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Chapter 1
The system, under which there were parallel places of detention for political opponents of the regime and for ordinary criminals, originated in the early years of Soviet power, when the Extraordinary Commissions were in operation. At the same time, the preferential keeping of prisoners not in prison, but in camp conditions, that is, at a distance from cities and with the indispensable obligation to work, gradually became a rule.
Already in 1918 The People's Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR formulated the basic principles of the penitentiary policy: ensuring full self-sufficiency of places of detention (when the income from the work of prisoners exceeds the cost of their maintenance) [
Self-sufficiency is when Expenses and Incomes are equal to each other, i.e. Self-sufficiency or Simple Reproduction. When income exceeds expenses, profit is formed. If the Profit is enough to partially cover the costs of Development, then Expanded Reproduction is obtained, if the Profit is enough to cover not part, but all! Development costs, then we have Full cost accounting -]
and complete re-education of convicts. Although there was a lot of revolutionary romance in the latter (despite the fact that at first the authorities did not have funds for the construction of new prisons), the later term " reforging", meaning the real labor re-education of hardened criminals at shock construction sites, became extremely popular during the years of the birth of the Gulag.
The history of the central governing bodies of places of detention in the first years of Soviet power is a special topic (for details, see "The system of forced labor camps in the USSR, 1923-1960. Reference book" (Compiled by M. B. Smirnov, edited by N. G. Okhotin and A. B. Roginsky), Moscow, 1998, pp. 10-24). Here we will only say that the Main Directorate of Places of Confinement inherited from tsarist Russia ( GUMZ) Ministry of Justice (since October 1917 - People's Commissariat of Justice ( NKJ) of Russia, and from January 1918 - NKJ RSFSR) in May 1918 was reorganized into the Central punitive the Department NKJ, and in October 1921 - to the Central Correctional Labor Department NKJ RSFSR.
At the same time, in the NKVD System of the RSFSR, in April 1919, the Central Directorate of Forced Labor Camps was created, a month later renamed the Department of Forced Labor, in May 1920 - to the Main Directorate of Forced Labor, in September of the same year - to the Main Directorate of Public Works and Duties, and in February 1921 - again to the Main Directorate of Forced Labor ( GUPR).
In October 1922, the corresponding devices NKJ The RSFSR and the NKVD of the RSFSR were merged into a single Main Directorate of Places of Confinement ( GUMZ) NKVD of the RSFSR headed by E. G. Shirvindtom which lasted until December 1930.
Then the republican NKVD was abolished, and GUMZ was transferred to NKJ RSFSR and reorganized into the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Institutions ( GUITU). With the liquidation of the republican NKVD, all work on the maintenance and labor use of those convicted for terms of less than three years was again transferred to the people's commissariats of justice of the republics.
chief GUITU Chekist I.A. was appointed Apeter, who previously held the post of first deputy plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the Moscow region. In January 1931 Apeter replaced Shirvindt also in the position of head of the Central Directorate of the escort troops of the USSR.
GUITU NKJ The RSFSR lasted until October 1934, when all places of detention subordinate to it were transferred to the subordination of the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR, which had noticeably strengthened by that time.
Formally, the forced labor camps (concentration camps) that arose already in 1919 belonged to the NKVD of the RSFSR, but in fact they were led by Chekists (especially since the chairman of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, simultaneously served as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs). In the first Correctional Labor Code of the RSFSR, adopted on October 16, 1924, it was only about detention houses, forced labor houses, labor colonies (agricultural, handicraft and factory), transitional corrective labor houses, and finally about special purpose isolators (for isolation " socially dangerous" prisoners).
At the same time, it was not explained whether in the latter case we are talking about the System of political isolators subordinate to the OGPU, equipped already in the early 1920s, as well as about Solovetsky camp, which arose by the end of 1923 with a transfer to Solovki Directorate of the Northern Forced Labor Camps and its subdivisions from Arkhangelsk, Kholmogor and Pertominsk. The normative documents themselves on the places of detention of the OGPU, as a rule, were not published, although they were approved by decrees SNK THE USSR.
Happy birth The camp system can be considered October 13, 1923. Decree SNK The USSR was formed from this number Solovetsky special-purpose forced labor camp with two transit and distribution points in Arkhangelsk and Kem. The administration of the camp was entrusted to the OGPU. As early as October 12, the chief Solovetsky the camp was appointed former head of the Eastern Department of the SOU GPU under the NKVD of the RSFSR F.I. Eichmans. General management of the activities of the Department Solovetsky special purpose camps CONDITION) were assigned to the Special Department of the OGPU, headed by G.I. Bokiem, specific problems CONDITION the 3rd branch of the Special Department of the OGPU was engaged.
On May 20, 1929, the 3rd branch of the Special Department was headed by the former head CONDITION Eichmans; he also became the first head of the OGPU Camp Administration (ULAG) formed by order of the OGPU No. 130/63 of April 25, 1930, to which the functions of the former 3rd branch of the Special Department were transferred; deputy Eichmans appointed (from the post of head of the Special Department (OO) of the Moscow Military District) L.N. Meyer(Zakharova). The same order approved the states of the ULAG.
The ULAG was entrusted with the management of all OGPU camps, both existing and newly emerging. Probably, then it was difficult to imagine that ten years later one of the leading divisions of the NKVD would grow out of a modest size (80 people) apparatus of the ULAG (the staff in 1940 was almost 1,600 people). Up to the "great turning point" in the OGPU system, only one Solovetsky camp, while other places of detention were subordinate GUMZ NKVD RSFSR.
With the adoption of the Politburo resolutions of May 13 and 23, 1929 "On the use of the labor of criminal prisoners" and the Politburo resolution "On the use of the labor of criminal prisoners" of June 27 of the same year (drawn up by the resolution of the same name SNK USSR dated July 11) the OGPU began organizing new camps.
Based on the decision SNK USSR dated June 6, 1929 "On the release of funds by the OGPU for the organization and maintenance of a concentration camp in the Olonets-Ukhta region" and the order of the OGPU No. March 26, 1930 renamed Syktyvkar).
Pursuant to the decision SNK USSR dated July 18, 1929, "On the release of funds for the construction of the Vishera Special Purpose Camp" is organized by the Office of Vishera Special Purpose Camps (UVLON) with a center in the city of Krasnovishersk, Ural Region (now Perm Region).
From October 1, 1929, by orders of local bodies of the OGPU, the Far Eastern Camp (DALULON) with a center in Khabarovsk, the Siberian Camp (SIBULON) with a center in Novosibirsk, the Central Asian (USAZLON) with the deployment of control in Tashkent and the Kazakhstan (KAZULON) with the deployment of control in Alma- And those.
The resolution of the Politburo of June 27, 1929 ordered "in the future to call concentration camps corrective labor camps." Thus, the popular notion that such a renaming was done to avoid undesirable analogies with the concentration camps of Nazi Germany is erroneous. One can only say that the task of "correction through labor" was set as a priority, and not the "concentration" of hostile elements in the camps.
April 7, 1930 chairman SNK USSR A.I. Rykov signed the "Regulations on corrective labor camps", according to which "the camps are under the jurisdiction of the OGPU, which exercises general management of their activities."
On May 25, by order of the OGPU No. 169/81, the order of subordination of forced labor camps was determined ( ITL) and ULAG functions. In places ITL completely subordinated to the relevant plenipotentiaries (PP) of the OGPU, who conducted operational work in the camps and were responsible for their protection.
Acquisition ITL Chekist cadres were assigned to the Administrative and Organizational Directorate (AOU) of the OGPU "on common grounds for organs and troops of the OGPU."
The following tasks were assigned to the ULAG: registration and distribution of prisoners in camps; economic, financial and planned management of the activities of the camps; supplying them with food, uniforms, inventory and materials for production.
By June 1, 1930, there were seven ITL, the total number of prisoners was 168,163, of which CONDITION e (logging, road construction, drainage of swamps) - 62,563, in USEVLON (cutting and loading export timber, road construction and other work) - 38,103, in UVLON (construction of a pulp and paper mill, logging and other work) - 18,863 , in SIBULON (gold and coal mining, logging, road construction and other works) - 24,566, in DALULON (logging, road construction, gold and coal mining, fishing and other works) - 18,149, in USAZLON (reclamation work and work in state farms) - 3548, in KAZULON (construction of a giant state farm) - 2823 people.
In the summer of 1930, the leadership of the ULAG was completely replaced: by order of the OGPU No. 165 of June 17, the former assistant to the head of the OGPU OO L. I. became the new head of the ULAG. Kogan, and by order No. 199 of July 15, M.D. Berman. F.I. Eichmans On July 13, he headed the newly created Vaigach expedition of the OGPU (engaged in the exploration and development of non-ferrous metal ores on the island Vaygach and the coast of the Kara Sea), and L.N. Zakharov Meyer On June 1, 1930, he was appointed deputy plenipotentiary of the OGPU for the Lower Volga region.
On July 19, 1930, by order No. 2 for the ULAG, its staff and structure were announced: leadership (L.I. Kogan, M.D. Berman); secretariat (14 people); administrative and inspection department (28 people, head - S.F. Belonogov); production and economic department (38 people, head - Ya. D. Rapoport, senior consultant - recent Solovetsky camp resident N. A. Frenkel). In total, there were 87 people in this state.
The abbreviation "GULAG" appeared on November 9, 1930, when by order of the AOU OGPU No. 308, the staff of the Main Directorate of Camps of the OGPU (96 people) was announced to be introduced from October 1 (retroactively). The personal distribution by position was as follows:
- management (head - L.I. Kogan, deputy chief - M. D. Berman, assistant chief - Ya. D. Rapoport and S.F. Belonogov, senior consultant - N. A. Frenkel; in total in the state - 8 people);
- secretariat (head - E.F. Prushakevich, total - 14 people);
- 1 (inspector) department (11 people);
- 2 (accounting and distribution) department (head - P. A. Ivanov, total - 9 people);
- 3 (information and investigation) department (head - M. D. Balyabin, total - 10 people);
- 4 (production) department (head - A.I. Maslennikov, in total - 11 people);
- 5 (supply) department (head - A. E. Sorokin, total - 26 people);
- planning group (head - M. Segal, total - 7 people).
By order of the OGPU No. 330/198 of June 2, 1931, a Department for special settlers, mainly evicted from areas of complete collectivization of kulaks, was organized as part of the GULAG; On June 29, by order of the AOU OGPU No. 177, this department was headed by G.P. Zakarian.
Decree SNK USSR No. 130ss of July 1 of the same year "On the organization of special settlers" the OGPU was entrusted with the administrative management of special settlers and the economic use of their labor; these tasks fell primarily to the Gulag.
Building decision the legendary White Sea Canal was adopted by the Council of Labor and Defense ( HUNDRED) as early as June 3, 1930, however, the surveys originally assigned to Belomorstroy NKPS, dragged on until April 1931. Then, in order to speed up the work, the Northern District of Belomorstroy was transferred to the OGPU. NKPS and finally, by order of the OGPU No. 667/359 of November 16 "On the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Waterway", all work on the canal was transferred to the newly created Office for the Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Waterway of the OGPU, headed by L.I. Kogan(concurrently with the position of the head of the Gulag), whose deputy also became the assistant to the head of the Gulag Ya. D. Rapoport. They had to personally supervise the construction, alternately being directly at the work site.
As part of the Gulag, a special group was created to supply Belomorstroy. By the same order, the White Sea-Baltic camp was created for the construction of the canal, which was headed by E.I. Senkevich, previously the head of Svirsky
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. The role of the Gulag in the system of political power
1 Creation of the Galag. Decree on Forced Labor Camps
2 Organizational structure of the Gulag
3 The scope of the Gulag
The economic role of the Gulag
Conclusion
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
GULAG - the main department of corrective labor camps, labor settlements and places of detention in the USSR.
NKVD - People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
ITL - corrective labor camp.
GubChK - provincial emergency commissions.
VTsIK - All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
RCP(b) - Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
UN - United Nations Organization.
OGPU - United State Political Administration.
INTRODUCTION
The political, economic and military realities of the second half of the 20th century made it difficult to study many key issues of Soviet history, and in particular, did not allow an objective and reliable study of the problem of forced labor and political repression in the USSR.
A wide range of opinions about nature itself and about the place and role in the Soviet state system of the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps, Labor Settlements and Places of Detention (GULAG) has emerged in scientific and publicistic literature.
Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps, Labor Settlements and Places of Confinement in the USSR in 1934-56. a subdivision of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), which managed the system of forced labor camps (ITL). Special departments of the GULAG united many labor camps in different regions of the country: Karaganda labor camp (Karlag), Solovetsky labor camp (USLON), White Sea-Baltic labor camp and the NKVD combine, Vorkuta labor camp, Norilsk labor camp, etc.
The inconsistency of assessments and judgments on the GULAG problem was primarily due to the narrowness and insufficient source base, which consisted mainly of the memoirs of participants in the events and eyewitness accounts, as well as official Soviet materials. The study of the Gulag at a qualitatively new level became possible only at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when researchers gained access to the necessary archival materials.
1. The role of the Gulag in the system of political power
The role of the Gulag in the system of political power was enormous. Fulfilling the will of the totalitarian regime, he mercilessly suppressed any dissent, kept all the citizens of the country in psychological tension, so that no one would doubt the correctness of the "wise" policy of the party and the state. The very existence of the Gulag gave rise to dissidence, emigration, the flight of people of various beliefs and views from the nightmare of the situation that prevailed in the country. [6, 9].
