“Personnel composition of state security agencies of the USSR 1935-1939” today is the most complete list of NKVD employees during the Great Terror. One of the project leaders, co-chairman of the Moscow Memorial, Jan Rachinsky, talks about the database, which took 15 years to compile.

- Tell me, what exactly is on this disk?

This is a reference book on the personnel composition of the state security agencies, not the NKVD as a whole, because the NKVD included firefighters, border guards, and a whole range of other services, namely state security agencies, those people who had special ranks introduced at the end of 1935. These are precisely those who carried out the Great Terror, because the disc covers the period 1935-1939.

Does this cover the entire pyramid of the NKVD hierarchy or are some individual ranks, say, represented there in more or less detail?

In principle, everyone who had special ranks of state security officers is included, from sergeant to general commissioner, all ranks without exception. Of course, there may be some omissions for various reasons: either due to the fatigue of the compiler, there may be random omissions, or because some of the orders were not published, had a stamp and were not available. But there are very few of them. At least 90% of the staff is represented here.

- How and where were these names and data on them obtained?

The compiler of this reference book, Andrei Nikolaevich Zhukov, has been studying this topic for many years. At first he was interested in the repressions against the security officers, which are talked about a lot and which, as it turns out from this code, are very much exaggerated. But then he, as a person with a collecting streak, began to collect not only the repressed, but everyone, just to understand how this correlated with the total number, and in general he worked on a lot of sources. At first these were open sources - well, conditionally open, you couldn’t call them easily accessible. Also, at one time, Nikita Petrov worked on newspaper publications and partly on various propaganda books, but then the archives were slightly opened.

The first, of course, is personnel orders, orders for personnel of the NKVD - many volumes have been published. They exist in the original source and there are printed collections reproduced that were sent to departments, just so that they could also be compared locally.

- That is, in other words, there is no consolidated list of NKVD employees?

- Sounds like a paradox Isn’t it really true that careful accounting of one’s personnel is a natural part of the life of any law enforcement agency, and even more so the NKVD?

The NKVD personnel department may have some kind of file cabinets, most likely, as well as personal files of employees, which are absolutely inaccessible today, so you have to turn to such sources. I had to look through the orders in a row. Basically, orders of two types are used: orders on assigning ranks and orders on dismissal.

Bringing all this together was in itself a non-trivial task - after all, in orders for conferring ranks there is a surname, name and patronymic, and in orders for dismissal there is a position from which the security officer is dismissed, but, as a rule, there is no name and patronymic, only initials. And with such a huge volume - over 40,000 characters - naturally, there are a lot of namesakes, and up to a dozen full namesakes

The second source is also seriously well-researched - this is the fund of the awards department of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, which was reviewed and where security officers were also identified. I already had to look through this all the time. Naturally, not everything has been revealed, but, nevertheless, there are a lot of these awards, and they were one of the important sources of biographical information.

It is especially significant here that when awarding the Order of Lenin, the candidate filled out a form with basic biographical information, so the date and place of birth and other minimal information could be taken from there.

Of course, this is only a starting point, this is the first step, very important and perhaps the most difficult.

Tell us more about Andrei Nikolaevich, who, in fact, collected all this data. After all, as far as I know, this work took him about 15 years.

It all started in the pre-computer era. The first version of his work was large notebooks, these extracts were then transferred to cards and from the cards he entered it into the computer in the form of a text file with many conventional abbreviations, which then needed to be deciphered, had to be checked carefully, because with such a volume of manual writing typos are inevitable. In general, this is a colossal amount of work, it’s even unclear how one person could handle it.

He is not limited only to security officers, he has collected quite a lot of information on repressions in the army, he has very extensive information on this topic, but it still applies to those who were repressed and to the top of the command staff, if we talk about those who were not repressed.

You said that Zhukov was initially interested in the topic of repression among NKVD employees - is this somehow reflected in the database?

The database contains information about repressions, but there is currently no special section of this type - repressed employees - it will probably appear in the online version. This is partly due to the fact that this information is incomplete. In the service regulations there was a special article on dismissal 38 “b”, which meant dismissal due to arrest, that is, we already know that the person was arrested, but for a large number of those dismissed in this way we have no information, what exactly next followed because most, a noticeable part, let’s say, of the arrested NKVD employees were subsequently released. Even of those who were convicted at the beginning of the war, in the first year and a half, many were released and sent to the front, and some were left in the rear to continue working. We also know such examples. Therefore, information about repression is not yet complete enough to be presented as a separate category.

