Chekist who went from chairing the Kabardino-Balkar troika to heading the NKVD prison department
As chair of the Kabardino-Balkar NKVD troika in 1937, he led repression; in 1937–38 he directly participated in the killing of Solovki special-prison inmates.
Born Luka Gritsyuk to a Ukrainian farm labourer's family in Dolsk, Volhynia, he won all four classes of the St George Cross in the First World War, joined the party in 1918 and helped organise the Dubrovytsia uprising. In the Cheka from 1920, he took part in the operation that lured General Tyutyunnyk out of Poland. From 1934 to 1937 he ran the Kabardino-Balkar NKVD and chaired the republic's special troika. From October 1937, as deputy head and then head of the NKVD prison department, he took a direct part in killing the inmates of the Solovki special-purpose prison. Arrested in October 1938, he was shot on 23 February 1939 and rehabilitated in 1955.
Activities and affiliations
- Security, intelligence and policing · Soviet Union
Career Timeline
- 1918Helped organize and lead the Dubrovytsia uprising; later served in the Red Army.
- 1920–1934Served in the Cheka, GPU and OGPU, rising to head of the Kabardino-Balkar regional OGPU department.
- 1934–1937Led state-security bodies in the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Oblast and ASSR and chaired its special troika.
- 1937–1938After serving as Kabardino-Balkar people's commissar for internal affairs, became deputy head and head of the USSR NKVD prison department and directly participated in killing Solovki special-prison inmates.
- 1938–1939Arrested in October 1938, he was shot on 23 February 1939 and rehabilitated posthumously in 1955.
Related historical events
The Kabardino-Balkar special troika and the Great Terror
Appointed people's commissar for internal affairs of the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on 1 July 1937, Antonov-Gritsyuk served until 1 October and also chaired the republic's special troika. A troika, composed of the local NKVD chief, a party leader and a procuracy representative, was a non-judicial body that decided cases outside ordinary court procedure. NKVD Order No. 00447 established the framework for an operation against former kulaks and other designated groups, setting regional limits for arrests and convictions. Regional troikas handled cases of people arrested in that operation. As chair in Kabardino-Balkaria, Antonov-Gritsyuk held a senior security post in the local machinery of the Great Terror. On 23 October 1937 he moved to Moscow as deputy head of the NKVD Main Directorate of State Security's prison department, serving until 28 March 1938.