The 'North Caucasian' Chekist who carried quota increases from Omsk to Khabarovsk
Omsk's approved first-category limit was 1,000. On 15 August 1937 Gorbach cabled Yezhov in cipher to ask for more: 'As of 13 August, 5,444 have been arrested in the first category in Omsk oblast...'
A North Caucasus Chekist whom Yevdokimov named in 1934 among 'his people' inside the OGPU, he served as deputy head of the Ordzhonikidze krai NKVD. As head of the Omsk oblast NKVD in 1937 he cabled Yezhov for quota increases and won an extra nine thousand, then followed Mironov at the head of the West Siberian (Novosibirsk) NKVD, where Naumov counts him among the chiefs who drove both the purge and the mass operations. Sent to head the Far Eastern NKVD in Khabarovsk in the summer of 1938 after Lyushkov's flight, he was arrested that November and shot the following year.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1920–1936Cheka and OGPU officer in the North Caucasus
- 1936–1937Deputy head, Ordzhonikidze krai NKVD
- 1937Head of the Omsk NKVD; won a 9,000 quota increase
- 1937–1938Head of the Novosibirsk oblast NKVD
- 1938Head of the Far Eastern NKVD at Khabarovsk
- 1938–1939Arrested in November; shot
Related historical events
Seeking higher limits for the Omsk 'kulak operation'
On 15 August 1937, Gorbach, head of the Omsk oblast NKVD, sent People's Commissar Nikolai Yezhov a cipher telegram requesting an increase in the limit for the “kulak operation.” The Russian State Historical Library's catalogue identifies it as a typed copy of a document held in the Presidential Archive (fond 3, inventory 58, file 212, folio 876). The record documents a regional chief directly seeking a higher operational limit from the centre. The catalogue description alone does not establish the number requested or whether the increase was approved.