Peoples’ Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), predecessor to the Committee for State Security (KGB), was in charge of the so-called operations of mass repression. In 1934, the OGPU (Unified State Political Directorate) was transformed into the GUGB (Chief Directorate of State Security), which was subordinated into the new All-Union NKVD; this marked the beginning of the Soviet state security’s most powerful and autocratic period. All key aspects of internal and state security were now subordinated into one body under one leader – at first G.G. Yagoda, then, from September 27, 1936, N.I. Yezhov, and finally, from November 25, 1938, Lavrentii Beria.

In Belarus, B. D. Berman was the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs from March 1937 to May 1938. His leadership corresponded to the most repressive period in Belarus. According to archive materials, during a NKVD meeting in January 1938, B.D. Berman mentioned the number of 60.000 people repressed in Belarus (Internet site of the Belarusian KGB). In the framework of the elites’ purge process, Berman was arrested in September 1938 and sentenced to death in February 1939. A.A. Nasedkin succeeded Berman at the head of the Belarusian NKVD but was also victim of the purge as he was arrested in December 1938 and executed in January 1940. Afterwards, L.F. Canava leaded the Belarusian NKVD until 1941 when he became in charge of the so-called Western Front. In 1943, he was appointed commissar of the Belarusian State security.

Mass operations were the internal cipher used by the GUGB units of the NKVD to denote major and ubiquitous offensives against certain groups in society. The requisite operational orders, prefixed by double naught to denote « top secret », were issued between July 1937 and November 1938. The victims were convicted in absentia and in camera by extra-judicial organs – the troiki sentenced indigenous « enemies » (Operation no. 00447), the two-man dvoiki (NKVD Commissar Yezhov and Main State Prosecutor Vyshinksii, or their deputies) those arrested along « national » lines. This strict division of labor in implementing state terror was also adhered at the highest echelons of power (McLoughlin, 2003: 119).

Operation no. 00447 was a joint Party-NKVD undertaking that « came from below » to a certain extent and definitely went beyond the Stalin-Yezhov axis behind the planning of « foreigner » mass operations. In most cases, the Politburo accepted the repression totals and the troika composition (NKVD commander, state prosecutor, local Party secretary) suggested by the provincial centers (McLoughlin, 2003: 123-124). A characteristic of all mass operations was flexibility: first, the numbers – the so-called limit – to be convicted in the « anti-kulak » operation could be easily increased; second, it was left entirely to the GUGB officers whether the prisoner was to be shot or sent to the camps; third, the time-limits set for the completion of single operations were extended time and again; fourth, operations against foreigners were not subject to limit and the convicted were usually executed; finally, simplified investigation procedures were adopted to convict suspects (McLoughlin, 2003: 25).

From November to December 1937 the terror entered its most arbitrary phase. GUGB units, non subject to reaching arrest norms and a « casework minimum », sketched out their operational schedule by simply writing on pre-printed forms how many persons from each sociological group were to be seized and sentenced (MacLoughlin, 2003: 127).

Victims of mass operation were executed at night, either in prisons, in the cellars of GUGB headquarters or in a secluded area, usually a forest. At the nocturnal executions, NKVD officers using the standard Nagan pistol shot prisoners in the back of the head or neck, and, sometimes in the temple (McLoughlin, 2003: 131). According to the 1988 excavations in Kurapaty, the people in all burials were killed by being shot in the head (mostly in the back of the head, the occipital area) with Soviet Nagan-type revolvers: « the Commission has come to the conclusion that in 1937-1941 in the forest massif of Kurapaty, mass shootings of Soviet citizens were conducted by agencies of the NKVD ». According to the archives on rehabilitation process in the 1950s-1960s, the Commission estimated that more than 40 members of the NKVD were involved in the Kurapaty mass killings. The Commission provided names and biographies of former NKVD leaders but mentioned that most of them had been purged in 1937-1939 with several receiving death sentences (Sovietskaïa Belorussia, January 22, 1989).

 C. Victims

According to the 1988 excavations, the experts concluded that all the victims were civilian, that they had been prepared for a long journey and that they had left their homes not long before their death. Experts assumed that these people were shot without trial and they had not undergone prolonged imprisonment. In several burials, the victims were from different walks of life and came from various regions of Belarus (possibly, some were from the Baltic lands). Judging from the footwear, the remains of clothing, and the personal effects, the majority of those buried belonged to the lower social strata (workers, peasants, minor officials, rural intelligentsia) (Kurapaty, 1994: 138-139). Most victims were males, aged 20-60 and among them the majority were found to be age 40-49 (Marples, 1994: 515). They were also women among the victims.

Among the 7 excavations the experts made, one grave was of persons from the Western regions of the USSR. Possibly these were representatives of the intelligentsia from Western Belarus or the Baltic States. The following testifies to this: foreign brand marks on footwear and other items (including Polish ones), the large number of pairs of spectacles, pencils, Catholic Medallions with the image of the Madonna, high-quality factory-made footwear, a relatively high number of metal dental crowns, dental prostheses, leather clothing, etc. (Kurapaty, 1994: 128).

The investigatory commission established that there were 510 « assumed burial places » in an area of about 30 hectares. Bones extracted from the graves visited by the commission belonged to « not less than 356 persons ». Since each grave was determined to contain the remains of 50-60 people, then at least 30.000 victims had been buried in the Kurapaty Forest, but it was not possible to establish a more precise figure (Sovetskaïa Belorussia, January 22, 1989). Zianon Pazniak, a Belarusian historian and political activist who revealed the Kurapaty mass killings to the public in 1988, gives figures that are much higher than this. In a summer 1989 interview, he remarked that approximately 250.000 people had been executed in the Kurapaty region (Marples, 1994: 516). After the 1997-1998 excavations, the Procurator General’s Office revised downward the number of estimated victims to about 7.000 (Belapan, November 7, 1998).

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