A Kuznetsov appointee to the Yaroslavl obkom who was sentenced to 15 years instead of death in the Leningrad Affair
"He beat me in the face and head, and when I fell, kicked me in the stomach… Then I saw the doctor with a syringe. I was terrified and signed two protocols at once."
A Belarusian-born party official who rose through Leningrad factories and the party apparatus to head the Yaroslavl Oblast Committee (1946–1949), one of the regional cadres Alexei Kuznetsov placed across the RSFSR after the war. Tried with the six central defendants in the Leningrad Affair on 29–30 September 1950, he was sentenced to 15 years instead of death; beaten into a false confession by MGB interrogators, he was released and rehabilitated in 1954 and lived quietly until 1994.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1926–1937Glass factory worker → engineer-economist, planning-production dept head, 'Proletary' factory, Leningrad
- 1937–1940Director, 'Proletary' factory, Leningrad
- 1940–1944Cadres secretary → 1st secretary, Krasnogvardeysky District Committee, Leningrad
- 1944–1945Secretary, Leningrad Oblast Committee VKP(b)
- 1945–19462nd secretary, Leningrad Oblast Committee VKP(b)
- 1946–19491st secretary, Yaroslavl Oblast Committee VKP(b); deputy, USSR Supreme Soviet
- 1949–1954Leningrad Affair: dismissed, arrested, sentenced to 15 years (beaten into false confession by MGB)
- 1954–1956Deputy chairman, Kustanay Oblast Executive Committee
- 1956–Deputy chairman, Leningrad Oblast Planning Committee → personal pensioner of union significance
Related historical events
The 1949 arrest and the 1954 account of a coerced confession
Turko was arrested in August 1949, half a year after he was removed from the Yaroslavl party post, as the Leningrad Affair investigation spread from the central defendants to regional cadres. Interrogation was conducted at Lefortovo prison by Arseny Putintsev, an assistant head of the MGB investigation department for especially important cases. Putintsev demanded that Turko proceed from the premise that an enemy anti-party group headed by Kuznetsov and Popkov really existed and that Turko was a member of it; he said Turko had been arrested on government instructions and would be convicted regardless, and presented the investigation as the voice of the Central Committee. The interrogations were held at night.
Testifying before Soviet prosecutors re-examining the case on 29 January 1954, Turko described that investigation. He acknowledged that in the preliminary inquiry he had signed protocols admitting a series of counter-revolutionary crimes and had confirmed his guilt in court, although he had committed none of them and had never considered himself guilty. No records were kept during the interrogations, he said, which were accompanied by beatings by Putintsev and Komarov, the prison regime, the punishment cell and sleep deprivation. Putintsev ordered him to sign a protocol prepared in advance; when Turko objected that it was untrue and slandered Andrei Zhdanov and refused, Putintsev beat him again and had him thrown into the punishment cell. Turko stated that he lost the capacity to resist and signed whatever was put before him. When he raised the beatings, Mikhail Riumin replied that they beat prisoners and did not conceal it from anyone.
The pressure extended to controlling his words at trial. About a week before the September 1950 proceedings Putintsev began preparing Turko to give false testimony in court, making him memorize the protocols through the night, while investigator Nosov warned him not to change his testimony before the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. Turko recalled taking the warning to mean that if he repudiated his testimony at trial and described his treatment in the investigation, he would be beaten again. On 1 October 1950 he was sentenced to 15 years rather than death. In February 1954 Procurator General Roman Rudenko reported his testimony to Khrushchev, and on 30 April 1954 the Supreme Court closed the case and Turko was released and rehabilitated.