HORROR OF SOVIET SECRET POLICE

I. Introduction

The Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia from its very inception in November (according to Gregorian calendar), 1917, was besmirched by inhuman oppression and terrorization of political opponents and even innocent common people without any political affiliation or opinion. The organized terror consisted of arrests, forced labor, complete extermination and genocide of theminor races like the Cossacks. The so called Socialist State (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from November, 1917to 1921 and USSR from 1921 to 1991) till the death of Joseph Stalin was basically a police state with overwhelmingly fascist characteristics, based on multiple secret services in civilian and military administration and they had penetrated deep into every aspect of life of the nation.

Many opine that this violence, repression and terror is embedded in basic Marxian doctrine, but this oversimplified view could hardly be substantiated, notwithstanding its propagation ofviolence to over through the bourgeois state machinery in order to establish dictatorship of the proletariat and to repress and re-educate the class enemies, i.e. the bourgeois and feudal elements still remaining after the proletarian revolution. In fact, the Leninist approach of terrorization and annihilation of all political opponents including the Left Social Revolutionaries, the sole representative of the peasantry (consisting of the majority of the Russian population) and even striking Bolshevik laborers (Kronstadt revolt of 1921), had tarnished the concept of humanitarian socialism as conceived by Marx and Engels. The reasons for such heinous crime of Leninism against humanity, dissolving the boundaries between Communism andFascism, are to be sought elsewhere.

According to strict Marxian principles, the Leninist Socialismwas but a utopian Socialism. Notwithstanding the process of industrialization in Tsarist Russia since 1880, the country was still a overwhelmingly agricultural and semi-feudal country in 1917, with industrial laborers consisting only 3% of the population. Since the bourgeois democratic revolution of March

1917, the Bolsheviks through their Soviets ran a parallel government and ultimately usurped power in November 1917. This takeover of power by the Bolsheviks is far from proletarian revolution as Marx conceived.

Immediately after the takeover of power the Mensheviks and Left SRs were in the new government and in the constituent Assembly election the Bolshevik’s received only 25% of votes, andthe Mensheviks only 3.2%, while the SRs with 57% of votes proved their overwhelming mass support. As a matter of facts, even the minority labor class supporting the Bolsheviks had little idea about the ideology of the Bolshevik Party (renamed Communist Party after the November Revolution) led basically by the middle class intellectuals and aristocrats turned communists. They defined Marxism in their own way and imposed on the majority by fascist mechanism and terrorization. Power clashes about these ambitious leaders also led to mutual fight and mutual annihilation returning to the jungle law of ‘survival of the fittest’. By this rule Leninist interpretation of Marxism was thedominating force till his death in 1924 and thereafter, Stalinism(Stalin’s way of interpreting Marx) was the dominant force till his death in 1954.

Soon after assuming power Lenin, realizing the object socio-economic condition of the country invented the utopian path (disregarding Marxian norms) of instant transition to socialism skipping the intermediate stage of capitalism an essential condition for transition to Socialism according to Marxian Doctrine. This was the most important reason why the first Marxian Socialist state (as ostensibly proclaimed by the Communists all over the world), turned into a fascist torturous dictatorship and this sealed the fate of True Marxian experiment (whether realistic or utopian) forever.

The other reasons were both circumstantial (First World War) and offshoots of the new policy of instant transition Socialism from a semi-feudal state, popularly known as ‘War Communism.’ Themeasure under war communism led to widespread discontent and created an opportunity for the Whites (the reactionary Tsarist forces) to win support of various political parties and groups disliking the hegemony of the Bolsheviks, and even the Menshevikswho were initially with the Bolsheviks.

The left SRs who were allies of the Bolsheviks were enraged atthe policy of nationalization of land as their objective was landto the cultivators. This along with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, under which Russia consented to stop war against the central powers (Germany, Austria Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) and grant humiliating concession to them. This resulted in ultimate enmity between the SRs and the Bolsheviks and revolt of the SRs against the Bolshevik State. Brest-Litovsk treaty also enraged the alliedpower (U.K. and France) prompting them to directly or indirectly assist the forces fighting against the Soviet government and evenplotted to overthrow it.

