The coordinator of the "Handbook of the Chekists" said that his site was attacked by worms and bots

The detective story develops around the so-called "Handbook of the Chekists of the era of great terror" (officially, this Internet resource, created by the Memorial society, is called more politically correct: "The personnel of the state security bodies of the USSR 1935−1939"). In just a week of existence, this site “fell down” twice, and then information appeared in the media about an open letter from the descendants of the NKVD officers demanding that the resource be closed “in order to avoid revenge from the descendants of the repressed.”

Memorial stated that they were not going to delete this database, and the project coordinator, member of the board of the international society "Memorial" Yan Rachinsky told us that no letter actually exists.

The last statement looks quite logical. If the relatives of the NKVD officers are really afraid of revenge, then signing an open letter and drawing additional attention to themselves is all the more dangerous. And the text of this letter has not been completely published anywhere, only separate anonymous quotes are given. But back to the conversation with Yan Rachinsky.

- For what purpose did you open the resource, which you have already dubbed the “Handbook on the Chekists of the Great Terror”?

There is a certain truth in this name: not all NKVD officers were included in this database: there are neither police nor border guards there. The main content of the resource is people who had internal departmental special titles and insignia of the state security department.

A separate system of ranks in the period from 1935 to 1943 in this department assumed that the major of state security was on a par with or above the general military colonel.

The purpose of this publication is to provide historians reference material for determining actors. In addition to the purely scientific side, there is a public one. The study of the tragic period of mass repressions has so far been somewhat one-sided: attention has been paid to the victims of crimes, while those responsible for the crimes and perpetrators have remained behind the scenes. You need to know the names of these people. They are in the handbook.

Of course, to say that it contains only the names of the executioners, as some do, is not sufficiently thorough. But for the most part, all the same, these are people who worked inside the mechanism of the executive machine of Stalin's criminal policy. Among them are the executors of criminal orders, and those who tortured prisoners and falsified their testimony. The publication of such data can help the society develop immunity against state criminal policy, give an understanding that the names of those who participated in the execution of lawlessness will not be forgotten either.

- Why is the site unstable, is it subjected to cyberattacks?

The resource does not always cope with the volume of downloaded information: as a rule, it is more than a gigabyte per hour. In the early days there was a peak load that he could not withstand. Then the traffic became less, but "worms" and "bots" appeared, and the resource could not stand it again. Now we have strengthened the protection.

– How many relatives of the NKVD officers mentioned on the list have applied to Memorial with different demands?

There is no official appeal yet. I saw reports in the press about some kind of open letter, but it did not come to us. We tried to find the text of this letter on the net, but in vain.

There are several dissatisfied comments on our site, but they do not contain requirements to close the resource. Therefore, publications that “the descendants of the executioners from the NKVD demand the removal of the database”, in my opinion, do not correspond to reality. They don’t like the wording “descendants of executioners”, I don’t like it either, why label it, but this is not our wording, it was invented by the media and bloggers.

And some of the descendants of the people listed on our resource start correspondence with us, maintain telephone contacts and provide additional information about their ancestors. First of all, of course, these are those who are sure that they were not connected with repressions.

But correspondence began with the head of one large construction company, whose ancestor, no doubt, was connected with repressions. And it is conducted in a benevolent scientific manner. The discussion goes not by searching: who would shift the blame today, but by understanding why this happened, how relatively ordinary employees of the system were forced to carry out criminal orders, and it was impossible not to fulfill them, and how to prevent this from happening in the future.

Earlier, members of the board of "Memorial" put forward the version that it was not the descendants of the NKVD officers who were fighting with their resource, but rather their spiritual heirs, who did not want to condemn the Stalinist repressions.

A list of NKVD officers for the years 1935-1941 appeared on the Web, on the website of the Memorial movement. Information that had been classified as "secret" for decades is now in the public domain. The database contains 40,000 Chekists who worked during the years of the Great Terror, when citizens, as they say, were sent to be shot without trial or investigation.

The descendants of the Chekists and current FSB officers are also dissatisfied with the appearance of documents on the Web. Some are afraid of revenge from the descendants of the repressed. Others understand: years later, their personal data with a "track record" can similarly appear on the Internet, and who wants everyone to know about his "exploits"!

HAVE AN OPINION

How to live with a list of executioners in your bosom

Dmitry OLSHANSKY

Is the person right who found in the archives the names of those who repressed and killed his great-grandfather in 1937 and is now thirsty for satisfaction

MEANWHILE

The website of the Memorial movement went down after the publication of a directory of NKVD officers

Section where posted specified information, works intermittently and often gives an error message

Starting today, November 23, 2016, the website of Memorial provides access to A. N. Zhukov’s reference book “Staff of the USSR state security agencies. 1935-1939".