The totalitarian regime did everything to hide from the people and the world community what was happening in the camps, labor settlements, Gulag prisons and among millions of relatives, friends and colleagues of repressed citizens. The Gulag system became such an element of power in the USSR that turned the lives of millions of Soviet people into a tragedy. 1.1 Creation of the Gulag. Decree on Forced Labor Camps April 1919 All-Russian Central Executive Committee signed by Chairman M.I. Kalinin issued a decree "On forced labor camps". This decree legitimized two provisions that accompanied the 18-month existence of the Soviet Republic, namely: the approval of the camp system and the approval of forced labor [1-6, 7].
How widely these provisions were implemented can be seen from the fact that the decree provided for the organization of forced labor camps "at the Departments of the Administration of the Provincial Executive Committees", i.e. By this, all provincial committees undertook to create camps. The organization and management of the camps were entrusted to Gubchek (Provincial Extraordinary Commissions); camps in the counties were opened with the permission of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Already in this first decree on the camps, it is provided that the escape from them "is subject to the most severe punishments." But the text of the decree of April 15, 1919, apparently, turned out to be insufficient, and on May 17, 1919, signed by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, V. Avanesov, a new expanded decree “On forced labor camps” was published, developed in great detail and has the following sections [5, 9]:
a) organization of camps and management of camps, c) guard team d) sanitary and medical supervision, e) about prisoners, e) room. It should be noted that for the first time the escape was set to increase the term of imprisonment by ten times, and for the secondary Revolutionary Tribunal had the right to apply execution. This decree laid down all the main provisions of forced labor, which became an integral element of the state life of the Soviet Union and gradually transformed into the current system of slave labor. At the Eighth Congress of the RCP(b) (March 1919), the fundamentals of the corrective labor policy were included in the new party program. The complete organizational design of the camp network in Soviet Russia strictly coincided with the first communist subbotniks (April 12 - May 17, 1919): the decrees of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on forced labor camps were held on April 15 and May 17, 1919. According to them, forced labor camps were created (through the efforts of the GubChK) without fail in every provincial city (for convenience - within the city, or in a monastery or in a close estate) and in some counties (yet - not in all). The camps were supposed to contain at least three hundred people each (so that both security and administration would pay off with the labor of prisoners) and be under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Punitive Departments [3, 7, 9].
Thus, already at the very beginning of the communist revolution, over 100 forced labor camps for at least 300 people each, that is, for a total of 30,000 prisoners, were opened in all provincial (97) and some district towns. The exact number of camps and the people imprisoned in them during this or that period of communist construction is unknown. But in the early fifties, a joint UN commission interviewed a large number of people who ended up in the West during the Second World War, and, based on carefully documented testimony, made the following conclusion: “... there are at least 10,000,000 people in concentration camps in the European and Asian parts of the Soviet Union prisoners; this is, however, the minimum figure derived with all conceivable care of statistical rigidity. In reality, the number of prisoners reaches 15,000,000 people " [11].
The figure of 15 million people is mentioned in many sources regarding forced labor in the USSR [11, 12].
But this figure is, of course, conditional; it is possible that it is unwittingly exaggerated. Out of caution, one should count not 15, but 10 million prisoners. However, even 10 million is a colossal value, exceeding the population of many European states [12].
Decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets on the establishment of forced labor camps [7-10].
) Forced labor camps are formed under the Departments of the Administration of the Provincial Executive Committees: a. The initial organization and management of forced labor camps is entrusted to the Provincial Extraordinary Commissions, which transfer them to the Departments of the Administration upon notification from the center. b. Forced labor camps in counties are opened with the permission of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Those persons and categories of persons are subject to confinement in forced labor camps regarding whom the decisions of the Departments of Administration, Extraordinary Commissions, Revolutionary Tribunals, People's Courts and other Soviet bodies have been granted this right by decrees and orders. ) All prisoners in the camps are immediately involved in work at the request of the Soviet Institutions. ) Those who escaped from the camps or from work are subject to the most severe punishments. ) For the management of all forced labor camps throughout the territory of the RSFSR, under the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, in agreement with the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, the Central Administration of Camps is established. ) The heads of forced labor camps are elected by the local Provincial Executive Committees and approved by the Central Administration of Camps. ) Credits for the equipment and maintenance of the camps are released by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs in the estimated order through the Provincial Executive Committee. ) The medical and sanitary supervision of the camps is entrusted to the local Departments of Health. ) Detailed provisions and instructions are proposed to be developed by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs within 2 weeks from the date of publication of this resolution. Signed by: Chairman of the All-Russian Central Committee M. KALININ, Secretary L. Serebryakov. Published in No. 81 of the News of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of April 15, 1919. 1.2 Organizational structure of the Gulag From the very beginning of the existence of Soviet power, the management of most places of detention was entrusted to the punitive department of the People's Commissariat of Justice, formed in May 1918. The Main Directorate of Forced Labor under the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs dealt with the same issues in part. [4-6].
July 1922, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution on the concentration of management of the main places of detention (except for general prisons) in one department and a little later, in October of the same year, a single body was created in the NKVD system - the Main Directorate of Places of Detention [7, 8].
In the following decades, the structure of state bodies in charge of places of deprivation of liberty changed several times, although there were no fundamental changes. April 1930, by order of the United State Political Directorate (OGPU) under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the Directorate of Camps was formed. The first mention of the GULAG itself (the Main Directorate of Camps of the OGPU) can be found in the order of the OGPU dated February 15, 1931 [2, 4, 5].
June 1934, in accordance with the Decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, when the new Union-Republican NKVD was formed, the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps and Labor Settlements was formed in its composition. In October of the same year, this department was renamed the General Directorate of Camps, Labor Settlements and Places of Confinement. In the future, this department was renamed twice more and in February 1941 received the name assigned to it as the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps and Colonies of the NKVD of the USSR. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, in connection with the reorganization of the People's Commissariats into ministries, the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps and Colonies in March 1946 became part of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs [2-9].
The next organizational change in the penitentiary system in the USSR was the creation in October 1956 of the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Colonies, which in March 1959 was renamed the Main Directorate of Places of Confinement. [4, 5, 7].
The departmental affiliation of the GULAG changed only once after 1934 - in March 1953 the GULAG was transferred to the jurisdiction of the USSR Ministry of Justice, but in January 1954 it was again returned to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. After October 1917 and up to 1934. general prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Republican People's Commissariats of Justice and were part of the system of the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Institutions. In 1934, general prisons were transferred to the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR, and in September 1938, an independent Main Prison Directorate was formed as part of the NKVD. [8, 9 ].
When the NKVD was divided into two independent people's commissariats - the NKVD and the NKGB - this department was renamed the Prison Department of the NKVD. In 1954, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Prison Department was transformed into the Prison Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. In March 1959, the Prison Department was reorganized and included in the system of the Main Directorate of Places of Detention of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. The most difficult conditions were established in the camps, elementary human rights were not respected, severe punishments were applied for the slightest violations of the regime. Prisoners worked for free on the construction of canals, roads, industrial and other facilities in the Far North, the Far East and other regions. Mortality from starvation, disease and overwork was extremely high. [7, 8, 12].
1.3 The scope of the Gulag Starting with perestroika, the question of the real number of those repressed during the years of the existence of the Gulag constantly arises. [2, 4, 9]. According to the available data, more than forty domestic and foreign authors studied and are studying the problems of the criminal law policy of the USSR in the 1920-1950s of the last century. Book A.I. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" [10], which, despite the fact that it was first published in the West in 1973, was very widely distributed in samizdat. The first volume of The Archipelago contained a detailed study of everything that preceded the appearance of millions of Soviet people in Stalin's concentration camps: the system of arrests and various types of imprisonment, torture investigations, judicial and extrajudicial executions, stages and transfers. In the second volume of his book, A. Solzhenitsyn explores the main and main part of the Gulag empire - the "extermination labor camps" [10]. Nothing here passes the attention of the author. The history of the camps, the economy of forced labor, the management structure, the categories of prisoners and the daily life of the camps, the situation of women and youngsters, the relationship between ordinary prisoners, criminal and political, security, escort, informing service, recruiting informers, the system of punishments and "incentives, the work of hospitals and first-aid posts, various forms of killing, murder and a simple procedure for burying prisoners - all this is reflected in Solzhenitsyn's book.The author describes various types of hard labor of prisoners, their starvation rations, he studies not only the camp, but also the nearest camp world, features of psychology and the behavior of prisoners and their jailers (in Solzhenitsyn's terminology, "camp workers") This careful artistic study is based on reliable facts [10].
Based on original archival documents [2, 11, 12], which are stored in the leading Russian archives, primarily in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (the former TsGAOR of the USSR) and the Russian Center for Socio-Political History (the former TsPA IML), many authors conclude with a sufficient degree of certainty that for 1930-1953 in the correctional 6.5 million people visited labor colonies, of which about 1.3 million were for political reasons, through forced labor camps in 1937-1950. about two million people were convicted under political articles. Objective data on prisoners in the Gulag in 1943-1953. During 1946, 228,000 repatriates were tested in the check-filtration camps. Of these, by January 1, 1947, 199.1 thousand were transferred to a special settlement, transferred to the cadres of industry (to "worker battalions") and sent to their place of residence. The rest continued to be tested. The total number of prisoners in the NKVD camps (on average per year): city - 697,258 people; city - 700,712 people; city - 1,048,127 people. city - 5,698 people; city - 2,197 people; city - 1,014 people. Special settlers in 1953 - 2,753,356 people, of which 1,224,931 were Germans, including those evicted by government decision - 855,674, mobilized - 48,582, repatriated - 208,388 and local - 111,324 people. Deported from the North Caucasus in 1943-1944 - 498 452, incl. Ingush - 83,518; Chechens - 316,717; Karachays - 63,327; Balkars - 33,214; others - 1,676 people. Those evicted from the Crimea in 1944 - 204,698, incl. Crimean Tatars - 165,259; Greeks - 14,760; Bulgarians - 12,465; Armenians - 8,570; others - 3,644. Deported from the Baltic states in 1945-1946 - 139 957. Those deported from Georgia in 1944 - 86,663, incl. Meskhetian Turks - 46,790; Kurds - 8,843; hemshils - 1 397. Those evicted in 1943-1944: Kalmyks - 81,475. Evicted in 1949 from the Black Sea coast - 57,142, incl. Greeks 37,353; Dashnaks - 15,486; Meskhetian Turks - 1,794; others - 2,510. Those evicted in 1949 from the Moldavian SSR - 35,838. The eviction of the OUN together with their families took place during 1944-1952. - 175 063; Vlasov - 56,746. Thus, based on the given archival data of the OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR, it is possible to draw an intermediate, but, it seems, very reliable conclusion: during the years of Stalinism, 3.4-3.7 million people were sent to camps and colonies for political reasons. . It is known that the archives do not contain ready-made statistical data (or they have been destroyed). However, according to various estimates, for the period from 1930 to 1953. about 52 million people were convicted, of which about 20 million passed through the camps. The scale of the victims is not belittled even by the reservation that these figures include convicts for the second time. A huge number of people were shot - about 1 million people, while excluding those who died from torture or committed suicide. At least 6 million people have gone through the links. forced labor camp 2. The economic role of the Gulag An important aspect of the history of the Gulag is its "economic" side. One of the most important areas of economic activity of ITL was the construction of communication lines [1, 5, 9, 11]. In the 1920s, a number of major problems arose in the field of transport communications, which negatively affected the defense capability of the state. The transport system could not cope with the ever-increasing growth in freight traffic, and this jeopardized the implementation of not only programs to develop the economy, but also to improve its security. The state did not have the ability to quickly transfer significant material, demographic resources, troops (this problem existed even in the Russian Empire and became one of the prerequisites that led to the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War). That is why during the years of the first five-year plan major transport projects were implemented, and above all railways, which had economic and military-strategic significance. Four railways and two trackless roads were built. In 1930, the construction of a 29-kilometer branch line to the Khibiny Apatity was completed, work began on the construction of a 275-kilometer railway Syktyvkar - Pinega. In the Far Eastern Territory, the OGPU organized the construction of an 82-kilometer railway line Pashennaya - Bukachachi, on the Trans-Baikal railway in Eastern Siberia - a 120-kilometer section of the Tomsk - Yeniseisk railway. Syktyvkar, Kem and Ukhta were connected by tracts 313 and 208 km long. The labor of prisoners was used in those areas where the local population was practically absent or could not be involved in the main work. These construction projects were aimed at creating an economic base in the outlying, undeveloped and strategically important regions of the country (the main activity of the ITL) [1,7].
