115. Leibovich et al. “Vkliuchen v operatsiiu,” 314–7 (based on former KGB archives in Perm). Some former kulaks, after their terms of exile ended, managed to return to their former places of habitation and sometimes even to reclaim their lands, which the regime deemed “sabotage.” Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 238–54. Recidivism was also a focus. “The main contingent committing disruptive offenses (robbery, brigandage, murder, aggravated theft) are people who have been convicted before, in most cases recently released from camps or places of detention,” Yezhov wrote in a memorandum to Stalin, a passage the despot marked in pencil. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 96 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 166, l. 151–4); Rittersporn, “‘Vrednye element,’” 103; Hagenloh, “‘Socially Harmful Elements,’” 300.
116. Ellman, “Regional Influences.”
117. Frinovsky sent out a ciphered directive that “anti-Soviet elements” whom local officials assigned to category 1 (“especially socially dangerous”) were not even to be presented with charges, just executed in cold blood. Stepanov, Rasstrel po limitu, 30 (Aug. 8, 1937); Junge and Binner, Kak terror stal “bol’shim,” 99. See also Rabishchev, “Gnilaia i opasnaia teoriia,” esp. 55.
118. National operations would claim approximately 350,000 victims, 247,157 of whom would be shot.
119. In April 1936, the regime had decided to deport the ethnic Poles and Germans in Ukraine near the western border (more than 10,000 families) to Kazakhstan; then it deported Soviet Finns from the border areas with Finland as well as Iranians near the border with Afghanistan (some 2,000 families). Stalin authorized a request to arrest all Afghan nationals in Merva, Turkmenistan (where there was an Afghan consulate). RGANI, f. 89, op. 48, d. 8, l. 1–2 (ciphered telegram from Anna Mukhamedov, acting party boss of Turkmenistan, to Stalin, July 23, 1937, with Stalin’s handwriting). Mukhamedov was arrested Oct. 5, 1937.
120. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 22, l. 16; d. 21, l. 157; Gelb, “Early Soviet Ethnic Deportation”; Bugai, “Vysylenie sovetskikh koreitsev,” 144; Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing, 9–20; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 352 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 139, l. 23). The Soviet Pacific Fleet had been put on alert to prevent the Koreans from fleeing by sea, but several hundred boats from Korea showed up, just off Soviet waters, to rescue these people; Soviet border guards detained many of the boats. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 301. See also Polian, Against Their Will, 99–101. About 25,000 ethnic Koreans not near the border were not deported, at least not immediately. Belaia kniga, 68, 82. Khaustov and Samuelson claim around 180,000 Koreans were deported altogether: Stalin, NKVD, 300 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 14). The population of ethnic Koreans in the Soviet Far East had tripled, to 170,000, between 1917 and 1926; a secret plan had been adopted (Dec. 6, 1926) but not implemented to relocate 88,000 of them from frontier zones. In 1928, 1930, and 1933, a few thousand Koreans had been shifted to the interior. Khisamutdinov, 119–21; Boldyrev, “Iaponiia i Sovetskii Dal’nyi Vostok,” 187–94, 193–4; Stephan, Russian Far East, 212; Petrov, Ukrepim sovety DVK, 97. Sibirskaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, II: 95.
121. Petrov and Roginskii, “‘Pol’skaia operatsiia’ NKVD,” 22–43.
122. About 70 percent of Soviet ethnic Poles were in Ukraine, and until 1937 Poland maintained consulates in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev, Minsk, and Tiflis, where they ran intelligence operations. But Stalin’s clampdown led the Polish embassies and consulates to desist from recruiting agents among Soviet ethnic Poles. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 48; Pepłoński, Wywiad Polski na ZSSR, 126–7. Conversely, when a Polish citizen showed up at the Lubyanka front door to betray his masters, he was tortured and forced to confess to having been sent to penetrate the NKVD for Poland. Stalin also demanded to know what border point he had crossed. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 229–30 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 254, l. 92-3, 203).