The directory contains brief data on 39,950 NKVD officers who received special ranks of the state security system from the moment they were introduced in 1935 to the beginning of 1941. Particular attention is paid to the time from autumn 1935 to mid-1939 - almost all of them are included in the directory , to whom the special title was awarded during this period.

The preliminary version of the handbook was published in May 2016 on CD. By the time the directory was posted on the Internet, changes and additions had been made to approximately 4,500 biographical notes.

The main source of information for the reference book was the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel. The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special titles and dismissal from the NKVD, information about the position held at the time of dismissal, as well as information about received state awards and on awarding the signs "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU".

The information from the orders is supplemented with biographical data from other sources - first of all, about the dead and missing during the Great Patriotic War, as well as those subjected to repression.

The reference book will be useful to those interested in Soviet history. So, in particular, with the help of the reference book, it will be possible to attribute many state security officers of the Great Terror era, who are still known only by their last names (as a rule, even without indicating their first and patronymic names) - from signatures in investigative files or from mentions in memoir texts.

The appearance of the reference book is a significant step towards a deeper and more accurate understanding of the tragic history of our country in the 1930s.

Material from the personnel of the NKVD 1935-1939

The basis and main content of this handbook was information about the workers of the NKVD, collected in libraries and archives by Andrei Nikolayevich Zhukov.

Initially - while the archives were tightly closed - the main source of his research was the old periodicals that published information about the awards of NKVD workers and brief biographical information during the election of the leaders of the NKVD-UNKVD to the deputies of the Supreme Soviets. Information in encyclopedias and books on the history of the state security agencies was extremely scarce and censored.

In the 1990s, access was also opened to archival materials: documents on awarding employees of state security agencies and depriving them of orders and orders from the NKVD on personnel - on the movement of workers and the assignment of personal titles. A. N. Zhukov devoted many years to studying these documents.

Thanks to his work, this project became possible.

Recall that in the structure of the NKVD of the USSR in the second half of the 1930s. The Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) and its local bodies - the Directorate of State Security (UGB) occupied a special place. It was the GUGB and the UGB that were entrusted with the duty to fight the “enemies of the people”. It is known that during the "mass operations" of 1937-1938. representatives of the most diverse divisions of the NKVD took part in the arrests, and sometimes the investigation: border and internal troops, police, economic units, and even cadets. However, the main role in conducting repressive campaigns was always played by the employees of the GUGB-UGB. It is they who bear the main responsibility for the implementation of the repressive policy of the Soviet leadership.

And from this point of view, this handbook is of particular value and public interest. With its help, historians will be able to attribute many hitherto unnamed state security officers who left only their signatures (as a rule, only surnames without indicating names and patronymics) in investigative files. The reference book will also be indispensable for the correct understanding of many memoirs, where the names of the Chekists are often mentioned not only without any explanation, but even without initials. It is also important for studying the system of state security organs as a whole.

The preliminary version of the handbook was published in May 2016 on CD. By the time the directory was posted on the Internet (November 2016), changes and additions had been made to about 3,500 biographical notes.

The task set by A. N. Zhukov is to give a complete list of persons who, in the period from December 1935 to June 1939, were awarded special ranks in the state security system.

The main goal was precisely the completeness of the list, and not a detailed description of the biographies of individual characters, and this explains the brevity of the information given about many well-known Chekists.

Personal special ranks for the commanding staff of the GUGB-UGB were introduced on October 7, 1935 by a decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The ranks were in the following order: state security sergeant (hereinafter referred to as GB), junior lieutenant of GB, lieutenant of GB, senior lieutenant of GB, captain of GB, major of GB, senior major of GB, commissar of GB 3rd rank, commissar of GB 2nd rank and commissar of GB 1st rank. On November 26, 1935, by a decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the title of General Commissar of the State Security Committee was introduced (assigned by decree of the Central Executive Committee, and later of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR). The ranks of commissars of the State Security Service of the 1st and 2nd ranks were assigned by decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and lower ones by orders of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

The main sources of information about the personnel of the NKVD were the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel for 1935-1941. The vast majority of these orders are not classified.

