Greek operation of the NKVD

The situation of Soviet power , after the revolution and the Civil War , was precarious. An attempt to build a clear vertical of power ran into resistance. Stalin considered these circumstances rather dangerous. So, the 1930s were reflected not only by the peak of dispossession , but also of “national purges”.

However, the states against whose representatives preliminary purges were carried out had common borders with the USSR, and Greece was separated from the Soviet state hundreds of kilometers. According to historians ^{[ who? ]} , the Greeks shared the fate of other minorities during the national upsurge of the period of the indigenous policy of the 1920s, mainly the rural wealthy class. Not the least role was played by the restoration of the monarchy in Greece in 1935 , as well as the fact that a year later, as a result of the coup, Ioannis Metaksas came to power.

On August 7, 1932, the Law on the Protection of Socialist Property (also known as the “Decree of the Seven-eighths” and the “Law of Three Spikelets”) came into force. In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov was replaced by Henry Yagoda as the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the repressive machine began to rapidly gain momentum. On July 2, 1937, by a decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks P51 / 94 “On Anti-Soviet Elements”, it was ordered within five days to compile lists of all persons involved in anti-Soviet actions and thus subject to execution or expulsion. Then, on July 30, 1937, Yezhov issued order No. 00447 "On the operation to repress former fists, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements" ^[2] . The planned number of persons for repression is 259,450 people, of which 72,950 people are planned to be assigned to the first category, i.e. to be shot, the rest to the second category, which provided for expulsion to camps for a period of 8 to 10 years. At the same time, the order allowed a motivated petition to increase these figures.

The repression began with directive No. 50215 of December 11, 1937, signed by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. I. Ezhov. She reported that the NKVD authorities exposed and should immediately liquidate a wide network of Greek nationalist, espionage, sabotage, insurgent, wrecking organizations whose ultimate goal is the liquidation of Soviet power in places of compact Greek residence in the Soviet Union and the establishment of a bourgeois state of the fascist type ^{[* 1 ] [3]} :

“The materials of the investigation establish that Greek intelligence conducts active espionage, sabotage and rebel work in the USSR, fulfilling the tasks of the English, German and Japanese intelligence. The basis for this work is the Greek colonies in Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar regions of the North Caucasus, Donetsk, Odessa and other regions of Ukraine, in Abkhazia and other republics of Transcaucasia, in Crimea, as well as widely scattered groups of Greeks in various cities and areas of the Union. Along with espionage and sabotage work in the interests of Germans and Japanese, Greek intelligence develops active anti-Soviet nationalist activity, relying on a wide anti-Soviet layer (fists, tobacco growers and gardeners, speculators, currency traders and others) among the Greek population of the USSR. In order to suppress the activity of Greek intelligence in the territory of the USSR, I order: On December 15 of this year, simultaneously in all republics, territories and regions, make arrests of all Greeks suspected of espionage, sabotage, rebel and nationalist anti-Soviet work. All Greeks (Greek nationals and citizens of the USSR) of the following categories are subject to arrest: a) who are on operational records and are being developed; b) former large traders, speculators, smugglers and currency traders; c) Greeks, conducting active anti-Soviet nationalist work, primarily from among the dispossessed, as well as all hiding from dispossession; d) political emigrants from Greece and all Greeks who illegally arrived in the USSR, regardless of the country from which they arrived; e) all Greeks settled on the territory of the USSR, the so-called back-to-back agents of the INO NKVD and the intelligence department of the Red Army. ... 5. If it is necessary to make arrests of persons of command and command staff who have military and special ranks, as well as specialists and persons included in the nomenclature of the Central Committee, request authorization from the NKVD of the USSR. ... 7. Report the results of the arrest operation by December 18. Report the progress of the investigation in five-day reports with the message of the final digital data and the most significant and important testimonies. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR General Commissioner of State Security Ezhov »

The text of the directive almost coincides with the text of the previous directives of the NKVD , which disposed of other national purges : the Latvian operation (dated November 30, 1937), Finnish, Estonian, Romanian and other similar ones. She clearly indicated the number of Greeks who needed to be arrested, how many of them would be shot and sent to camps for 10 years. Three days were allotted for the preparation of lists with surnames for the issuance of arrest warrants. The day after the signing of the Directive on December 12, 1937, elections were held, as a result of which the Greeks became deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR : Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Papanin , Hero of Socialist Labor Pasha Angelina , Hero of the Soviet Union Vladimir Kokkinaki (later all three became twice Heroes of the USSR) other.

