The Sverdlovsk NKVD chief whose testimony first unspooled the 'NKVD conspiracy'
Order No. 00447 gave Sverdlovsk a limit of 4,000 in the first category and 6,000 in the second. His report of 11 December 1937 recorded the operation's close: '15,000 anti-Soviet elements have been convicted, 7,500 of them in the first category...'
A Chekist who came up through the Cheka and the central OGPU apparatus and took over the Sverdlovsk oblast NKVD in the summer of 1936; Naumov counts him, with Lyushkov and Redens, among the 'North Caucasians'. One of the chiefs who pushed quota increases through without the Politburo's written sanction, he closed the kulak operation by reporting 15,000 convictions against the 10,000 that Order No. 00447 had allotted him. Recalled in 1938 to head the NKVD highways administration, he was arrested in June, gave the first detailed testimony of a 'conspiracy inside the NKVD' on 22 October, and was shot in 1939.
Career Timeline
- 1920–1936Cheka and OGPU officer, latterly in the central apparatus
- 1936–1938Head of the Sverdlovsk oblast NKVD
- 1937Overshot the quota, reporting 15,000 convictions
- 1938Recalled to head the highways administration; arrested in June
- 1938October testimony of a 'conspiracy inside the NKVD'
- 1939Shot