The most popular construction project among various whistleblowers of the Stalin era was the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which was built between 1931 and 1933. However, the implementation of this project was directly related to the security of the Soviet Union. For the first time, the question of building a canal in Soviet Russia was raised after the October 1917 coup. The idea arose much earlier, the plan for the construction of a navigable canal belonged to Tsar Peter and appeared during the Northern War with Sweden. In the 19th century, four canal construction projects were developed: in 1800 - the project of F. P. Devolan, 1835 - the project of Count A. Kh. were not implemented due to the high cost). In 1918, the Council of the National Economy of the North created a plan for the development of the region's transport system. This plan included the construction of the White Sea-Ob railway and the Onega-White Sea Canal. These communications were supposed to provide economic ties between the North-Western industrial region and Siberia, to become the basis for the development of the Ukhto-Pechersk oil-bearing and Kola mining regions. However, during the Civil War and intervention, and then the restoration of the country, these plans were shelved. In 1930, the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR returned to the issue of building a canal, which was connected with the problem of the country's security - neighboring Finland then pursued an anti-Soviet policy and counted on the support of other Western states in the fight against Soviet Russia. If in the pre-war years the Gulag contingent was an important means of solving economic problems, then the outbreak of war, interrupting the implementation of the "program of socialist construction", subordinated all its activities to the interests of the armed struggle, then in the post-war years, prisoners of the Gulag were used as free labor to raise the destroyed industry, cities and sat down. Given the significant replenishment of the camps, due to the repatriated prisoners of war, a huge army of prisoners appeared. Labor camp contingents were used at that time in all sectors of the national economy, and especially where there was a chronic shortage of hired labor [2, 4, 9]. For example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, when the allies began to transport their Lend-Lease caravans along the Northern Sea Route, Nordvikstroy was formed, where some of the prisoners from Norillag were transferred. Nordvikstroy is a major object of the labor front, which flourished in 1944. At this time, the Allies bunkered ships with local coal here, going with Lend-Lease cargo to Murmansk. The miners were chopping coal for the ships in Nordvik. Vessels battered by the ice of the northern seas were repaired here, and fresh water was replenished. Nordvik had its own salt mine, and at that time salt was worth its weight in gold or even ammunition. And also in the Nordvik Bay, the Allied ships defended in anticipation of a normal ice situation in the Velkitsky Strait. At the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Plant, the number of prisoners working at the Normsk Metallurgical Plant increased every year, as the plant was developing rapidly at that time. And if in 1941 20.5 thousand prisoners worked on it, then in 1943 their number approached 31 thousand, and already in 1944 it amounted to almost 35 thousand. Moreover, the sphere of employment of prisoners in the Norillag gradually expanded. For example, in 1941, 175 km of railway tracks were built by their forces. Thanks to all this, already in 1941, 48 thousand tons of ore were mined at the plant and 324 thousand tons of coal were chopped (compared to 1940 - 228 thousand tons). The receipt and processing of platinoids in Norilsk made it possible to pay off the debt of the USSR to the allies for Lend-Lease supplies. However, of particular interest is the use of prisoner labor in the defense industry. [3, 5, 8, 12].
In total, more than 60 thousand people were transferred to the enterprises of the defense industry of the region during the war years, of which 3.5 thousand were in the coal industry; 7.2 thousand worked in the ammunition and weapons industry; in non-ferrous metallurgy - 9.2 thousand people. After the prisoners were assigned to industrial enterprises, the food supply system, which was used by civilian workers, extended to them. This made it possible not only to save the lives of many prisoners, but also to make their contribution to the common victory of the people real. Shevchenko refers to another feature of the GULAG system as follows: from the beginning of the war, by orders of the NKVD, certain categories of prisoners were released with the transfer of persons of military age to the Red Army. Part of the prisoners released from custody remained in the camps in the position of civilians without the right to leave the areas of work until the end of the war. Only complete invalids, the elderly and women with children were released - as the most reliable reserve of labor. Former prisoners, for the most part, sought to consolidate the freedom granted to them, because any violation of production regimes by them or independent departure from the enterprise could cost them their lives. Another traditional idea that various kinds of enterprises in the country needed labor, which was provided by the Gulag, does not correspond to reality. The relationship was just the opposite. The NKVD simply did not know what to do with the incredibly increased number of prisoners, who, in this regard, they tried to use in accordance with the tasks of the socialist economy [1]. This explains the incomprehensible number of executed citizens in the prime of their lives and many notorious voluntaristic decisions of the party leadership in the field of the national economy (the Dead Road is just the only example of many similar ones). Gradually, with the rejection of manual labor in favor of machine, the GULAG turned out to be unprofitable, because complex and expensive machines, machine tools, etc. were entrusted. the state could not [4, 8].
Therefore, in 1956, the Gulag "ceased to exist" ... but the camps and prisoners remained, and the government still continued to exploit the forced labor of prisoners. Conclusion The Main Directorate of the Camps (GULAG) was in form a typical state-bureaucratic institution. It was an important part of the Soviet system of penitentiaries. During the thirty-year period (from 1930 to 1960) of the existence of this head office, its departmental affiliation and full name changed several times. Over the years, the GULAG was under the jurisdiction of the OPTU of the USSR, the NKVD of the USSR, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and the Ministry of Justice of the USSR. The GULAG was actively involved in the implementation of projects to restore the national economy and projects related to the development of the country's defense complex. Forced labor became an important element in the mechanism by which the Soviet state built up its military-industrial potential. Summing up, we note that the creation of a whole system of correctional camps was one of the most cruel mistakes of Stalinism. It is difficult to give a precise definition of their purpose: to present it as an improvement in the prison system is cynical; as an "innovative" form of punishment - historically ignorant; as an "ideal" system of intimidation, intimidation and maintenance of the cult of Stalin - most likely, at the same time, the Gulag - it was an inexhaustible source of free labor, as the height of impunity. Bibliography 1.Gintsberg L.I. Mass starvation combined with the export of bread in the early 30s. Based on the materials of the "special folders" of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks // Questions of History.-2009.-No. 10.-P.119-126 2.The Gulag: Its Builders, Inhabitants and Heroes / Ed. Dobrovolsky I.V. - St. Petersburg: Norma, 2008. - 176 p. .Dmitrienko V.P. The history of homeland. XX century.: A manual for students / V.P. Dmitrienko, V.D. Esakov, V.A. Shestakov. - M., 1999. .History of Russia in questions and answers / Textbook 2nd edition corrected. and additional / Compiled by Kislitsyn S.A. - Rostov n / D .: "Phoenix", 2009.-S.392-395 .History of Russia.T.2 / Textbook 6th ed. revised / Ed. Shumilova M.M., Ryabikina S.P. - M .: Olma-Press, St. Petersburg: Neva Publishing House, 2007.- 527 p. .Konovalov L.A. In the jungle of the Gulag / L.A. Konovalov // Historical and archival almanac. - Novosibirsk, 1997. - No. 3. .Domestic history of the XX century / Textbook / Under the editorship of prof. Ushakov A.V. - M.: "Agar", 2006.-S.306-312 .Political History of Russia/Study Guide Ed.Prof.V.V. Zhuravlev. M.: Jurist, 2008.- S.530-536 .Solzhenitsyn A.I. The Gulag Archipelago: In 6 volumes / A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - M., 1991. .Shakhmatova G.A. V Historical readings: Sat. materials scient.-pract. conf. / G. Shakhmatova, S. Gaidin. - Krasnoyarsk: Krasnoyarsk. state un-t, 2005.
Nikita Vasilievich Petrov History of the Gulag Empire A source of information - http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/index.htm . Chapter 8 - http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava08.htm. Chapter 8
The gradual disaggregation of the GULAG began in 1940: in January, it separated from it into an independent Glavk of the GUZhDS, and in September, the Glavgidrostroy of the NKVD. These were the first two steps towards a radical reorganization of the GULAG apparatus in February 1941, when on the basis of its sectoral departments and departments a number of independent central departments and departments of the NKVD of the USSR would arise: Lavpromstroy, GULGMP, ULLP and others. The reorganizations were the result of obvious difficulties in managing such a multidisciplinary branch commander-in-chief as the GULAG of the 1939-1940 model, when 1500-1600 people worked here (the peak of the headquarters headcount in its entire history from 1930 to 1956). The further, the more influenced the reorganization of the Gulag and the Second World War that broke out in the autumn of 939; the country began to prepare for it.
On January 4, 1940, by order of the NKVD (hereinafter this clarification is omitted) No. 0014, the Main Directorate of Railway Construction of the NKVD of the USSR (GUZhDS) was organized on the basis of the GULAG Railway Construction Department in the Far East and the GULAG Railway Construction Department. Initially, the name of the new head office did not contain the word "camps", the abbreviation GULZhDS will appear only in February 1941 during the general reorganization of the People's Commissariat and will remain until March 1953, when the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs will be transferred to the Ministry of Railways.
By the same order, GUZhDS was headed by corps engineer N. A. Frenkel, previously head of the Gulag Railway Construction Department in the Far East. In 1940, the GUZhDS was provided with premises in Moscow at the address: Meshchanskaya Street, 15.
On January 14, by order No. 019, on the basis of the mining department of the Gulag, the Gulag Mining and Metallurgical Industry Administration (UGMP) was organized, which was headed by the former head of the Main Directorate of the Copper Industry of the People's Commissariat of Nonferrous Metallurgy of the USSR Zakharov Pyotr Andreevich.
On January 20, by order No. 89, P. A. Zakharov was also appointed deputy head of the Gulag (and by order of the head of the Gulag No. 82 of February 21, he was given a salary of 3,000 rubles a month).
On January 27, by Order No. 129, Brigadier Commissar I.V. Vasilyev was dismissed from the post of head of the Gulag Political Department as "failed to do his job" (on February 11, he was appointed head of the Yeleno-Karakubsky camp of the NKVD for prisoners of war in the Stalin (now Donetsk) region in Ukraine, and on September 6 - Deputy Head of the Department of ITL and Construction of the Khimki District of the Gulag in Moscow). Gorbachev Maxim Efimovich, a graduate of the Higher School of the NKVD of the USSR (in 1938-1939, head of the military department of the Kalmyk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the city of Elista), was appointed the new head of the Political Department of the Gulag by the same order.
On February 3, Order No. 63 announced the "Regulations on Large-Circulation Newspapers of the Political Departments of the Camps and Constructions of the GULAGNKVD of the USSR", according to which "large-circulation newspapers are published by the political departments of the camps and constructions of the NKVD. rallying workers, intelligentsia and paramilitary security personnel around the CPSU (b) and the leader of the peoples, Comrade Stalin, for educating them in the spirit of selfless devotion to the socialist homeland, hatred and implacability towards the enemies of the people. In the "Regulations ..." it was noted that the Political Department of the Gulag allowed the publication of large-circulation newspapers only after the appropriate decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). It was strictly forbidden to place secret materials in camp newspapers and to allow prisoners and "politically dubious" people to work "on the production of a newspaper" (which was once an important part of the "reforging" process).
On February 7, Beria signed the order of the NKVD No. 00149 "On the intelligence and operational services of the correctional labor camps-colonies of the NKVD of the USSR", which liquidated the 3rd department of the Gulag, and the operational and Chekist services of the Gulag and the management of the intelligence and operational work in the ITL and ITK were assigned to the Main Economic management (GEM) of the NKVD (head of the GEM - B. Z. Kobulov).
Already on September 19, by order No. 001178, the 9th department will be organized as part of the 1st department of the GEM, which will be entrusted with intelligence and operational services for the GULAG and its local bodies (ITL and ITK), by the same order, the 9th department will be headed by Senior Lieutenant GB E. G. Bendersky (formerly Senior Investigator of the Investigative Department of the GEM).
The former head of the 3rd department of the Gulag, captain of the State Security Service B.P. Trofimov, in March 1940, will head the Kexholm task force of the NKVD - on the territory of Finland, which was ceded to the USSR after the Soviet-Finnish war.
The operational security service of the GUZHDS and its subordinate camps and colonies was now entrusted to the Main Transport Directorate (GTU) of the NKVD (the head of the GTU was S. R. Milshtein). On the ground, the management of the operational-Chekist work of camps and colonies serving transport construction was transferred to the road transport departments (DTO) of the NKVD "according to territoriality."
3 departments of ITL and ITK were reorganized into operational security departments (OCHO). The heads of the OCHO were now subordinate not to the 3rd department of the Gulag, as before, but to the head of the ITL or ITK that the corresponding department served. The tasks of the operational-Chekist departments of the ITL and the ITK of the NKVD were as follows:
- creation of an agent-information network for the development of prisoners in order to highlight their political mood and timely suppress enemy activity;
- the fight against sabotage, disorganization of production, theft of camp property, banditry and hooliganism among prisoners;
– identification and prevention of disruptions in the production activities of the camp and defects in the work performed;
- the fight against escapes of prisoners and the organization of the search and arrest of fugitives;
- operational security service for civilian employees of camps and colonies suspected of hostile work;
- fulfillment of tasks of the NKVD bodies of the USSR for intelligence and information surveillance of convicted criminals;
- recruitment of agents and information among imprisoned criminals with the expectation of their further use after serving their sentence;
- timely information from the NKVD about persons released and leaving for their territory who have served their sentences for anti-state work.
The investigation into cases of anti-state crimes, as a rule, was to be conducted in the investigative units of the NKVD / UNKVD "according to territoriality." The departments of the regime in the ITL and ITK that existed before this order were abolished, and their functions to ensure the intra-camp regime were assigned to the operational-Chekist departments of the ITL and ITK. Finally, by the same Order No. 00149 of February 7, to ensure a systematic check of the work of the camps and colonies, a Control and Inspection Group was organized under the head of the Gulag, consisting of 15 people. By another order, Beria instructed "Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs for Personnel to Commissar of State Security of the 3rd rank, Comrade Kruglov, to personally review and submit to me for approval the heads of the operational-Chekist departments (departments) of corrective labor camps and colonies."
- Department of the forest industry - 112 people;
— Management of the mining and metallurgical industry — 85 people;
- Department of Correctional Labor Colonies - 118 people;
— Department of hydraulic engineering construction — 44 people;
— Department of the fuel industry — 36 people;
— Marine Construction Department — 16 people;
— Pulp and paper department — 21 people;
- Department of labor colonies - 67 people;
– Agricultural department – 53 people;
– Mining technical inspection – 6 people;
– Autotractor inspection – 6 people;
- Bureau of Rationalization and Invention (BRIZ) - 3 people;
— Department of rail and water transportation — 12 people;
- Mob department - 14 people;
— Secretariat — 28 people;
— Archival department — 13 people;
- Administrative and economic department (AHO) - 273 people;
— Department of technical supply — 87 people;
- Political department - 46 people;
— Department of VOKhR — 80 people;
— Department of cultural and educational work — 10 people;
- Department of supply of paramilitary contingents - 15 people;
– Sanitary department – 40 people;
- Department of general supply - 65 people;
— Department of labor settlements — 15 people;
— Accounting and distribution department — 75 people;
— Personnel department — 70 people;
— Planning department — 36 people;
— Financial department and arbitration 33 people;
— Central accounting — 16 people;
— Department of labor organization and wages — 21 people;
- Control and inspection group - 15 people.
