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The Value of International Criminal Justice: How Much International Criminal Justice Can the World Afford ?

International criminal justice, and in particular the icc , has been overburdened by the unrestrained idealism underlying the ambitions inscribed in its fundaments. However, the resulting acts of legal development have not been without value. On the contrary, it is only when idealism sharpens our view on reality that progress can be achieved. Striving to gradually strengthen international criminal justice is therefore worthwhile. Our best bet is to seek to understand where shortcomings in the existing system are grist to the mill for cynicism and to look for opportunities to make international criminal justice more credible in the eyes of victim populations. The question of how much criminal justice the world can afford is the wrong question to ask. Rather, we should be asking whether the international community, if it is still concerned about establishing trust and peace among nations, can afford to do away with international criminal justice.

• 1 State of Play

The question ‘How much international criminal justice can the world afford?’, sometimes raised with a financial thrust, reflects a change in the mindset about international criminal justice. In 1998, the unforgettable Antonio Cassese (1937–2011) wrote an article outlining why, in the case of war crimes and crimes against humanity, justice is better than revenge, forgetting or an amnesty. 1 Cassese has since died, while another protagonist of international criminal justice, M. Cherif Bassiouni, passed away in the summer of 2017. The question discussed here may also, therefore, serve as a wake-up call for younger generations to avoid a situation in which growing cynicism about the international rule of law and international human rights, and diminishing support for multilateralism, undermine the project of international criminal justice, which is still in a sensitive initial phase of life.

An assessment of the value of international criminal justice can the world afford?’ concerns international criminal justice in general, which is at present delivered by the International Criminal Court ( icc ), with an open, comprehensive task, and by a patchwork of hybrid and other specialized tribunals. 2 There are various angles from which international criminal justice can be assessed, including its costs, the efficiency of the icc ’s operations and its effects within societies which were torn apart by internal warfare and horrendous crimes. However, the starting point for any assessment here is whether or not criminal justice should be an integral part of the international legal order.

The idea of international criminal justice as an element of the international legal order is relatively new, and in any event does not pre-date the first steps in the process of redefining international law as no longer being exclusively dependent on the consent of each international sovereign subject. At first, the idea of trying war criminals and perpetrators of crimes against humanity was seen – also in the minds of international actors – as confirmation that they had fought and won a just war. After the First World War, for example, it was planned to put the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm ii and 900 others on trial 3 (these efforts were abandoned when the Netherlands refused to extradite the former Kaiser, while the other indictments were transferred to a German court, which ultimately tried twelve individuals, half of whom were acquitted). After the Second World War, too, trials were held in Nuremberg and Tokyo, this time with much more force, and based on irresistibly justifying evidence.

Nevertheless, the idea of criminal justice as a permanent component of the international legal structure is still relatively recent. Since its beginnings in 1993, the Netherlands has been involved in promoting international criminal justice and the idea of accepting rules designed to put an end to impunity and to oblige states to try or extradite even high-ranking suspects were responsible for by establishing international tribunals and courts. 4 But even though it culminated in the acceptance of the Rome Statute of the icc , the movement towards international criminal justice was not a one-way street. Instead, there were complications along the way, such as the uk Minister of Justice’s undermining of the House of Lords’ ruling in the Pinochet case, and the highest court in the Netherlands’ interpretation of the non-retroactivity principle in the Bouterse case, such that it covered not only the requirement for punishability at the time the crime was committed, but also the jurisdiction. 5 According to Kai Ambos, with whom I concur, this latter view is inconsistent with the idea behind the nullum crimen principle. 6 The most important setback, however, was of a political nature because although the United States, China and the Russian Federation accepted the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ( icty ) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ( ictr ), they were reluctant to accept the icc as a body where their own service personnel and even leaders could face prosecution. Since then, feelings of living in a hostile world have dominated politics in both the United States and Russia.

Here we are confronted with a fundamental problem: the fostering of trust among people and nations requires institutions to be built on foundations that are themselves based on an intuitive trust. Imbalances of power and – in the case of terrorism – the weaponizing of existential fears undermine the conditions needed to create trust-promoting institutions. Although international terrorism has been an additional reason for reinforcement of international cooperation in law enforcement, populist responses dismiss the importance of international cooperation and suggest that only strong nation-states can effectively respond to these threats. Diminishing support for international criminal justice is also part of an increasingly sceptical – if not cynical – approach to human rights and international enforcement of human rights. Under the influence of the ‘clash of civilizations’ ideology, the protection of human rights is arrogantly claimed as an achievement of ‘the West’ not accepted by and, therefore, not suitable to be exported to other parts of the world. This attitude contradicts the very purpose and nature of human rights.