December 15, 1937 a wave of arrests took place over Georgia , Crimea , Donetsk and Odessa regions of Ukraine, Krasnodar Territory and Azerbaijan . The operation turned out to be the most bloody among other "national purges" in the USSR. On the very first night in Kharkov, Konstantin Chelpan ^{[4] [5]} , the chief designer of the T-34 tank engine, who was recently awarded the Order of Lenin , was arrested among more than 30 Greeks. In ten days, operations in the republics of the Soviet Union arrested about 8,000 Greeks.

On January 31, 1938, a resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (B) No. P57 / 49 was issued with permission to extend the period of repression, an out-of-court procedure for considering cases and proposing new ethnic cleansings ^[7] :

1. Allow the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to continue until April 15, 1938, an operation to defeat espionage and sabotage contingents from Poles, Latvians, Germans, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians, Harbins, Chinese and Romanians, both foreign nationals and Soviet citizens, according to existing orders NKVD of the USSR. 2. Leave until April 15, 1938 the existing extra-judicial procedure for the consideration of cases of people arrested in these operations, regardless of their citizenship. 3. Offer the NKVD of the USSR to carry out a similar operation before April 15 and smash the cadres of Bulgarians and Macedonians, both foreign nationals and citizens of the USSR. SECRETARY OF THE CC

Using approximate figures, Ivan Juha calls 5000 - 6000 victims of the "Greek operation" in Ukraine ^[6] .

The Greeks were judged not by the “ troika ” ^{[* 2]} , but by a special meeting, which personally included Nikolai Ezhov and USSR Attorney General Andrei Vyshinsky . From prisons in the regions, Moscow received lists with the names of those arrested (as in previous national operations). Officials quickly examined the lists and submitted whole signatures to Yezhov and Vyshinsky. Therefore, this method of sentencing is called "landscape".

The largest "island" of the camp "archipelago" later became Kolyma , where less than one and a half thousand Greeks fell; about 100 people got to the Norilsk camp, more than 130 - to the camps of the Komi Republic , more than 200 people - to Kazakhstan , 60-80 people - to the Arkhangelsk camps ^{[* 3]} . Only half of the deportees returned from the camps ^[8] . In the "Certificate on the composition of the prisoners held in the NKVD ITL as of January 1, 1939," 2030 Greeks are mentioned. In addition, another 451 Greek were serving their sentences in the camps - Greek citizens (Greek nationals accounted for 11% of foreign Gulag prisoners) ^[9] . That is, in the camps as of 1938 there were about 2500 Greeks, of whom 600-800 people died in the period 1938-1941 ^[6] .

Also, at that time, vigorous activity was carried out to uncover the counter-revolutionary elements. “Counter-revolutionary" organizations were convicted in Rostov-on-Don , Mariupol and almost every Greek village of Priazovye , Baku , Krasnodar , Ashgabat , Lyubertsy near Moscow and even in the polar Igarka . Among other events of the "Greek" operation: the closure of all national Greek schools in the USSR, publishing houses, newspapers; the dissolution of the Hellenic national region in the Kuban (among the repressed 92-94% were shot ^[10] ), and in its place the Crimean region was formed.

As of 1937 , 95% of all foreign nationals in the USSR were Greeks ^[11] , who had lived in Turkey for a long time, and at the beginning of the 20th century were forced to flee from extermination on ethnic grounds . However, officially Greece and the USSR were bound by a trade agreement, and the Greek government did not want to spoil relations with a strategic partner because of the "Russian Greeks", although from time to time it sent formal notes of protest.

Then the Soviet Union proposed Greece to accept its compatriots, but Greece refused ^[11] , since it considered the Greeks of the USSR carriers of communist ideology and did not want to spread it in the country. In addition, Greece was experiencing economic difficulties due to the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923 . However, Greece nevertheless accepted about 10 thousand refugees, despite the fact that there were at least 40 thousand applicants for political asylum ^[11] . A formal refusal was given due to the fact that the Greek embassies were not able to issue thousands of new visas and passports .

Meanwhile, repressions also touched the Greek ambassador to the USSR. In March 1938, the newspaper Pravda reported that the Greek ambassador, D. Nikolopoulos, committed suicide due to a serious illness. An autopsy was prohibited. By that time, D. Nikolopoulos had served in Moscow for only a month and a half, and because of this, historians ^{[ who? ] they} believe that he would hardly have been sent to the diplomatic service for the seriously ill, and suicide is a disguised murder on suspicion of anti-Soviet activity and espionage.