War Communism was characterized by:1. Nationalization of land, Banks, shipping2. Foreign trade was declared a state monopoly3. On June 28th, 1918, a decree was passed that ended all

forms of private capitalism.4. Many large factories were taken over by the state.5. On November 29th, 1920, any factory/industry that employed

over 10 workers was nationalized.6. War Communism also took control of the distribution of

food. The Food Commissariat was set up to carry out this task. All co-operatives were fused together under this Commissariat.

Six basic principles of War Communism were:1) Production should be run by the state. Private ownership

should be kept to the minimum. Private houses were to be confiscated by the state.

2) State control was to be granted over the labor of every citizen. Once a military army had served its purpose, it would become a labor army.

3) The state should produce everything in its own undertakings. The state tried to control the activities of millions of peasants.

4) Extreme centralization was introduced. The economic life ofthe area controlled by the Bolsheviks was put into the hands of just a few organizations. The most important one was the Supreme Economic Council. This had the right to confiscate and requisition. The specialty of the SEC was the management of industry. Over 40 head departments (known as glavki) were set up to accomplish this. One glavki could be responsible for thousands

of factories. This frequently resulted in chronic inefficiency. The Commissariat of Transport controlled the railways. The Commissariat of Agriculture controlled what the peasants did.

5) The state attempted to become the sole distributor as well as the sole producer. The Commissariats took what they needed to meet demands. The people were divided into four categories – manual workers in harmful trades, workers who performed hard physical labor, workers in light tasks/housewives and professional people. Food was distributed on a 4:3:2:1 ratio. Though the manual class was the favored class, it still received little food. Many in the professional class simply starved. It isbelieved that about 0% of all food consumed came from an illegal source. On July 20th 1918, the Bolsheviks decided that all surplus food had to be surrendered to the state. This led to an increase in the supply of grain to the state. From 1917 to 1928, about ¾ million ton was collected by the state. In 1920 to 1921, this had risen to about 6 million tons. However, the policy of having to hand over surplus food caused huge resentment in the countryside, especially as Lenin had promised “all land to the people” pre-November 1917. While the peasants had the land, they had not been made aware that they would have to hand over any extra food they produced from their land. Even the extra could not meet demand. In 1933, 25 million tons of grain was collected and this only just met demand.

6) War Communism attempted to abolish money as a means of exchange. The Bolsheviks wanted to go over to a system of a natural economy in which all transactions were carried out in kind. Effectively, bartering would be introduced. By 1921, the value of the ruble had dropped massively and inflation had markedly increased. The government’s revenue raising ability was chronically poor, as it had abolished most taxes. The only tax allowed was the ‘Extraordinary Revolutionary Tax’, which was targeted at the rich and not the workers.

Realizing the precarious condition of latent disfavor by the majority of the population under the conditions of the civil war,it was necessary for the survival of the Bolsheviks and their minority government to subdue all other political parties througharrests and annihilation and to terrorize the majority of the

population by various terrorizing methods for the majority of thepopulation.

All these horrible killings and torture were performed under the euphemized cover of repression of the class enemies – the bourgeois counter revolutionaries, the adherents of the Tsarist rule and various vested interest groups who would lose their opportunity to exploit the masses under communist rule. But in reality the ‘class enemies’ became a mysterious term. Anyone could brand his opponents and rivals class enemies and exterminate them under the pretext of doing away with class enemies.

According to strict Marxian doctrine, in a socialist regime class enemies are mainly persons belonging to the bourgeois classand landlords. However, the Bolshevik leadership was overwhelmingly dominated by intellectuals and politicians drawn from the middle class, upper middle class and aristocrats. Lenin himself was from a rich family. To hoodwink the true proletariat class the theory of being declassed was invented and Bolshevik leaders, mainly drawn from the non-proletariat classes claimed tohave been declassed. The Bolsheviks never got the support of the peasantry, the majority of the population, who were supporters ofthe Social Democratic Party. The minority labor class, at first was befooled by the Bolsheviks, but could realize through tortures and oppressions of War Communism that the Bolshevik theory of being declassed was but a hoax and they were power mongers and hardly interested in the well being of the proletariats and the other poor.

Thus fate of Marxian socialism in Russia fell into the hands of power mongering Bolsheviks, mostly belonging to non-poor classes, who modified and distorted Marxian Doctrine to serve their own interests. Their support was eroding but they had command over the military and state machinery. So it was necessary to subdue the majority through terrorizing, mass arrests and mass killings.

