“We [NKVD] never make mistakes, our work doesn’t have defects… If the [arrested] person is honest, but has been beaten, we can’t release him […] since he will discredit the organs [i.e., NKVD].” —Ye. I. Abramovich, NKVD Interrogator, the city of Odessa, 1938 “You should understand, FSB officers always achieve their goals! In any way, it will be… Read More »
On May 24, 2017 Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating that by the decision of the President, “military units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, other military formations and organs can be transferred to the operational subordination of the district commander of the National Guard [known also as Rosguards – V. B.] to carry out… Read More »
On May 3, 2017, the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry (MVD) announced that the number of its officers assigned abroad will be increased from 41 to 100 representatives. These are not traditional SVR rezidenturas, intelligence officers involved in espionage at Russian embassies, but a type of MVD rezidentura. A draft of the Decree of Russian President Putin detailed the future changes.… Read More »
On February 27, 2014, Russian troops in unmarked green uniforms, the so-called “green men” or “polite people”, as the Russians called them, entered Crimea. Participants in the invasion received medals on which the date of the “return” of the Crimea to the Russian Federation was given as February 20, 2014-March 18, 2014. As a result of the Russian invasion, Crimea… Read More »
For four years, Denis Karagodin, a graduate from the Philosophical Faculty of the Tomsk University (Siberia), searched for the names of every person involved in the execution of his great-grandfather Stepan, in 1938, from a NKVD woman-typist to the NKVD investigators who signed the death sentence. The story of the local peasant Stepan Karagodin in those years was quite… Read More »
On November 24, 2016, the Moscow human rights group, “Memorial”, published a book on the web, authorized by the “Memorial” member Andrei Zhukov, entitled “Staff of the State Security of the USSR. 1935-1939”. This reference book includes biographies of 39,950 NKVD (People’s Interior Affairs Commissariat) officers who were promoted to special state security ranks from 1935 to mid-1939. Under the… Read More »
In keeping with the current re-writing of history in present day Russia, the burnishing of the GULAG has started. On August 16, 2016, the administration of labor camp IK no. 31 for women in the Komi Republic, in the northern part of Russia, organized a celebration in the memory of the founding of that camp in 1937 as… Read More »