The compiler of the reference book completely reviewed those stored in the State Archives Russian Federation printed collections of orders of the NKVD on personnel for the period 1935-1940. (GARF. F. 9401. Op. 9a. D. 1-65) in order to identify information about the assignment of special ranks and information about the dismissal of NKVD officers who received these ranks. In total, over 11,000 orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel were issued during this period: No. 1-885 in 1935, No. 1-1308 in 1936, No. 1-2580 in 1937, No. 1-2648 in 1938 ., No. 1-2305 in 1939 and No. 1-1889 in 1940. These orders represent almost all persons who were awarded special ranks in the state security system (with rare exceptions when information about the assignment of a rank was not given by orders or the orders themselves not replicated). In the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel, announcing the conferment of the rank, the surname, name and patronymic of the person who was awarded the rank were necessarily indicated and, as a rule, the former rank was indicated if it was not about the initial assignment. If, according to the assigned special ranks, the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel give almost exhaustive completeness, then this cannot be said about information about the transfer and appointment of NKVD employees to positions. Here, the orders reflect only the leading layer - the nomenclature of the NKVD of the USSR. Grassroots positions are reflected only in the orders of the NKVD of the Union republics and the UNKVD of the territories and regions. That is why most of the characters in the reference book do not have any indication of their official position. In addition, it should be noted that the orders of the NKVD of the USSR do not always provide information about the dismissal of workers from the NKVD system, even at the nomenklatura level. There are also separate orders for the dismissal of employees of the NKVD, drawn up in the form of lists, which do not indicate the positions of the listed persons. In addition, the dismissal orders always indicated only the initials of the dismissed. This incompleteness of information in the orders of the NKVD, unfortunately, did not allow us to accurately identify a number of characters in the reference book who had common surnames, and sometimes to tie this or that title or award to a specific person. Hence the inevitable errors that may occur in the array of information presented in the directory.

For the period from December 1935 to mid-1939. the reference book gives an almost complete list of state security officers who had special titles. The only exceptions were those who were awarded the title by orders of the NKVD, which were not stored in the GARF, or orders that remained inaccessible to the compiler of the reference book, since they were deposited in the array of secret and top secret orders of the NKVD. The total number of such persons is insignificant, and since subsequent ranks were assigned to them by the usual orders of the NKVD for personnel, their names basically also ended up in the directory. For a later period - from July 1939 to January 1941 - only those persons who were awarded the rank of senior lieutenant of the GB and above are systematically included in the directory.

The directory contains 39,950 people who received special titles of the state security system from the moment they were introduced until the beginning of 1941. Over 11,000 of them (according to the information presented in the directory, which is far from complete) during this period, for one reason or another, were dismissed from bodies of the NKVD - by age, in reserve, in connection with the arrest, etc. Considering that the total number of employees of the UGB-GUGB of the NKVD by January 1, 1940 was 32,163 people (of which certified, that is, who had personal titles on 01/01/1940 there were 21,536 people - 67%), it can be said with confidence that only an extremely small number of persons remained outside the directory who were awarded a special rank in the period from 1935 to mid-1939 (and for ranks from senior lieutenant of the GB and above - until February 1941).

It must be borne in mind that special titles in the second half of the 1930s. were assigned not only to employees of the GUGB-UGB, but also - often - also to employees (mainly senior staff) of other NKVD structures. For example, the heads of the Administrative and Economic Department of the NKVD (I. Ostrovsky, V. Blokhin, etc.), the Gulag (for example, M. Berman, S. Firin, Ya. Moroz), etc. The directory contains the names of all these NKVD employees who received special titles.

In addition to employees of the NKVD who received special titles in the line of state security, the directory selectively presents police officers, border and internal security, military justice - those who were awarded fairly high police or combined arms ranks by orders of the NKVD of the USSR. There are about 1700 such people in the directory.

The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special titles and dismissals, as well as information about the position held at the time of dismissal.

The dismissal orders, as a rule, indicated the articles “Regulations on the service of the commanding staff of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR” (10/16/1935), according to which the employees were dismissed, and this helps to understand the reason for the dismissal.

Art. 37. Dismissal of the commanding staff from the cadres and operating reserve The Main Directorate of State Security is carried out according to the length of service in active service (Chapter 6 of this "Regulation") and due to illness, and can also be produced:

a) in the attestation procedure for official non-compliance;
b) for the inability to use due to downsizing or reorganization.
Art. 38. In addition, in some cases, the reasons for dismissal may be:
a) the verdict of the court or the decision of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR
b) arrest by the judicial authorities;
>c) the inability to use at work in the Main Directorate of State Security.
Art. 39. Depending on the reason for the dismissal, age and state of health, those dismissed from the staff and the current reserve of the Main Directorate of State Security can either be credited to the reserve of the Main Directorate of State Security, or dismissed from the Main Directorate of State Security altogether, with deregistration, and:
a) the commanding staff, dismissed from active service from the Main Directorate of State Security, who has not reached limit ages status in compulsory service (Chapter 6 of this "Regulation");
b) a commanding staff who has reached the age limit of compulsory service or is recognized for health reasons unfit for service both in peacetime and in wartime, as well as sentenced by a court or a Special Conference of the NKVD of the USSR to imprisonment

Information from the orders on the assignment of special titles and on the dismissal of employees, which is the main content of the directory, was supplemented by information from a number of other sources.

The most important block of sources is associated with the awarding of NKVD officers with state and departmental awards.