Bolsheviks had command over the armed forces, which they had to keep under control through espionage, surveillance and extermination of deserters. They used this power through secret service to all persons expressing slightest doubt about their professed intention of establishing a socialistic regime ruled by

the proletariats. Cheka was the main instrument to this end. Class enemy was defined by the Bolsheviks as one who opposes or even raises questions about the Bolsheviks and the leadership of Lenin. There were no doubt bourgeois and erstwhile exploiters among them, but they also included poor cultivators (the majorityof the population), defined as petit bourgeois and even the working class. There were no judicial procedures to convict a person. It was done by secret means, at times by whims of the Cheka officials. Personal rivals of within the Bolshevik party were led to mutual extermination under false accusations. For arresting any person, simply doubt by the any Cheka of subversiveactivity against the Bolshevik rule was enough. Even innocent joking about any Bolshevik or Cheka official was treated as subversion and resulted in arrest and severe punishment. Family members, even children of the family of a person were not spared.The females were generally raped fist and then arrested and torture and even killed. Many arrested persons, with minor offences (according to the ruling of the Cheka) were sent to the forced labor camps popularly known as Gulags.

II. Red Terror

The horrendous method by which the minority Bolshevik regime of the aristocrats could successfully subdued the majority peasant class and later on the laborers (who were befooled at first but could ultimately become fully aware of the real designsof the Bolsheviks).

The Red Terror consisted of mass killings, torture, and systematic oppression in Petrograd and Moscow. The horrible and inhuman campaign of the Bolsheviks was officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918.The Cheka played the crucial role in this regard.

The term "Red Terror" was borrowed from the reign of terror during the originally used to describe the last six weeks of the French Revolution, ending on July 28, 1794 with the execution of Robespierre. The ruthlessness of the Cheka red terror surpassed all atrocities of the French revolution.

Apparently the campaign was to reeducate and subdue the remnants of the oppressor class, i.e. the so called class enemies

of the proletariat. But in reality it was to eliminate and terrorize all opponents of the Bolsheviks, irrespective of their class origin. In fact, majority of the millions of people killed or arrested by the Cheka were peasants and industrial workers.

The red terror took its full form after the assassination of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky by Leonid Kannegisser, and attempted assassination of Lenin by Fanni Kaplan on August 30, 1918. At the same time Cheka unearthed a plot known as Lokhart Conspiracy. by Western Nations to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. Lenin immediately instructed: "It is necessary - secretlyand urgently to prepare the terror". Lenin also opined that it isto be seen that thousands of innocent people may be killed but not a single opponent of the Bolsheviks should be spared.

Five hundred political opponents of the Bolsheviks were executed immediately after the assassination of Uritsky. Izvestiya, the mouthpiece of the Bolsheviks announced officially on September 3, 1918 "crush the hydra of counterrevolution with massive terror! ... anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to concentration camp" and thereafter on September 5, 1918, the decree "On Red Terror" was issued by the Cheka.

On March 16, 1919, the Cheka special force was formed with around 200,000 loyal soldiers. These troops, well trained to cruelty and methods of atrocities, guarded the forced labor camps(Gulag), conducted food requisition, and mercilessly put down rebellions and mutinies by peasants, laborers and deserting soldiers. They also unleashed terror by promptly killing or torturing the Christian clergy, Muslims and Jews, skeptical intellectuals and ethnic people like the Cossacks.

For various categories of people, Cheka terror took the following forms.

Deserters from Red ArmyEver since the takeover of power by the Bolsheviks, there were

widespread mutinies and desertions from the Red Army. More than 3million deserters escaped from Red Army during 1919-20. Kyuzis Peteris alias Yan Karlovich Berzin, a notorious second grade armyofficer, with doglike loyalty to Bolshevik chieftains, was entrusted with the task arresting and executing the deserters andhe could accomplished his duty most faithfully by wanton killing

of the arrested deserters. About fifty percent of the deserting soldiers were arrested and most of them tortured to horrible death. Their family members were taken hostages, females raped and killed and even the children were not spared.

