The main function of the NKVD was to protect the
state security of the Soviet Union through massive
political repression, including authorized murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations, and mass deportations. Formally, most of these people were convicted by
NKVD troikas ("triplets") – special
courts martial. Evidence standards were very low: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Use of "physical means of persuasion" (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD themselves. Hundreds of
mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret "plans." Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "public enemies") in a given region (e.g., the quotas for clergy, former
nobles, etc., regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to
NKVD Order no. 00486. The purges were organized in a number of waves according to decisions of the
Politburo of the Communist Party. Some examples are the campaigns among engineers (
Shakhty Trial), party and military elite plots (
Great Purge with
Order 00447), and medical staff ("
Doctors' Plot").
Gas vans were
used in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge in the cities of
Moscow,
Ivanovo, and
Omsk A number of
mass operations of the NKVD related to persecution of entire ethnic categories. For example, the
Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles. Whole populations of certain ethnicities
were forcibly resettled. Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention. When disillusioned
American citizens in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the
U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new
U.S. passports to leave the USSR (their original U.S. passports had been taken for 'registration' purposes years before), none were issued. Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested the Americans, who were all taken to
Lubyanka Prison and later shot. American factory workers at the Soviet Ford
GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being 'poisoned' by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford
Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps. Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at
Yuzhnoye Butovo District, near Moscow. However, the people of the
Soviet Republics were still the majority of NKVD victims. The NKVD also served as an arm of the Russian Soviet communist government for lethal mass persecution and destruction of ethnic minorities and religious beliefs, such as the
Russian Orthodox Church, the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the
Roman Catholic Church,
Greek Catholics,
Islam,
Judaism, and other religious organizations, an operation headed by
Yevgeny Tuchkov.
International operations with
Joseph Stalin (in background) and Stalin's daughter
Svetlana During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed opposed him. Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as
Pavel Sudoplatov and
Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including the United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as
Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as
Martha Dodd. Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called
wet business, where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated. The NKVD's
intelligence and
special operations (
Inostranny Otdel) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of the USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of
Joseph Stalin. Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were: •
Leon Trotsky, a personal political enemy of Stalin and his most bitter international critic, killed in
Mexico City in 1940. •
Yevhen Konovalets, a prominent
Ukrainian nationalist leader attempting to create a separatist movement in
Soviet Ukraine; assassinated in
Rotterdam. •
Yevgeny Miller, former General of the
Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army; in the 1930s, he was responsible for funding anti-communist movements inside the USSR with the support of European governments. Kidnapped in Paris and brought to Moscow, where he was interrogated and executed. •
Noe Ramishvili, Prime Minister of independent
Georgia, fled to France after the Bolshevik takeover; responsible for funding and coordinating
Georgian nationalist organizations and the
August uprising, he was assassinated in Paris. •
Boris Savinkov, a Russian revolutionary and anti-Bolshevik terrorist lured back into Russia and allegedly killed in 1924 by the
Trust Operation of the
GPU. •
Sidney Reilly, a British agent of
MI6, deliberately entered Russia in 1925, trying to expose the
Trust Operation to avenge Savinkov's death. •
Alexander Kutepov, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army, was active in organizing anti-communist groups with the support of French and British governments. Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including
Walter Krivitsky,
Lev Sedov,
Ignace Reiss, and former
German Communist Party (KPD) member
Willi Münzenberg. Pro-Soviet leader
Sheng Shicai in
Xinjiang received NKVD assistance to conduct a purge coinciding with Stalin's
Great Purge in 1937. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive
Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. Soviet Consul General
Garegin Apresoff, General
Ma Hushan,
Ma Shaowu, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of
Xinjiang province, Huang Han-chang, and
Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under Soviet influence. NKVD agents acting in conjunction with the
Communist Party of Spain exercised substantial control over the
Republican government, using Soviet military aid to further Soviet influence. The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around Madrid, used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of the NKVD's enemies, first focusing on
Spanish Nationalists and
Spanish Catholics, then after late 1938 increasingly anarchists and
Trotskyists as objects of persecution. In 1937,
Andrés Nin, the secretary of the
Trotskyist POUM, and his colleagues were tortured and killed in an NKVD prison in Alcalá de Henares.
