The
NKVD Order No. 00486 instructed about
repression of wives and children of
enemies of the people convicted
to execution or imprisonment. It was dated August 15, 1937 and signed by
Nikolai Yezhov acting both as chief of NKVD and General Commissar of State Security (chief of
GUGB). The order implemented a resolution by
Politburo. The corresponding parts of
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) were modified accordingly. As an element of the rollback of the
Great Purge, on October 17, 1938, the later
NKVD Order No. 00689, signed by
Lavrenty Beria, said not to arrest wives automatically, together with their husbands, but only after consideration by a single NKVD officer. Only wives that were deemed "politically untrustworthy or socially dangerous" or who knew about the "counter-revolutionary activity" of their husbands were to be arrested. In 1940, a Politburo decree
"On prosecution of traitors to the Motherland and their family members" and some other documents specified exile to the
Far North of the family members of "traitors of the Motherland" who fled across the border. It primarily concerned the population of the territories newly acquired by the Soviet Union during the early years of
World War II: the
Baltic States,
Western Belarus and
Western Ukraine taken from
Poland, and
Northern Bukovina taken from
Romania. On June 24, 1942 the
State Defense Committee issued top secret resolution No. 1926SS "On the Family Members of Traitors of the Motherland" that was signed by Stalin and restored some of the original wording. ==Order No. 00486==