In total, there were 1,492 people in the Gulag.
For comparison, here is the structure of the Main Prison Directorate of the NKVD as of March 1, 1940 (a total of 179 people in the state):
- leadership - the head of the GTU and two deputies;
- secretariat - 19 people;
- Political department - 33 people: 1st department (organizing instructor), 2nd department (agitation and propaganda), 3rd department (for Komsomol work), 4th department (cultural and mass work), 5th department (accounting and information);
– General inspection (4 people);
— Mobinspektsiya (5 people); 1 department (operational) - 49 people: 1 department (regime, security and combat training), 2 department (special department), 3 department (intelligence services for prisoners), 4 department (registration and transfer of prisoners);
— Personnel department (as a department) — 11 people;
- 3rd department (operational and construction) - 21 people: 1st department (construction), 2nd department (maintenance of buildings), 3rd department (material and technical);
- 4th department (supply) - 22 people: 1st department (accounting and planning), 2nd department (convoy and clothing and food), 3rd department (artillery and technical equipment);
- Sanitary inspection - 12 people.
On April 1, 1940, 1,269,785 prisoners were kept in the ITL of the NKVD, of which 1,162,690 were men and 107,030 were women. The camp contingent was distributed as follows:
by age
Up to 16 years old - 109 people;
from 16 to 18 years old - 3850 people;
from 18 to 21 years old - 109,843 people;
from 22 to 30 years old - 432,359 people;
from 31 to 40 years old - 383,119 people;
from 41 to 50 years old - 215,306 people;
from 51 to 60 years old - 94,127 people;
over 60 years old - 19,616 people.
of Education
Higher - 23,238 people;
average - 125,967 people;
the lowest - 632,010 people;
illiterate - 371,211 people;
illiterate - 105,356 people.
by nationality
Citizens of the USSR - 1,261,029 people;
citizens of other countries (foreign nationals) - 4136 people.
by nature of crimes
Counter-revolutionary crimes - 417,381 people, of which:
Trotskyites, Zinovievites, rightists - 17,621 people;
treason to the motherland - 1473 people;
terror - 12,710 people;
sabotage - 5737 people;
espionage - 16,440 people;
wrecking - 25,941 people;
heads of k / r organizations - 4493 people;
anti-Soviet agitation - 178,979 people;
family members of traitors to the motherland - 13,241 people.
especially dangerous crimes against management - 46,374 people, of which:
banditry and robbery - 29,514 people;
defectors - 13,924 people.
crimes against the order of government:
hooliganism - 90,291 people;
speculation - 31,652 people;
violation of the law on passportization - 19,747 people.
embezzlement of socialist property (law of August 7, 1932) - 23,549 people.
malfeasance and economic crimes - 96,193 people.
crimes against the person - 66,708 people.
property crimes - 152,096 people.
SVE and ESR - 220,835 people.
military crimes (Article 193) - 11,067 people.
former kulaks - 80,868 people;
clergy - 5007 people.
by terms of imprisonment
below 1 year - 2902 people;
from 1 year and below 3 years - 231,477 people;
from 3 to 5 years - 465,557 people;
from 5 to 10 years - 550,062 people;
from 11 to 15 years old - 5363 people;
from 16 to 20 years old - 2133 people;
from 21 to 25 years - 836 people, including 3224 people sentenced to CMN with replacement for imprisonment.
by the organs of condemnation
NKVD - 620,001 people, including:
OSONKVD - 105,009 people;
special buildings - 270,000 people.
People's Commissariat of Justice - 638,394 people.
During the same reporting quarter (January - March 1940), 53,7778 people were released from the ITL, of which:
ahead of schedule - 3 people (due to illness);
ahead of schedule after serving half of the term - 737 people;
ahead of schedule in the order of a general amnesty - 4 people;
ahead of schedule in the form of a private amnesty - 607 people;
for the termination of the case - 9856 people;
on review of the case - 6592 people;
additional credits - 58 people;
after the end of the term - 35,782 people;
under subscription - 139 people.
As of April 1, the NKVD ITK contained 297,477 prisoners. However, by December 1, the contingent of the penal colony will increase to 425,583 people (taking into account the "ukazniks" who have begun to arrive - those convicted for being late for work, etc.).
As of January 1, 1940, there were 186,278 people in NKVD prisons, on April 1 - 195,582, on July 1 - 205,987, on October 1 - 413,126 people.
On April 17, Order No. 266 introduced mandatory "mass technical training" for prisoners in all ITLs and ITKs in order to "acquire" their production and labor skills as quickly as possible, train qualified personnel from among them and increase the efficiency of using their labor. According to the "Regulations on the mass-technical training of prisoners in the ITLK of the NKVD of the USSR" "The task of the ITL and the ITK of the NKVD of the USSR, along with the isolation of criminals, is also the most efficient and rational use of the labor of prisoners."
The mass technical training network for prisoners included: short-term training courses for skilled labor (training period from 1 to 4 months), technical minimum courses (from 2 to 6 months), advanced training and retraining courses (from 1 to 4 months), transfer schools and the study of Stakhanov's methods of labor, the school of masters (foremen) (training period from 4 to 6 months).
On April 20, Order No. 0161 announced the "Regulations on the Department of Cultural and Educational Work of the Gulag NKVD of the USSR" and "Regulations on Cultural and Educational Work in the ITL and ITK NKVD." As follows from them, the Department of cultural and educational work (KVO) is an independent department, subordinate to the leadership of the Gulag and has as its goal: "re-education of prisoners convicted of domestic and official crimes on the basis of highly productive socially useful labor" and "promotion of the most efficient and rational use of the labor of all prisoners in production to fulfill and overfulfill production plans". The main types of cultural and educational work in the camps and colonies of the NKVD were declared: political mass work,
mass production work, work with refuseniks, wall printing, school work, mass club work, library work.
On April 22, by order No. 522, the leaders of the Gulag were awarded special titles: Senior Major of the State Security Service - A.P. Lepilov; major GB - G. M. Orlov and M. N. Popov; captain GB - M. E. Gorbachev, M. V. Konradov and M. S. Shelkov.
April 25 marked the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Ulaga, which was reorganized into the Gulag on October 1, 1930. Over the years, its staff has grown 20 times (from 80 to 1600 employees). Of course, the apparatus did not grow on its own, but along with the expansion of the system of corrective labor institutions. If on June 1, 1930, the ULAG was in charge of the ITL family with a total contingent of 168,163 prisoners, then ten years later, 65 NKVD camps and construction sites (not counting the ITK and children's colonies) were subordinate to the Gulag with a total contingent of 1,269,785 prisoners (on April 1, 1940). We have already seen how the structure of the Gulag has become more complex over the years.
The Soviet-Finnish war ended on March 13, and on April 26, M. I. Kalinin signed a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (PVS) on awarding NKVD workers with orders and medals "for the successful fulfillment of government tasks for the protection of state security." Among those who received the Order of Lenin was the head of the DalstroyNKVD, commissar of the State Security Committee of the 3rd rank I.F. Nikishov, the Order of the Red Banner - the head of the White Sea-Baltic Combine of the NKVD, Major M.M. Timofeev, the Order of the Red Star - the head of the Gulag division commander V.V. Chernyshov, the order Sign of Honor" - Deputy Head of Dalstroy, Senior Major of State Security S. E. Egorov and Deputy Head of the Gulag, Major of State Security, I. T. Sergeev, medal "For Courage" - Deputy Head of the Gulag, Major of State Security G. P. Dobrynin, medal "For Labor Valour" - chief engineer of the Kuibyshevgidrostroy of the NKVD, divisional engineer S. Ya. Zhuk, deputy chiefs of the GULAG, majors of the GB V. A. Poddubko and M. N. Popov and head of the Department of Children's Labor Colonies of the Gulag, Senior Lieutenant of the GB L. M. Yatskevich. In total, according to this decree, 757 employees of the NKVD of the USSR were awarded, of which the Order of Lenin - 15 people, the Order of the Red Banner - 36, the Order of the Red Star - 127, the Order of the Badge of Honor - 204, the medal "For Courage" - 321, the medal "For labor prowess" - 54 people.
Based on the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 647 of May 4 and the order of the NKVD No. 378 of May 23, in order to stimulate labor productivity "on the basis of the wide deployment of socialist competition and the Stakhanov movement in the work carried out by the DalstroyNKVD", the award badge "Excellent Dalstroevets" was established. The right to receive this badge (issued on the basis of orders from the NKVD) was given to all administrative and technical personnel, workers and employees of enterprises and institutions of Dalstroy.
May 4 by order No. 321 of 1940 "to stimulate labor at construction sites and in the camps of the NKVD"The award was also established as six challenge Red Banners of the Gulag with prizes: the Red Banner with a premium in the amount of 200,000 rubles for the best construction of the Gulag; the Red Banner with a premium of 200,000 rubles - for the best forest camp; the Red Banner with a premium of 150,000 rubles - for the best the camp of the fuel and mining and metallurgical industry The Red Banner with a premium of 100,000 rubles - to the best department of the ITC The Red Banner with a premium of 50,000 rubles - to the best agricultural camp These Red Banners were supposed to be awarded twice a year based on the results of the implementation of the plan for the first half of the year and the annual plan.
On May 5, in the Kremlin, Stalin was visited by the head of the GUZhDS and the deputy head of the GULAG N. A. Frenkel, the head of the BAMproject and the deputy head of the GUZHDS of the NKVD F. A. Gvozdevsky, the head of the GULAG and the deputy people's commissar of internal affairs V. V. Chernyshov, People's Commissar Beria ( and on July 20, by decree of PVSFrenkel and Gvozdevsky, for the construction of railways in the Far East, they were awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner of Labor, respectively; among other awardees, the former head of the KVO Dmitlag M.V. "for drunken adventures" and sent to the construction of BAM - in 1940, Filimonov worked there as an assistant to the head of the Amurlag GUZhDS).
On May 21, by order No. 666, the head of Dalstroy, Commissar of State Security of the 2nd rank, K. A. Pavlov, was appointed deputy head of the GULAG mining and metallurgical industry.
On July 4, by order No. 878, the head of the SANO GULAG, A. A. Chalov, was dismissed by order No. 878, and on August 19, by order No. 001019, he will be replaced in this position by D. M. Loydin, previously the head of the SANO UZhDS Gulag in the Far East.
On June 26, M. I. Kalinin signed a decree of the PVS "On the transition to an eight-hour working day, to a seven-day working week and on the prohibition of unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions", on the basis of which unauthorized departure from enterprises and institutions was punishable by a court sentence imprisonment from 2 to 4 months, and absenteeism without good reason - corrective labor work (at the place of work) for up to 6 months with deduction from salary up to 25 percent.
On July 10, a PVS decree "On liability for the production of low-quality or incomplete products and for non-compliance with mandatory standards by industrial enterprises" appeared, which equated this with sabotage and threatened directors, chief engineers and heads of the quality control department of enterprises with imprisonment from 5 to 8 years. On August 10, the chairman of the PVS signed a decree "On criminal liability for petty theft at work and for hooliganism" (up to a year in prison) and another decree, which provided for the sole, without the participation of assessors, consideration by judges of cases of absenteeism for unexcused reasons and on unauthorized departure from enterprises and institutions. As a result, the contingent of prisoners began to replenish with the so-called "pointers".
As early as July 31, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On control over the implementation of the Decree of the USSR PVS of June 26, 1940 ...", which noted that "the prosecutor's office, to which the Decree assigned direct duties to punish flyers and truants, works unacceptably poorly In many cases, the prosecution authorities are criminally inactive and do not exercise the functions assigned to them to control the implementation of the Decree. Employees of the prosecution authorities delay for weeks the transfer of cases of truants received to them to court. The prosecution authorities do not hold accountable directors of enterprises and heads of institutions that evade betrayal court of flyers and truants". The Plenum decided to "remove USSR Prosecutor Comrade Pankratiev from his post, as not coping with his duties and not ensuring control over the implementation of the Decree ... of June 26, 1940."
On August 7, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to dismiss Pankratiev from his post and appoint Major General (from July 28) V. M. Bochkov as Prosecutor of the USSR. On August 23, by order of the NKVD No. 1146, Bochkov was relieved of his duties as head of the Special Department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR "in connection with the transfer to another job"(Major GB A. N. Mikheev became the new head of the NGO (Special Department, aka the 4th department of the GUGB).
Let's say a few words about Bochkov's career here. After graduating from the Military Academy. M. V. Frunze, by order of the NKVD No. 2433 of November 23, 1938, he was appointed head of the then newly organized Main Prison Directorate of the NKVD, but did not work there for long and by order No. 2565 of December 29, he took the post of head vacant after the arrest of brigade commander N. N. Fedorov OO GUGB. On January 28, 1939, by order No. 180, Bochkov was awarded the special rank of senior major of the GB, and by order No. 346 of March 14, 1940, he was awarded the rank 3 commissar of the GB. On July 25, Bochkov, together with People's Commissar Beria, was at a reception in the Kremlin with Stalin, where, it seems, Bochkov's appointment as USSR Prosecutor was a foregone conclusion. On July 28, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 1373, Bochkov was awarded the military rank of Major General (general ranks were introduced on May 7, 1940).