World War II operations Before the German invasion, to accomplish its own goals, the NKVD was prepared to cooperate even with such organizations as the German
Gestapo. In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and the Gestapo met for a week in
Zakopane to coordinate the pacification of Poland. The Soviet Union allegedly deported hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to Nazi territories as unwanted foreigners. According to the work of , no evidence that which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as "anti-fascists" for deportations to Nazi Germany. Furthermore, many NKVD units later fought the Wehrmacht, for example the
10th NKVD Rifle Division, which fought at the
Battle of Stalingrad. After the German invasion, the NKVD
evacuated and killed prisoners. During World War II, NKVD
Internal Troops were used for rear area security, including preventing the retreat of Soviet army divisions. Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used at the front, for example during the
Battle of Stalingrad and the
Crimean offensive. Unlike the
Waffen-SS, the NKVD did not field any armored or mechanized units. Similar actions took place across the
occupied Byelorussia and
Ukraine. The NKVD (later the
KGB) carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both
collaborators with Germany and members of non-communist
resistance movements such as the Polish
Home Army and the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which were trying to separate from the Soviet Union, among others. The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1940–1941, including at the
Katyń massacre where chief NKVD executioner
Vasily Blokhin personally oversaw and carried out thousands of the executions. On November 26, 2010, the
State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin's responsibility for the Katyn massacre and the execution of intellectual leaders and 22,000
Polish POWs by Stalin's NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material "not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders." NKVD units were also used to repress the prolonged partisan war in
Ukraine and the
Baltics, which lasted until the early 1950s. NKVD also faced strong opposition in Poland from the Polish resistance movement known as the
Armia Krajowa.
Postwar operations After the death of
Joseph Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev halted NKVD purges. From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of victims were legally "rehabilitated," i.e., acquitted with their rights restored. Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation, either out of fear or a lack of documents. The rehabilitation was not complete; in most cases, the formulation was "due to lack of evidence of the case of crime." Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation "cleared of all charges.". Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of a particular violation of anyone's rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also "purged" without a legitimate criminal investigation or court decision. In the 1990s and 2000s, a small number of ex-NKVD agents in the
Baltic states were convicted of crimes against the local population.
Intelligence activities These included: • Establishment of a widespread spy network through the
Comintern. • Operations of
Richard Sorge, the "
Red Orchestra,"
Willi Lehmann, and other agents who provided valuable intelligence during World War II. • Recruitment of important UK officials as agents in the 1940s. • Penetration of British intelligence (
MI6) and counterintelligence (
MI5) services. •
Collection of detailed nuclear weapons design information from the U.S. and Britain during the
Manhattan Project. • Disruption of several confirmed plots to assassinate Stalin. • Establishment of the
People's Republic of Poland and earlier its communist party along with training activists during World War II. The first
President of Poland after the war was
Bolesław Bierut, an NKVD agent.
Soviet economy The extensive system of labor exploitation in the
Gulag made a notable contribution to the rising
Soviet economy and the development of remote areas. Colonization of
Siberia, the
Far North, and the
Far East were among the explicitly stated goals in the first laws concerning Soviet
labor camps. Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of the labor camps were part of the Soviet
planned economy, and the NKVD had its own production plans. The most unusual part of the NKVD's achievements was its role in
Soviet science and
arms development. Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the gulag, colloquially known as
sharashkas. These prisoners continued their work in these prisons and were later released. Some of them became world leaders in science and technology. Among the
sharashka were
Sergey Korolev, head designer of the Soviet rocket program and first human space flight mission in 1961, and
Andrei Tupolev, the famous airplane designer.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also imprisoned in a sharashka and based his novel
The First Circle on his experiences there. After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry under the direction of General
Pavel Sudoplatov. The scientists were not prisoners, but the project was supervised by the NKVD because of its great importance and the corresponding requirement for absolute security and secrecy. The project also used information obtained by the NKVD from the United States. ==People's Commissars==