Руководство нквд 1930 1940

NKVD

Народный комиссариат внутренних дел Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh dyél
NKVD emblem
Agency overview
Formed	10 July 1934; 88 years ago
Preceding agencies	Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) Commissariats of Internal Affairs of all Union republics
Dissolved	15 March 1946; 77 years ago
Superseding agencies	Ministry of Internal Affairs People’s Commissariat for State Security
Type	Secret police Intelligence agency  • Law enforcement  • Gendarmerie  • Border guard  • Prison authority
Jurisdiction	Soviet Union
Headquarters	11-13 ulitsa Bol. Lubyanka, Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union
Agency executives	Genrikh Yagoda (1934–1936) Nikolai Yezhov (1936–1938) Lavrentiy Beria (1938–1945) Sergei Kruglov (1945–1946)
Parent agency	Council of the People’s Commissars
Child agencies	Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB) Main Directorate of Camps (Gulag) Main Directorate of Militsiya (GURKM) Main Directorate of Border and Internal Security (GUPiVO).

People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs

The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, romanized: Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, pronounced [nɐˈrod.nɨj kə.mʲɪ.sə.rʲɪˈat ˈvnut.rʲɪ.nʲɪx̬ dʲel]), abbreviated NKVD (НКВД listen (help·info)), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.

Established in 1917 as NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,^[1] the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country’s prisons and labor camps.^[2] It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934.^[3]

The functions of the OGPU (the secret police organization) were transferred to the NKVD around the year 1930, giving it a monopoly over law enforcement activities that lasted until the end of World War II.^[2] During this period, the NKVD included both ordinary public order activities, and secret police activities.^[4] The NKVD is known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin. It was led by Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria.^[5][6][7]

The NKVD undertook mass extrajudicial executions of citizens, and conceived, populated and administered the Gulag system of forced labour camps. Their agents were responsible for the repression of the wealthier peasantry.^[8][9] They oversaw the protection of Soviet borders and espionage (which included carrying out political assassinations), and enforced Soviet policy in communist movements and puppet governments in other countries,^[10] most notably the repression and massacres in Poland in 1937 and 1938 to crush opposition and establish political control.^[11]

In March 1946 all People’s Commissariats were renamed to Ministries. The NKVD became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).^[12]

History and structure[edit]

After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsarist police and set up the People’s Militsiya. The subsequent Russian October Revolution of 1917 saw a seizure of state power led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The Provisional Government’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), formerly under Georgy Lvov (from March 1917) and then under Nikolai Avksentiev (from 6 August [O.S. 24 July] 1917) and Alexei Nikitin (from 8 October [O.S. 25 September] 1917), turned into NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) under a People’s Commissar. However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Militsiya staffed by proletarians was largely inexperienced and unqualified. Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR established (20 December [O.S. 7 December] 1917) a secret political police, the Cheka, led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions, if that was deemed necessary in order to «protect the Russian Socialist-Communist revolution».

The Cheka was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate, or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR.^[13] In 1922 the USSR formed, with the RSFSR as its largest member. The GPU became the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya, and various other responsibilities.

In 1934, the NKVD of the RSFSR was transformed into an all-union security force, the NKVD (which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders soon came to call «the leading detachment of our party»), and the OGPU was incorporated into the NKVD as the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB); the separate NKVD of the RSFSR was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR). As a result, the NKVD also took over control of all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the Gulag) as well as the regular police. At various times, the NKVD had the following Chief Directorates, abbreviated as «ГУ»– Главное управление, Glavnoye upravleniye.

Chronology of Soviet security agencies
1917–22	Cheka under SNK of the RSFSR (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission)
1922–23	GPU under NKVD of the RSFSR (State Political Directorate)
1920–91	PGU KGB or INO under Cheka (later KGB) of the USSR (First Chief Directorate)
1923–34	OGPU under SNK of the USSR (Joint State Political Directorate)
1934–46	NKVD of the USSR (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
1934–41	GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR (Main Directorate of State Security of People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
1941	NKGB of the USSR (People’s Commissariat of State Security)
1943–46	NKGB of the USSR (People’s Commissariat for State Security)
1946–53	MGB of the USSR (Ministry of State Security)
1946–54	MVD of the USSR (Ministry of Internal Affairs)
1947–51	KI MID of the USSR (Committee of Information under Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
1954–78	KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (Committee for State Security)
1978–91	KGB of the USSR (Committee for State Security)
1991	MSB of the USSR (Interrepublican Security Service)
1991	TsSB of the USSR (Central Intelligence Service)
1991	KOGG of the USSR (Committee for the Protection of the State Border)
v t e

ГУГБ – государственной безопасности, of State Security (GUGB, Glavnoye upravleniye gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti)

ГУРКМ– рабоче-крестьянской милиции, of Workers and Peasants Militsiya (GURKM, Glavnoye upravleniye raboče-krest’yanskoi militsyi)

ГУПВО– пограничной и внутренней охраны, of Border and Internal Guards (GUPVO, GU pograničnoi i vnytrennei okhrany)

ГУПО– пожарной охраны, of Firefighting Services (GUPO, GU požarnoi okhrany)

ГУШосДор– шоссейных дорог, of Highways (GUŠD, GU šosseynykh dorog)

ГУЖД– железных дорог, of Railways (GUŽD, GU železnykh dorog)

ГУЛаг– Главное управление исправительно-трудовых лагерей и колоний, (GULag, Glavnoye upravleniye ispravitelno-trudovykh lagerey i kolonii)

ГЭУ – экономическое, of Economics (GEU, Glavnoye ekonomičeskoie upravleniye)

ГТУ – транспортное, of Transport (GTU, Glavnoye transportnoie upravleniye)

ГУВПИ – военнопленных и интернированных, of POWs and interned persons (GUVPI, Glavnoye upravleniye voyennoplennikh i internirovannikh)

Yezhov era[edit]

Until the reorganization begun by Nikolai Yezhov with a purge of the regional political police in the autumn of 1936 and formalized by a May 1939 directive of the All-Union NKVD by which all appointments to the local political police were controlled from the center, there was frequent tension between centralized control of local units and the collusion of those units with local and regional party elements, frequently resulting in the thwarting of Moscow’s plans.^[14]

During Yezhov’s time in office, the Great Purge reached its height. In the years 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were executed for ‘crimes against the state’. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps (or during transport to them).^[15]

On 3 February 1941, the 4th Department (Special Section, OO) of GUGB NKVD security service responsible for the Soviet Armed Forces military counter-intelligence,^[16] consisting of 12 Sections and one Investigation Unit, was separated from GUGB NKVD USSR.

The official liquidation of OO GUGB within NKVD was announced on 12 February by a joint order No. 00151/003 of NKVD and NKGB USSR. The rest of GUGB was abolished and staff was moved to newly created People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). Departments of former GUGB were renamed Directorates. For example, foreign intelligence unit known as Foreign Department (INO) became Foreign Directorate (INU); GUGB political police unit represented by Secret Political Department (SPO) became Secret Political Directorate (SPU), and so on. The former GUGB 4th Department (OO) was split into three sections. One section, which handled military counter-intelligence in NKVD troops (former 11th Section of GUGB 4th Department OO) become 3rd NKVD Department or OKR (Otdel KontrRazvedki), the chief of OKR NKVD was Aleksander Belyanov.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941), the NKGB USSR was abolished and on July 20, 1941, the units that formed NKGB became part of the NKVD. The military CI was also upgraded from a department to a directorate and put in NKVD organization as the (Directorate of Special Departments or UOO NKVD USSR). The NKVMF, however, did not return to the NKVD until January 11, 1942. It returned to NKVD control on January 11, 1942, as UOO 9th Department controlled by P. Gladkov. In April 1943, Directorates of Special Departments was transformed into SMERSH and transferred to the People’s Defense and Commissariates. At the same time, the NKVD was reduced in size and duties again by converting the GUGB to an independent unit named the NKGB.

In 1946, all Soviet Commissariats were renamed «ministries». Accordingly, the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the USSR became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), while the NKGB was renamed as the Ministry of State Security (MGB).

In 1953, after the arrest of Lavrenty Beria, the MGB merged back into the MVD. The police and security services finally split in 1954 to become:

• The USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), responsible for the criminal militia and correctional facilities.
• The USSR Committee for State Security (KGB), responsible for the political police, intelligence, counter-intelligence, personal protection (of the leadership) and confidential communications.

Main Directorates (Departments)[edit]

• State Security
• Workers-Peasants Militsiya
• Border and Internal Security
• Firefighting security
• Correction and Labor camps
• Other smaller departments
  • Department of Civil registration
  • Financial (FINO)
  • Administration
  • Human resources
  • Secretariat
  • Special assignment

Ranking system (State Security)[edit]

In 1935–1945 Main Directorate of State Security of NKVD had its own ranking system before it was merged in the Soviet military standardized ranking system.

Top-level commanding staff

• Commissioner General of State Security (later in 1935)
• Commissioner of State Security 1st Class
• Commissioner of State Security 2nd Class
• Commissioner of State Security 3rd Class
• Commissioner of State Security (Senior Major of State Security, before 1943)

Senior commanding staff

• Colonel of State Security (Major of State Security, before 1943)
• Lieutenant Colonel of State Security (Captain of State Security, before 1943)
• Major of State Security (Senior Lieutenant of State Security, before 1943)

Mid-level commanding staff

• Captain of State Security (Lieutenant of State Security, before 1943)
• Senior Lieutenant of State Security (Junior Lieutenant of State Security, before 1943)
• Lieutenant of State Security (Sergeant of State Security, before 1942)
• Junior Lieutenant of State Security (Sergeant of State Security, before 1942)

Junior commanding staff

• Master Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)
• Senior Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)
• Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)
• Junior Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)

NKVD activities[edit]

The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union. This role was accomplished through massive political repression, including authorised murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations and mass deportations.

Domestic repressions[edit]

In implementing Soviet internal policy towards perceived enemies of the Soviet state («enemies of the people»), untold multitudes of people were sent to GULAG camps and hundreds of thousands were executed by the NKVD. Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas («triplets»)– special courts martial. Evidential standards were very low: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Use of «physical means of persuasion» (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD itself. Hundreds of mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Documented evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret «plans». Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially «public enemies») in a given region (e.g. the quotas for clergy, former nobles etc., regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486.

The purges were organized in a number of waves according to the decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party. Some examples are the campaigns among engineers (Shakhty Trial), party and military elite plots (Great Purge with Order 00447), and medical staff («Doctors’ Plot»). Gas vans were used in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge in the cities of Moscow, Ivanovo and Omsk^{[17][18][19][20]}

A number of mass operations of the NKVD were related to the persecution of whole ethnic categories. For example, the Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles.^[21] Whole populations of certain ethnicities were forcibly resettled. Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention. When disillusioned American citizens living in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U.S. passports to leave the USSR (their original U.S. passports had been taken for ‘registration’ purposes years before), none were issued. Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested all the Americans, who were taken to Lubyanka Prison and later shot.^[22] American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being ‘poisoned’ by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps. Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at Yuzhnoye Butovo District near Moscow.^[23] Even so, the people of the Soviet Republics still formed the majority of NKVD victims.

The NKVD also served as arm of the Russian Soviet communist government for the lethal mass persecution and destruction of ethnic minorities and religious beliefs, such as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, Greek Catholics, Islam, Judaism and other religious organizations, an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov.

International operations[edit]

During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed to oppose him. Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as Pavel Sudoplatov and Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including the United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as Martha Dodd. Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business,^[24] where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated.^[25]

The NKVD’s intelligence and special operations (Inostranny Otdel) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of the USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of Joseph Stalin. Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were:

• Leon Trotsky, a personal political enemy of Stalin and his most bitter international critic, killed in Mexico City in 1940;
• Yevhen Konovalets, prominent Ukrainian nationalist leader who was attempting to create a separatist movement in Soviet Ukraine; assassinated in Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Yevgeny Miller, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army; in the 1930s, he was responsible for funding anti-communist movements inside the USSR with the support of European governments. Kidnapped in Paris and brought to Moscow, where he was interrogated and executed
• Noe Ramishvili, Prime Minister of independent Georgia, fled to France after the Bolshevik takeover; responsible for funding and coordinating Georgian nationalist organizations and the August uprising, he was assassinated in Paris
• Boris Savinkov, Russian revolutionary and anti-Bolshevik terrorist (lured back into Russia and allegedly killed in 1924 by the Trust Operation of the GPU);
• Sidney Reilly, British agent of the MI6 who deliberately entered Russia in 1925 trying to expose the Trust Operation to avenge Savinkov’s death;
• Alexander Kutepov, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army, who was active in organizing anti-communist groups with the support of French and British governments

Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Walter Krivitsky, Lev Sedov, Ignace Reiss, and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg.^{[26][27][28][29][30]}

The pro-Soviet leader Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang received NKVD assistance in conducting a purge to coincide with Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a «Fascist Trotskyite plot» to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff, General Ma Hushan, Ma Shaowu, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang, and Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under soviet influence.^[31]

Spanish Civil War[edit]

During the Spanish Civil War, the NKVD ran Section X coordinating the Soviet intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans.^[32] NKVD agents, acting in conjunction with the Communist Party of Spain, exercised substantial control over the Republican government, using Soviet military aid to help further Soviet influence.^[33] The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around the capital Madrid, which were used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of the NKVD’s enemies, at first focusing on Spanish Nationalists and Spanish Catholics, while from late 1938 increasingly anarchists and Trotskyists were the objects of persecution.^[34] In 1937, Andrés Nin, the secretary of the Trotskyist POUM and his colleagues were tortured and killed in an NKVD prison in Alcalá de Henares.^[35]

World War II operations[edit]

Prior to the German invasion, in order to accomplish its own goals, the NKVD was prepared to cooperate even with such organizations as the German Gestapo. In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and the Gestapo met for one week in Zakopane, to coordinate the pacification of Poland; see Gestapo–NKVD conferences. It is claimed that the Soviet Union deported hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to the Gestapo, as unwanted foreigners, together with their documents. However, according to the work of scholar Wilhelm Mensing, there is no evidence that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as «anti-fascists» for deportations.^[36] Furthermore, many NKVD units were later to fight the Wehrmacht, for example the 10th NKVD Rifle Division, which fought at the Battle of Stalingrad.

After the German invasion, the NKVD evacuated and killed prisoners. During World War II, NKVD Internal Troops units were used for rear area security, including preventing the retreat of Soviet Union army divisions. Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used at the front to stem the occurrence of desertion through Stalin’s Order No. 270 and Order No. 227 decrees in 1941 and 1942, which aimed to raise troop morale via brutality and coercion. At the beginning of the war the NKVD formed 15 rifle divisions, which had expanded by 1945 to 53 divisions and 28 brigades.^[37] Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used in the front-lines, for example during the Battle of Stalingrad and the Crimean offensive.^[37] Unlike the Waffen-SS, the NKVD did not field any armored or mechanized units.^[37]

In the enemy-held territories, the NKVD carried out numerous missions of sabotage. After the fall of Kiev, NKVD agents set fire to the Nazi headquarters and various other targets, eventually burning down much of the city center.^[38] Similar actions took place across the occupied Byelorussia and Ukraine.

The NKVD (later KGB) carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and non-communist resistance movements such as the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army aiming to separate from the Soviet Union, among others. The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1940–1941, including the Katyń massacre.^[39][40] On 26 November 2010, the Russian State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin’s responsibility for the Katyn massacre, the execution of 22,000 Polish POWs and intellectual leaders by Stalin’s NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material «not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.»^[41]

NKVD units were also used to repress the prolonged partisan war in Ukraine and the Baltics, which lasted until the early 1950s. NKVD also faced strong opposition in Poland from the
Polish resistance known as the Armia Krajowa.

Postwar operations[edit]

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev halted the NKVD purges. From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of victims were legally «rehabilitated» (i.e., acquitted and had their rights restored). Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation out of fear or lack of documents. The rehabilitation was not complete: in most cases the formulation was «due to lack of evidence of the case of crime». Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation «cleared of all charges».

Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of the particular violation of anyone’s rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also «purged» without legitimate criminal investigations and court decisions. In the 1990s and 2000s, a small number of ex-NKVD agents living in the Baltic states were convicted of crimes against the local population.

Intelligence activities[edit]

These included:

• Establishment of a widespread spy network through the Comintern.
• Operations of Richard Sorge, the «Red Orchestra», Willi Lehmann, and other agents who provided valuable intelligence during World War II.
• Recruitment of important UK officials as agents in the 1940s.
• Penetration of British intelligence (MI6) and counter-intelligence (MI5) services.
• Collection of detailed nuclear weapons design information from the U.S. and Britain during the Manhattan Project.
• Disruption of several confirmed plots to assassinate Stalin.
• Establishment of the People’s Republic of Poland and earlier its communist party along with training activists, during World War II. The first President of Poland after the war was Bolesław Bierut, an NKVD agent.

Soviet economy[edit]

The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas. Colonization of Siberia, the Far North, and the Far East was among the explicitly stated goals in the very first laws concerning Soviet labor camps. Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of the labor camps were part of the Soviet planned economy, and the NKVD had its own production plans.^{[citation needed]}

The most unusual part of the NKVD’s achievements was its role in Soviet science and arms development. Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the Gulag, colloquially known as sharashkas. These prisoners continued their work in these prisons, and later released, some of them became world leaders in science and technology. Among such sharashka members were Sergey Korolev, the head designer of the Soviet rocket program and first human space flight mission in 1961, and Andrei Tupolev, the famous airplane designer. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also imprisoned in a sharashka, and based his novel The First Circle on his experiences there.

After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry, under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov. The scientists were not prisoners, but the project was supervised by the NKVD because of its great importance and the corresponding requirement for absolute security and secrecy. Also, the project used information obtained by the NKVD from the United States.

People’s Commissars[edit]

The agency was headed by a people’s commissar (minister). His first deputy was the director of State Security Service (GUGB).

• 1934–1936 Genrikh Yagoda, both people’s commissar of Interior and director of State Security
• 1936–1938 Nikolai Yezhov, people’s commissar of Interior
  • 1936–1937 Yakov Agranov, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
  • 1937–1938 Mikhail Frinovsky, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
  • 1938 Lavrentiy Beria, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
• 1938–1945 Lavrentiy Beria, people’s commissar of Interior
  • 1938–1941 Vsevolod Merkulov, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
  • 1941–1943 Vsevolod Merkulov, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
• 1945–1946 Sergei Kruglov, people’s commissar of Interior

Note: In the first half of 1941 Vsevolod Merkulov transformed his agency into separate commissariat (ministry), but it was merged back to the people’s commissariat of Interior soon after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1943 Merkulov once again split his agency this time for good.

Officers[edit]

Andrei Zhukov has singlehandedly identified every single NKVD officer involved in 1930s arrests and killings by researching a Moscow archive. There are just over 40,000 names on the list.^[42]

See also[edit]

• Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Terror, famine and the Gulag
• Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
• 10th NKVD Rifle Division
• Hitler Youth conspiracy, an NKVD case pursued in 1938
• NKVD filtration camp
  • NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–49, internment camps set up at the end of World War II in eastern Germany (often in former Nazi POW or concentration camps) and other areas under Soviet domination, to imprison those suspected of collaboration with the Nazis, or others deemed to be troublesome to Soviet ambitions.

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

See also: Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Violence and terror and Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Terror, famine and the Gulag

• Hastings, Max (2015). The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939 -1945 (paperback). London: William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-750374-2.

External links[edit]

• Media related to NKVD at Wikimedia Commons
• For evidence on Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War, see the full text of Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks from the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
• NKVD.org: information site about the NKVD
• (in Russian) MVD: 200-year history of the Ministry
• (in Russian) Memorial: history of the OGPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB Archived 2016-12-10 at the Wayback Machine

Coordinates: 55°45′38″N 37°37′41″E / 55.7606°N 37.6281°E

РЫКОВ Алексей Иванович (1881-1938)

       Нарком внутренних дел с 25 октября по 4 ноября (7-17 ноября) 1917 г.
       Профессиональный революционер. Учился, но не окончил юридический факультет Казанского университета. Назначен наркомом II съездом Советов. 10 ноября 1917 года подписал постановление о создании милиции. Подал в отставку и вышел из ЦК РКП(б), так как считал возможным создание «однородного социалистического» правительства, сформированного из представителей всех партий, входящих во ВЦИК. В 1918-1920 и 1923-1924 годах -председатель Высшего совета народного хозяйства. С 1921 года — заместитель Председателя Совнаркома РСФСР.  С 1924 по 1930 год — Председатель Совнаркома СССР. С 1931 по 1936 год — нарком связи СССР. На судебном процессе по делу о «правотроцкистском блоке» 1938 года приговорен к расстрелу. Реабилитирован посмертно.

    ПЕТРОВСКИЙ Григорий Иванович (1878-1958)

       Нарком внутренних дел РСФСР с ноября 1917 по март 1919 г.
      Профессиональный революционер. Депутат IV Государственной думы. С 1919 по 1938 годы — председатель Всеукраинского ЦИК. С 1926 по 1939 годы — кандидат в члены Политбюро ЦК ВКП(б). С 1940 года — заместитель директора Музея Революции.

    ДЗЕРЖИНСКИЙ Феликс Эдмундович (1877-1926)

         Нарком внутренних дел РСФСР с марта 1919 по август 1923 г.
       Член компартии с 1895 года. Во время Октябрьской революции 1917 года -член Военно-революционного комитета, руководившего вооружейным восстанием. В первые дни после революции был сторонником использования милиции Временного правительства для охраны общественного порядка. С 1917 года — председатель ВЧК при СНК РСФСР, преобразованной в феврале 1922 года в Главное политическое управление при НКВД РСФСР. В ноябре 1923 года было образовано Объединенное государственное политическое управление на правах самостоятельного наркомата (ОГПУ РСФСР), которое возглавил Ф.Э. Дзержинский, оставив пост наркома внутренних дел. Одновременно с руководством ВЧК и НКВД РСФСР с 1921 года — нарком путей сообщения РСФСР (с 1922 г. — НКПС СССР). С 1924 по 1926 год — председатель Высшего совета народного хозяйства. С 1921 года — кандидат в члены Политбюро ЦК РКП(б).

    БЕЛОБОРОДОВ Александр Георгиевич (1891-1938)

      Нарком внутренних дел РСФСР с августа 1923 по ноябрь 1927 г.
      Участник рабочего и революционного движения на Урале. Рабочий. Член компартии с 1907 года. В 1918 году — председатель Уральского областного Совета. Отдал распоряжение о расстреле царской семьи, находившейся на территории Уралоблсовета. В 1919 году — уполномоченный Совета обороны по подавлению восстания казаков на Дону. Заместитель начальника политуправления Реввоенсовета. С 1919 года — заместитель наркома внутренних дел. Назначен наркомом по рекомендации Ф.Э. Дзержинского. Снят с должности наркома как «активный участник троцкистской оппозиции». В 1927 году исключен из РКП(б) и постановлением Особого совещания ОГПУ отправлен в ссылку сроком на три года. В 1929 году возвращен из ссылки, восстановлен в РКП(б), назначен уполномоченным Комитета заготовок при СНК СССР на работу в Ростовскую область. В 1936 году арестован. В 1938 году расстрелян. В 1958 году реабилитирован.

    ТОЛМАЧЕВ Владимир Николаевич (1886-1937)

      Нарком внутренних дел РСФСР с января 1928 по январь 1931 г.
      Член компартии с 1904 года. В 1919 году — член Реввоенсовета Крымской республики. В 1921-1922 годах — секретарь Кубано-Черноморского обкома ВКП(б). С 1924 по 1928 годы — заместитель председателя Северо-Кавказского крайисполкома. При наркоме В.Н. Толмачеве НКВД союзных и автономных республик были упразднены. Руководство милицией осуществлялось ОГПУ СССР. В.Н. Толмачев был исключен изВКП(б) как член «фракционной группировки Смирнова, Толмачева, Эйсмонта», которые обсуждали между собой возможность замены И.В. Сталина на посту Генсека ЦК ВКП(б). Вскоре был репрессирован. В 1937 году расстрелян. В 1962 году реабилитирован.

    ЯГОДА Генрих Григорьевич (1891-1938)

       Нарком внутренних дел СССР с июля 1934 по сентябрь 1936 г.
      Член компартии с 1907 года. В 1917 году — член Высшей военной инспекции РККА. С 1919 года — член коллегии Наркомата внешней торговли. С 1920 года — член Президиума ВЧК, с 1924 года — заместитель председателя ОГПУ СССР. В июле 1934 года было упразднено ОГПУ и образован НКВД СССР. Наркомом был назначен Г.Г.Ягода, исполнявший обязанности председателя ОГПУ вместо скончавшегося в мае 1934 года В.Р. Менжинского. В 1935 году Ягоде было присвоено звание «генеральный комиссар государственной безопасности». В сентябре 1936 года снят с должности наркома внутренних дел. С 1936 по апрель 1937 года — нарком связи СССР. Снят с должности с официальной формулировкой «…вследствие обнаруженных должностных преступлений уголовного характера». В 1938 году на судебном процессе по делу «правотроцкистского блока» приговорен к расстрелу.

    ЕЖОВ Николай Иванович (1895-1940)

         Нарком внутренних дел СССР с сентября 1936 по декабрь 1938 г.
        Член компартии с 1917 года. С 1922 года — секретарь Марийского обкома ВКП(б), секретарь Семипалатинского губернского, Казахского краевого комитетов ВКП(б). В 1929-1930 годах — заместитель наркома земледелия СССР. В 1930-1934 годах — заведующий Распределительным отделом и Отделом кадров ЦК ВКП(б). С 1934 года — заместитель председателя Комиссии партийного контроля при ЦК ВКП(б). С начала 1938 года наряду с руководством НКВД является наркомом водного транспорта. Генеральный комиссар государственной безопасности. В феврале 1940 года Военной коллегией Верховного суда приговорен к расстрелу.

    БЕРИЯ Лаврентий Павлович (1899-1953)

      Нарком внутренних дел СССР с декабря 1938 по декабрь 1945 г., министр внутренних дел СССР с 15 марта по 26 июня 1953 г.
      Работал в органах ЧК Закавказья, председатель ГПУ Грузии, секретарь компартии Грузии, секретарь Закавказского крайкома ВКП(б). Генеральный комиссар государственной безопасности, Маршал Советского Союза. Специальным судебным присутствием Верховного суда СССР 23 декабря 1953 года приговорен к расстрелу.

    КРУГЛОВ Сергей Никифорович (1907-1977)

      Министр внутренних дел СССР с декабря 1945 по март 1953 г. и с июня 1953 по февраль 1956 г.
      Генерал-полковник.
      Окончил Московский институт востоковедения. В 1936-1937 годах учился в Институте Красной профессуры. Был ответственным организатором ЦК ВКП(б), особоуполномоченным НКВД СССР. С 1940 года — заместитель наркома внутренних дел СССР. В 1941 году — начальник управления оборонным строительством, командующий 4-й саперной армией. В 1956 году — заместитель министра строительства электростанций. В 1957 году -заместитель председателя совнархоза Кировского административно-экономического района. С 1958 года — на пенсии по болезни и инвалидности. В январе 1960 года исключен из КПСС, погиб в июне 1977 года, попав под поезд.

     ДУДОРОВ Николай Павлович (1906-1977)

       Министр внутренних дел СССР с февраля 1956 по январь 1960 г. Звание не присваивалось.
      Окончил Московский химико-технологический институт. В 1941-1944 годах -начальник различных главков в Министерстве строительных материалов и Министерстве строительства СССР. Заведующий отделом строительства МГК КПСС, заместитель председателя Моссовета. В 1954-1956 годах — заведующий отделом строительства ЦК КПСС. В 1960-1962 годах — генеральный правительственный комиссар Всемирной выставки в 1967 году в Москве. В 1962-1972 годах — начальник Главного управления промышленности и строительных материалов Мосгорисполкома. С 1972 года на пенсии.

    СТАХАНОВ Николай Павлович (1901-1977)

       Министр внутренних дел РСФСР с февраля 1955 по июнь 1961 г. Генерал-лейтенант.
      Окончил Военную академию им. М.В. Фрунзе. Служил в пограничных войсках. В 1942-1952 годах — начальник пограничных войск. В 1952 году — заместитель министра госбезопасности СССР. В марте 1953 года назначен начальником Главного управления милиции МВД СССР. С 1954 года — первый заместитель министра внутренних дел СССР. В феврале 1955 года, наряду с МВД СССР, образуется МВД РСФСР. Министром внутренних дел РСФСР назначен Н.П. Стаханов. С 1961 года на пенсии.

    ТИКУНОВ Вадим Степанович (1921-1980)

      Министр внутренних дел (охраны общественного порядка) РСФСР с июня 1961 по сентябрь 1966 г. Генерал внутренней службы второго ранга.
      Окончил Алма-Атинский юридический институт. В 1942 году — секретарь Ак-тюбинского обкома ЛКСМ Казахстана. В 1944 году работал в ЦК ВЛКСМ. С 1945 года — второй секретарь ЛКСМ Эстонии. С 1947 по 1952 годы — первый секретарь Владимирского обкома ВЛКСМ, секретарь Владимирского горкома КПСС, Владимирского обкома КПСС. В1952-1959 годах — заведующий сектором, заместитель заведующего отдела административных органов ЦК КПСС. В 1959-1961 годах — заместитель председателя КГБ СССР. С 1967 по 1969 год — в отделе ЦК КПСС по работе с заграничными кадрами и выездам за границу. В 1969-1974 годах — чрезвычайный советник-посланник в Румынии. В 1974-1978 годах — чрезвычайный и полномочный посол СССР в Верхней Вольте, а в 1978-1980 годах — в Камеруне.

    ЩЕЛОКОВ Николай Анисимович (1910-1984)

      Министр внутренних дел (охраны общественного порядка) СССР с сентября 1966 по декабрь 1982 г. Генерал армии, доктор экономических наук.
      В 1939-1941 годах — председатель Днепропетровского городского Совета. Участник Великой Отечественной войны. С 1946 года — заместитель министра местной промышленности УССР. С1951 года — первый заместитель председателя Совета Министров Молдавской ССР. В 1965-1966 годах — второй секретарь ЦК КП Молдавии. В 1982-1984 годах — в группе генеральных инспекторов Министерства обороны СССР. Покончил жизнь самоубийством.

    ФЕДОРЧУК Виталий Васильевич (р. 1918)

       Министр внутренних дел СССР с декабря 1982 по январь 1986 г. Генерал армии.
      Окончил Высшую школу КГБ. В 1936-1939 годах — курсант военного училища. С 1939 года — в органах государственной безопасности. Участник Великой Отечественной войны 1941-1945 годов. С 1970 года — председатель КГБ УССР. В мае-ноябре 1982 года — председатель КГБ СССР. С 1986 по 1991 годы — в группе генеральных инспекторов Министерства обороны СССР. На пенсии.

    ВЛАСОВ Александр Владимирович (р. 1932)

       Министр внутренних дел СССР с января 1986 по октябрь 1988 г. Генерал-полковник.
      Окончил Иркутский горно-металлургический институт. В 1954-1964 годах -на комсомольской и партийной работе в Иркутской области. С 1965 года — секретарь, второй секретарь Якутского обкома КПСС. В 1972-1975 годах — инспектор ЦК КПСС. С 1975 года — секретарь Чечено-Ингушского обкома КПСС, с 1984 года — первый секретарь Ростовского обкома КПСС. В 1988-
      1991 годах — Председатель Совета Министров РСФСР, заведующий отделом
      социально-экономической политики ЦК КПСС. На пенсии.

    БАКАТИН Вадим Викторович (р. 1937)

       Министр внутренних дел СССР с октября 1988 по декабрь 1990 г. Генерал-лейтенант.
      Окончил Новосибирский инженерно-строительный институт, Академию общественных наук при ЦК КПСС. С 1960 по 1973 годы — на партийной работе: второй секретарь Кемеровского горкома, заведующий отделом, секретарь Кемеровского обкома КПСС. С 1983 по 1985 годы — инспектор ЦК КПСС. В 1985-1987 годах — первый секретарь Кировского обкома КПСС. В 1987-1988 годах — первый секретарь Кемеровского обкома КПСС. В 1990-1991 годах -член Президентского совета СССР. В августе — декабре 1991 года — председатель КГБ СССР, Межреспубликанской службы безопасности. С марта
      1992 года — вице-президент Международного фонда экономических и социальных реформ «Реформа».

    ПУГО Борис Карлович (1937-1991)

       Министр внутренних дел СССР с декабря 1990 по август 1991 г. Генерал-полковник.
      Окончил Рижский политехнический институт. В 1961-1973 годах — на комсомольской и партийной работе в Латвии, секретарь ЦК ВЛКСМ. В 1974-1976 годах — инспектор ЦК КПСС, заведующий отделом организационно-партийной работы ЦК Компартии Латвии, первый секретарь Рижского горкома партии. С 1976 года — в органах государственной безопасности, с 1980 года — председатель КГБ Латвийской ССР. С 1984 года — первый секретарь ЦК Компартии Латвии, с 1988 года — председатель Комитета партийного контроля при ЦК КПСС. Покончил жизнь самоубийством.

    БАРАННИКОВ Виктор Павлович (1940-1995)

      Министр внутренних дел РСФСР с сентября 1990 по август 1991 г. Министр внутренних дел СССР с августа по декабрь 1991 года. В декабре 1991 — январе 1992 года — министр безопасности и внутренних дел РСФСР. Генерал армии.
      Окончил Высшую школу милиции. В органах внутренних дел с 1961 года. В 1992-1993 годах — генеральный директор Агентства федеральной безопасности РФ, министр безопасности РФ.

    ТРУШИН Василий Петрович (р. 1934)

       Министр внутренних дел РСФСР с октября 1989 по сентябрь 1990 г. Генерал-полковник внутренней службы.
      Окончил Московский горный институт. Был секретарем Московского горкома партии, начальником ГУВД Мосгорисполкома. В 1990-1991 годах — заместитель министра внутренних дел СССР. На пенсии.

    ДУНАЕВ Андрей Федорович (р. 1939)

       Министр внутренних дел РСФСР с сентября по декабрь 1991 г. Генерал-лейтенант внутренней службы.
      Окончил Высшую школу милиции и Академию МВД СССР. С 1959 года на различных должностях в органах внутренних дел. В 1990-1991 годах — заместитель министра внутренних дел РСФСР. В1992-1993 годах — первый заместитель министра внутренних дел Российской Федерации. На пенсии.

    ЕРИН Виктор Федорович (р. 1944)

       Министр внутренних дел Российской Федерации с января 1992 по июль1995 г. Генерал армии. Герой России.
      Окончил Высшую школу МВД СССР. В органах внутренних дел с 1964 года. В 1990-1991 годах — заместитель, первый заместитель, министр внутренних дел РСФСР. В сентябре-декабре 1991 года — первый заместитель министра внутренних дел СССР. В декабре 1991 — январе 1992 года — первый заместитель министра безопасности и внутренних дел РФ. С июля 1995 года — заместитель директора Службы внешней разведки РФ.

    КУЛИКОВ Анатолий Сергеевич (р. 1946)

       Министр внутренних дел Российской Федерации с июля 1995 по 23 марта1998 г. Генерал армии.
      В1966 году окончил Орджоникидзевское высшее военное командное училище внутренних войск МВД СССР, затем — Военную академию им. М.В. Фрунзе, Военную академию Генерального штаба. Доктор экономических наук. Прошел во внутренних войсках путь от командира взвода до заместителя министра внутренних дел РФ — командующего внутренними войсками МВД России. Депутат Государственной Думы III созыва.

    СТЕПАШИН Сергей Вадимович (р. 1952)

        Министр внутренних дел РФ с марта 1998 по май 1999 г. Генерал-полковник.
      Окончил Высшее политическое училище МВД СССР и Военно-политическую академию им. В.И. Ленина, доктор юридических наук, профессор. Трудовой путь: преподаватель Высшего политического училища МВД СССР, депутат Верховного Совета РСФСР, заместитель министра безопасности, директор Федеральной службы контрразведки, министр юстиции. С мая по август 1999 года — председатель Правительства Российской Федерации. Ныне -председатель Счетной Палаты РФ.

    РУШАЙЛО Владимир Борисович (р. 1953)

       Министр внутренних дел Российской Федерации с мая 1999 по март 2001 г. Генерал-полковник.
      Окончил Омскую высшую школу милиции. Работал в МУРе. Организовал Московское региональное управление по борьбе с организованной преступностью и возглавлял его. Был заместителем начальника ГУБОП МВД РФ, заместителем министра внутренних дел России. С марта 2001 года — Секретарь Совета Безопасности РФ.

    ГРЫЗЛОВ Борис Вячеславович (р. 1950)

          Министр внутренних дел Российской Федерации с марта 2001 г. Специальное звание не присваивалось.
        Родился 15 декабря 1950 года в семье военного летчика и учительницы. В 1954 году семья Грызловых переехала в Ленинград, где Б.В. Грызлов окончил физико-математическую школу с золотой медалью. После школы поступил в Ленинградский электротехнический институт связи, по окончании которого получил специальность радиоинженера и начал работать в НПО имени Коминтерна (ВНИИ мощного радиостроения). Участвовал в разработке космических систем связи. В 1977 году перешел в Ленинградское производственное объединение «Электроприбор», где проработал почти 20 лет, пройдя путь от ведущего конструктора до директора крупного подразделения. С 1996 по 1999 годы трудился в сфере высшего образования: по его инициативе были созданы Институт ускоренного обучения руководящих работников и Центральный институт работников городского хозяйства. В это же время возглавил Учебно-методический центр новых технологий обучения Балтийского государственного технического университета («Военмех» имени Д.Ф. Устинова). В 1999 году возглавил Межрегиональный фонд делового сотрудничества «Развитие регионов». В декабре 1999 году избран депутатом Государственной Думы по федеральному списку межрегионального движения «Единство». В январе 2000 года избран лидером фракции «Единство» в Госдуме. 28 марта 2001 года назначен министром внутренних дел Российской Федерации. Женат, имеет двоих детей.

NKVD
People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs

Народный комиссариат внутренних дел Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh dyél
NKVD emblem
Agency overview
Formed	10 July 1934; 88 years ago
Preceding agencies	Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) Commissariats of Internal Affairs of all Union republics
Dissolved	15 March 1946; 77 years ago
Superseding agencies	Ministry of Internal Affairs People’s Commissariat for State Security
Type	Secret police Intelligence agency  • Law enforcement  • Gendarmerie  • Border guard  • Prison authority
Jurisdiction	Soviet Union
Headquarters	11-13 ulitsa Bol. Lubyanka, Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union
Agency executives	Genrikh Yagoda (1934–1936) Nikolai Yezhov (1936–1938) Lavrentiy Beria (1938–1945) Sergei Kruglov (1945–1946)
Parent agency	Council of the People’s Commissars
Child agencies	Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB) Main Directorate of Camps (Gulag) Main Directorate of Militsiya (GURKM) Main Directorate of Border and Internal Security (GUPiVO).

The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, romanized: Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, pronounced [nɐˈrod.nɨj kə.mʲɪ.sə.rʲɪˈat ˈvnut.rʲɪ.nʲɪx̬ dʲel]), abbreviated NKVD (НКВД listen (help·info)), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.

Established in 1917 as NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,^[1] the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country’s prisons and labor camps.^[2] It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934.^[3]

The functions of the OGPU (the secret police organization) were transferred to the NKVD around the year 1930, giving it a monopoly over law enforcement activities that lasted until the end of World War II.^[2] During this period, the NKVD included both ordinary public order activities, and secret police activities.^[4] The NKVD is known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin. It was led by Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria.^[5][6][7]

The NKVD undertook mass extrajudicial executions of citizens, and conceived, populated and administered the Gulag system of forced labour camps. Their agents were responsible for the repression of the wealthier peasantry.^[8][9] They oversaw the protection of Soviet borders and espionage (which included carrying out political assassinations), and enforced Soviet policy in communist movements and puppet governments in other countries,^[10] most notably the repression and massacres in Poland in 1937 and 1938 to crush opposition and establish political control.^[11]

In March 1946 all People’s Commissariats were renamed to Ministries. The NKVD became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).^[12]

History and structure[edit]

After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsarist police and set up the People’s Militsiya. The subsequent Russian October Revolution of 1917 saw a seizure of state power led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The Provisional Government’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), formerly under Georgy Lvov (from March 1917) and then under Nikolai Avksentiev (from 6 August [O.S. 24 July] 1917) and Alexei Nikitin (from 8 October [O.S. 25 September] 1917), turned into NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) under a People’s Commissar. However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Militsiya staffed by proletarians was largely inexperienced and unqualified. Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR established (20 December [O.S. 7 December] 1917) a secret political police, the Cheka, led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions, if that was deemed necessary in order to «protect the Russian Socialist-Communist revolution».

The Cheka was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate, or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR.^[13] In 1922 the USSR formed, with the RSFSR as its largest member. The GPU became the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya, and various other responsibilities.

In 1934, the NKVD of the RSFSR was transformed into an all-union security force, the NKVD (which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders soon came to call «the leading detachment of our party»), and the OGPU was incorporated into the NKVD as the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB); the separate NKVD of the RSFSR was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR). As a result, the NKVD also took over control of all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the Gulag) as well as the regular police. At various times, the NKVD had the following Chief Directorates, abbreviated as «ГУ»– Главное управление, Glavnoye upravleniye.

Chronology of Soviet security agencies
1917–22	Cheka under SNK of the RSFSR (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission)
1922–23	GPU under NKVD of the RSFSR (State Political Directorate)
1920–91	PGU KGB or INO under Cheka (later KGB) of the USSR (First Chief Directorate)
1923–34	OGPU under SNK of the USSR (Joint State Political Directorate)
1934–46	NKVD of the USSR (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
1934–41	GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR (Main Directorate of State Security of People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
1941	NKGB of the USSR (People’s Commissariat of State Security)
1943–46	NKGB of the USSR (People’s Commissariat for State Security)
1946–53	MGB of the USSR (Ministry of State Security)
1946–54	MVD of the USSR (Ministry of Internal Affairs)
1947–51	KI MID of the USSR (Committee of Information under Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
1954–78	KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (Committee for State Security)
1978–91	KGB of the USSR (Committee for State Security)
1991	MSB of the USSR (Interrepublican Security Service)
1991	TsSB of the USSR (Central Intelligence Service)
1991	KOGG of the USSR (Committee for the Protection of the State Border)
v t e

ГУГБ – государственной безопасности, of State Security (GUGB, Glavnoye upravleniye gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti)

ГУРКМ– рабоче-крестьянской милиции, of Workers and Peasants Militsiya (GURKM, Glavnoye upravleniye raboče-krest’yanskoi militsyi)

ГУПВО– пограничной и внутренней охраны, of Border and Internal Guards (GUPVO, GU pograničnoi i vnytrennei okhrany)

ГУПО– пожарной охраны, of Firefighting Services (GUPO, GU požarnoi okhrany)

ГУШосДор– шоссейных дорог, of Highways (GUŠD, GU šosseynykh dorog)

ГУЖД– железных дорог, of Railways (GUŽD, GU železnykh dorog)

ГУЛаг– Главное управление исправительно-трудовых лагерей и колоний, (GULag, Glavnoye upravleniye ispravitelno-trudovykh lagerey i kolonii)

ГЭУ – экономическое, of Economics (GEU, Glavnoye ekonomičeskoie upravleniye)

ГТУ – транспортное, of Transport (GTU, Glavnoye transportnoie upravleniye)

ГУВПИ – военнопленных и интернированных, of POWs and interned persons (GUVPI, Glavnoye upravleniye voyennoplennikh i internirovannikh)

Yezhov era[edit]

Until the reorganization begun by Nikolai Yezhov with a purge of the regional political police in the autumn of 1936 and formalized by a May 1939 directive of the All-Union NKVD by which all appointments to the local political police were controlled from the center, there was frequent tension between centralized control of local units and the collusion of those units with local and regional party elements, frequently resulting in the thwarting of Moscow’s plans.^[14]

During Yezhov’s time in office, the Great Purge reached its height. In the years 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were executed for ‘crimes against the state’. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps (or during transport to them).^[15]

On 3 February 1941, the 4th Department (Special Section, OO) of GUGB NKVD security service responsible for the Soviet Armed Forces military counter-intelligence,^[16] consisting of 12 Sections and one Investigation Unit, was separated from GUGB NKVD USSR.

The official liquidation of OO GUGB within NKVD was announced on 12 February by a joint order No. 00151/003 of NKVD and NKGB USSR. The rest of GUGB was abolished and staff was moved to newly created People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). Departments of former GUGB were renamed Directorates. For example, foreign intelligence unit known as Foreign Department (INO) became Foreign Directorate (INU); GUGB political police unit represented by Secret Political Department (SPO) became Secret Political Directorate (SPU), and so on. The former GUGB 4th Department (OO) was split into three sections. One section, which handled military counter-intelligence in NKVD troops (former 11th Section of GUGB 4th Department OO) become 3rd NKVD Department or OKR (Otdel KontrRazvedki), the chief of OKR NKVD was Aleksander Belyanov.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941), the NKGB USSR was abolished and on July 20, 1941, the units that formed NKGB became part of the NKVD. The military CI was also upgraded from a department to a directorate and put in NKVD organization as the (Directorate of Special Departments or UOO NKVD USSR). The NKVMF, however, did not return to the NKVD until January 11, 1942. It returned to NKVD control on January 11, 1942, as UOO 9th Department controlled by P. Gladkov. In April 1943, Directorates of Special Departments was transformed into SMERSH and transferred to the People’s Defense and Commissariates. At the same time, the NKVD was reduced in size and duties again by converting the GUGB to an independent unit named the NKGB.

In 1946, all Soviet Commissariats were renamed «ministries». Accordingly, the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the USSR became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), while the NKGB was renamed as the Ministry of State Security (MGB).

In 1953, after the arrest of Lavrenty Beria, the MGB merged back into the MVD. The police and security services finally split in 1954 to become:

• The USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), responsible for the criminal militia and correctional facilities.
• The USSR Committee for State Security (KGB), responsible for the political police, intelligence, counter-intelligence, personal protection (of the leadership) and confidential communications.

Main Directorates (Departments)[edit]

• State Security
• Workers-Peasants Militsiya
• Border and Internal Security
• Firefighting security
• Correction and Labor camps
• Other smaller departments
  • Department of Civil registration
  • Financial (FINO)
  • Administration
  • Human resources
  • Secretariat
  • Special assignment

Ranking system (State Security)[edit]

In 1935–1945 Main Directorate of State Security of NKVD had its own ranking system before it was merged in the Soviet military standardized ranking system.

Top-level commanding staff

• Commissioner General of State Security (later in 1935)
• Commissioner of State Security 1st Class
• Commissioner of State Security 2nd Class
• Commissioner of State Security 3rd Class
• Commissioner of State Security (Senior Major of State Security, before 1943)

Senior commanding staff

• Colonel of State Security (Major of State Security, before 1943)
• Lieutenant Colonel of State Security (Captain of State Security, before 1943)
• Major of State Security (Senior Lieutenant of State Security, before 1943)

Mid-level commanding staff

• Captain of State Security (Lieutenant of State Security, before 1943)
• Senior Lieutenant of State Security (Junior Lieutenant of State Security, before 1943)
• Lieutenant of State Security (Sergeant of State Security, before 1942)
• Junior Lieutenant of State Security (Sergeant of State Security, before 1942)

Junior commanding staff

• Master Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)
• Senior Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)
• Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)
• Junior Sergeant of Special Service (from 1943)

NKVD activities[edit]

The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union. This role was accomplished through massive political repression, including authorised murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations and mass deportations.

Domestic repressions[edit]

In implementing Soviet internal policy towards perceived enemies of the Soviet state («enemies of the people»), untold multitudes of people were sent to GULAG camps and hundreds of thousands were executed by the NKVD. Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas («triplets»)– special courts martial. Evidential standards were very low: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest. Use of «physical means of persuasion» (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD itself. Hundreds of mass graves resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country. Documented evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass extrajudicial executions, guided by secret «plans». Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially «public enemies») in a given region (e.g. the quotas for clergy, former nobles etc., regardless of identity). The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486.

The purges were organized in a number of waves according to the decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party. Some examples are the campaigns among engineers (Shakhty Trial), party and military elite plots (Great Purge with Order 00447), and medical staff («Doctors’ Plot»). Gas vans were used in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge in the cities of Moscow, Ivanovo and Omsk^{[17][18][19][20]}

A number of mass operations of the NKVD were related to the persecution of whole ethnic categories. For example, the Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 resulted in the execution of 111,091 Poles.^[21] Whole populations of certain ethnicities were forcibly resettled. Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention. When disillusioned American citizens living in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U.S. passports to leave the USSR (their original U.S. passports had been taken for ‘registration’ purposes years before), none were issued. Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested all the Americans, who were taken to Lubyanka Prison and later shot.^[22] American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being ‘poisoned’ by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were executed or died in labor camps. Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at Yuzhnoye Butovo District near Moscow.^[23] Even so, the people of the Soviet Republics still formed the majority of NKVD victims.

The NKVD also served as arm of the Russian Soviet communist government for the lethal mass persecution and destruction of ethnic minorities and religious beliefs, such as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, Greek Catholics, Islam, Judaism and other religious organizations, an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov.

International operations[edit]

During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed to oppose him. Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as Pavel Sudoplatov and Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including the United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as Martha Dodd. Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business,^[24] where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated.^[25]

The NKVD’s intelligence and special operations (Inostranny Otdel) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of the USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of Joseph Stalin. Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were:

• Leon Trotsky, a personal political enemy of Stalin and his most bitter international critic, killed in Mexico City in 1940;
• Yevhen Konovalets, prominent Ukrainian nationalist leader who was attempting to create a separatist movement in Soviet Ukraine; assassinated in Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Yevgeny Miller, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army; in the 1930s, he was responsible for funding anti-communist movements inside the USSR with the support of European governments. Kidnapped in Paris and brought to Moscow, where he was interrogated and executed
• Noe Ramishvili, Prime Minister of independent Georgia, fled to France after the Bolshevik takeover; responsible for funding and coordinating Georgian nationalist organizations and the August uprising, he was assassinated in Paris
• Boris Savinkov, Russian revolutionary and anti-Bolshevik terrorist (lured back into Russia and allegedly killed in 1924 by the Trust Operation of the GPU);
• Sidney Reilly, British agent of the MI6 who deliberately entered Russia in 1925 trying to expose the Trust Operation to avenge Savinkov’s death;
• Alexander Kutepov, former General of the Tsarist (Imperial Russian) Army, who was active in organizing anti-communist groups with the support of French and British governments

Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Walter Krivitsky, Lev Sedov, Ignace Reiss, and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg.^{[26][27][28][29][30]}

The pro-Soviet leader Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang received NKVD assistance in conducting a purge to coincide with Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a «Fascist Trotskyite plot» to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff, General Ma Hushan, Ma Shaowu, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang, and Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under soviet influence.^[31]

Spanish Civil War[edit]

During the Spanish Civil War, the NKVD ran Section X coordinating the Soviet intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans.^[32] NKVD agents, acting in conjunction with the Communist Party of Spain, exercised substantial control over the Republican government, using Soviet military aid to help further Soviet influence.^[33] The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around the capital Madrid, which were used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of the NKVD’s enemies, at first focusing on Spanish Nationalists and Spanish Catholics, while from late 1938 increasingly anarchists and Trotskyists were the objects of persecution.^[34] In 1937, Andrés Nin, the secretary of the Trotskyist POUM and his colleagues were tortured and killed in an NKVD prison in Alcalá de Henares.^[35]

World War II operations[edit]

Prior to the German invasion, in order to accomplish its own goals, the NKVD was prepared to cooperate even with such organizations as the German Gestapo. In March 1940, representatives of the NKVD and the Gestapo met for one week in Zakopane, to coordinate the pacification of Poland; see Gestapo–NKVD conferences. It is claimed that the Soviet Union deported hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to the Gestapo, as unwanted foreigners, together with their documents. However, according to the work of scholar Wilhelm Mensing, there is no evidence that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as «anti-fascists» for deportations.^[36] Furthermore, many NKVD units were later to fight the Wehrmacht, for example the 10th NKVD Rifle Division, which fought at the Battle of Stalingrad.

After the German invasion, the NKVD evacuated and killed prisoners. During World War II, NKVD Internal Troops units were used for rear area security, including preventing the retreat of Soviet Union army divisions. Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used at the front to stem the occurrence of desertion through Stalin’s Order No. 270 and Order No. 227 decrees in 1941 and 1942, which aimed to raise troop morale via brutality and coercion. At the beginning of the war the NKVD formed 15 rifle divisions, which had expanded by 1945 to 53 divisions and 28 brigades.^[37] Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used in the front-lines, for example during the Battle of Stalingrad and the Crimean offensive.^[37] Unlike the Waffen-SS, the NKVD did not field any armored or mechanized units.^[37]

In the enemy-held territories, the NKVD carried out numerous missions of sabotage. After the fall of Kiev, NKVD agents set fire to the Nazi headquarters and various other targets, eventually burning down much of the city center.^[38] Similar actions took place across the occupied Byelorussia and Ukraine.

The NKVD (later KGB) carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and non-communist resistance movements such as the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army aiming to separate from the Soviet Union, among others. The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1940–1941, including the Katyń massacre.^[39][40] On 26 November 2010, the Russian State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin’s responsibility for the Katyn massacre, the execution of 22,000 Polish POWs and intellectual leaders by Stalin’s NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material «not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.»^[41]

NKVD units were also used to repress the prolonged partisan war in Ukraine and the Baltics, which lasted until the early 1950s. NKVD also faced strong opposition in Poland from the
Polish resistance known as the Armia Krajowa.

Postwar operations[edit]

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev halted the NKVD purges. From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of victims were legally «rehabilitated» (i.e., acquitted and had their rights restored). Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation out of fear or lack of documents. The rehabilitation was not complete: in most cases the formulation was «due to lack of evidence of the case of crime». Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation «cleared of all charges».

Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of the particular violation of anyone’s rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also «purged» without legitimate criminal investigations and court decisions. In the 1990s and 2000s, a small number of ex-NKVD agents living in the Baltic states were convicted of crimes against the local population.

Intelligence activities[edit]

These included:

• Establishment of a widespread spy network through the Comintern.
• Operations of Richard Sorge, the «Red Orchestra», Willi Lehmann, and other agents who provided valuable intelligence during World War II.
• Recruitment of important UK officials as agents in the 1940s.
• Penetration of British intelligence (MI6) and counter-intelligence (MI5) services.
• Collection of detailed nuclear weapons design information from the U.S. and Britain during the Manhattan Project.
• Disruption of several confirmed plots to assassinate Stalin.
• Establishment of the People’s Republic of Poland and earlier its communist party along with training activists, during World War II. The first President of Poland after the war was Bolesław Bierut, an NKVD agent.

Soviet economy[edit]

The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas. Colonization of Siberia, the Far North, and the Far East was among the explicitly stated goals in the very first laws concerning Soviet labor camps. Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of the labor camps were part of the Soviet planned economy, and the NKVD had its own production plans.^{[citation needed]}

The most unusual part of the NKVD’s achievements was its role in Soviet science and arms development. Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the Gulag, colloquially known as sharashkas. These prisoners continued their work in these prisons, and later released, some of them became world leaders in science and technology. Among such sharashka members were Sergey Korolev, the head designer of the Soviet rocket program and first human space flight mission in 1961, and Andrei Tupolev, the famous airplane designer. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also imprisoned in a sharashka, and based his novel The First Circle on his experiences there.

After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry, under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov. The scientists were not prisoners, but the project was supervised by the NKVD because of its great importance and the corresponding requirement for absolute security and secrecy. Also, the project used information obtained by the NKVD from the United States.

People’s Commissars[edit]

The agency was headed by a people’s commissar (minister). His first deputy was the director of State Security Service (GUGB).

• 1934–1936 Genrikh Yagoda, both people’s commissar of Interior and director of State Security
• 1936–1938 Nikolai Yezhov, people’s commissar of Interior
  • 1936–1937 Yakov Agranov, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
  • 1937–1938 Mikhail Frinovsky, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
  • 1938 Lavrentiy Beria, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
• 1938–1945 Lavrentiy Beria, people’s commissar of Interior
  • 1938–1941 Vsevolod Merkulov, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
  • 1941–1943 Vsevolod Merkulov, director of State Security (as the first deputy)
• 1945–1946 Sergei Kruglov, people’s commissar of Interior

Note: In the first half of 1941 Vsevolod Merkulov transformed his agency into separate commissariat (ministry), but it was merged back to the people’s commissariat of Interior soon after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1943 Merkulov once again split his agency this time for good.

Officers[edit]

Andrei Zhukov has singlehandedly identified every single NKVD officer involved in 1930s arrests and killings by researching a Moscow archive. There are just over 40,000 names on the list.^[42]

See also[edit]

• Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Terror, famine and the Gulag
• Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
• 10th NKVD Rifle Division
• Hitler Youth conspiracy, an NKVD case pursued in 1938
• NKVD filtration camp
  • NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–49, internment camps set up at the end of World War II in eastern Germany (often in former Nazi POW or concentration camps) and other areas under Soviet domination, to imprison those suspected of collaboration with the Nazis, or others deemed to be troublesome to Soviet ambitions.

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

See also: Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Violence and terror and Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Terror, famine and the Gulag

• Hastings, Max (2015). The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939 -1945 (paperback). London: William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-750374-2.

External links[edit]

• Media related to NKVD at Wikimedia Commons
• For evidence on Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War, see the full text of Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks from the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
• NKVD.org: information site about the NKVD
• (in Russian) MVD: 200-year history of the Ministry
• (in Russian) Memorial: history of the OGPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB Archived 2016-12-10 at the Wayback Machine

Coordinates: 55°45′38″N 37°37′41″E / 55.7606°N 37.6281°E

НКВД

Название:	НКВД
Официальное название:	Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел
Статус:	упразднен
Дата создания:	26 октября 1917 года
Дата упразднения:	15 марта 1946 года

Наркомат (Наркомвнудел, НКВД) внутренних дел РСФСР и СССР (1917-1923, 1934-1946) — центральный государственный орган для организации внутреннего административного управления и охраны общественного порядка.

Руководители НКВД РСФСР

Руководители НКВД СССР

НКВД РСФСР образован декретом II Всероссийского съезда Советов 26 октября 1917 года.
7 октября 1918 года в составе НКВД было организовано Главное управление милиции (Главмилиция).
С весны 1919 года постановлением ВЦИК к ведению НКВД было отнесено руководство исправительно-трудовым делом, а с 12 июля 1920 года — пожарным делом (до этого находилось в ведении ВСНХ).
В компетенцию НКВД входили также регистрация актов гражданского состояния, руководство эвакуацией населения в годы гражданской войны, организация коммунального хозяйства.
После образования СССР НКВД оставался республиканским наркоматом. 15 декабря 1930 года совместным решением ВЦИК и СНК СССР НКВД союзных и автономных республик были ликвидированы. Вместо них при СНК союзных и автономных республик создавались Главные управления коммунального хозяйства, в которые входили службы пожарного дела, управления милиции и уголовного розыска. Места заключения были переданы в ведение наркоматов юстиции союзных республик.
10 июля 1934 года постановлением ЦИК СССР был образован общесоюзный НКВД с включением в его состав ОГПУ СССР, преобразованного в Главное управление государственной безопасности (ГУГБ).
Постановлениями ЦИК и СНК СССР от 17 сентября и 27 октября 1934 года НКВД были переданы конвойные войска и исправительно-трудовые учреждения. Одновременно в НКВД входило Главное управление милиции и ряд других служб: пожарное и архивное дело, Главное управление лагерей (ГУЛАГ) и т. д.
Главенствующую роль в системе НКВД играло ГУГБ, выполнявшее задачи по ведению разведки, политического контроля и политического розыска.
Контроль за деятельностью НКВД и ГУГБ как его основного звена осуществляло Политбюро во главе с И. В. Сталиным. В результате нормы права все больше уступали место административному произволу.
10 июля 1934 года при наркоме внутренних дел было образовано Особое совещание, имевшее право применять в административном порядке ссылку и заключение на срок до пяти лет.
Приказом НКВД от 27 мая 1935 года в органах внутренних дел республик, краев и областей создавались «тройки» НКВД с правами Особого совещания. Приказом НКВД от 30 июля 1937 года были созданы специальные органы, выносившие приговор без ограничений, — «тройки» в республиках, краях и областях с участием первого секретаря партийного комитета, начальника управления внутренних дел и прокурора.
Рассмотрение дел по спискам приказами НКВД от 11 августа и 20 сентября 1937 года проводилось «двойками» в том же составе, без участия прокурора.
«Тройки» и «двойки» были ликвидированы приказом НКВД от 26 ноября 1938 года во исполнение постановления СНК и ЦК ВКП(б) от 17 ноября 1938 года «Об арестах, прокурорском надзоре и ведении следствия».
Указом Президиума ВС СССР от 3 февраля 1941 года НКВД был разделен на Наркомат внутренних дел и Наркомат государственной безопасности. 20 июля 1941 года они вновь были слиты в рамках НКВД, а 14 апреля 1943 года из НКВД опять был выделен Наркомат государственной безопасности (НКГБ).
По постановлению Верховного Совета от 15 марта 1946 года наркоматы были преобразованы в министерства.

Источники информации:

1. Справочник «Высшие органы государственной власти и управления России IX-XX вв.»

Статьи категории НКВД