PeasantsThe peasants, comprising the majority of the population of

Soviet Russia, could realize from the very beginning that the interests of the power mongering and self seeking Bolsheviks had always been opposed to the interests of the peasants and other working classes. So there were relentless uprisings and revolts by the peasants which were ruthlessly suppressed by the Cheka. Incourse of putting down the Tambov Rebellion, around hundred thousand peasants were arrested by Cheka. A large part of them along with their family members were summarily executed and the others were deported to the Gulag camps in remote areas to die through inhuman labor, malnourishment and disease. This campaign marked the beginning of the Gulag, and some scholars have estimated that 70,000 were imprisoned by September 1921 (this number excludes those in several camps in regions that were in revolt, such as Tambov). Conditions in these camps led to high mortality rates, and there were "repeated massacres." The Cheka at the Kholmogory camp adopted the practice of drowning bound prisoners in the nearby Dvina River. Occasionally, entire prisonswere “emptied” of inmates via mass shootings prior to abandoning a town to White forces.

Industrial WorkersAt first the Industrial Workers were befooled by the

propaganda by the Bolsheviks that the new regime was by the proletariat and for the proletariat. But it did not take mush time for the laborers to be aware of the hypocrisy of Lenin and other self seeking middle class intellectuals and aristocrats branded as Bolsheviks and Communists. So the labor class too revolted against the torturous new regime. There were innumerablestrikes by the industrial workers which were quelled by the Chekain the same fashion as in the case of the peasants.

As soon as the workers of the Putilov factory went on strike in March 1919, Cheka stormed the factory and arrested most of theworkers and executed most of them without trial. Within a short span of time since then, innumerable strikes took place in the

cities of Tula, Orel, Tver, Ivanovo and Astrakhan. In most of thecases the demand of the workers, who were starving, was food rations matching those of Red Army soldiers and members of the Bolshevik Party who used to enjoy many other privileges. Their demand also included end of high handed fascist rule of the Bolsheviks, freedom of press, and free elections. All strikes were mercilessly suppressed by Cheka using arrests and executions.

The city of Astrakhan was a site of mass annihilation of laborers by Cheka. As soon as the workers I the city went on strike, the strikers and Red Army soldiers who joined them were loaded onto barges and then thrown by the hundreds into the Volgawith stones around their necks. According to the recently published archival documents this was the largest massacre of workers by the Bolsheviks before the suppression of the Kronstadtrebellion. In spite of mass killing and atrocities by Cheka, disillusioned workers all over Soviet Russia continued protests and strikes.

Lenin became worried by this and instructed more severe actionby Cheka. As regards the strikes in the Ural region on 29 January1920, he sent a telegram to Vladimir Smirnov stating "I am surprised that you are taking the matter so lightly, and are not immediately executing large numbers of strikers for the crime of sabotage".

ClergyAccording to Marxian doctrine, ‘religion is opium to the

masses” and so all religions should be crushed after taking over of power by the communists. Accordingly the Bolsheviks adopted all sorts of methods to root out religion. But their propaganda mechanism failed to destroy faith of the people. So, in this casealso Cheka came forward to make people refrain from religious practices through torture and killings. In Russia at that time the religious communities were Christians, Jews and Muslims (especially in Asian Russia). Atrocious methods were adopted to terrorize Muslims and Jews. As the majority religious community was the Christians, most drastic methods were adopted to subdue Christian faith. The Cheka targeted mainly the churches and clergy because if they are terrorized and killed ordinary people would no longer be able to carry on religious practices –

priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given drowned in melted lead anddrowned in holes in the ice. An estimated 3,000 members of clergywere put to death in 1918 alone.

Atrocious Methods of Chekai) White officers were tied to planks and slowly fed them into

furnaces or tanks of boiling water.ii) Occasionally the skin was peeled off victims' hands to

produce "gloves".iii) In some places Cheka rolled naked people around in

barrels studded internally with nails.iv) Victims were crucified or stoned to death at some places.v) At times, rebelling peasants were buried alive.vi) At Orel, water was poured on naked prisoners bound in the

winter streets until they became living ice statues.vii) In Ukraine, Cheka detachments placed rats in iron tubes

sealed at one end with wire netting and the other placed against the body of a prisoner, with the tubes being heated until the rats gnawed through the victim's body in an effort to escape.

ix) In various prisons before execution, the condemned were stripped of their clothing and other belongings, which were shared among the Cheka executioners. Generally, they were shot inthe back of the neck as they entered the execution cellar, which became littered with corpses and soaked with blood.

x) Victims killed outside the town were conveyed by lorry, bound and gagged, to their place of execution, where they sometimes were made to dig their own graves.