The unresolved issue is the rehabilitation of the Greeks as a nation: all the repressed are rehabilitated by name, but the nation as a whole is not. In Ukraine, such an initiative has not yet been put forward, but the Greeks of Russia since 1993 have been seeking political rehabilitation as a nation. The law of the RSFSR No. 4 107-1 “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples” of April 26, 1991 does not name a single nation, therefore it is the basis for decision-making on specific nations in accordance with Article 13. However, during 1992-1994 they were officially rehabilitated : Russian Germans - by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 231 of February 21, 1992; Russian Koreans - by Decree of the State Duma of the Russian Federation No. 4721-1 of April 1, 1993; Russian Finns - by Resolution of the State Duma of the Russian Federation No. 5229-1 of June 29, 1993; Karachais - by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 1100 dated October 30, 1993; Kalmyks - by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 2290 of December 25, 1993 and Balkars - by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 448 of March 3, 1994 ^[12] .

In 2005, Ivan Savvidi submitted a bill “On the Rehabilitation of Russian Greeks” to the State Duma for consideration, which suggested recognizing that political rehabilitation of Russian Greeks means their right to free national development, as well as the right to restore Russian citizenship to Greeks who were illegally deported to other Republic of the USSR. At the same time, a letter was sent to the Presidential Administration in which Savvidi was answered to his letter to the administration. A letter from the Presidential Administration noted that the eviction of the Greeks was carried out differently, not as “Russian Greeks,” but as Greek citizens, former Greek citizens, or Greek citizens accepted into Russian citizenship. In addition, the eviction was carried out not so much from the territory of the RSFSR as from the territories of other republics of the former USSR - Georgian , Azerbaijan , Armenian and Ukrainian ; and in this regard, raising the issue of issuing a decree of the President of the Russian Federation on the rehabilitation of Russian Greeks seems problematic ^[13] . After that, the bill was withdrawn from consideration at the request of its author ^[14] .

• Greek Nationalist Counter-Revolutionary Spy and Sabotage Organization
• Deportation of the Pontic Greeks
• Genocide of the Pontic Greeks
• Hellenization (Ukraine)

• Juha, Ivan. Greek operation: the history of repression against the Greeks in the USSR . - Aleteĭi︠a︡, 2006. - ISBN 5893298543 , 9785893298543, 2010521285.
• Juha, Ivan. Special echelons go east: the history of repressions against the Greeks in the USSR: deportations of the 1940s. . - Aleteĭi︠a︡, 2008 .-- ISBN 9785914190788 , 5914190789, 2009375072.
• Juha, Ivan. "I am writing in my own words--": the history of repressions against the Greeks in the USSR: letters from the Gulag . - Aleteĭi︠a︡, 2009 .-- ISBN 9785914192027 , 5914192021, 2010495338.
• Juha, Ivan. He stood behind the Parthenon, lay ahead of Magadan: The history of repressions against the Greeks in the USSR: the Greeks in Kolyma . - ISBN 9785914193772 , 591419377X, 2011515295.
• Juha, I. G. "So it was, I am a witness ...": the history of repressions against the Greeks in the USSR: memories . - Aletejja, 2012 .-- ISBN 9785914195981 , 5914195985.
• Juha I.G. As it was in the Kuban. The history of repression against the Greeks in the USSR. - SPb. Aletheia. 2013.
• Juha, Ivan. The book of memory of the Greeks of the Krasnodar Territory: Victims of the Greek operation of the NKVD 1937-1938 . - ISBN 9785914197923 , 5914197929, 2013484654.
• Nikolsky V.N., Bout A.N., Dobrov P.V., Shevchenko V.A. Book of memory of the Greeks of Ukraine. - Donetsk, 2005
• “Greek operation” // Greeks and Slavs: 1000 years. International literary-artistic, historical-educational and historical-religious magazine. - Donetsk. - 1997. - No. 1. - S.134-139.
• National Aspects of Political Repressions 1937 p. in Ukraine // Ukrainian History Journal. - 2001. - No. 2 (437). - S.74-89.
• Alexander Dionisiadi. The story of my family. - Foundation for Greek Studies, 2016. - 502 p. - ISBN 978-618-81280-7-1 .

• Ivan Juha : “I would like to become a man of the world”
• Greeks in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (Materials from the book of I. Juha “Greek operation of the NKVD”)
• I am writing in my own words ... (letters from the Gulag and places of special settlement). Section 2. Greek operation 1937-1938

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