New sources on Soviet perpetrators of mass repression: a research note

Canadian Slavonic Papers. 2018. Vol. 60. No. 3-4. P. 592–604.

Viola L. A.

At the end of the Great Terror, Stalin reversed course and reined in
the NKVD. Hundreds of NKVD interrogators and other officials
were arrested and charged with “violations of socialist legality.”
Punishments ranged from imprisonment in the Gulag to execution.
This repression of the NKVD was the result of a combination
of scapegoating and “clan” politics. The arrests and accompanying
trials of these NKVD officers created an enormous paper trail of
sources, strictly classified in the FSB archives in Moscow. Recently,
however, the security police archives in Ukraine opened its doors
to researchers. The result is access to a range of sources which
allow researchers, for the first time, to explore in detail the topic of
Soviet perpetrators, in this case, the Soviet security police during
and in the aftermath of the Great Terror.

Keywords: Stalin era, repressions, perpetrators

Publication based on the results of: War, Power and Society in the USSR, 1930-50s: continuity and changes (2018)