After the appointment of the Prosecutor of the USSR, Bochkov was released from the leadership of the GO GUGB, however, with the beginning of World War II, by order of the NKVD No. 1024 of July 19, 1941, the Prosecutor of the USSR Bochkov was appointed head of the OO of the North-Western Front, and in this order he again appears not as a general, but as a Chekist special rank (commissioner of the State Security Service of the 3rd rank). By order of the NKVD No. 17 of January 4, 1942, Commissar GB 3rd rank Bochkov was relieved of his post as head of the NKVD NWF "in connection with the transfer to the performance of his direct duties as the Prosecutor of the USSR", and by order No. 29 of February 2, 1942, Prosecutor of the USSR V M. Bochkov "for the successful fulfillment of the tasks of the NKVD of the USSR" was awarded the badge "Honored Worker of the NKVD". Characteristically, as the Prosecutor of the USSR, Bochkov occupied the dacha of the NKVD of the USSR in Tomilino near Moscow.
By decree of the PVS of November 13, 1943, Bochkov was relieved of his duties as the Prosecutor of the USSR "according to a personal request", and by order of the NKVD No. 5 of January 3, 1944, "Major General" Bochkov replaced Major General M. S. Krivenko as head of the NKVD escort troops. By Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 1598 of November 17, 1944, Bochkov was awarded the military rank of Lieutenant General. At the end of his career, V. M. Bochkov returned to the same field in which he started: from June 8, 1951 to May 18, 1959, he served as deputy head of the GULAG / GUITK / GUMZMVD, then the USSR Ministry of Justice.
On July 24, by order No. 591, the Cultural and Educational Department of the Gulag was subordinated to the Political Department of the Gulag as its department (in the camps and colonies, a corresponding reorganization also took place), and by order of the NKVD No. and head of the Department of cultural and educational work).
On August 19, People's Commissar Beria signed order No. 001019 "On the reconstruction of the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR", according to which the apparatus of the central office was reduced to nine departments and eight departments, and 11 deputy chiefs of the Gulag were appointed:
- First Deputy Head of the Gulag - G. M. Orlov;
- Head of the Central PFD of the NKVD and Deputy Head of the Gulag (part-time) - L. I. Berenzon;
- Head of the Main Directorate of Railways of the NKVD and Deputy Head of the GULAG (part-time) - N. A. Frenkel;
- Directorate for the construction of factories and mining enterprises of ferrous metallurgy (head, he is also deputy head of the GULAG - commissioner of the State Security Committee of the 2nd rank K. A. Pavlov);
- Directorate of corrective labor colonies and labor settlements (head, he is also deputy head of the GULAG - captain of the State Security Service G.S. Zavgorodniy, who previously headed the 7th department of the 3rd department of the GEM of the NKVD of the USSR);
- Directorate for the supply of camps and construction sites of the NKVD of the USSR (head V. A. Uvarov);
- Department of Security and Regime (Head, he is also Deputy Head of the Gulag - Major GB G. P. Dobrynin);
- Department of the mining and metallurgical industry (head, he is also the deputy head of the Gulag - P. A. Zakharov);
- Department of the forest industry (head, he is also deputy head of the Gulag - Major I. T. Sergeev);
- Department of industrial and special (capital) construction (head, he is also deputy head of the Gulag - Major M. N. Popov);
- Directorate for the construction of aircraft factories (head, he is also the deputy head of the Gulag - A.P. Lepilov);
— Department of the fuel industry;
- Political Department (Head - Captain GB M.E. Gorbachev);
- personnel department (head, he is also deputy head of the Gulag - captain of the State Security Service S. S. Kuznetsov);
- department for recording and distribution of prisoners (head - lieutenant of the State Security Service G. M. Granovsky);
- sanitary department (head - D. M. Loidin);
- mobilization department (head - junior lieutenant of the State Security Service P. K. Ostapov);
— veterinary department;
- department of general supply (head - quartermaster of the 1st rank V. V. Silin);
- administrative and economic department (head - N. A. Maslikhov);
- Control and inspection group under the head of the GULAG (head - senior lieutenant of the State Security Service A. N. Karamyshev, formerly assistant head of the Investigative Department of the GEM);
— mining and technical inspection;
- Bureau of Rationalization and Invention (Head - B. D. Stratiev);
- the secretariat;
- archive.
The departments of the GULAG - planning, financial, labor and wages, main accounting - were abolished with the assignment of their functions to the CPFD of the NKVD of the USSR, the head of the CPFO (at that time L. I. Berenzon) was now simultaneously the deputy head of the Gulag for the organization of labor and wages, planning , financing and accounting of the camps, colonies and industries of the GULAG.
The functions of the abolished departments of the Gulag were transferred: the department of railway and water transportation - to the Department of railway and water transportation of the NKVD; department of technical supply - to the Directorate for the supply of camps and construction sites of the NKVD of the USSR. The department of labor colonies for juvenile delinquents, the department of labor and special settlements, the department of agricultural camps were merged into the Department of Correctional Labor and Labor Settlements; autotractor inspection of the Gulag - to the Supply Department; the department of cultural and educational work - in the Political Department of the Gulag.
In September, on the basis of the Hydrotechnical Department of the Gulag, the Main Directorate of Hydrotechnical Construction of the NKVD (Glavgidrostroy) will be organized, and its head will also become (concurrently) the deputy head of the Gulag - the twelfth in a row.
This was the last reorganization of the central office before its radical disaggregation (in the spring of 1941, when the NKVD was divided into two people's commissariats), when the GULAG apparatus was divided into independent branch central offices and departments, and the GULAG itself would turn into a mobile apparatus with the functions of managing a number of separate labor camps, all ITK , children's colonies and special settlers, as well as the camp sectors of those labor camps that were subordinate to the production headquarters.
On August 28, by order of the NKVD No. 001060 (based on the decisions of the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 343ss and 344ss of August 6), the Special Construction Department of the NKVD of the USSR was organized to manage the construction of aircraft factories "with the placement of management in the Bezymyanka area of the Kuibyshev region." The head of the UOS was appointed deputy. Head of the Gulag, Senior Major of State Security A.P. Lepilov (part-time), First Deputy Head of the UOS - Head of the Samara ITL and the construction of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric complex, Major of State Security P. V. Chistov (also part-time); On September 25, by order No. 001203, the Bezymyansky NKVD camp will be organized to service the Osobstroy, and on October 11, by order No. 0441, the construction department of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric complex and the Samara camp will be disbanded.
On September 5, GULAG circular No. 214ss "On the procedure for the admission, appointment, transfer and dismissal of employees of the GULAG System of the NKVD" announced positions, appointments to which were subject to the approval of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs: the head of the head office and his deputies; the head of the Political Department of the Gulag, his deputies and assistants in the Komsomol; heads of departments and departments of the Gulag. All other positions in the central apparatus of the central office were the nomenclature of the head of the Gulag, his first deputy and the deputy head of the Gulag for personnel.
On September 7, 1940, at a reception at Stalin's in the Kremlin were the head of Volgostroy-Volgolag Ya. D. Rapoport, the former head of the Hydrotechnical Department of the Gulag M. N. Popov, the head of construction No. S. Ya. Zhuk and chief engineer of Volgostroy NKVD V. D. Zhurin. Together with them, Stalin had People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria and People's Commissar of the Navy N.G. Kuznetsov.
On September 13, by order No. 001159, on the basis of the hydraulic engineering department of the GULAG, an independent Main Directorate of Hydraulic Engineering Construction of the NKVD (Glavgidrostroy) was organized, which was entrusted with the management of: Volgostroy (construction of the Uglich and Rybinsk hydroelectric complexes), construction of the Volga-Baltic (Vytegorsky and Sheksninsky ITL) and Severo-Dvinsky (Znamenitlag and Opoksky ITL) of the waterway, the construction of hydroelectric power stations on the rivers Klyazma (Verkhne-Klyazminskaya HPP near Vladimir), Kotorosl, Kostroma and Msta (Borovichevskaya HPP), construction No. 200 (Luga Bay), 201 (Nikolaevsk-on-Amur) and 213 (the port of Nakhodka), the completion of the Belomorsky port, as well as the temporary conservation of the Kuibyshev and Solikamsk hydroelectric facilities (the latter, apparently, remained at the project stage).
The head of the Glavgidrostroy of the NKVD (and concurrently the deputy head of the Gulag) was appointed former senior major of the State Security Service Ya. D. Rapoport, before that the head of Volgostroy-Volgolag. Chief Engineer and First Deputy Head of Glavgidrostroy was Senior Major S. Ya. Zhuk, previously Chief Engineer and Deputy Head of Construction of the Kuibyshev Hydroelectric Complex. By the same order, Volgostroy-Volgolag of the NKVD was simultaneously headed by the chief engineer of this construction, Major VD Zhurin.
On September 19, by order No. 1313, the captain of the State Security P.V. Safonov (previously heading the 4th department of the 2nd department of the GEM NKVD) was appointed deputy head of the GULAG with the responsibility of leading the following units: the mobile department, the ORZ, the general supply department, the SANO, the veterinary department , mining and technical inspection and BREEZE (November 12, by order of the Gulag No. 686, Safonov was established "salary of maintenance" at 2600 rubles).
On October 4, Order No. 001268 announced the "Regulations on the Mobilization Department of the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR." The Mob Department was in charge of mobilization preparation not only for the Gulag and its local structures, but also for the organization of "prisoner of war institutions" in wartime (since September 9, 1939, the NKVD had a Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees, the head of the UPVI was P. K. Soprunenko) .
On October 8, by order No. 1425, Senior Major Semyon Nikolayevich Burdakov, former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan, was appointed head of the fuel industry department. On October 17, order No. 001318 announced the deployment of the ITL and NKVD construction sites operating at that time with a total number of "65 units":
- Amurlag (city of Svobodny, Khabarovsk Territory);
- Arkhbumstroy (the town of Mechka-Hollow, Arkhangelsk region);
- Astrakhanlag (Astrakhan);
- White Sea-Baltic Combine (Medvezhyegorsk, Karelian-Finnish SSR);
— Birdag (Bira station of the Far Eastern railway);
— Burdag (Izvestkovaya station of the Far Eastern Railway);
— Bukachachlag (village of Bukachacha, Chita region);
— Vladlag (Vladivostok);
— Vorkutpechlag (village of Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk region);
— Volgolag (Pebory village, Rybinsk district, Yaroslavl region);
— Vyazemlag (city of Vyazma, Smolensk region);
— Vyatlag (working settlement Rudnichny, Kirov region);
- Gorshorlag (Akhpun station of the Tomsk railway);
- Gdovlag (station Slantsy of the Leningrad railway);
- Dzhezkazganlag (the village of Novy Dzhezkazgan in the Karaganda region of the Kazakh SSR);
- Zaimandrolag (Olenya station of the Kirov railway - construction of an iron mine on the Kola Peninsula);
— Ivdellag (Ivdel village, Sverdlovsk region);
- Karlag (Karaganda);
— Kargopollag (city of Kargopol, Arkhangelsk region);
— Kraslag (city of Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory);
— Kuloylag (Arkhangelsk);
— Koldag (Murmansk);
— Luzhlag (Leningrad);
- Likovlag (the village of Likovo, Kuntsevsky district, Moscow region - construction of the Vnukovo airfield);
- Nizhamurlag (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk Territory);
- Monchegorlag (Monchegorsk, Murmansk region - construction of the Severonickel plant);
— Norildag (Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory);
- Novotambovzhag (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk Territory);
— Oneglag (station Plesetskaya of the Northern Railway);
- Pudozhstroy (Medvezhyegorsk, Karelian-Finnish SSR - construction of a ferrovanadium plant);
- Sevpechlag (village Abez Komi ASSR);
- Raychikhdag (sedo Raychikha of the Amur Region of the Khabarovsk Territory);
— Sredbellag (Sredne-Belaya Amur railway station);
- Samarlag (Kuibyshev);
— Sevuralag (Irbit, Sverdlovsk region);
- Soroklag (Belomorsk, Karelian-Finnish SSR);
- Sevzheldorlag (the village of Zheleznodorozhny Komi ASSR);
- Segezhlag (station Segezha of the Kirov railway);
- Sevvostlag (Magadan, Khabarovsk Territory);
— Solikambumstroy (working settlement of Borovsk, Solikamsk district, Molotov region);
— Management of the Solikamsk hydroelectric complex (Leningrad);
- Temlag (the village of Yavas, Zubovo-Polyansky district of the Mordovian ASSR);
— Tomasinlag (village Asino, Novosibirsk region);
- Unzhlag (station Sukhobezvodnaya of the Gorky railway);
— Usollag (Solikamsk, Molotov region);
— Ust-Vymlag (village Vozhael, Ust-Vymsky district, Komi ASSR);
- Ukhtoizhemlag (working settlement of Ukhta Komi ASSR);
— Khabarlag (Khabarovsk);
— Khimlag (Nikolskoe village, Leningradskoe shosse, Moscow);
— Cherepovetslag (Cherepovets, Vologda Oblast — construction of a metallurgical plant);
- Yuzhlag (Zaudinskaya station of the East Siberian railway);
— Yagrinlag (city of Molotovsk, Arkhangelsk region);
- UITLC UNKVD of the Leningrad Region (Leningrad);
- UITLC UNKVD of the Moscow Region (Moscow);
- UITLC UNKVD of the Novosibirsk Region (Novosibirsk);
- UITLC UNKVD of the Irkutsk region (Irkutsk);
- UITLC of the NKVD of the Uzbek SSR (Tashkent);
- Aktyubinlag (Aktyubinsk, Kazakh SSR - construction of a metallurgical plant, mining);
— Kandalakshlag (city of Kandalaksha, Murmansk region — construction of an aluminum plant);
— construction No. 201 (Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk Territory);
— construction No. 211 (Strizhevka village, Vinnytsia region);
— building No. 213 (Nakhodka Bay, Primorsky Territory);
— construction No. 263 (Sovgavan of the Primorsky Territory);
- Kexgolmlag (Kexholm of the Karelian-Finnish SSR - construction of pulp and paper enterprises on the former Finnish territory);
- Bezymyanlag (Bezymyanka station of the Kuibyshev railway).