This does not mean, however, that international criminal justice is succumbing to enfeeblement within twenty years after its initial success. Institutions can be sufficiently resilient to overcome downward political conjunctures. The icc and the various specialized tribunals have so far managed to do precisely that. They administer justice, and each judgment they issue is tremendously important for the individuals and groups involved in the history of the case. Apparent political expediency should not distract from the importance of these facts.

It is above all, however, the changed international political climate that is turning the cards against international criminal justice. Encouraged by the bias of targeted political communications, many political leaders are preferring to ‘stand up for their own people’ and are now more interested in defeating their enemies and destroying the latter’s power bases than in achieving justice for victims in a sophisticated judicial process. To the extent that these leaders are interested in peaceful settlement, their interest is often more in the results of negotiations than in justice being seen to be done. That explains why African leaders, while sincerely striving for peace in Sudan, opposed the arrest of President Bashir that was intended to result in his being tried before the icc . Article 27 of the Rome Statute states that ‘official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute’. Under Security Council ( sc ) Resolution 1593, 7 which referred the situation in Darfur to the icc , Sudan is theoretically obliged to arrest its own president. However, Article 98 appears to confirm that other states have to respect President Bashir’s immunity as a head of state. 8 Meanwhile, Article 16 of the Rome Statute allows an investigation or prosecution to be deferred in the interest of conflict resolution:

No investigation or prosecution may be commenced or proceeded with under this Statute for a period of 12 months after the Security Council, in a resolution adopted under Chapter vii of the Charter of the United Nations, has requested the Court to that effect; that request may be renewed by the Council under the same conditions. 9

This indictment of an acting head of state, which some considered to be bizarre, together with the feeling that African situations were disproportionately often the object of investigations and prosecutions, provoked some African countries to renounce their membership of the state parties to the Rome Statute. 10 The contention that targeting African situations reflected post-colonial prejudices was especially harmful; 11 the most convincing counter-argument is that complaints from African victims were – as, indeed, they should be – precisely the reason why the Court became involved in the first place.

• 2 A Mission Impossible?

The icc was established with a grandiose ambition. In other words, according to the preamble to the Rome Statute, the Court’s ambition is to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. Article 5 distinguishes four such crimes:

• 1. The crime of genocide;
• 2. Crimes against humanity;
• 3. War crimes;
• 4. The crime of aggression.

The icc budget has to pay for staff salaries, building rental, global travel, intensive investigations in often hostile terrain, translators, for the defence teams, for legal aid for defendants and victims and so on. The court registry – the administrative heart of the tribunal – pays most of these bills, which explains why it takes up around half of the budget. So the impression, on paper, that the bureaucrats are getting a disproportionate slice of the cake, is misleading. 13

Actually, both sides of the above equation miss the point: the icc is not designed to try large groups of people, and the apparent majesty of its premises and equipment is largely explained by the complex nature of state-of-the-art criminal proceedings. If measured against the standard of putting an end to (or at least approaching the end of) impunity, the icc cannot be seen as having succeeded. Moreover, other grave injustices, such as crimes of corruption relating to international terrorism, 14 or the displacement and undermining of vulnerable populations’ living conditions, 15 do not fall within the icc ’s competence.

The quantitative disappointment felt is thus a consequence of the overreaching ambitions vested in the icc , and this disappointment is aggravated by an understandable feeling among victims and their communities that some bad people have got away with the benefit of the doubt. This, however, is characteristic of conscientious criminal judgments and of punishment that can hardly be seen as retribution for the often inconceivable nature of atrocities committed. In that sense, there is an unavoidable mismatch between the law and the crime, a subject raised by David Luban when reflecting on Hannah Arendt’s account of the Eichmann trial. 16

The establishment of the icc was part of the hope felt in the late-twentieth century that it would be possible to establish a worldwide rule of law and gradually constitutionalizing international law. According to Erika de Wet, ‘The constitutionalization of the international legal order through the recognition of a human-rights-based hierarchy … is first and foremost a European phenomenon, the broader impact of which is still uncertain’. 17 International human rights treaties containing mechanisms for oversight, also at the request of individuals and collectivities, appeared to emulate global law enforcement, whereas the ‘duty to protect’ justified replacing oppressive regimes by democracies with international support, and ‘preferably’ with a mandate from the sc . International criminal justice appeared in this way to have become a new cornerstone of ‘governing the world’. The re-emergence of power politics and the rise of inward-oriented politics have since, however, thwarted these ambitions. ‘The idea of governing the world is becoming yesterday’s dream’. 18 A certain tension between hegemony in international relations and the constitutionalization of international law is unavoidable and bearable within certain limits of self-restraint. 19 Yet in recent years, diminishing support for multilateralism – resulting from populist, ‘own nation first’ politics – has further reduced the opportunities for international criminal justice to serve as the watchdog of the international rule of law.

