Mironov, during the June 1937 “Center of Centers” plenum, privately complained to Frinovsky that all the fabrication was making it impossible to pursue real cases. “What are you doing philosophizing?” Frinovsky snapped. “Now the tempo is such that you need to show results not within months or years, but in days.”97 On June 28, even before the plenum had concluded, a sentencing troika was approved for Western Siberia. On July 2, Stalin authorized a resolution, “On Anti-Soviet Elements,” directing all regions to reintroduce troikas to pass sentences without courts.98 (The resolution was issued in the politburo’s name, but formal meetings had ceased.)99 It would become the most murderous single document of his regime. On July 3, a coded telegram in Yezhov’s name went to all sixty-five NKVD republic and regional offices, demanding a fast inventory of previously deported kulaks, ordinary criminals, and former convicts.100 As the calculations were being tabulated, on July 5, a decree was issued to incarcerate wives of enemies in camps for five to eight years—for being their wives.101 The Uzbekistan leadership asked to be able to include “nationalist terrorists” (i.e., non-Uzbeks, especially Tajiks); Mironov’s Western Siberia asked to include former SRs, former Mensheviks, former Whites, former priests—indeed, all “formers.”102 Permission was granted.103 For those who required extra motivation, the NKVD bosses in Chelyabinsk and Tataria were arrested, which would prompt a sleepless night for Mironov; he had once worked under the Tatar head.104
There were carrots for the NKVD, too: in a single month, 179 operatives received state awards, including no fewer than forty-six Orders of Lenin (Mironov got one). On July 17, 1937, Yezhov was awarded the Order of Lenin, “for outstanding successes in leading the organs of the NKVD in the fulfillment of government tasks.” That same day, the politburo formally approved substantial NKVD pay increases for state security personnel (GB) in Moscow, Leningrad, and Ukraine.105 Rank-and-file operatives now got paid 500 to 800 rubles per month, while republic NKVD heads got 3,500 rubles per month, a jump of 300 percent. (By comparison, a provincial party boss got a salary of 2,000 rubles per month, not including the extra cash envelopes, and the head of the USSR Supreme Court got 1,200 rubles.) Additionally, while NKVD bosses had long enjoyed the use of villas with servants, like gentry, while their subordinates often lived in communal housing or dormitory beds, during the terror, many rank-and-file operatives acquired coveted apartments, as well as state dachas from arrested “enemies.”106 Possessions confiscated from enemies of the people, including cash, were considered fair game (some Chekists were known to complain when arrestees turned out to be “poor peasants”). Some of the loot would be legally resold through what were called special trading centers, which had been set up to bring in revenue from confiscations, but much was pocketed. Bosses not on the scene expected a cut.107
Once home from the Moscow gathering, Mironov instructed his subordinates (July 25) that the requirement of procuracy authorization for an arrest (Article 127 of the 1936 Constitution) had been “suspended,” and that they should go out and secretly “find a place where the sentences can be carried out and the bodies buried.”108
On July 26, 1937, Stalin hosted a Kremlin reception for the aviators Chkalov, Baidukov, and Belyakov, who had returned from North America and a White House reception. They had ridden to the Kremlin in open-top cars garlanded with flowers. Stalin embraced and kissed them. The heroes requested that the evening’s concert program include jazz by Leonid Utyosov, whose band approached the stage singing “Heart,” from the smash film