On October 26, People's Commissar Beria signed order No. 001365 on awarding cash prizes to 125 employees of the Central Office of the NKVD and the UNKVD of the Kalinin, Smolensk and Kharkov regions "for the successful completion of special tasks", namely, for the execution of Poles. 44 employees were given a bonus in the amount of a monthly salary, 81 employees - 800 rubles each. Among the recipients of the awards were: the head of the Commandant's Department of the ACS NKVD, Major GB V. M. Blokhin; employees for special assignments of the Commandant's Department of the ACS Captain GB V. I. Shigalev, senior lieutenant of the GB I. I. Shigalev (he is also the head of the ACS UNKVD of the Moscow Region), senior lieutenant of the GB D. E. Semenikhin and lieutenant of the GB A. M. Emelyanov ; Head of the Investigative Department and Deputy Head of the Main Transport Directorate of the NKVD, Senior Major of the State Security Department N. I. Sinegubov; Deputy Head of the Main Prison Directorate of the NKVD, Major GB K. S. Zilberman; chief of staff of the NKVD escort troops, brigade commander M. S. Krivenko; Colonel A. A. Rybakov, head of the Operations Department of the Main Directorate of Convoy and Internal Troops of the NKVD; assistant to the head of the 1st special department of the NKVD, captain of the GB A. M. Kalinin; head mashburo of the secretariat of the 1st special department, sergeant GB R. S. Getselevich. But not a single employee of the Gulag is on this list.
On November 11, NKVD circular No. 270 for juvenile prisoners of the NKVD colonies established: for prisoners aged 12 to 16 years - a 4-hour working day at work (in student workshops) and 4 hours of classes at school; from 16 to 18 years old - an 8-hour working day in production (in student workshops) and 2 hours of classes.
On December 23, order No. 001601 "On changing the system of registration and operational accounting of criminals" stated:
"... There is no single center in charge of this work in the NKVD System. 5 departments are in charge of registration and operational accounting of criminals: 1 special department, the Main Prison Directorate, a special department of the GURKM [Main Directorate of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia], 2 department of the Gulag and the Department of labor settlements of the Gulag The absence of a unified system of accounting for criminals leads to parallelism in the work of these departments, to depersonalization in accounting and to the need, in necessary cases, to resort to verification of all these records in order to obtain information about a particular person ...
I order to centralize the registration of criminals in the 1st special department of the NKVD of the USSR, entrusting it with the management of the registration and operational accounting of criminals in all NKVD apparatuses (in the 1st special departments of the NKVD-UNKVD, in the DTO and Special departments, in the bodies of the URCM, prisons, labor camps , colonies, special and labor settlements). Oblige all NKVD bodies in charge of registering and recording criminals to report each newly registered criminal to the 1st Special Department of the NKVD of the USSR no later than 48 hours from the moment of registration.
Immediately after the organization of the Pechora railway camp in May 1940, the death rate among its prisoners began to noticeably exceed the average. If for all labor camps it was: in August 1940 - 0.22 percent of the total number of prisoners, in September - 0.3, in October - 0.29, in November - 0.3, in December - 0.31 percent , then in the Pechora railway camp, respectively: 1.92 percent (209 people died), 2.6 (563 people), 3.22 (909 people), 3.44 (1076 people), 2.78 percent (925 people). In total, 3,680 Pechlag prisoners died in 1940, 14 percent of its total.
On December 25, 1940, Beria signed order No. 001606 "On checking the state of the Pechora railway camp of the NKVD", where it was noted that "as a result of the criminal attitude to the household arrangement and labor use of prisoners by the leadership of the Pechora railway camp, there is a significant morbidity and mortality among the camp prisoners. The head of the camp, Bolshakov, and the head of the operational security department of the camp, Yugov, did not promptly inform the NKVD of the USSR about the difficult state of the camp and did not take the necessary measures to eliminate the situation that had arisen"; by the same order, G.P. Bolshakov was removed from his post, and the acting head of the Pechorlag became deputy. Head of the Main Directorate of Railways, Major S. A. Chesnokov, who was ordered to immediately deliver food, clothing, linen and medicines to the Kozhva-Sinya and Abez sections by road, to introduce enhanced food standards for all weakened prisoners, to deploy housing and medical and sanitary construction, in providing the campers with minimal sanitary and living conditions in the shortest possible time. Deputy head of the Gulag P. V. Safonov and deputy. 150 tons of fresh meat, 15 tons of butter, 15 wagons of sauerkraut, 30 tons of yeast and enough vegetables for sick prisoners were ordered to be sent to Pechorlag immediately. A team of NKVD officers headed by the head of the Political Department of the Gulag, captain of the State Security Service M.E. Gorbachev, was instructed to identify the causes of morbidity and high mortality in prisoners within two months in order to bring the perpetrators to justice. Finally, by the same order, the head of the GUZhDS N.A. Frenkel was recalled from construction site No. 107 (Caspian ITL, which was building a railway line in Azerbaijan) and sent to Pechorlag to ensure the timely construction of the North Pechora Mainline.
The very next year, based on the results of a survey of the Pechora railway camp, order No. 0220 of April 30, 1941 was issued (by the same order, N. F. Potemkin was appointed the new head of the Pechorlag):
"The commission sent by order of the NKVD of December 25, 1940 No. 001606 to check the condition of Pechorlag on the spot established a number of criminal actions on the part of the former head of Pechorlag Bolshakov, his deputy Goldman, the head of the Control and Planning Department Kairevich, the head of the Sanitary Department Novosadova, who led at the end of 1940 camp to a serious condition and to the disruption of the implementation of the program in the 4th quarter of 1940 and the 1st quarter of 1941.
These persons have been arrested, put on trial and will face severe punishment. I note that as a result of the activities carried out by the NKVD during the first quarter of 1941 and the work of the commission, the condition of the Pechora camp improved significantly and the camp was prepared for the great and responsible work of 1941 to build a railway line from Pechora to Vorkuta.
“According to the Operative Department of the Severopechora camp of the GULZHDSNVD, the leadership of the Pechora camp, despite the lessons of last year, does not take the necessary measures to create normal living conditions for prisoners. cold water and mud, which causes a large number of colds.
As of May 10, only in the southern section of the Pechorlag of the NKVD there were 1,361 bed patients. The number of diseases is increasing daily.
The number of scorbutic diseases has increased alarmingly. As of May 10, 8,389 people with scurvy were registered in the southern section of Pechorlag, including 3,398 people of the second and third degrees of morbidity and 4,991 people of the first degree. The number of scurvy diseases is increasing.
Columns are provided with dryers, baths, dezochambers by 5-10%. Due to the lack of boilers, people are forced to drink raw water, the columns are provided with 40% of kitchen utensils.
Barracks and tents are kept in an unsanitary condition, there is very little bedding and underwear, lice among prisoners reaches 70%. By order of the leadership of the Pechorlag, the 21-day quarantine due to newly arriving stages is not observed.
Stages arriving at Kanin Nos set off on foot to their destination for 150 km in felted shoes through mud and water.
In just three years of operation of the Pechorlag (from 1940 to 1942), five of its chiefs were replaced: from May 14, 1940 - G.P. Bolshakov; from December 25, 1940 - S. A. Chesnokov; from April 30, 1941 - N. F. Potemkin; from January 25, 1942 - D. V. Uspensky; from September 25, 1942 (and until December 26, 1946) - V. A. Barabanov. Of these, only Potemkin (September 15, 1943, the Order of the Red Star) and Dmitlag Barabanov (November 27, 1950, the Order of Lenin) were awarded for the construction of the Pechora Railway.
On December 28, 1940, the PVS decree "On the responsibility of students of trade, railway schools and schools of the FZO for violations of discipline and for unauthorized departure from the school (school)" was issued, punishable by imprisonment in labor colonies for up to one year. Already next year, by orders No. 27 of January 11 and No. 0117, 25 specialized labor colonies for 5,000 people will be organized for the maintenance of convicted minors.
During 1941, 1,343,663 prisoners arrived in the ITL, 624,276 were released, 100,997 died, and 10,592 fled. As of January 1, 1941, 1,500,524 prisoners were kept in the ITL, men accounted for 92.4 percent of the total camp contingent (1,352,542 people), women - 7.6 percent (110,835 people).
420,293 people (28.7 percent of all prisoners) were serving sentences for counter-revolutionary crimes. 566,309 people (38.7 percent) were convicted by the NKVD, of which 120,148 people (8.2 percent) were convicted by the OSONKVD, and 252,678 (17.2 percent) by the UNKVD special units. 858,448 people (58.6 per cent) were convicted by courts and tribunals.
If on January 1, 1940, the ITL contained 1,344,408 prisoners, and the average annual number of their contingent was 1.4 million people, then by January 1, 1941, the ITLNKVD contained 1,500,524 prisoners with an average annual number of 1.56 million (however, by January 1, 1942, the ITL contingent had dropped to 1,415,596 people).
The number of ITK contingents during 1941 fluctuated as follows:
- as of January 1 - 429,205 people;
- as of April 1 - 475,978 people;
- as of July 1 - 559,419 people;
- as of October 1 - 498,769 people;
- as of December 1 - 416,485 people.
The number of prisoners in NKVD prisons in 1941 was:
- as of January 1 - 470,693 people;
- as of April 1 - 440,061 people;
- as of July 1 - 206,430 people (excluding Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Smolensk region);
- as of October 1 - 249,349 people (excluding Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Belarus).
On January 16, by order No. 43, signed by the deputy. People's Commissar V.V. Chernyshov reported that "for the systematic overfulfillment of production tasks in the camp, good quality of work, exemplary behavior in everyday life and discipline, on the proposal of the chiefs of camps and departments of corrective labor colonies, by a resolution of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR of January 9, 1941, they received a suspended -early release and reduction of sentences" for 206 prisoners: this order was announced in all ITLs and ITKs.
On February 3, 1941, the NKVD was divided into two People's Commissariats: the NKVD and the NKGB. L.P. Beria was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR (on January 30 he received the special title "General Commissar of State Security"), and the former First Deputy was appointed People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and head of the GUGB V. N. Merkulov. On the same day, Beria was appointed concurrently Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, who oversaw the work of the NKVD, the NKGB, the people's commissariats of the forestry industry, non-ferrous metallurgy, the oil industry and the river fleet.
On February 26, 1941, Order No. 00212 announced a new structure and placement of the leadership of the NKVD, which included the following camp units:
- Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps and Colonies (GULAG), head - senior major of the State Security Service V. G. Nasedkin (formerly deputy head of the Main Economic Directorate of the NKVD);
- Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps (GULZhDS) - Corps Engineer N. A. Frenkel;
- Main Directorate of Hydrotechnical Construction Camps (Glavgidrostroy) - Senior Major of State Security Ya. D. Rapoport;
- Main Directorate of Camps for Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises (GULGMP) - P. A. Zakharov;
- Main Directorate of Industrial Construction Camps (Glavpromstroy) - Major GB G. M. Orlov;
- Administration of Fuel Industry Camps (ULTP) - Senior Major S. N. Burdakov;
- Directorate of forest industry camps (ULLP) - senior major of State Security M. M. Timofeev;
- Directorate of camps for the construction of the Kuibyshev plants (Obozstroy) - Senior Major of the State Security Committee A.P. Lepilov;
- Dalstroy - Commissioner of State Security 3rd rank I. F. Nikishov;
- GUSHOSDOR - military engineer 1st rank V. T. Fedorov.
On March 1, the leadership of the NKVD was serviced by cars: People's Commissar Beria - two Cadillacs and a Buick; first deputy People's Commissar S. N. Kruglov - "Packard" and "Hudson"; deputy People's Commissar V. S. Abakumov - "Lincoln" and "Plymouth"; deputy People's Commissar VV Chernyshov - two Packards; deputy Commissar for the troops I. I. Maslennikov - "Lincoln" and "Packard"; deputy People's Commissar for Personnel B.P. Obruchnikov - "Kreisler". The heads of the prison administration M.I. Nikolsky, the Special Technical Bureau V.A. Kravchenko, Glavgidrostroy Ya.D. Rapoport, UPVI P.K. ".
On March 7, Order No. 00256 announced a new structure and placement of the leadership of the GULAG:
- Department of security and regime: chief, he is also deputy. head of the GULAG - major GB G. P. Dobrynin;
- Department of Correctional Labor Colonies (UITK): head, he is also deputy. head of the Gulag - captain of the State Security Service G. S. Zavgorodniy;
- Operations department: chief, he is also deputy. head of the Gulag - captain of the State Security Service Ya. A. Iorsh;
- Political Department: Head - Captain GB M.E. Gorbachev;
- Human Resources Department: Deputy head of the Gulag for personnel - captain of the State Security Service S. S. Kuznetsov;
- Department for Registration and Distribution of Prisoners (OURZ): head - lieutenant of the State Security Service G. M. Granovsky;
- Department of Labor and Special Settlements: Head - Captain GB M. V. Konradov;
- Mob department: head - lieutenant of the State Security P. K. Ostapov;
- Department of General Supply: Head - quartermaster of the 1st rank V. V. Silin;
- Sanitary Department: Head - D. M. Loidin;
- Control and inspection group under the head of the Gulag: head - art. lieutenant GB A. N. Karamyshev;
- Secretariat: chief - art. lieutenant GB P. A. Luferov;
- Bureau of Invention (BRIZ): head - B. D. Stratiev;
— Veterinary department: head — V. G. Rogovsky;
- Archival department: head - N.P. Levin.
