Yezhov's chief of secretariat, keeper of the Great Terror's papers and figures
In November 1938, days after Yezhov lost the NKVD, his chief of secretariat was arrested — the man who had kept every figure of the Great Terror now became a deposition witness against his own patron.
An economic functionary who had passed through the Finance Commissariat, the Soviet Control Commission, and the Central Committee apparatus, he followed Yezhov into the NKVD in January 1937, serving as deputy chief and then chief of its Secretariat and chief of the 9th Special Department, and from 1938 headed the 1st Special Department in charge of operational records, registration, and statistics. The paperwork and figures of the Great Terror passed through his hands to Yezhov's desk, earning him the Order of the Red Star and the Honorary Chekist badge. Arrested on 13 November 1938 immediately after Yezhov's fall, he testified against his former patron and was sentenced by the Military Collegium and shot in February 1940; he was rehabilitated in 1956.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1918–1922Red Army political commissar at brigade level
- 1922–1929Official of the RSFSR Finance Commissariat and Gosplan
- 1930년대Deputy department head, Soviet Control Commission; sector chief in the CC apparatus
- 1937.1–7Deputy chief, NKVD Secretariat
- 1937–1938Chief, NKVD Secretariat (concurrent); chief, 9th Special Department, GUGB
- 1938.3–11Chief, 1st Special Department (operational records, registration, statistics)
- 1937–1938Deputy, Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR
Related historical events
The Paper Trail of the Great Terror
Shapiro was the working head of the documentary channel through which the Great Terror's execution lists were compiled and approved. From 28 March to 13 November 1938 he headed the 1st Special Department (operational records, registration and statistics), a core unit of the GUGB's records system. During those months the consolidated lists of persons to be tried by the Military Collegium went up to the Central Committee and the Special Conference's decisions were drawn up under his signature; some of that paperwork survives in the form of department-to-department letters signed by Shapiro, and a 1938 'Moscow-Centre' list of 139 names was submitted for execution in this way. The mass shootings of 1938 were thus not the work of individual executioners alone but the output of an administrative system that divided list-making, approval and shooting between separate desks.