Our technical role - mine and not only mine - was to bring this into a form convenient for use. This is the first version, it will be improved on the Internet.

- That is, your “function” was to turn this into a database.

Yes, process it in such a way that it acquires a certain unified structure, functionally similar to Wikipedia.

- Is there any preliminary release date for the online version?

We want to do this by the end of the year, since there will still be additions - it is now obvious that there will be quite a lot of them.

- How is the entry in this database arranged? Does each name have a certain set of additional information?

Yes, each name has a set of information, in the preface it is written what the maximum it can be, but for many - for a good half - it comes down to a single record of assignment of the rank - sergeant or junior lieutenant, and we have nothing more about the person today we don't know. But, nevertheless, this is at least a name and patronymic, and often also a connection to the region. This makes it possible to identify these employees, investigators, who often appear only with their last name, and nothing else is known; this is some next step towards identification. Today we have a systematization there alphabetically, by rank, by awards and by region - these are four such sections.

And, in fact, when this appears on the Internet, it will become possible to add information there from a wide variety of sources, to link there both fragments of memories and some pieces of subsequent investigations into the activities of this or that character.

This is somewhat different, because here our list is just closed, that is, we more or less already know the heroes who may be added a little, but the list of personalities itself is close to exhaustion. But you can add a lot for each person.

The coordinator of the “Handbook of Chekists” said that his site was attacked by worms and bots

The detective story develops around the so-called “Handbook of Chekists of the Great Terror” (officially, this Internet resource created by the Memorial society is called more politically correct: “Personnel composition of the state security bodies of the USSR 1935−1939”). In just a week of existence, this site “fell” twice, and then information appeared in the media about an open letter from the descendants of the NKVD employees demanding that the resource be closed “in order to avoid revenge from the descendants of the repressed.”

Memorial stated that they do not intend to delete this database, and the project coordinator, member of the board of the international society Memorial Jan Rachinsky told us that no letter actually exists.

The last statement seems quite logical. If relatives of NKVD employees are truly afraid of revenge, then signing an open letter and drawing additional attention to themselves is all the more dangerous. And the text of this letter has not been published in full anywhere; only individual anonymous quotes are given. But let's return to the conversation with Jan Rachinsky.

- For what purpose did you open the resource, which has already been dubbed the “Directory of the Chekists of the Great Terror”?

There is a certain truth in this name: not all NKVD employees are included in this database: there are no police or border guards there. The main content of the resource is people who had internal departmental special ranks and insignia of the state security department.

A separate system of ranks in the period from 1935 to 1943 in this department assumed that the state security major was on par with or above the general military colonel.

The purpose of this publication is to provide historians with reference material to identify the characters involved. In addition to the purely scientific side, there is a social one. The study of the tragic period of mass repression has so far been somewhat one-sided: attention has been paid to the victims of crimes, while the perpetrators of the crimes and perpetrators have remained behind the scenes. You need to know the names of these people. They are contained in the directory.

Of course, to say that it contains only the names of executioners, as some do, is not sufficiently thorough. But for the most part, these are still people who worked inside the mechanism of the executive machine of Stalin’s criminal policies. Among them are executors of criminal orders, and those who tortured prisoners and falsified their testimony. The publication of such data can help society develop immunity against state criminal policies and give an understanding that the names of those who participated in the execution of lawlessness will not be forgotten either.

- Why is the site unstable, is it subject to cyber attacks?

The resource does not always cope with the volume of downloaded information: as a rule, it is more than a gigabyte per hour. In the first days there was a peak load that he could not withstand. Then the traffic became less, but “worms” and “bots” appeared, and the resource could not stand it again. We have now strengthened our protection.

– How many relatives of the NKVD employees listed on the list contacted Memorial with various demands?

There is no official appeal yet. I saw reports in the press about some kind of open letter, but it did not come to us. We tried to find the text of this letter on the Internet, but in vain.

There are several dissatisfied comments on our website, but they do not contain demands to close the resource. Therefore, publications that “the descendants of the executioners from the NKVD demand that the database be deleted”, in my opinion, do not correspond to reality. They don’t like the wording “descendants of the executioners”, I don’t like it either, why hang labels, but this is not our wording, it was invented by the media and bloggers.