In accordance with the notions of international rule of law, the icc and its judges are expected to act independently (Articles 40 and 42). This expectation contrasts sharply with the dynamics of international power-broking in and around the sc and summits. The independence of the icc and its judges is, of course, essential, and also means they can remain outside the gravitational fields that define their ‘elbow room’. Although this is in principle the same as in domestic constitutional systems, national judiciaries usually have a base of socially and culturally founded authority, if necessary against political powers. As a result, the deterrent effect of international criminal justice – as we can see every day in several parts of Africa, in Syria and in Myanmar – has fallen sharply below the expectation voiced in the preamble to the Rome Statute that international criminal justice would ‘contribute to the prevention of such crimes’. This situation has been aggravated by differences in constitutional and political cultures.

• 3 Redefined Expectations

The conclusion of the above observations must surely be that international criminal justice, and in particular the icc , has been overburdened by the unrestrained idealism underlying the ambitions inscribed in its fundaments. 20 Although the enthusiasm at the Rome Conference was almost irresistible among those present, including representatives of non-governmental organizations that supported the establishment of the Court, that enthusiasm has been seen to provide an insufficient basis, with the ratification of the Statute being unable to change the underlying realities. It is a typical legal drafters’ fallacy to think that as soon as expectations are carved into normative stone, reality will follow suit. In the case, however, of international criminal justice, even more so than in established constitutional and legal forms of life, legal normativity and social reality interact at a much slower pace than decision-makers anticipate.

That does not mean that these acts of legal development are without value. On the contrary, it is only when idealism sharpens our view on reality that progress can be achieved. In this way, striving to gradually strengthen international criminal justice is worthwhile. However, ambitious idealism has to stay close to the varieties of societal life, which are mainly an unorganized, autonomous process. While public institutions are certainly important in this context, they should not feel they need to be in full control: rather, they must be available wherever trust is broken and has to be restored. Gradual progress towards more effective protection of human rights is a desirable development, albeit one with ups and downs, backlashes, and moments of progress. This is where the availability of institutions for international criminal justice can play a role, especially in situations where people are seeking to restore a civilized order. Citizens in formerly fragile states can benefit from legal protection through acknowledgement of their rights as citizens. But encouraging a culture of the rule of law is not enough. Think, for instance, of the ordeal of the 800,000 Rohingya people who have fled from their home country that does not recognize their citizenship. Although the icc has not yet been asked to deal with this situation, it could be another possible case to be submitted to the Court. Refugees are often fleeing violence that amounts to crimes in the sense of the Rome Statute. Under the Sustainable Development Goals ( sdg s), setting up reliable rule-of-law institutions can be part of the process of investing in development. un Secretary-General António Guterres recently said that safe migration cannot be limited to the global elite and stressed the need to do more to respond to the challenges of migration. Refugees, internally displaced people and migrants are not the problem; the problem lies in conflict, persecution and hopeless poverty. 21

There are many more situations in which the Court would be an appropriate complementary mechanism, without overstepping its capacities. ‘Post-conflict situations’ are often characterized by high numbers of people having been victimized in an unrestricted internal war. While such situations require the restoration of justice, they usually lack judicial institutions with sufficient capacities and authority among population groups that have been set against each other. 22

And much more has still to be done. At an early stage, the international courts and tribunals recognized the importance of protecting victims against permanent victimization, and the need to assist them in their role as witnesses. For many years, this subject has been one of the Dutch priorities in research – especially at Intervict (Tilburg University’s Institute for Victimology) – and also in practice, through the extra contributions made available to assist witnesses. The effects of hearing victims as witnesses go far beyond a specific prosecution in contributing to the recognition of deprived population groups’ suffering. In this way, the multiplier effect of prosecutions means that even if the number of criminal cases at the icc remains limited, the fact that these prosecutions have taken place can still be very important in the eyes of affected population groups.

