Album procedure (альбомный порядок)

Introduction and operation

The album procedure was introduced by NKVD Order No. 00485 of 11 August 1937, 'On the liquidation of Polish sabotage and espionage groups and units of P.O.W.' The order was approved by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) on 9 August 1937 (P51/564) and signed by Yezhov on 11 August. Order No. 00485 established the album procedure for the conduct of all national operations: every ten days lists of the convicted with brief case summaries were to be sent to the Soviet NKVD, with the categories assigned by NKVD chiefs and prosecutors of the republic, oblast or krai. It became the model directive for the Romanian, Latvian, Finnish and other national operations; some orders did not describe it in detail and merely stated that conviction should be carried out 'in the order of Order 00485'.

The first album was signed on 25 August 1937. The Polish operation was initially allotted three months (20 August to 20 November 1937), but the deadline was successively prolonged to 10 December, 1 January 1938, 15 April and finally 1 August 1938, each extension permitting the simplified investigation and sentencing 'by albums'.

Format and practice

Formally the Moscow approval stage was the Commission of the NKVD of the USSR and the Procurator of the USSR. The deciding part of its protocol had two columns: the left listed the defendant's data (from mid-October 1937 also year and place of birth, from mid-May 1938 citizenship) and the right stated the decision, whether to shoot, to send to a corrective labour camp for a term, to return the case for further investigation, or to transfer it to a court or military tribunal. The name 'dvoika' appears only in colloquial use, not in official correspondence.

In practice the procedure was largely formal. Local officials signed the lists automatically, and in Moscow neither Yezhov and Vyshinsky nor their deputies Firinovsky and Roginsky looked into the albums. Review was delegated to heads of departments who each decided on 200–300 certificates per evening, usually mechanically approving local proposals, so that the only person who actually saw the case file was the investigator.

Scaling back and abolition

By spring and summer 1938 the centre could no longer process the incoming albums in good time. Several months elapsed between sending an album to Moscow and receiving it back, by summer 1938 albums for more than 100,000 people had accumulated in the centre, and the regions complained about overcrowded prisons. On 15 September 1938 the Politburo adopted decision P64/22 abolishing the album procedure and creating in each region Special Troikas to pass sentences on 'national contingents'; on that basis NKVD Order No. 00606 was issued on 17 September 1938, and over the following two weeks all unexamined albums were sent out from the centre to the regions. Accounts differ on the end date. English Wikipedia states the album procedure was officially discontinued by the 17 November 1938 Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation No. 81, the decree that also discontinued the NKVD troikas of all levels, whereas the Russian Wikipedia article on the national operations and Petrov–Roginsky date the replacement by Special Troikas to the 17 September 1938 order, note that the Special Troikas' work was stopped exactly on 15 November 1938, and hold that the joint Politburo/Sovnarkom decree of 17 November 1938 announced the end of all mass operations.

Concrete examples

In the German operation (July 1937 to November 1938) there were 55,005 convictions, of which 41,898 were executions; album shootings numbered 24,910 against 16,988 by troika. In Karelia the first albums on Finns accused of espionage and sabotage were sent to Moscow in December 1937, and under the first nine albums 900 people were convicted, of whom 727 (80.8%) were sentenced to shooting. On the Latvian line Yezhov told Radzivilovsky not to be squeamish because 'their cases will be considered in album order'; as of 10 September 1938 the Commission of the NKVD and the Procurator of the USSR had examined 17,851 cases on that line, sentencing 13,944 to shooting, and in total about 21,300 were convicted in the Latvian operation, of whom 16,575 were shot.

From 25 August 1937 to 15 November 1938, in album order and by Special Troikas, cases on 346,713 people were examined across all national operations, of whom 335,513 were convicted, including 247,157 sentenced to shooting, 73.66% of all convicted. On the 'national' orders No. 00485 and No. 00593, the Commission of the NKVD of the USSR and the Procurator of the USSR convicted 235,122 people: 172,830 sentenced to shooting, 9,529 deported from the USSR, 7,777 subjected to internal exile, 37,619 cases sent back for further investigation and 12,903 people released.

Distinctions

Although those processed by albums account for most first-category shootings, the procedure did not cover everyone charged on the Polish line. Part of those accused were convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR or by military tribunals, and the Special Council (OSO) considered the cases of prisoners and of the wives of those arrested, so the albums concerned mainly the 'lower ranks' of those arrested under Order No. 00485.

The album procedure is also distinct from the Order No. 00447 troikas. It was supplementary to convictions carried out by the NKVD troikas created by Order No. 00447 of 30 July 1937, which belonged to the 'kulak operation' with regional limits on arrests and shootings, whereas in the national operations no such quotas were set and local NKVD chiefs had freedom of action.

It differs as well from the 1938 Special Troikas. These were composed by office only (local party leader, prosecutor, chief of NKVD-UNKVD), their decisions required no confirmation in Moscow and were carried out immediately, they had the right to release defendants, which the album operations had not provided, and their term was set at two months. In two months they examined cases on almost 108,000 people across all 'national lines' and released 137. They are not to be confused with the regional troikas established under Order No. 00447, since unlike the album procedure those units were authorized to try the cases themselves without sending them to Moscow.

The procedure also did not target only ethnic Poles. Of 105,032 people convicted by the Special Troikas in September–November 1938 across all national operations, those recorded as Poles numbered 21,258, followed by Germans 17,150, Russians 15,684, Ukrainians 8,773 and Belarusians 5,716; on the 'Polish line' itself 36,768 were convicted, of whom 20,147 were Poles and the rest Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians and others. The 'Polish operation' and 'Poles' therefore cannot be equated.