The Great Terror

The Secret Police machine proper was concentrated in the NKVD’s Chief Administration of State Security. This consisted of a highly organized array of departments, skilled in the ways of their trade, and practiced in all modes of investigation, interrogation, and falsification. Almost all its leading officers had been with it for a decade, and had coped with the great cases of the late 1920s and early 1930s. (The NKVD controlled, in addition to this Secret Police machine, the “militia” [ordinary police], the frontier guards, its own internal troop formations, the fire service, and the labor camps, whose main administration, Gulag, under Matvei Berman, was already receiving a vast number of assorted purgees.)

Yagoda and Agranov themselves, and Yezhov representing the Central Committee, played a prominent part in the organization of the trial, and Stalin personally conducted the key conferences. Under them, the Secret Political Department was technically responsible for the whole operation, though it now had at its disposal the services of a number of officers from the other departments of State Security, including their chiefs.

The Secret Political Department, which had been the kernel of the Cheka from the beginning,⁵⁰ was still the key center of Secret Police operations. That is, it had the overall responsibility of supervising all the country’s organizations and carrying on the political struggle against all hostile political elements. It was headed by G. A. Molchanov, an unscrupulous careerist, and his deputy, G. S. Lyushkov.

The Economic Department

had security responsibility for all industry and agriculture (except for transport, dealt with by the Transport Department). In Soviet conditions, this gave it a role as weighty, in a general way, as that of the Secret Political Department, and it had had the main responsibility for trials such as the Shalchty, which, though in a general sense political, were centered on economic crimes. Its Head, L. G. Mironov, was a man with an extraordinary memory, which was to be of great use in composing and mastering the details of the first two trials. At the same time as he ran his vast department, he acted as assistant to Yagoda in the whole of the State Security side of the NKVD. He is described as a conscientious Party man who was depressed by the prosecution of the Old Bolsheviks.⁵¹ Previous cases that he had organized, and which do not seem to have depressed him similarly, included the “Industrial Party” and the Metro-Vic Trials—cases, with all their political importance, definable as “economic.” The Zinoviev Trial had no economic component. Nevertheless, Mironov was given an important role.

The Operative Department was responsible for guarding leading personnel and installations and investigating terrorist acts against them. Its main concern at this time was the protection of Stalin. Its Head, K. V. Pauker, or his deputy, A. I. Volovich, was almost continually with him except when he was actually in his heavily guarded offices, and L. I. Chertok, one of their chief subordinates, also spent much time organizing his local defense.

Pauker was a sort of evil buffoon. He had been a barber and valet to opera stars in Budapest, and had himself a turn for comic acting. Taken prisoner by the Russians in 1916, he had become one of the group of Communists which emerged from that milieu. An ignorant and uneducated man without any political convictions, he was recruited to the Cheka, like so many other foreigners in those days, to work on searches and arrests. He rose by becoming a personal attendant again, this time to Menzhinsky, who came to rely on him and finally appointed him head of the Kremlin bodyguard and chief of the Operative Department. He was on close terms with Stalin, who even allowed him to shave him.⁵²

The Special Department in general covered the armed forces. Its Head was M. I. Gay.

The Foreign Department

dealt with espionage and terror abroad. Its Head, A. A. Slutsky, was a sly intriguer who played an important role in the major interrogations. His deputies were Boris Berman and M. Shpigelglas.

The Transport Department, under A. M. Shanin, was the only one not deeply involved, having its hands full with Kaganovich’s endless purges on the railways.

There was a good deal of flexibility in these arrangements. Postings between departments were fairly frequent. And reorganization involving the transfer of lesser matters between the departments was also quite common.

Such was the order of battle of the shock troops of repression that Stalin was now launching on the helpless prisoners in the Lubyanka.