The last mass scale torture and killings by Cheka took place at the municipal town of Kronstadt in March 1921, when a group ofnavy officers, soldiers along with their civilian supporters rebelled against the Bolshevik regime. So far they had been staunch supporters of the new regime as they could be fooled by the Bolshevik hypocrites. But torturous and self seeking activities of the Bolsheviks soon disillusioned them and they demanded what the hypocrites had promised to them – freedom of speech, abandonment of deportation to Gulags, change in Soviet war politics, and liberation of the soviets (workers' councils) from "party control”.

Soon Leon Trotsky, then the Minister of War in the Soviet Government, and the leader of the Red Army Sent a Cheka detachment to crush the uprising and they could successfully accomplish their assigned task through arrests and mass killings.

Thus Lenin was successful in ensuring the continuity of the minority Bolshevik ruling by silencing all forms of opposition through seer terrorizing and mass killings. But he was apprehensive that the repressed discontent may flare up a t any moment and relegate the Bolshevik Leninism to the museum of Fascist Terrorism of Dark History of Mankind. Moreover, Civil wars and inadvertent economic policies of War Communism had devastated the Russian economy. So, Lenin with great foresight reversed his economic policy, eschewed the path of instant socialism and announced the NEP (New Economic Policy) that allowed for transition to capitalism as an intermediary to Socialism. The terror reign of Cheka ended and Cheka was replacedby GPU (Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye or State Political Directorate) from 6.2.1922 and on 15.11. 1923 it was replaced by a unified autonomous secret agency OGPU (Obyedinyonnoye Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye or Joint State Political Directorate).

On paper, these agencies were free from the drastic terrorism of Cheka without any power to shoot at will and political suspects had to be brought before a judge in normal circumstances. In fact, the terror of the Cheka regime subsided considerably till the second wave of horror under Stalinism. Thiswas possible as horrified mass could now be appeased with concessions under NEP.

But the humanitarian milieu was short lived and emergence of Stalin after the death of Lenin in 1924, and Stalin’s interpretation of Socialism in his own way once again brought back the reign of terror in the Stalinist way. The second wave began since the end of 1920s.

There is a common belief that inhuman terrorizing and mass extermination of political opponents and genocide of minority communities and races in the modern era was inventions of Hitler and Stalin, but the archive papers disclosed by the Russian government during the 1990s has dispelled this belief. Documents from the Cheka archives have clearly demonstrated that the all

these crimes against humanity were rooted in Leninism. In fact, this single most important aspect of Leninism distinguished it from Marxism and later on shaped Communism and all forms of dictatorial oppression by means of inhuman extermination of opponents in future. Unfortunately Leninist psychosis persists inthe modern world as the worst curse of the human civilization still today. In the past Leninism had inspired Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Enver Hoxa of Albania, Pol Pot of Cambodia, various Naxalite groups and C.P.I. (M) Harmads in West Bengal, India to terrorize and exterminate political opponents and ethnic minorities. The Leninist curse is still rampant among the extremist and terrorist groups all over the world and it would take centuries for human civilization to be free from the curse of Leninism.

Stalin, who had hitherto been almost passive, promptly took uppower after the death of Lenin in 1924 by repressing or killing all political rivals and soon the second wave of horror started in the Stalinist way.

III. NKVD

During the regime of Joseph Stalin, Bolshevik repression took a new form and in this regard the agency that played the crucial role was the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyy Komissariat Venutrennikh Del, abbreviated NKVD). Although NKVD was created right after the Bolshevik takeover of power it was under CHEKA during the Leninist regime. Since 1930 Stalin made itthe leading agency since 1934 and by 1934 till the end of the World War II, all other espionage and secret repressive agencies became subordinate to it.

Like the CHEKA of Lenin, NKVD undertook to annihilate political opponents of Stalin, intellectuals skeptical about the designs of the Bolsheviks, clergy, Jews, foreign nationals working in USSR, and deportation of ethnic groups like the Cossacks to remote uninhabitable regions. In this regard there was hardly any difference between the policies of Hitler and Stalin. NKVD was also the supreme agency for international espionage that included assassination of foreign political

leaders, and political opponents of Stalin exiled in foreign lands.

