Stalinist Russia Grad Class Papers #6

The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930

Hiroaki Kuromiya

Hiroaki Kuromiya’s The Voices of the Dead is a work about the Great Terror in Ukraine that traces the life stories and fates of ordinary citizens who were arrested and interrogated by the NKVD in 1937-38. The book reveals the sheer brutality of the regime expressed in the methods used and the speed at which it moved to eradicate those it deemed undesirable or suspect. Through the examined personal case files the author shows the totality of the terror; individuals with links to foreign countries or nationals, ethnic minorities, priests and their families, former privileged classes, fugitives and de-kulakized peasants, marginal people such as the poor and unemployed, and those who were suspected of Ukrainian or any other nationalism were targeted.  However, anyone could be implicated and arrested for “anti-Soviet agitation,” “counter-revolutionary activity,” or espionage. Witness depositions, and the interrogation records themselves were almost always manipulated and confessions extracted or falsified by the NKVD.

Kuromiya’s focus is on the less studied and perhaps less known aspect of the terror – individual case files and what they reveal about the victims and the psyche of the Stalinist system. His goal is to give these victims a voice – in most cases their families and relatives have long since disappeared and the vestiges of their existence have been effaced and their memory forgotten.  Almost all the cases examined in the book come from Kiev as today Ukraine allows greater access to information pertaining to the NKVD records than does Russia.  Nonetheless, the pattern of the Great Terror violence in Ukraine, during which 700,000  or so people were sentenced to be executed for political reasons in the entire Soviet Union, is not noticeably different from the rest of the country in numerical terms.  In Kiev in 1937-1938, according to the available data, 3,555 people were sentenced by the extra-judiciary tribunals (troika or dvoika).  Almost always executions were carried out a few days after sentencing, which became mere rubber-stamping, usually taking no more than a few minutes.  Executions usually took place in a basement or execution chamber of the prisons between 11 p.m. and midnight, carried out by a bullet to the nape of the neck.  Then the bodies were loaded in a truck and buried in mass graves in Bykivnia on the outskirts of Kiev.  Some were rehabilitated in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but the government still lied about their cause of death. Most victims were rehabilitated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and in almost all cases no living relatives could be located. 

During the Great Terror anybody could be denounced and arrested for anti-Soviet 

behavior such as making a political joke or complaining about the quality of life, and there are plenty of cases where innocent people were arrested and executed under such pretext. Kuromiya, however, demonstrates the fatality of the situation of those who happened to have foreign connection either through coming in contact with foreigners, having relatives or being born abroad, or simply being of Polish, German, Romanian, Greek, Korean, Japanese or other descent. Because of the shifting borders and mass migration that occurred as a result of the collapse of the Russian empire and World War I, many citizens fell into this category. With the increased paranoia of espionage, political opposition and subversion this group was extremely vulnerable during the Great Terror. The author demonstrates, however, that fake accusations supported by fraudulent denouncements could be mounted against anybody that the regime wanted to eliminate (priests, nationalists, having the wrong last name, etc.)

By closely studying the cases presented Kuromiya shows that guilt did not need to be proven. The accused were often tortured and forced to confess. If they did not, their confessions were often faked. Some hoped to save themselves by being firm and denying their guilt, but many thought that partial confession would save them. Ultimately it really did not matter; only when the Great Terror wound down to its end did its severity and absurdness subside. 

Kuromiya’s work is invaluable in his attempt to give voice to those ordinary innocent men and women who where caught and perished in the eye of the storm by sheer chance often because they were born in the wrong place or found themselves in the wrong situation at the wrong time. He shines a light on an often forgotten part of history and exposes the brutality and absurdity of a system that had no respect for the sanctity of human life. 

Dr. w: An excellent critique. It is also very well written. A