And some of the descendants of the people listed on our resource begin correspondence with us, maintain telephone contacts and provide additional information about their ancestors. First of all, these are, of course, those who are sure that they were not associated with repression.

But a correspondence also began with the head of a large construction company, whose ancestor, undoubtedly, was associated with the repressions. And it is conducted in a benevolent scientific manner. The discussion is not by searching for who to shift the blame to today, but by understanding why this happened, how relatively ordinary employees of the system were forced to carry out criminal orders, and it was impossible not to carry them out, and how to prevent this from happening in the future.

Previously, members of the Memorial board put forward the version that it is not the descendants of NKVD employees who are fighting against their resource, but rather their spiritual heirs who do not want to condemn Stalin’s repressions.

A section has appeared on the website of the Memorial movement, which is a database “Personnel composition of the state security bodies of the USSR. 1935-1939”, which presents data on 39 thousand 950 NKVD employees. The information that formed the basis of the database was collected by researcher Andrei Zhukov.

The project description states that the directory will be useful to those interested in Soviet history. “So, in particular, with the help of the directory it will be possible to attribute many state security employees of the era of the Great Terror, hitherto known only by last name (as a rule, without even indicating the first and patronymic) - from signatures in investigative files or from mentions in memoir texts. The appearance of the reference book is a significant step towards a more in-depth and accurate understanding of the tragic history of our country in the 30s of the twentieth century,” Znak.com quotes a message from Memorial.

The structure of the database allows you to search both alphabetically and by place of service, titles or awards of individuals. Repressed NKVD employees are placed in a separate category. The completeness of information about specific personalities in the directory depends on the source from which the information was obtained. In some cases, only last names and initials are known about a particular NKVD employee; in some cases, the start and end dates of service are established.

In May of this year, Memorial released a directory on CD. As Radio Liberty reported then, the main source of information was the orders of the USSR NKVD regarding personnel. It contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special ranks and dismissals from the NKVD, which often meant subsequent arrest. They also contain information about the position held at the time of dismissal, state awards received and awards with the badge “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU”. In addition, the compiler of the directory, Andrei Zhukov, used data from other sources - primarily about those killed and missing during the war, as well as those subjected to repression.

At the presentation of the disc, the chairman of the board of the international Memorial, Arseny Roginsky, said that many years ago he noticed a man who came to Memorial over and over again and worked through one “Book of Memory” after another, writing something out in the barn book.

“In general, “Memorial” is a place where there are a lot of eccentrics of all kinds. But a person who would review all the “Books of Memory” over and over again is still unique, so it was impossible not to be interested in what it was all about he does. It turns out that from all the “Books of Memory” he then wrote out employees of state security agencies,” Roginsky said.

Later it turned out that Andrei Zhukov works from a variety of sources, not only from the “Books of Memory”. First of all, these were personnel orders of the NKVD bodies, which are stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation and are available for study.

“At some point we realized that we needed to make something out of this. It was impossible to leave all this as the property of home cards or notebooks, barn books, of which Andrei Nikolaevich had accumulated an immeasurable amount. Then it was more or less figured out how to do this, and the topic more or less emerged. We were not interested in everyone - from Adam and Eve to the present day. We limited ourselves to a certain period, and on the disk it is indicated: 1935-1939. We chose for this disk from everywhere, from Andrei Nikolaevich’s gold reserves. people who received special ranks during these years. As we remember, they were introduced in 1935. Those people who received them during the first four years are our characters,” says a representative of Memorial.

According to Roginsky, even draft versions of the database allowed important discoveries to be made. So, for example, it turned out that in Yuri Dombrovsky’s novel “The Faculty of Unnecessary Things” all the names of the security officers are genuine.

"Even books have been written about many characters, some were themselves involved in criminal cases for various reasons. Some - because they refused to carry out the 447th order (secret order of the NKVD of July 30, 1937 "On the operation to repress former kulaks , criminals and other anti-Soviet elements", according to which from August 1937 to November 1938, 390 thousand people were executed and 380 thousand people were sent to camps. - Note website) or did not carry it out actively enough, such cases are also known,” historian Jan Rachinsky says about the people mentioned in the database.

As Rachinsky noted in an interview with the History Lesson project, it took 15 years to compile the database.