On March 7, by order of the NKVD No. 300 on personnel, the states and deployment of the personnel of the "Operational Department at the GULAGENKVD", introduced from March 1, were announced. In total, there were 71 people in the Operations Department of the Gulag: management (head of the department - captain of the State Security Service Ya. A. Iorsh, deputy and assistant chief) - 3 people; secretariat - 4 people; registration group - 3; office - 4; mashbureau - 6; 1 department (GULDZHS and zheldorlagery) - 12; 2 department (GULGMP, Dalstroy, ULTP, Glavpromstroy and their camps) - 11; 3rd branch (Glavgidrostroy and its camps) - 8; 4th department (ULLP, forest and agricultural camps, UITK) - 12; 5th department (investigation group, active search for especially dangerous criminals who escaped from the camps) - 8 people.
Based on the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 24 and the order of the NKVD No. 00328 of March 27 on the construction of airfields for the Red Army Air Force, the Main Directorate of Airfield Construction (GUAS) was organized as part of the NKVD, the head of which was appointed the former head of the GUShOSDORNVD military engineer 1st rank V. T. Fedorov. The GUAS staff initially numbered 278 people, but with the outbreak of the war it was reduced (by December 29) to 120 people.
On March 22, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars No. 648, L. B. Safrazyan, previously the head of the Glavvoenstroy under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, was appointed the new Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Now he was entrusted with monitoring the work of the GUAS, which was located at the address: st. Kuibysheva, house 8. We also note that by order No. 00343 of April 3, the construction of airfields for the Air Force was also entrusted to the GULZHSNKVD.
On March 27, the Volgolag Prosecutor of the NKVD A. M. Sklakin sent a letter to the head of the Department for Supervision of Places of Detention of the USSR Prosecutor's Office V. P. Dyakonov asking him to explain how to respond to the request of the Moscow Trust for Medical Benefits of the USSR People's Commissariat for Health to issue him the corpses of deceased prisoners for use by departments of medical institutes for educational purposes. Dyakonov replied that "it is not advisable to allow the sending of the corpses of deceased prisoners to medical institutes for educational purposes, therefore the petition filed with you before this issue should be rejected."
On March 28, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars No. 718, A.P. Zavenyagin was appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, and A.A. Panyukov, formerly deputy head of Norilskstroy, replaced him at the head of the construction of the Norilsk plant of the NKVD.
As of March 31, the personnel of ITL and ITK were trained by the following educational institutions: Central GULAG courses in Pechatniki (Lyublino, Moscow region), Kyiv GULAG courses (Svyatoshino, Kyiv region), Vyazemsky GULAG courses (Vyazma city), Kuibyshev GULAG courses (Kuibyshev city) , the Khabarovsk school of the VOKhR, the Bugrovskaya school of the VOKhR (the town of Bugry, Leningrad Region), the School of Service Dog Breeding (the village of Perebory, Yaroslavl Region - the "capital" of the Volgolag); Taishet courses of VOKhR and KVO (city of Taishet, Irkutsk region), Novosibirsk school of VOKhR. cadres for prison management were trained by Vladimir courses for prison officers (Vladimir).
As of April 5, the structure and staffing (in total - 123 people) of the prison department of the NKVD (with the division into two people's commissariats of the head office that had lost its status) looked like this:
- head of the prison department - M. I. Nikolsky;
- Deputy the head of the prison department - K. S. Zilberman;
- Secretariat (15 people), head - M. V. Rubanov;
- Political department (21 people); chief - vacancy: 1st department (organizing instructor), 2nd department (agitation and propaganda), 3rd department (for Komsomol work);
- 1 department (security, regime, prison records) (29 people), head - K. S. Zilberman (part-time): 1 department (security, regime); 2 department (prison registration and escorting);
- 2nd department (economic and sanitary maintenance of prisons) (29 people), head - F. I. Sudzilovsky: 1st department (housekeeping), 2nd department (sanitary), 3rd department (engineering and technical);
- Operational unit (undercover and investigative) (17 people), head - I. Ya. Ilyin;
- Personnel department (9 people), head - A.F. Egorov.
On April 18, by order No. 00482, the personnel department of the Gulag was disbanded with the transfer of its functions to the personnel department of the NKVD. On May 21, by order No. 717, the former deputy head of the GULAG for personnel, captain of the State Security Service S.S. Kuznetsov, was appointed deputy head of the Glavgidrostroy of the NKVD for personnel.
On May 14, by order No. 00576, on the basis of the Department of Ferrous Metallurgy of the GlavpromstroyNKVD, the Directorate of Camps for the Construction of Ferrous Metallurgy Enterprises of the NKVD was organized. The head of the new department was appointed the former head of the department for the construction of factories and mining enterprises of ferrous metallurgy and deputy head of the GULAG, Commissar of State Security of the 2nd rank K. A. Pavlov (with the outbreak of war, by order No. Main Directorate of Camps for Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises of the NKVD, having existed - mostly on paper - for a little over a month).
On May 30, by order of the NKVD No. 00689, the staffing of the Gulag was announced: the head of the central office - 1 person, deputy. head of the central office - 1 person, secretariat - 28, administrative and economic department - 8, personnel department - 9, security and regime department - 53, UITK - 185, URZ - 40, department of labor and special settlements - 18, mobile department - 15, cultural and educational department - 15, general supply department - 65, sanitary department - 45, archival department - 18, veterinary department - 21, BREEZE - 4 people.
In total, the GULAG staff (excluding the operational and political departments) consisted of 526 people.
In pursuance of the decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. 1511-622ss of June 6, by orders of the NKVD No. 00750 (June 12), 00766, 00767, 00768 and 00769 (June 14) to all enterprises of the GULAG, GULGMP, Glavpromstroy, ULLP and GUShOSDOR it was instructed to prepare for a possible transition from July 1 to work on the implementation of the mobilization plan for the production of ammunition elements and special closures, as well as the transition to two-shift work of 11 hours each shift.
On June 14, by order No. 00774, all heads of the NKVD camp departments, all heads of labor camps, correctional labor camps and NKVD enterprises, as well as the people's commissars of internal affairs of the republics and heads of the UNKVD of the territories and regions were warned of criminal liability for disrupting the preparation and implementation of the ammunition mobplan. Along with the strengthening of the mobilization readiness of the GULAG enterprises, by the end of June it was planned to put into operation a network of field airfields in the western border regions.
In May and early June, there was extremely intensive activity in this direction. On June 18, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR informed the Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine M. A. Burmistenko in code that a meeting with the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Union Republics on the construction of airfields would be held on June 24, where a representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine should be sent , whose participation has already been agreed upon in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
On the same occasion, representatives of party bodies and leaders of the NKVD of the Baltic republics (for June 30), Transcaucasia and the regions of the North (for July 4) were summoned to Moscow in ciphers of June 19.
On June 17, 1941, Order No. 136 announced the last pre-war distribution of duties between the People's Commissar and his deputies for monitoring the work of the camp and prison units of the NKVD:
- People's Commissar Beria - GULZhDS, Directorate of Timber Industry Camps, Special Technical Bureau;
- first deputy People's Commissar Kruglov - GULAG, GUShOSDOR, Prison Department, Department for Prisoners of War and Internees;
- Chernyshov - Department of technical supply of construction sites and camps, Glavgidrostroy, Glavpromstroy, Osobstroy;
- Zavenyagin - GULGMP, Dalstroy, Directorate of camps for the fuel industry, Directorate of camps for the construction of ferrous metallurgy enterprises;
- Safrazyan - GUAS.
On June 24, People's Commissar Beria will inform Kyiv and Minsk that the meeting in Moscow on airfield construction has been "postponed."
Settlement receipts (bonds) in denominations of 1, 3, 5 and 10 rubles, issued by the Main Directorate of the Northern Camps of the NKVD in 1936. Appeared in circulation among collectors in the late 80s, after the declassification of a significant part of the archives of the NKVD during the period of Perestroika. With similar means of payment, the camp management issued salaries and bonuses to prisoners for overfulfillment of the plan. The bonds presented in the collection are in excellent condition and have obviously not been used - there is no seal on the reverse side, which was a necessary condition for accepting surrogates in the camp stall.
The very fact of the existence of the internal "currency" of the Gulag until the end of the 80s was not widely known. On the one hand, this was due to the closed nature of the system itself, as well as the fact that settlement receipts were in circulation only in the territory of a certain camp. On the other hand, the issue of "camp currency" itself was semi-legal in nature and was often carried out on the initiative of the head of the zone without any strict control by the leadership of the NKVD. Over time, camp bonds became part of the shadow economy of the Gulag, which gave rise to a high-profile investigation in 1936, became the main reason for the arrest and subsequent execution of the head of the NKVD, Heinrich Yagoda. Perhaps this explains the good preservation of the settlement receipts presented in the collection: issued in 1936, they were never put into circulation and, most likely, settled in the local archives of the NKVD for many decades.
There was nothing surprising in the fact that within the Gulag system, over time, its own "camp" currency appeared. By the mid-1930s, the GULAG had become a powerful and highly profitable organization with its own laws, rules, economy, and, consequently, means of payment. The construction of concentration camps in Soviet Russia began as early as 1918, literally immediately after the official start of the so-called "Red Terror" - the repressive state policy of the Bolshevik government. By the end of 1921, there were already 122 camps in the country, and in the fall of 1923 - 315.
From 1923 to 1934, all such institutions were under the jurisdiction of the United State Political Administration (OGPU). During this time, for the purpose of "social prevention" over 10% of the population of the USSR passed through the "correctional crucible". Security institutions were not only a means of suppressing any dissent, but also a bottomless reservoir of free labor. More precisely, almost free. Surprisingly, the prisoners of the Soviet camps still received remuneration for their work. True, it was very conditional. According to the circular of GUMZAK (General Directorate of Places of Confinement) dated November 25, 1926, the salary of the prisoners was to be 25% of the rate of a worker of the appropriate qualification in the state industry. However, this rule worked only on paper. In fact, the state did its best to achieve full self-financing of its offspring. So from the very beginning, the main task of the camps was not the notorious "reforging", but obtaining the maximum economic return from the "s/k" at the minimum cost of their maintenance.
In part, this task was solved at the expense of the prisoners themselves. For example, in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), each prisoner had the right to receive up to 50 rubles a month from home - for the camp it was a lot of money. However, it was strictly forbidden to use real state banknotes on the territory of the zone. For sheltering Soviet money, the prisoner was supposed to be shot (a camp employee - a long term). However, this measure was approached selectively. It is authentically known that on the Solovetsky Islands criminals from among the “thieves” played cards for their usual “crunches”, while a bullet was waiting for political prisoners for such impudence. Therefore, money from relatives was not handed out to the prisoners, but was immediately credited to their personal account. Bonus receipts for 3-5 rubles were added monthly to the household amount for exceeding the norm. However, the prisoners were not always able to use the amounts that their relatives transferred to them. So, the writer Mikhail Rozanov in his book "The Solovetsky concentration camp in the monastery" wrote the following: “From the personal account to which the money taken away or sent by relatives is recorded, one can take or, more precisely, they could give a receipt for a ruble, and for ten, and for fifty rubles. Or refuse to issue at all. It depended on the year, on the mood of this or that chief, on the position of the prisoner and on the amount in his account, and above all and most of all, on blat.
Settlement receipts were a booklet with tear-off checks, which was issued by the financial department of the OGPU. With these checks, the prisoner could pay at a stall or Rozmag - a "retail store", which was located on the first floor of the camp administration (located in the building of the former monastery hotel in the Solovetsky port). “Everyone had a “receipt” in their hands for the amount that could be spent in camp shops. From this amount, the store manager would “write off” in red ink, and the camp accounting department would do the calculations. In a word, according to the prison type, former prisoners recalled. An approximate text was placed on the receipts: “The GPU Special Purpose Camp - a receipt for up to N rubles - was issued to a prisoner NN for the amount of N rubles N kopecks”. After each purchase, a note was made on the check about how much the goods were purchased for and how much money was left on the owner's personal account. Rozmag employees wrote out receipts in two copies: one was left with them, and the second was sent to the office that kept records of the prisoners' funds. This made counterfeit receipts pointless and impossible.
History has preserved the price list for some goods from the camp stalls: 1 kg of fish (herring) cost 1 ruble 30 kopecks, sausages - 2 r. 50 k., sugar - 63 k., cologne - 5 p. 25 k., safety pin - 30 k. True, in order to earn a safety pin, the prisoner needed to exceed the daily plan by at least 200%. In addition, the “Gulag Stakhanovites” received the right to be served at Rosemage without a queue. Such are the Solovki privileges.
By the way, even a 300% overfulfillment of the plan did not at all guarantee the prisoner the payment of all well-deserved bonds. The fact is that, in addition to the bonus, the camps also had their own system of fines. This, in particular, writes the Gulag researcher Mikhail Rozanov in his book "The Conquerors of White Spots": “If during the month a prisoner had more than three days with output below 100%, the bonus for the entire month was automatically deducted. Among the camp penalties was the imposition of monetary fines by the accounting department, as well as the deprivation of bonus remuneration and stall products for various violations, mainly for minor material damage. Here, for example, is a characteristic wording: "For felt boots burned by the fire ... to deprive the bonus for the months of January and February."
