Laboratories of Terror: The Final Act of Stalin's Great Purge in Soviet Ukraine

241 Pages·2022·12.602 MB·English

by  Lynne Viola, Marc-Stephan Junge

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Laboratories of Terror
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LABORATORIES
OF TERROR
The Final Act of Stalin’s Great Purge
in Soviet Ukraine
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Edited by
LYNNE VIOLA
AND MARC JUNGE
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Viola, Lynne, editor. | Junge, Marc, editor.
Title: Laboratories of terror : the final act of Stalin’s great purge in
Soviet Ukraine /edited by Lynne Viola and Marc Junge
Other titles: Final act of Stalin’s great purge in Soviet Ukraine
Description: New York, NY: Oxford Unitersity Press, [2023] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022042426 (print) | LCCN 2022042427 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197647547 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197647554 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780197647578 (epub) | ISBN 9780197647585
Subjects: LCSH: Soviet Union. Narodnyĭ komissariat vnutrennikh del. |
Political purges—Ukraine—History—20th century. | Political
purges—Soviet Union—History. | Ukraine. Narodnyĭ komisarii︠a︡t
vnutrishnikh sprav. | State-sponsored terrorism—Ukraine—History—20th
century. | Soviet Union—Politics and government—1936-1953.
Classification: LCC DK508.833 .L33 2023 (print) | LCC DK508.833 (ebook) |
DDC 947.70842—dc23/eng/20220906
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042426
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042427
DOI: 10.1093/o so/ 9780197647547.001.0001
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Paperback printed by Lakeside Book Company, United States of America
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
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This book is dedicated to Memorial and all its tireless work
for human rights and for history.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Contributors and Translators xi
Glossary xv
Introduction— Lynne Viola and Marc Junge 1
1. “The Party Will Demand a Full Reckoning”: Korablev and the
Vinnitsa NKVD— Valeriy Vasylyev and Roman Podkur 24
2. “The Party Makes Mistakes, the NKVD— Never”: The NKVD in
Odessa— Andrei Savin and Aleksei Tepliakov 49
3. “A Sacrificial Offering”: Karamyshev and the Nikolaev
NKVD— Marc Junge 77
4. “Enemies Within”: Pertsov and the NKVD in Kharkov and
Odessa— Vadym Zolotar’ov 106
5. “Under the Dictation of Fleishman”: The NKVD in
Skvira— Lynne Viola 134
6. “The Situation at the Time”: The NKVD in
Zhitomir— Serhii Kokin 156
7. “This Is How You Interrogate and Secure Testimony”: Kocherginskii
and the Northern Donetsk Railway NKVD— Jeffrey J. Rossman 185
Index 201
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Acknowledgments
The project from which this volume derives began in 2010 at a con-
ference on Stalinist terror, convened by James Harris in Leeds, UK.1 Lynne
Viola presented a paper on the general subject of perpetrators. In response,
Marc Junge noted the existence and accessibility of key sources on NKVD
perpetrators in the Ukrainian SBU archives. Subsequently, in 2011, Viola and
Junge made an initial foray into the Kyiv archives. The volume of materials was
so vast that they enlisted a team of experienced scholars from Ukraine, Russia,
Moldova, Georgia, and the United States to join them in this research. These
scholars included Valeriy Vasylyev, Roman Podkur, Vadym Zolotar’ov, Serhii
Kokin, Andrei Savin, and Aleksei Tepliakov. At a later stage, they were joined
by Ol’ga Dovbnja, Igor Casu, Timothy Blauvelt, and Jeffrey Rossman. The
team published four volumes of archival documents, as well as an anthology of
articles, each in Ukrainian and in Russian.2 Although we completed the main
body of our work before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,
the project’s success was based on Ukrainians, Russians, and others working
together. The current, unprovoked war against Ukraine in no way detracts
from our successful collaboration, but it is a reminder of the dangers, still,
of dictatorial regimes. The chapters presented here are English translations
of the final results of this collective work, covering events in the Ukrainian
1. Conference proceedings were later published in James Harris, ed., The Anatomy of
Terror: Political Violence under Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
2. The published documents are in Marc Junge, Lynne Viola, and Jeffrey Rossman, eds., Ekho
bol’shogo terrora v 3 tomakh (Moscow: Probel- 2000, 2017–2 019) and, in Ukrainian, Vidlunnia
velkogo terror v 3 tomakh (Kyiv: Vidavets’ V. Zakharenko, 2017– 2019). The anthologies
were first published in Z arkhiviv VUChK- GPU- NKVD- KGB, nos. 1– 2 (2015) and then in
Russian as Marc Junge, Lynne Viola, Jeffrey Rossman, eds., Chekisty na skam’e podsudimykh
(Moscow: Probel- 2000, 2017).