Starting today, November 23, 2016, access to A. N. Zhukov’s directory “Personnel composition of state security bodies of the USSR. 1935-1939".

The directory provides brief data on 39,950 NKVD employees who received special ranks of the state security system from the moment of their introduction in 1935 to the beginning of 1941. Particular attention is paid to the time from the autumn of 1935 to mid-1939 - the directory includes almost all , to whom the special rank was awarded during this period.

A preliminary version of the reference book was published in May 2016 on CD. By the time the directory was posted on the Internet, changes and additions had been made to approximately 4,500 biographical information.

The main source of information for the directory was the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel. The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special ranks and dismissal from the NKVD, information about the position held at the time of dismissal, as well as information about received state awards and the awarding of the “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU” badges.

Information from the orders is supplemented by biographical data from other sources - first of all, about those killed and missing in action during the Great Patriotic War, as well as about those subjected to repression.

The reference book will be useful to those interested in Soviet history. Thus, in particular, with the help of the directory it will be possible to attribute many state security employees of the era of the Great Terror, hitherto known only by last name (as a rule, without even indicating the first and patronymic) - from signatures in investigative files or from mentions in memoir texts.

The appearance of the reference book is a significant step towards a more in-depth and accurate understanding of the tragic history of our country in the 30s of the twentieth century.

Material from NKVD personnel 1935-1939

The basis and main content of this directory was information about NKVD workers collected in libraries and archives by Andrei Nikolaevich Zhukov.

Initially - while the archives were tightly closed - the main source base for his research were old periodicals that published information about awards to NKVD workers and brief biographical information on the election of NKVD-UNKVD leaders to deputies of the Supreme Soviets. Information in encyclopedic publications and in books on the history of state security agencies was extremely scarce and censored.

In the 1990s, access to archival materials became available: documents on awards to employees of state security agencies and the deprivation of their orders and NKVD personnel orders - on the transfer of workers and the assignment of personal titles. A. N. Zhukov devoted many years to the study of these documents.

Thanks to his work, this project became possible.

Let us recall that in the structure of the NKVD of the USSR in the second half of the 1930s. The Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) and its local bodies - the Directorate of State Security (UGB) occupied a special place. It was the GUGB and the UGB that were entrusted with the responsibility of fighting “enemies of the people.” It is known that during the “mass operations” of 1937−1938. Representatives of various units of the NKVD took part in arrests and sometimes investigations: border and internal troops, police, economic units and even cadets. However, the main role in carrying out repressive campaigns was always played by employees of the GUGB-UGB. It is they who bear the main responsibility for implementing the repressive policies of the Soviet leadership.

And from this point of view, this guide is of particular value and public interest. With its help, historians will be able to attribute many hitherto unnamed state security officers who left only their signatures (as a rule, only last names without indicating first names and patronymics) in investigative cases. The reference book will also be indispensable for the correct understanding of many memoir texts, where the names of security officers are often mentioned not only without any explanation, but even without initials. It is also important for studying the system of state security agencies as a whole.

A preliminary version of the reference book was published in May 2016 on CD. By the time the directory was posted on the Internet (November 2016), changes and additions had been made to approximately 3,500 biographical information.

The task that A. N. Zhukov set for himself was to provide a complete list of persons who were awarded special ranks in the state security system in the period from December 1935 to June 1939.

The main goal was precisely the completeness of the list, and not the detailed description of the biographies of individual characters, and this explains the brevity of the information provided about many well-known security officers.

Personal special ranks for the commanding staff of the GUGB-UGB were introduced on October 7, 1935 by a resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The ranks were in the following order: state security sergeant (hereinafter GB), GB junior lieutenant, GB lieutenant, GB senior lieutenant, GB captain, GB major, GB senior major, GB commissar 3rd rank, GB commissar 2nd rank and GB commissar 1st rank. On November 26, 1935, by decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the title of General Commissar of the State Security was introduced (assigned by decree of the Central Executive Committee, and later of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR). The titles of GB commissars of 1st and 2nd ranks were assigned by decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and lower ones by orders of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

The main sources of information about the personnel of the NKVD were orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel for 1935-1941. The vast majority of these orders are not classified.

The compiler of the reference book completely reviewed the printed collections of NKVD orders on personnel stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation for the period 1935-1940. (GARF. F. 9401. Op. 9a. D. 1−65) to identify information about the assignment of special ranks and information about the dismissal of NKVD employees who received these ranks. In total, during this period, more than 11,000 orders of the NKVD of the USSR were issued for personnel: No. 1−885 in 1935, No. 1−1308 in 1936, No. 1−2580 in 1937, No. 1−2648 in 1938 ., No. 1−2305 in 1939 and No. 1−1889 in 1940. These orders represent almost all persons who were assigned special ranks in the state security system (with rare exceptions, when information about the assignment of the rank was not given by orders or the orders themselves were not replicated). In the orders of the NKVD of the USSR regarding personnel that announced the assignment of a rank, the surname, first name and patronymic of the person to whom the rank was assigned must be indicated and, as a rule, the previous rank was indicated if it was not a matter of primary assignment. If the orders of the NKVD of the USSR on personnel assigned to special ranks provide almost exhaustive completeness, then the same cannot be said about information about the movement and appointment of NKVD employees to positions. Here the orders reflect only the leadership layer - the nomenklatura of the NKVD of the USSR. Lower-level positions are reflected only in the orders of the NKVD of the union republics and the NKVD of territories and regions. That is why most of the characters in the directory do not have any indication of their official position. In addition, it should be noted that the orders of the NKVD of the USSR do not always provide information about the dismissal of workers from the NKVD system, even at the nomenklatura level. There are also separate orders for the dismissal of NKVD employees, issued in the form of lists that do not indicate the positions of the listed persons. In addition, dismissal orders always indicated only the initials of those being dismissed. This incompleteness of information in the NKVD orders, unfortunately, did not allow us to accurately identify a number of characters in the directory who had common surnames, and sometimes to link a particular title or award to a specific person. Hence the inevitable errors that may occur in the array of information presented in the reference book.

For the period from December 1935 to mid-1939. the directory provides an almost complete list of state security employees who had special ranks. The only exceptions were those to whom the rank was assigned by NKVD orders that were not kept in the GARF, or by orders that remained inaccessible to the compiler of the directory, since they were deposited in the array of secret and top secret NKVD orders. The total number of such persons is insignificant, and since subsequent ranks were assigned to them by ordinary orders of the NKVD for personnel, their names mostly also ended up in the directory. For the later period - from July 1939 to January 1941 - the directory systematically includes only those persons who were awarded the rank of senior lieutenant of the GB and above.

The directory presents 39,950 people who received special ranks of the state security system from the moment of their introduction until the beginning of 1941. Over 11,000 of them (according to the information presented in the directory, which is far from complete) during this period were, for one reason or another, dismissed from bodies of the NKVD - by age, in reserve, in connection with arrest, etc. Considering that the total number of employees of the UGB-GUGB NKVD by January 1, 1940 was 32,163 people (of which certified, that is, having personal ranks as of 01/01/1940 there were 21,536 people - 67%), we can say with confidence that only an extremely small number of people remained outside the directory who were awarded a special rank in the period from 1935 to mid-1939 (and for ranks from senior lieutenant of the GB and above - until February 1941).

It must be borne in mind that special ranks in the second half of the 1930s. were assigned not only to employees of the GUGB-UGB, but also - often - also to employees (mainly senior staff) of other structures of the NKVD. For example, the heads of the Administrative and Economic Directorate of the NKVD (I. Ostrovsky, V. Blokhin, etc.), the Gulag (for example, M. Berman, S. Firin, Y. Moroz), etc. The directory contains the names of all these NKVD employees who received special ranks.

In addition to NKVD employees who received special ranks in the line of state security, the directory selectively presents employees of the police, border and internal security, military justice - those who were awarded fairly high police or combined arms ranks by orders of the NKVD of the USSR. There are about 1,700 people in the directory.

The directory contains the numbers and dates of orders for the assignment of special ranks and dismissals, as well as information about the position held at the time of dismissal.

The dismissal orders, as a rule, indicated the articles “Regulations on the service of commanding personnel of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR” (10/16/1935), according to which the employees were dismissed, and this helps to understand the reason for the dismissal.

a) in the certification procedure for professional non-compliance;
b) due to impossibility of use due to staff reduction or reorganization.
Art. 38. In addition, in some cases, the reasons for dismissal may be:
a) a court verdict or a decision of a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR
b) arrest by judicial authorities;
>c) impossibility of use at work in the Main Directorate of State Security.
Art. 39. Depending on the reason for dismissal, age and state of health, those dismissed from the cadre and active reserve of the Main Directorate of State Security can either be enrolled in the reserve of the Main Directorate of State Security, or dismissed altogether from the Main Directorate of State Security, with deregistration, and:
a) commanding officers dismissed from active service from the Main Directorate of State Security who have not reached the age limit for compulsory service are transferred to the reserve (Chapter 6 of these “Regulations”);
b) commanding officers who have reached the age limits for compulsory service or who are recognized for health reasons as unfit for service both in peacetime and in wartime, as well as those sentenced by a court or a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR to imprisonment, are dismissed from service altogether with exclusion from registration.

Information from orders on the assignment of special ranks and on the dismissal of employees, which constitutes the main content of the directory, was supplemented with information from a number of other sources.

The most important block of sources is related to the awarding of state and departmental awards to NKVD employees.

The GARF reviewed a thematic selection of orders of the NKVD of the USSR on incentives and awards (GARF. F. 9401. Op. 12), which made it possible to identify persons awarded the badges “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (V)” and “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (XV) )" (the directory provides information about 505 who were awarded the first of these badges and 3,035 who were awarded the second). Information on awards with these badges has also been verified with special reference publications published to date.

In the archival materials of the Central Executive Committee and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (GARF. F. 7523. Op. 7, 44), files with profiles of those awarded the Order of Lenin were completely reviewed, among whom many (more than 1,700) NKVD employees were found. Personal information from these questionnaires (last name, first name, patronymic, year and place of birth, information about party affiliation and place of work, as well as previous awards) is also included in the directory. Biographical information was also extracted from the reviewed materials for the decrees on the deprivation of awards.

In a number of cases, materials about awards during the war years were also used, presented in the electronic publication of award documents on the website of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation “Feat of the People”.

Information about some leading NKVD employees was clarified using party registration documents: registration forms of members of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks during the exchange of party documents stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, and personal files of NKVD employees who were part of the nomenclature of the Party Central Committee ( RGASPI. F. 17. Op. 99, 100, 107 and 108).

Another significant source of personal information is the “Book of Memory of Counterintelligence Officers Who Died and Missed in Action during the Great Patriotic War” (M., 1995). This book, as a rule, provides basic personal data (last name, first name, patronymic, year and place of birth, information about party affiliation and place of service), as well as information about the date and place of death. Among the characters in the reference book, more than 1,900 people died or went missing during the war.

The directory also includes information about the repressions to which NKVD workers were subjected. Indication of articles 38A or 38B in orders of dismissal meant dismissal due to conviction or arrest - and for 930 people we have only such confirmation of the fact of repression. More detailed information about the repressions was found for another 3,600 people. About 1,600 of them were sentenced to death, of the rest, about 400 did not receive a camp sentence, but were released with the termination of the case.

Basically, this information was drawn by the compiler from Books of Memory of Victims of Political Repression, published in many regions of the former USSR, as well as from the consolidated database of the Memorial Society. The completeness of information about repressions varies - sometimes only the date of arrest or only the sentence is indicated. The dates of execution in many cases were established based on the acts on executions stored in the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation (this information was provided by Memorial).

It should be noted that many of the security officers sentenced to imprisonment were released at the beginning of the war and sent to the front.

The directory also takes into account data from a number of reference publications and studies devoted to the history of the Soviet state security agencies.

As a result, the most detailed certificates for employees of the GUGB-UGB NKVD system can contain the following information: last name, first name and patronymic, year and place of birth, nationality, party affiliation, length of service in state security agencies, place of service (sometimes position) at the time of assignment special ranks, position upon dismissal or at the time of arrest, date of arrest and subsequent fate (in case of conviction - date and information about rehabilitation), year and place of death (sometimes - cause), information about the awarding of orders and medals and departmental insignia (including the period 1941-1945, which is outside the chronological framework of this directory, and for individuals, later awards). However, as a rule, much less information is provided in the certificates. Often they are limited only to the last name, first name and patronymic, the date of receipt of the special rank and the order number. However, even in this minimal version, in our opinion, they make sense, since they can serve as a starting point for further study of biographies.

In some cases, when more complete biographical information on individual characters has already been published, references to these publications are provided.

When preparing the directory for publication, we found it useful to “reconstruct” the original NKVD orders based on information about personalities. Although this reconstruction is obviously incomplete, since it only includes information about the assignment of ranks and dismissals, it may be of independent interest to researchers, since it makes it possible to see the names of security officers mentioned in the same order.

For ease of use of the directory, it also includes some documents:

• Regulations on the service of commanding staff of the Main Directorate of State Security of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR

Database with data of 40 thousand NKVD employees. Shortly before this, Tomsk resident Denis Karagodin published his investigation into the people involved in the execution of his great-grandfather Stepan during the Great Terror. One of them turned out to be Nikolai Zyryanov, an employee of the Tomsk city department of the NKVD. Zyryanov’s granddaughter Yulia wrote Denis a letter in which she repented for her grandfather’s actions. The reaction to these publications was mixed. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov is a “sensitive” topic, and the descendants of the security officers wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin asking him to close access to the base for fear of retaliation. Lenta.ru asked people whose relatives worked in the NKVD to talk about how they feel about public discussion of the role of their ancestors in the events of 80 years ago.

“Try and figure it out!”

Yuri Vasiliev, lives and works in Latvia. Grandfather Yakov Vasiliev served during the war in the NKVD troops, and later worked in the police in Riga.

This digging in the past is like digging through dirty laundry; you are definitely not interested in looking for clean laundry! And now for me there is no need for this either. Grandfather lived well, raised two children, and died in 1981, I was only seven years old.

In my opinion, a discussion about people who worked in the NKVD is not necessary. Whoever remembers the old, look out. You have a lot of forces in Russia now who want to rock the country with these and other unnecessary things. If any of the victims want to seek the truth, let them look for it themselves and sue. But the culprits cannot be found, and there were none; the system is to blame. And it’s not that she’s to blame, it was and couldn’t have been any other way in order to save the country.

Alexey Ivanov (name and surname have been changed). One of the grandfathers served in the NKVD troops.

I support the dissemination of any information about the history of Russia, including the full opening of the archives of the twentieth century. It may make sense not to open 80-year-old archives to give the people mentioned in them the opportunity to die in peace, but after this period, all archives need to be opened and published every year.

In the twentieth century, crimes were committed against the Russian people and humanity in Russia. Some people do not want the people to know the truth, but this is in the interests of the people. The people have the right to know their history, and hiding this information is a crime against them.

As for the relatives of criminals, they are not responsible for their ancestors. Everyone should be judged only for their own deeds.

In Russian, the word "repentance" (from the name of the biblical Cain) is an inaccurate translation of the Greek Christian and ancient term "matanaia", which literally means "change of mind" or can be conventionally rendered by the word "change of mind".

In the original sense of the word “change the mind,” all of us, residents of Russia, need to determine our attitude to the events of history. And, seeing the good deeds of our ancestors, we also see their evil deeds. Call crimes crimes, condemn them rather than justify them, and say that we do not agree with these actions. As the German people did after 1945, by the way.

As for the apologies of the descendants of the executioners to the descendants of the victims, I think this is an extremely positive and Christian phenomenon. You just need to better define the subtle differences between repentance in the sense of a change of mind and repentance when you seem to apologize for the sins of another person as if they were your own. It would probably be better to say “my condolences” or something like that. This is also a subtle ethical and philosophical question.

Tatyana Zheltok, lives in Poland. His great-uncle is NKVD Colonel Alexander Rabtsevich, his younger brother Mikhail Rabtsevich is a KGB colonel (later general).

The public discussion is already making people dizzy from the growing force of its inadequacy. Living and remembering is very important, but I don't see the right healthy opportunity for public discussion. The energy nightmare that such debates produce is dangerous in many ways.

I believe that finding out who is to blame will lead nowhere. It is not that simple. War is not red and white, but much more complex. People can't figure things out in their families.

Photo: Georgy Petrusov / RIA Novosti

We must live today! Live and remember the past, but do not live in the past. I am not a person of the past, and this digging will not cure people (and, judging by what is happening, the majority need to be treated for grievances and bitterness). Here in Poland they have been looking for those responsible for the crash of Kaczynski’s plane near Smolensk for six years now. Do you think it’s possible to find someone to blame for the terrible events of history that we know so little about?

My relatives worked in the NKVD and the KGB in another area - foreign intelligence and diplomatic relations. I wouldn’t even know what to tell you if my relatives had anything to do with this nightmare! I probably couldn't have such relatives.

And how many people who did not work in these bodies are to blame for the fate of those repressed? Someone simply informed, and there were an awful lot of them too. Just try and figure it out! Terrible, indescribable milestones in history. Horror.

“A person is responsible only for himself”

Seraphim Orekhanov. Great-great-grandfather worked as the head of the investigative unit of the Moscow department of the NKVD in 1935-1939. Orekhanov discovered him on Memorial’s lists.

Lenta.ru: Are you sure that the person you found in the Memorial database is really your great-great-grandfather?

Seraphim Orekhanov: I’m sure, because I knew that he existed, I knew his name and patronymic, I knew that he worked in the NKVD. I didn’t know only his position and rank - now I know.

What did you previously know about your grandfather? What did his parents say about him?

I know the history of my family quite well, and although it was four generations ago, I know the house on Lubyanka where he lived, I know that he had a severe, hot-tempered disposition - not surprising - and I even know the place in the Novodevichy cemetery where he is buried. We didn’t discuss it much at home, but as an adult, my father began to talk more about his family. Her story is as interesting and as tragic as the story of any other family that happened to live in the twentieth century in Russia. It’s unlikely that anyone but us needs the details of this story.

Has your attitude towards your great-great-grandfather changed?

I didn’t have any special relationship with him: I didn’t even have any photographs of him. I am sure that all NKVD employees are exactly the same victims of this system as those whom they sent to camps or shot. Many of them ended their lives in the same ditches as their victims, and those who escaped this, at best, drank themselves to death. I saw an interview with one of the executioners who shot people at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. Already in the nineties, he, being a very old man, complains that “they didn’t crush the reptile” and that the repressions were insufficient. Isn't this a miserable man?

I’ve heard about the upcoming publication for a long time, I kept wanting to stop by the Memorial office and ask to look at their data, but I never got around to it. In any case, this did not come as a surprise to me: I entered the base knowing that I would find my great-great-grandfather. I think the publication of these lists is an excellent reason to start a conversation about the Great Terror, about Stalin and about the Russian twentieth century in general. Not in the discourse of relations between the authorities and the people, but in the discourse of family stories, which, it seems to me, is a much more suitable basis for the formation of a healthy sense of history instead of endless debates about the “strong hand”, “the price of victory” and other abstractions.

Have you ever thought about the need for public discussion of this page of our history and is it worth starting now?

Of course it's worth it. I grew up in a circle in which the attitude towards Stalinism, and indeed everything Soviet, was quite clear: it was a disaster, the worst thing that could happen to Russia, the most terrible period in our history, a huge step back. And, in general, I had no reason not to share these views.

On the other hand, the Soviet experiment of the early 1920s was the greatest of utopias and perhaps the greatest moment in Russian cultural history. This has all been said many times, but I would really like the discussion of the Soviet legacy - and the Great Terror as its central part - to be more specific. So that the destinies of people, not ideas, are discussed.

Is this a reproach to whom?

It is clear that this applies primarily to the conventionally patriotic camp, which is inclined to neglect details, but conventional liberals often sin in the same way. For example, from time to time there is a proposal to demolish the Mausoleum. Guys, well, actually this is Shchusev, taking and demolishing a work of art, whether we like it or not, for anti-Bolshevik purposes - this is Bolshevism.

And it also seems important that the discussion of the Soviet be separated from the Great Patriotic War: after all, the war did not exactly radically change the nature of the Stalinist regime. By making the conversation about the Second World War a central part of the debate about the Soviet, we are simply trying to avoid discussing things that are much more complex, but also much more concerning to us all.

Should the state pursue policies that condemn people (not just leaders) who took part in repression?

It seems to me that our history is already too much monopolized by the state. I think that no special politics is needed here, but things like the story of Denis Karagodin, or the “Last Address” campaign, or the publication of personal testimonies of people who experienced all this in the “Lived” project are needed. When history is under the control of the state, it inevitably becomes, firstly, the history of power, and secondly, an abstraction that can be argued about until you are hoarse, but which has very little connection with our lives.

Is public repentance necessary on the part of the descendants of NKVD workers, or should the discussion be conducted impersonally?

Of course not. I don't believe in collective responsibility. Its place is in the Old Testament. No one should be responsible for the sins of others - neither in the metaphysical sense, nor in the legal sense. I wrote about this in my