The most novel aspect of NKVD was to reorganize GULAG, i.e. the forced labor camps to build up the Soviet economy, especiallydevelopment of remote difficult geographical regions like, Siberia.

Major Activities of NKVDAlthough Stalin executed many erstwhile members of the Cheka,

the Stalinist policy of repression followed the same line as the Cheka and at times, in a more horrible way and NKVD played the main role in this regard. The crime against humanity of the NKVD may be categorized in the following way.

a) Domestic Terrorizing Activities in GeneralArchival documents brought to light during the early 1990s by

the Russian government revealed that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret "plans". Most of thesepeople were convicted by NKVD troikas ("triplets") – special courts martial. Very little evidence was necessary. Anyone suspected to be an enemy of the Bolsheviks was convicted without any trial. A tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest, torture and in most of the cases killing. Innumerable mass graves of the victims have been discovered throughout Russia. NKVD plan prescribed the number andproportion of victims (branded as "public enemies") in a particular region were regularly arrested. The families of the victims were also faced the same fate. Children were killed either by drowning or slashing against poles or trees. Women weregang raped before killing. The activities were carried on in a series of waves in accordance with the dictates of the Politburo of the Communist Party.

b) Annihilation or resettlement of Ethnic CommunitiesEthnic communities like the Cossacks were either annihilated,

or forcibly resettled in remote areas or sent to the forced laborcamps (Gulag). Their properties, belongings and young women were divided among the NKVD chieftains and activists.

c) Killing of ForeignersAmerican and other foreign nationals working in various

Russian factories were arrested, tortured and most of them killed.

d) Religious CommunitiesINKVD was entrusted with the sacred mission of make USSR free

from all religious faiths and therefore, the religious heads of various categories of Christians, Judaism and slam were arrested and tortured to death and the common people with religious faith were terrorized to abandon religious practices.

e) EspionageAn extremely powerful and efficient espionage agency was

created by the NKVD and it spread its global network to all majorcities in Europe and USA. To run this organization well trained,loyal and extremely competent were employed. Agents were recruited from all walks of life in the Soviet Union, especially the intellectuals and aristocrats loyal to the Bolshevik governments mainly because of obtaini9ng various privileges. The espionage network also included local communists who were blind supporters of the Bolsheviks and many of these locally recruited agents were planted into the foreign government positions, policeand foreign espionage agencies like the CIA of the USA, MI-5 & 6 of UK etc. NKVD espionage network had two major activities:

i) Collection of information: This included all sorts of information – political, administrative, war efforts, economics etc. of the western countries. Special emphasis was placed on gathering information on technology, scientific knowledge and warmechanism.

ii) Kidnapping and murder of politicians both foreign and exiled Russian.

NKVD espionage network undertook to kidnap and assassinate targeted politicians, both foreign and Russian (mainly the political rivals of Stalin and politicians opposing Bolshevik rule).

Some of the politicians assassinated by this network wereLeon Trotsky: Killed in Mexico City in 1940Yevhen Konovalets, prominent Ukrainian nationalist leaderYevgeny Miller, former General of the Tsarist ArmyNoe Ramishvili, Prime Minister of independent GeorgiaBoris Savinkov, Russian revolutionary and anti-Bolshevik

terroristGuy Leland, French anti-Soviet intellectual and poetAlexander Kutepov, former General of the Tsarist Army

During Spanish Civil WarThe NKVD agents which had considerable control over the

Republican government through the Spanish Communist Party which was loyal to the Bolsheviks undertook to torture and kill thousands of Spanish nationals, Catholics, Trotskyites (like Andrés Nin, the secretary of the Trotskyites organization in Spain) and opponents of the Republican Government.

World War II operationsUntil the treaty between Germany and USSR broke leading to

German invasion of the latter, NKVD collaborated with Gestapo (German secret police) in annihilating Slavs and Jews. In course of an NKVD-Gestapo conference in March 194o, the KNVD agreed to handover to Gestapo the German and Austrian communists who had escaped into USSR. During the war the NKVD played a major role inarresting and killing defecting Russian soldiers. While the Red Army chased the receding German forces, in the liberated territories in East Europe, the NKVD and (later) NKGB carried outmass arrests, deportations, and executions of both collaborators with Germany and non-Communist resistance movements such as the Polish Armia Krajow.

