A state-security administrator who commanded regional apparatuses
The judgment recorded that at the Novosibirsk NKVD he permitted “unfounded arrests” and the falsification of investigative materials.
Ivan Maltsev was a Soviet official from a working-class background who became a regional commander in the security organs through the Revolution and Civil War. Moving through the Urals, Siberia and the North Caucasus, he exemplified how the VChK, OGPU and NKVD fused local administration with political control. As head of the Novosibirsk regional NKVD in 1938, he belonged to the special-troika apparatus and bore responsibility for the machinery of the Great Terror; he was later convicted and never rehabilitated.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1917Commander of a Red Guard detachment at the Bilimbay works
- 1918–1921Political and military officer of the Red Army on the Eastern Front
- 1921–1925Yekaterinburg gubernia Cheka and GPU officer, then Tagil district chief
- 1925–1931Chief of the Chelyabinsk, Perm and Tomsk OGPU district offices
- 1931–1935Orenburg operational-sector chief, then aide to the OGPU plenipotentiary in the Middle Volga
- 1936–1938Head of NKVD in Adyghe Autonomous Oblast, then deputy chief in West Siberia and Novosibirsk
- 1938–1939Head of the Novosibirsk regional NKVD and member of a special troika
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army officer on the Eastern FrontFrom 1918 to 1921, he served as a political and military officer of the Red Army on the Eastern Front.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeNovosibirsk NKVD chiefIn 1938, he served on the special troika and bore responsibility for the machinery of the Great Terror.
The Novosibirsk troika and the Great Terror
On 31 March 1937 Maltsev was assistant head of the NKVD administration for West Siberian Krai; on 15 August he became its deputy head. When Novosibirsk Oblast was established on 1 October, he became deputy head of its NKVD administration. From 11 June 1938 to 28 January 1939 he headed the oblast administration while also leading the Special Department of the NKVD Main Directorate of State Security for the Siberian Military District. These posts combined command of regional security bodies with surveillance within the military district.
The West Siberian Krai troika was established by a Politburo decision on 28 June 1937, initially comprising NKVD chief Sergei Mironov, party secretary Robert Eikhe and prosecutor Ivan Barkov. Maltsev was not a founding member: he joined later, replacing Mironov, and his signature appears in the troika’s records from August 1937. After the krai was abolished and Novosibirsk Oblast formed in October, the troika continued its work under a changed name and jurisdiction. In 1938 its recorded members included Georgy Gorbach, Maltsev and Ivan Alekseev, secretary of the Novosibirsk regional party committee. The troika issued sentences without defendants present or prosecution and defense proceedings, and its decisions could not be appealed. A Tomsk NKVD Memorial Museum account citing historian Sergei Papkov’s research reports that in 1937 the West Siberian Krai and Novosibirsk Oblast troika convicted 42,725 people and sentenced 26,772 to death. These figures are the troika’s aggregate record, not a count of Maltsev’s individual decisions.
Maltsev was arrested on 25 January 1939. On 14 May 1940 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court sentenced him to eight years’ imprisonment under Article 193-17(a) of the RSFSR Criminal Code. He died in custody at the Kotlas transit camp in August 1940. Biographical accounts give different dates, 24 and 26 August, and the circumstances of his death remain unconfirmed.