Later, settlement receipts began to perform the functions of encouragement - that is, they were issued to the prisoner, regardless of the state of his own personal account, as a reward for overfulfilling production standards. “Money in administrative documents was originally and until the end of the 1940s denoted by the terms “cash incentive” or “monetary bonus”. The concept of "salary" was also sometimes used, but officially such a name was introduced only in 1950, - write the researchers L. Borodkin and S. Erts in the book "The Structure and Stimulation of Forced Labor in the Gulag". In official documents, the same idea receives an ideological justification: “The construction of a bonus system in camp conditions is a beginning that stimulates labor productivity by no means less intensively than the piecework wages of freemen.”“They didn’t pay any money for the work. But monthly lists were compiled for the "bonus" - at the discretion of the chiefs, and according to these lists they were given two, three, rarely five rubles a month. These two rubles were issued in camp bonds - money like "kerenki" in size, with the signature of the then leader of the camps Gleb Bokiy. Bonami began to be calculated from the end of 1929, during the reforging, "— wrote Varlam Shalamov, who spent about 18 years in Soviet camps, in his autobiographical novel “Vishera is an anti-novel”.
The ever more widespread practice of encouraging "leaders" led to the fact that money substitutes called "bons" began to appear in the camps. For the first time they appear on the same Solovki - in the fall of 1929, in the year of the "Great Break", special tickets came into use in the camp, the calculation of which received the code designation "Cashier No. 2". They depicted an elephant with the letter "U" on a blanket. The result was "USLON" - the Office of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps. Since then, the image of this animal has become the unspoken emblem of the Solovetsky camp. "Elephants" were still called settlement receipts, but they looked like banknotes. They differed in color, denomination and size: horizontal ones - 75x52 mm in size and denominations of 2, 5 and 20 kopecks, and vertical ones 75x102 mm in size and denominations of 1, 3, 5 rubles and 50 kopecks.
Printed in color on good paper, carefully protected from forgery, the first camp banknotes were made not just anywhere, but at the enterprises of Goznak. Their appearance made it possible to perform several tasks at once. First, to create an additional and very effective instrument of pressure (or encouragement) on prisoners. Recall that the camp ration of the same Solovki was calculated from the amount of 3 rubles 78 kopecks per person, and because of its poverty was nicknamed "dead". Secondly, the surrogates made it possible to fulfill the security requirement that the prisoner should not be able to use the funds accumulated in the camp in the event of release or escape. Therefore, money certificates were valid only on the territory of a certain correctional institution. Finally, precisely because of the limited use of certificates, they could not be considered real money - otherwise it would be contrary to the laws of the USSR. It is curious that a cryptogram-acronym was encrypted in the system of state sign numbering of camp bonds. The first letters of the series of various denominations were formed into an abbreviation "OGPU": letter "O"- on receipts in denominations of 5 rubles, "G"- 3 rubles, "P"- 1 ruble and "U"- on a receipt of 50 kopecks. The second letter of the series corresponds to the issue number: BUT - first, B - second, AT - the third. On each "elephant" of the first edition of 1929, at the bottom left, there was a column with a facsimile signature: "Member of the Board of the OGPU: G. Boky". The second signature is the head of the Financial Department of the OGPU (on all subsequent issues it is the same, but difficult to read).
The Solovetsky experience seemed successful, and it was picked up by other camps and correctional institutions. In the early 1930s, “their own” bonds were printed not only in Solovki, but also in other camps. For example, located in the Sverdlovsk region. In the Urals, they were called "intra-construction settlement signs." The edition was printed on paper without watermarks in 1932. These money surrogates also differed in color depending on the denomination - from 1 to 100 rubles. A large number of giants of industrialization, in the construction of which the prisoners participated, also had special bonds to pay workers. These include the self-supporting signs of Uralmashstroy, where in 1931 bonds were issued in denominations from one kopeck to 5,000 rubles. In the collections of numismatists there are also Permstroy money surrogates worth up to 500 rubles. It is known that in the Gorky region at the Vakhtan construction, special booms of the "workers' cooperative" were issued. These were signs in denominations of 25 and 50 kopecks, 1, 1 p. 50 kop., 1 p. 75 kopecks, 2, 3 and 5 rubles, with one-sided text: “For the right to receive goods from the store of the Vakhtan Workers’ Cooperative for…”. They were not dated, but also came out in the early 30s.
Camp booms became a significant help for the prisoners. In 1932, on Solovki, the worst varieties of fresh fish, various vegetables, seal fat, bones, sausage, and sometimes milk were freely sold on local bonds. It is noteworthy that in freedom, many people have not seen these products either. There are cases when freemen in Karelia exchanged camp banknotes for vodka or Soviet money at a rate of 1: 2, for which later in Rosemage it was possible to buy what disappeared from stores in the wild, where the card system reigned. By the way, it was in 1932 that the next issue of Solovetsky bonds fell. At this time, special purpose camps receive a less terrible name - corrective labor camps. A denomination of 10 rubles was added to the “elephants” of the denominations already known to us. The new receipts differed from previous batches by a facsimile signature - this time it was left by the appointed head of the Gulag on June 9, 1932. It was during his vigilant leadership of the Soviet forced labor camps that a sixth of the prisoners died.
Bonds and settlement receipts existed until 1933, when they suddenly disappeared from use overnight. The fact is that on February 25, 1933, a decree of the People's Commissariat of Finance of the USSR was issued "On preventing the issuance of money surrogates into circulation." After the issuance of this decree, the leadership of the Gulag had no choice but to refuse to issue money surrogates and, probably, switch back to a non-cash payment system - i.e. back to payroll. However, apparently, camp booms do not cease to exist on this. In the collections of numismatists around the world, there are Gulag settlement receipts and checks from 1935-1950, but nothing is known for certain about their authenticity. In addition, none of them has been cataloged by numismatists (in fairness, we note that not all Solovetsky bonds issued earlier than 1933 are listed in the Catalog of Paper Banknotes, but most are mentioned in Kardakov's catalog).
It can be assumed that, in view of the limited circulation of camp booms, the NKVD decided that they did not fully fall under the definition of “surrogate money” given in the Narkomfin decree. It is also possible that the bonds began to play too prominent a role in the shadow economy of the Gulag to completely abandon them. It is no coincidence that by 1936 bonds without serial numbers and without any signatures were increasingly common. At best, when given to prisoners, such receipts were stamped with the seal of the correctional institution on the reverse side. Such "anonymous" surrogates opened up truly limitless opportunities for abuse - both on the part of the "thieves", who often robbed ordinary prisoners, and on the part of the camp authorities. It is likely that the threads of this shadow economy led directly to the leadership of the NKVD - in particular, to the chief of the Main Directorate of Camps under the OGPU Lazar Kogan. This is a former anarchist, who in most of the old reference books was listed as an assistant to the chairman of the Gulyai-Polye District Military Revolutionary Council - the highest body of the Makhnovist movement. However the leader of the Union of Anarchists of Ukraine, Vyacheslav Azarov, questions this fact and claims that there has never been a person with that name among the leaders of the Makhnovist movement. Howbeit, in 1918 Kogan broke with anarchism and went over to the side of the victorious Bolsheviks. He proved his loyalty as head of the Special Department of the IX Army, then deputy head of the OGPU troops. It is Kogan who is considered one of the main organizers of the Gulag. In 1932, he became deputy head of the Department of Northern Special Purpose Camps, created in 1929 - USEVLON (presumably this department would later issue the booms presented in our collection), whose office was located in the former Stroganov Palace in Solvychegodsk. By that time, the USEVLON structure included Arkhangelsk, Kotlas, Solovetsky, Syktyvkar, Pinyuginsky, Ust-Vymsky, Ukhta camps, the total number of prisoners in which was almost 140 thousand people.
At the same time, Kogan realized the idea of creating enterprises at the camps, the products of which were put on the “black market”, and the proceeds were used for personal enrichment and bribing officials. Soon, the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, himself came into play, who proposed a bigger game: to create an NKVD Cooperative, through which to sell diamonds and precious metals mined by prisoners of Siberian camps in the West. The Gulag "business" soon attracted the attention of foreign intelligence services. In the end, this story reached Stalin, and it became the direct cause of Yagoda's arrest. The head of the NKVD, already mentioned in the Little Stories, was arrested by the deputy people's commissar of the NKVD comrade. Frinovsky is the same one who investigated the case of secret symbols on pioneer badges (see note ") and was himself shot a year later. And in January 1938, Lazar Kogan himself was arrested. He was one of the witnesses for the prosecution against Yagoda, on whom he tried to shift the blame for his own crimes. Sitting in the cell, Kogan wrote letters of repentance to Yezhov and Beria, but without an answer. In March 1939 he was shot. And in 1956 they rehabilitated, as "unreasonably repressed commander of the Red Army"! Moreover, the rehabilitation was complete - with the return of confiscated property and awards. Such are the zigzags of fate.
Another character that cannot be kept silent about in our story is the “inflexible party member” who grew up in the family of a Ukrainian teacher. Gleb Ivanovich Boky, whose facsimile appeared on the very first issues of the Solovetsky bonds. A participant in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, Gleb Bokiy did not manage to complete his education - he never received a diploma in geology. " He was a student and was a miner, but the tests did not go in any way”, Bokiya succinctly teased a “friendly epigram” in the Solovetsky Islands magazine for 1929. A member of the Bolshevik Party since 1900, Boky began his career in the bodies as deputy chairman of the Petrograd Cheka and later became famous as one of the organizers of the "Red Terror" in Petrograd. Bokiy is also known to many as the head of the special department for interception and decryption - this foreign intelligence unit was one of the most secret in the OGPU. Between Kemyu and the Solovetsky Islands, a steamship named after him plied, which transported prisoners in holds and on a trailed barge. On this occasion, the Solovites composed a comic song:
Everyone whispered... But who could believe?
Everyone thought that rumor was ridiculous:
They will come here to unload us
On "Gleb Sideways" - Boky Gleb.
Steamboat "Gleb Boky" According to the recollections of people who knew Bokiy personally, “He stooped when walking and had a strange habit of wearing a military uniform and cape all year round. The interlocutors shuddered from the look of his cold blue eyes, which made people think that he was disgusted by the very sight of them. Many also remember that this party member had some rather strange jokes. Once he made a bet with Maxim Litvinov that he would steal documents from his safe in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. Litvinov put a sentry at the door, but the next morning a special courier brought his papers to the diplomat. The future People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs then did not send Bokiy the spoiled cognac, but wrote a complaint to Lenin. However, Gleb Boky did not receive any special penalties for this trick “man and ship”. However, his fate was no less tragic than that of the people he oversaw: in 1937, at the age of 58, he was shot as an enemy of the people. They say that Bokiya was sideways with his phrase: “What does Stalin mean to me? Lenin put me in this place. However, after the death of Stalin, in June 1956, Bokiy was rehabilitated.
Fully rehabilitated in the late 50s and already mentioned earlier Matvey Berman- the head of the Gulag, notorious for organizing pestilence among prisoners. Here is how Alexey Teplyakov, the author of the article "The Berman Brothers - Stakhanovites of Terror", describes his last days: “On December 24, 1938, the head of the personnel department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Georgy Malenkov, informed Matvey Berman that Comrade Stalin could no longer keep the brother of a German spy and friend of a whole gang of exposed enemies of the people in the government. The forty-year-old former people's commissar realized that the Boss had put an end to his fate. Berman really remained at large for an indecently long time. Many of his prominent colleagues in the NKVD were arrested a few weeks ago. Yes, and all the predecessors in the peaceful People's Commissariat of Communications - the former head of the Council of People's Commissars Alexei Rykov, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda, the former army commander Innokenty Khalepsky - went to the dungeons long ago and were shot. And Berman sat in this chair for almost a year and a half. Obedient to a nod from Malenkov, Matvey Davidovich stood up, for the last time gazing at the swollen woman's face and the cloudy eyes of Stalin's favorite. Berman was already waiting in the waiting room. Several security officers took their former boss out into the street and put him in a "funnel". The investigation was short lived. Already on March 7, 1939, the chubby chairman of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR Vasily Ulrikh quickly read the sentence: for participation in a conspiratorial and terrorist organization in the NKVD - to be shot. Berman was dragged to the basement, and Vasily Vasilyevich, rustling papers, was already quickly reading a similar sentence to the next victim, recalling how two weeks earlier the younger brother of the recently convicted by him, the recent People's Commissar of Communications, the former Commissar of State Security, stood in front of him ... "
Despite the massive purges in the ranks of the NKVD and the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the "shadow economy" in the Gulag system did not weaken. Moreover, the influx of German prisoners of war and citizens of countries newly annexed to the USSR into the camps led to the emergence in the camps of new forms of commodity-money relations, such as currency exchange, arms trade, etc. Obviously, all this “business” could not take place without the participation of high-ranking officials of the NKVD. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, in the chapter devoted to the eviction of the Baltic peoples, the author reports that many of the settlers were forcibly driven into the artels of the prospectors of the Khakzoloto and Yeniseystroy trusts, over which the generals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had real power. “These dying people were sent to lick the remains of gold, which the state was sorry to leave. These "prospectors" earned 3-4 "golden" rubles per month (150-200 Stalinist rubles, a quarter of the subsistence level). In some mines near Kopyev, the exiles were paid not in money, but in bonds: in fact, why do they need all-Union money, if they still can’t move, and in a mine shop they will be sold (overwhelming) and for 6ons? Solzhenitsyn writes.
The history of prison booms of the 1930s and 1950s still remains unsaid. The disclosure of the archives of the NKVD-KGB in the early 90s, although it replenished the catalogs of collectors with new artifacts, did not bring much clarity to the question of how many bonds, where and until when. In this regard, disputes about the authenticity of certain money surrogates do not subside among collectors. One thing remains undoubted - so the not completely declassified "currency" of the Soviet Gulag remains irrefutable evidence that the mass repressions of the first half of the 20th century in the USSR were only outwardly political in nature. In fact, the multi-million army of disenfranchised and obscure workers was called upon to strengthen the economic power of the state, simultaneously contributing to the personal enrichment of individual responsible workers of one of the bloodiest punitive machines in the world, known by the abbreviation GULAG.