The most heinous activity of the NKVD at the end of the war was the Katyn massacre.

Katyn MassacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre,

was a heinous crime against humanity by the NKVD. In April and May 1940 the NKVD, with the approval of Stalin executed brutally all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Total number of victims was around 22,000. Of them about 8,000 were Polish officers takenprisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest werePolish intelligence agents, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests.

IV. Gulag

One of the major functions of the NKVD was to run the Gulag orthe system of forced labor camps. Through this inhuman mechanism Stalin wanted to kill two birds with the same stone – to suppressthe political rivals and opponents of the Soviet government and at the same time build up soviet economy with the help of the

slave labor of the convicts. Gulag system had its origin ever since the takeover of power by the Bolsheviks, but it assumed significant form only since the 1930s.

Stalin had already launched five year plans for systematic andrapid development of the Soviet economy. The target was to build up basic and capital goods industries and infrastructure necessary for rapid development of these industries. The slave laborers of the Gulag camps came to considerable help in this regard. As a matter of fact, Soviet economy from 1930 to 1960 (Gulag system continued even after the death of Stalin in 1954) was a slave based economy. In ancient Athens, prosperity was an outcome of exhaustive use of slaves, in Ancient India also, the sudra class played the role of slaves to bring about prosperity for the upper castes. Slave system became very common during the middle ages. But the heinous system was abolished since the American civil war during the 1860s. Soviet Russia, especially since the Stalinist regime reintroduced the system.

The camps were scattered all over Russia, but majority of themwere located in remote areas and islands.

Slave labor in Soviet Union helped to build up infrastructure,heavy industries, metallurgy and armament industries, especially during the Second World War. Scientific developments were also possible through the interned scientists in Gulag camps, which were, however, not as harsh as the camps for ordinary laborers. The scientists were kept in relative comfort, but they did not have any freedom. Researches were to be conducted strictly in accordance with the dictates of the NKVD officials.

The remote and inaccessible areas of Russia like Siberia couldalso be developed with the help of the forced laborers.

The inmates of these camps consisted of ordinary criminals, kulaks (rich farmers) intellectuals dubious about the Soviet Regime, members of the clergy, all political rivals of Stalin andpolitical opponents of the Communist Party and Soviet government.They were branded as reactionaries and class enemies. A large number of victims were without any specific charge, and arrested by the NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment on flimsy grounds. Even petty crimes and jokes about the Soviet government and officials were enough ground to arrest and send to the forced labor camps. The basic target was to

collect specific number of laborers every month and that was doneby any means.

The conditions of these camps were such that ultimately, most of the laborers had to die due to over and arduous work, malnutrition, hunger and diseases without treatment. Thus Stalin was intelligent not to kill the political opponents (the so called class enemies) without extracting their potential labor. Through the Stalinist Gulag camps, enemies were exterminated and the Soviet economy could be built up with their labor.

According to archival (opened during early 1990s) and other source, the total number of Gulag laborers during 1930-1954 was around 14 million. Most of them died in the camps and a large number of those who survived were shot while the Germans invaded Soviet Union, so as to deprive Germans of the Russian labor resources. Total estimated death was around 10 million, i.e., only 4 million survived in a moribund condition. The system continued even after the death of Stalin, but the condition of the laborers improved considerably and premature death in the camps was rare during 1954-60. The system was abandoned completely in 1960.

Productivity of the laborers was much lower than that of the ordinary laborers because of malnourishment and lack of tools andmachineries. But the Soviet government set high targets of production for the camps. So the NKVD officials under the charge of the camps were compelled to force the starving workers more and more even 19 to 20 hours a day. The scarcity of food in the camps after the onset of the Second World War increased and at the same time demand for higher production from the war authorities increased. The NKVD now introduced an incentive scheme in the camps. Food ration of each laborer was tagged to the output target. So, as the workers became weaker and less efficient, they had to work harder to get access to the same foodration, which was barely subsistence food. So they had to die, either out of overwork or of hunger or both. Thus Stalin’s intentions were fulfilled -- to exterminate the so called enemiesof the state and extracting their labor power till death to buildup the “Glorious Soviet Economy”.