In the GARF, a thematic selection of orders of the NKVD of the USSR on incentives and awards (GARF. F. 9401. Op. 12) was viewed, which made it possible to identify persons awarded the signs “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (V)” and “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (XV )” (the directory contains information about 505 awarded the first of these signs and 3035 - the second). The information about the awards with these badges has also been compared with the special reference publications that have been issued to date.

In the archival materials of the Central Executive Committee and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (GARF. F. 7523. Op. 7, 44), cases with questionnaires were completely reviewed awarded with the order Lenin, among whom were found many (more than 1700) employees of the NKVD. Personal information from these questionnaires (last name, first name, patronymic, year and place of birth, information about party membership and place of work, as well as previous awards) is also included in the directory. Biographical information was also extracted from the reviewed materials to the decrees on the deprivation of awards.

In a number of cases, materials on awards during the war years presented in electronic publishing award documents on the website of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation "Feat of the people".

Information about some leading NKVD officials was clarified according to party records: registration forms of members of the CPSU (b) when exchanging party documents, stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, and personal files of NKVD workers who were part of the nomenclature of the Party Central Committee ( RGASPI, F. 17, op. 99, 100, 107 and 108).

Another significant source of personal information is the “Book of Memory of Counterintelligence Officers Who Died and Missing in Action during the Great Patriotic War” (M., 1995). This book, as a rule, provides basic personal data (last name, first name, patronymic, year and place of birth, information about party membership and place of service), as well as information about the date and place of death. Among the characters in the guide, more than 1,900 people died or went missing during the war years.

Included in the directory and information about the repressions that NKVD workers were subjected to. Articles 38A or 38B in the dismissal orders meant dismissal due to conviction or arrest - and for 930 people we have only such confirmation of the fact of repression. More detailed information about the repressions was found regarding another 3,600 people. About 1,600 of them were sentenced to death, of the rest, about 400 did not receive a camp sentence, but were released with the termination of the case.

Basically, this information was gathered by the compiler from the Books of Memory of the Victims political repression published in many regions former USSR, as well as from the consolidated database of the Memorial society. The completeness of information about the repressions is different - sometimes only the date of arrest or only the verdict are indicated. In many cases, the dates of the execution were established according to the acts on the enforcement of sentences stored in the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (this information was provided by Memorial).

It should be noted that many of the security officers sentenced to imprisonment were released at the beginning of the war and sent to the front.

The reference book also takes into account data from a number of reference publications and studies on the history of the Soviet state security agencies.

As a result, the most detailed references to employees of the GUGB-UGB NKVD system can contain the following information: last name, first name and patronymic, year and place of birth, nationality, party membership, length of service in the state security bodies, place of service (sometimes - position) at the time of assignment special titles, position upon dismissal or at the time of arrest, date of arrest and further fate (in case of conviction, date and information about rehabilitation), year and place of death (sometimes - cause), information about awarding orders and medals and departmental insignia (including the period 1941-1945, which is outside chronological framework this handbook, and for individuals and later awards). However, as a rule, information in the certificates is presented much less. Often they are limited to only the surname, name and patronymic, the date of receipt of the special title and the number of the order. However, even in such a minimal version, they, in our opinion, make sense, since they can serve as a starting point for further study of biographies.

In some cases, when more complete biographical information on individual characters has already been published, references are made to these publications.

In preparing the reference book for publication, we found it useful to “reconstruct” the original orders of the NKVD on the basis of information about personalities. Although this reconstruction is obviously incomplete, since it only includes information about the assignment of ranks and dismissals, it may be of independent interest to researchers, since it makes it possible to see the names of the Chekists mentioned in the same order.

For ease of use, the guide also includes some documents:

Regulations on the service of the commanding staff of the Main Directorate of State Security of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR

https://www.site/2016-11-24/dvizhenie_memorial_opublikovalo_bazu_dannyh_na_pochti_40_tys_sotrudnikov_nkvd

The era of the Great Terror

The Memorial movement published a database of almost 40,000 NKVD officers

The Memorial movement on its official website opened access to Andrey Zhukov's database “Personnel of the USSR state security bodies. 1935-1939”, which presents brief data on 39 thousand 950 employees of the NKVD. As stated in the project description, the guide will be useful to those interested in Soviet history.

“So, in particular, with the help of the reference book, it will be possible to attribute many state security officers of the era of the Great Terror, who are still known only by their last names (as a rule, even without indicating their first and patronymic names) - from signatures in investigative files or from mentions in memoir texts. The appearance of the reference book is a significant step towards a deeper and more accurate understanding of the tragic history of our country in the 30s of the 20th century,” Memorial notes.

The directory contains data on NKVD employees who received special ranks of the state security system from the moment they were introduced in 1935 until the beginning of 1941. The main source of information was the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel. The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special titles and dismissal from the NKVD, information about the position held at the time of dismissal, as well as information about received state awards and about awarding the signs "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU".