The Role of Yagoda, Belsky, Leplevsky, Berman and Pliner in Repressing Ethnic Germans in the USSR during the 1930s

The Role of Yagoda, Belsky, Leplevsky, Berman, and Pliner in Repressing Ethnic Germans in the USSR during the 1930s.

J. Otto Pohl

In recent months  there has been a concerted effort by a rather large number of people to deny two very well established facts. The first is the fact that ethnic persecution of Germans began long before the Wehrmacht invaded the USSR in 1941. Repression of ethnic Germans for being German started in the USSR in the late 1920s and reached a pre-war zenith in 1937-1938 during the German Operation. The second is the claim that there was not a disproportionate number of ethnic Jews in high ranking positions in the NKVD during this persecution. This second claim seeks to deny the historical existence of Genrikh Yagoda, Matvei Berman, Leon Belksy, Israel Leplevsky, and Israel Pliner among others. This short essay will briefly outline the targeted ethnic repression against Soviet citizens of German ancestry during the 1930s and the role played by the men listed above in this persecution.

The ethnic Germans in the former Russian Empire and USSR suffered a significant number of fatalities due to repression and famine in the period 1918-1922. Killings by the Cheka and Red Army as well as famine during the Civil War and its aftermath claimed a significant number of lives among ethnic Germans in the Volga and Black Sea regions on a class basis. Separating Civil War and famine deaths during this time is difficult. Viktor Krieger conservatively estimates at least 180,000 combined German deaths for the whole of the former Russian Empire. These were concentrated in the Volga region with over 100,000 and the Black Sea region with over 50,000. (Victor Krieger, Bundesburger russlanddeutscher Herkunft: Historische Schlusslerfahrungen und kollektives Gadachtnis (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2013), pp. 240-242.)But, ethnically targeted persecution of ethnic Germans by the Soviet regime did not start until the late 1920s during the collectivization of agriculture and internal deportation of “kulaks” to special settlement villages.The first decree to specifically mention Germans by name as the target of such deportation was issued in 1929.  On 27 March 1929, the Central Committee of the Communist Party Ukraine (B) issued a decree under the title “On Evicting Germans from Nikolaev Okrug” (V.V. Chentsov, Tragicheskie sud’by: Politicheskie repressii protiv nemtskogo nasaleniia Ukrainy v 1920-e -1930-e gody. Moscow: Gotika, 1998., p. 42). This decree was one of the very first to name a specific nationality as a target of forced resettlement. Later during the early 1930s during dekulakization the local OGPU officials on the ground often targeted ethnic Germans as “Kulaks” and referred to them by ethnically derogatory terms (GARF F. 3316, O. 64, , D. 760, ll. 77-78). Other than a figure of 4,288 families (about 25,000 people) deported to special settlement villages as “kulaks” from the Volga German ASSR finding exact figures broken down by nationality is difficult (German et al, Istoriia nemtsev Rossii. Moscow: MSNK Press, 2005, p.351). Viktor Krieger estimates that the OGPU internally deported about 50,000 ethnic Germans in the USSR from 1928-1932 (Viktor Krieger, “Chronolgie der antideutschen Massnahmen in Russland bzw. der UdSSR,” Volk auf dem Weg 8-9, 2007, p. 13). Finding any breakdown of deaths among deported “kulaks” by nationality is even more difficult. But, in 1933 alone a recorded 151,601 special settler deaths were recorded by the NKVD. This represented 13.27% of the total cohort at the time (V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy, 2005, table 4, pp. 24-25).Chief among the culprits for the mass human suffering and death that resulted from dekulakization and the special settlement regime of the 1930s were OGPU First Deputy Chairman, Genrikh Yagoda and GULag chief Matvei Berman. Neither of these men were ethnically Latvian nor Russian.

In the wake of collectivization and dekulakization the Soviet regime engineered the Holodomor. This famine also took the lives of a considerable number of ethnic Germans. Viktor Krieger offers again a very conservative estimate of the number of ethnic Germans to perish from hunger during 1932-1933. His estimate for the number of ethnic Germans in the USSR as a whole to die of hunger related causes during these two years is 100,000. (Krieger 2013, pp. 240-242). Again Yagoda was involved as a high ranking OGPU officer in helping to create this artificial famine.

In 1936 the NKVD headed by Genrikh Yagoda forcibly deported some 15,000 ethnic Germans from Ukraine near the border with Poland to special settlements in Kazakhstan (V. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politcheskaia ssylka narodov Sovetskoi Rossii. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005, p. 23). This deportation unlike most of the “kulak” deportations was specifically based upon ethnicity and indeed did not even make any pretense of having a class basis. It took place as part of a series of ethnic deportations along the Soviet borders in 1936-1938 that included Poles, Kurds, and in 1937 almost all Koreans in the USSR. These unfortunate deportees especially the last category mostly ended up in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Korean deportation was carried out by Genrikh Liushkov who again like Yagoda and Berman was neither an ethnic Russian nor a Latvian.

The height of Soviet repression against its citizens of German heritage before the war with Germany started in 1941 was during the German Operation in 1937-1938. The German Operation was part of the larger nationality operations including the Polish, Latvian, and Finnish operations within the Great Terror. Yezhov had replaced Yagoda as head of the NKVD by this time. But, the number two man in the NKVD responsible for these mass arrests and executions was Leon Belsky whose real name was Abram Mikhailovich Levin. He joined the Cheka in 1919 and served in the repressive organs until his arrest on 30 April 1939. From 3 November 1936 to 1 April 1939 he was the number two man in the NKVD. He thus served as second highest ranking individual in the NKVD after Yezhov for the entirety of the Great Terror including the German Operation (Jerzy Bednarek et al. eds., Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s: Documents from the Archives of the Secret Services. (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2012, Fn. 1, p. 154). Like Yagoda and Berman, Belsky (Levin) was neither ethnically Russian nor Latvian. The German Operation was the second largest national operation during the Great Terror after the Polish Operation. In total the German Operation resulted in 55,000 convictions of which 41,898 were death sentences. Nicolas Werth gives more precise figures concerning the number of ethnic Germans repressed during the Great Terror. He places the total number of Germans arrested during this time at 72,000 or 5% of their population. The majority of these arrests or about 38,000 took place as part of the German Operation (Nicolas Werth, “The Mechanism of a Mass Crime The Great Terror in the Soviet Union, 1937-1938” in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 232). While not all of the almost 42,000 executions under the German operation were of ethnic Germans, they constituted almost 70% of death sentences. A full 29,000 of these death sentences were imposed upon ethnic Germans and another 9,000 were sent to labor camps as part of this operation (Werth, p.232). The labor camps in the USSR were run by GULag. From 1932 to 1937 the head of the GULag was Matvei Berman. In 1937 he was succeeded by Israel Pliner. Again Pliner was neither ethnically Russian nor Latvian. From 1937 to 1938 deaths in GULag camps and colonies increased from 31,056 (2.42%) to 108,654 (5.35%), more than tripling (Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History. NY: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 519). There are no good figures on how many ethnic Germans perished in GULag camps during the 1930s.

The largest part of the repression of the German Operation took place in Ukraine where 21,299 people were convicted as part of the German Operation. A full 18,005 of these people received death sentences (N. Okhotin and A. Roginsky, “Iz istorii ‘nemetskoi operatsii’ NKVD 1937-1938 gg.” in Nakazannyi narod: Repressii protiv rossiiskikh nemtsev, edited by I.L. Shcherbakova. Moscow. Zven’ia 1999, pp. 64-66). The Black Sea Germans in the Ukrainian SSR during 1937-1938 became especially targeted both ethnically and geographically. The head of the NKVD in Ukraine from 14 June 1937 to 25 January 1938 was Israel Moiseyevich Leplevsky (Bednarek et al., Fn. 22, p. 185). Once again it goes without saying that Leplevsky was neither ethnically Russian nor Latvian. He was replaced by Aleksandr Uspensky in early 1938. However, the majority of executions from the German Operation in Ukraine took place under Leplevsky’s tenure and not under Uspensky. From 1 June 1937 to 10 January 1938 the NKVD in Ukraine reported arresting 180,350 people under the command of Israel Leplevsky. A full 15,026 of these arrests were of ethnic Germans. The number sentenced to death numbered 6,294 and those sent to camps numbered 632 (Bednarek, doc. 16, pp. 206-211). On 25 January 1938 the NKVD issued a statistical report on their activities in Ukraine since 9 August 1937. This report placed the number of death sentences issued since that date in relation to the German Operation at 10,436. Another 1,508 received camp sentences under the German Operation. (Bednarek, doc. 18, pp. 214-215). The first report is referring to ethnic Germans and the second to all people convicted as part of the German Operation regardless of nationality. The German Operation saw tens of thousands of ethnic Germans in the USSR shot for being German. Thousands of these executions took place under the NKVD authority of Israel Leplevsky.

In the decade of the 1930s in the USSR direct Soviet repression killed tens of thousands of ethnic Germans in ethnically targeted terror. Among those responsible for this repression in addition to Stalin and Yezhov were Yagoda, Belsky, Leplevsky, Berman, and Pliner. The prominent role played by these last five men in this repression has to be taken into consideration when viewing later historical events. Otherwise it is impossible to understand the actions of people like Alfred Rosenberg and Georg Leibbrandt in the NSDAP government.