V. Post Stalinist Era

After the death of Joseph Stalin, the regime under Khrushchev abolished the NKVD and endeavored to end the reign of terror. Thus the horror of secret police ceased considerably but the increasing espionage activities, especially since the removal from power the liberal Khrushchev by Leonid Brezhnev, of the postStalinist agency The KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) i.e. the Committee for State Security became a serious menace topeace and stability of the world. The heinous and unprecedented unethical activities of this organization during the Col War regime were serious threats to the independence and sovereignty of the newly independent states. Through various devices the KGB attempted to have a control of the governments of these third world countries and pit them against USA. Not only in these countries but also in USA and other developed countries KGB agents penetrated social life, NGOs and important government positions including the police, military and counter intelligenceagencies of these countries. The members of the Communist Partiesof most of these countries were blindly loyal to the USSR and assisted the KGB in various ways to carry on their espionage and sabotaging activities. The KGB was a direct successor of the Cheka and the NKVD.

KGB was like a military service governed by army laws and regulations, similar to the Soviet Army. The major functions of the KGB may be classified as:

B i) Foreign intelligence & counterintelligenceii) Guarding the State Border of the USSRiii) Guarding the leadership of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Governmentiv) Investigatory activitiesv) Ensuring of government communicationsvi) Suppression of nationalism, dissent, and anti-Soviet

activitiesTypes of spiesKGBG agents i.e. the spies were of two types, legal and

illegal.Legal spies were resident spies associated with Soviet

embassies and consulates in different countries with full diplomatic safeguard.

The illegal spies, who were more important and free from limitations of the legal spies as regards espionage activities, did not enjoy diplomatic immunity. Most of them were planted intoforeign countries with false identity. In general they were duplicates of live or dead persons and their background story, passport etc, were prepared meticulously. Before implanting them to the target country they for sometime lived in any foreign country without any suspicious activity. So it was very difficultto find out their true identities. These spies were classified into two categories, viz. intelligence providers and intelligencerelaying agents).

Fields of operationThe fields of the activity of the spies may be categorized as:

i) political, ii) economic, iii) military-strategic iv) technological, and v) disinformation, to befool the counter agents of other countries.

Noteworthy activities since the mid 1960KGB played the crucial role in deposing Nikita Khrushchev from

power and installing Leonid Brezhnev into power in 1964. Brezhnevconferred more power and independence to the KGB and since mid 1960s KGB went into full swing.

KGB was successful implanting moles in various important positions in USA and other western countries. KGB could successfully recruit in 1967 recruiting the US Navy Chief WarrantOfficer John Anthony Walker who created a spy ring that operated for eighteen years enabling Soviet Intelligence to decipher some one million US Navy messages, and track the US Navy.

It could also recruit as moles Robert Hanssen of Federal Borough of Investigations (FBI), the counter intelligence agency of USA and the CIA Soviet Division officer Aldrich Ames during the 1980s.

KGB could successfully crush the uprising in Hungary in 1956 and the Prague Spring of "Socialism with a Human Face", in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The KGB played a crucial role in suppressing all ideological challenges to the communists, protests from religious groups, anddemands for democratic rights by the liberals. It could also crush all ideological differences and dissidents within the Communist Party.

The heinous activities of the KGB included: abduction, secret assassination, collaboration with drug traffickers and criminal organizations, and sponsoring various categories of terrorist organizations. One advantage of the KGB was that it got voluntaryand active cooperation from the communist parties in most of the countries. They were more loyal to the USSR than their own countries.

This role of the communist parties turned out to be a real threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the third world countries. The communists in a planned way entered in various government and non-government organizations and institution to become the source of intelligence to the KGB. Theywere also entrusted by the KGB with the task of running the propaganda machinery in favor of the government of USSR and its Communist Party and leaders. They propagated the false and exaggerated fear of US imperialism, forcing the governments of these countries lean more and more towards the USSR with increasing economic and strategic dependence and ultimately turning into virtual colonies of the Soviet Union.

The menace of Soviet secret police and espionage apparently ended with the fall of the Communist government in Russia. But has it really? The recent incident in Ukraine once again raises the fear of return of the old terror.

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The Author

The author of this booklet is a Ph.D. in economics and professionally an economist but his passion for knowledge compelshim at times to eschew the arena of economics and venture into other fields of knowledge, philosophy, current politics, espionage and religion are important among them. Dr. Basu may be contacted at rlbasu@rediffmail.com.

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