It is consequently important to adapt the law enforcement methods of international criminal justice in such a way that more and more perpetrators of crimes against humanity are forced to face judges. That is not the same as establishing an overarching international criminal justice system in The Hague – the institutional interpretation of complementarity. There is no need to revise the Rome Statute at this point, but the political acceptance and support with respect to a situation-based, functional complementarity needs to be strengthened, for good reason. In this vein, local methods of reconciliation, like those applied in South Africa and Rwanda, are supplemented by the judicial processes that only an international court can provide.

• 4 Conclusion

Our best approach is to seek to understand where shortcomings in the existing system arouse cynicism and to look for opportunities to make international criminal justice more credible in the eyes of victim populations. To this end, the various courts and tribunals should not operate in an environment that is unnecessarily remote from the societies concerned. On the one hand, this remoteness may admittedly contribute to impartiality and calmness in the proceedings. On the other hand, however, differing views on what constitutes appropriate punishment (the icc cannot issue a death penalty, for example) and seemingly comfortable detention conditions could alienate people from international criminal justice. The value of hybrid courts and tribunals is partly to be found in the balance they manage to achieve between the extremes of remoteness from and involvement in underlying tensions.

Notwithstanding the ‘harsh reality’ with which the icc has been confronted, 23 I agree with Armin von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke, 24 who believe that the fact that so many states have endorsed international adjudication can – and must – be seen as a confirmation of democratic values. The politically legitimate establishment of independent international courts demonstrates trust in the basic values of democracies abiding by the law, including human rights law. Therefore, what we can expect from honest international adjudication, including international criminal justice, is, in the first place, a highly visible confirmation of these values.

The importance of the courts and tribunals for international criminal justice must be seen firstly in their availability . Wherever post-conflict situations or situations in which the rule of law is being restored can benefit from processes in which justice can be done (and be seen to be done), the parties involved in the transition or the sc should have the opportunity to avail themselves of these judicial bodies’ organization and expertise. And that, in turn, is also the most important argument for having the icc as a court standing ready.

There are also highly practical reasons for ensuring these institutions’ availability. Perpetrators who flee the country where they committed the crimes cannot always be extradited to their country of origin. In these cases, an international, hybrid or foreign criminal court has to step in. And sometimes it is more acceptable for both sides in a contested post-war situation to have an impartial international court dealing with the crimes committed. With respect to certain crimes, especially those directed against women, such as where rape is used as a method of warfare, disrespectful local attitudes adversely impact on the ability of local courts to handle these cases. In such cases, international courts are consequently better positioned to do justice.

The rights of women and children are part of the international human rights framework and are intended to protect the most vulnerable members of many societies. International human rights protection must not fade away as a side-effect of neglected enforcement. Indeed, international criminal justice is an indispensable part of human rights since other enforcement mechanisms, such as judiciaries and oversight committees, are effective only within the context of more or less orderly constitutional settings. 25 More generally, the victims’ perspective 26 requires an effective complementarity of ‘local’ and international prosecutions. 27 Here, the innovative approaches in the practice of the icc may serve to encourage the introduction of adequate procedures for victim participation in hybrid and national jurisdictions. 28

For the reasons outlined above, any further loss of momentum in international criminal justice would represent a dramatic setback in the development of the international rule of law. That does not mean that everything in its current modus operandi should remain unchanged. Reviewing the procedures for hearing witnesses and bringing them more in line with the continental or civil law approach rather than the common law approach could, for example, be helpful. 29 Given that impunity is a lasting burden for societies, victims and their relatives, peace and reconciliation require justice to be seen to be done. But sufficient consensus on the need to prosecute is also needed. Referral by a certain number of states could therefore serve as an alternative starting point. While referrals by the sc are often a desirable and more workable starting point than the prosecutor’s own initiative, being exclusively dependent on the sc would place each of the permanent members, including the most powerful nations, in an undesirable gatekeepers’ position. An acceptable alternative would be to grant the sc the right to halt proceedings at the icc in the interests of promoting peaceful international relations. The effect of the veto power in the sc would thus be inverted. 30

Lastly, the questions I have raised here are not about only a specialized branch of criminal law, but also about the intertwinement of international criminal law and human rights law, and international law in general, in a fragmented world order. Torture and other infringements of human dignity abound, with human rights currently under pressure in many parts of the world. 31 The urgent need to deploy a range of efforts, including international criminal justice, in fighting this situation is evident. Inevitably, international criminal justice is focused on suspects and perpetrators. Moving in the direction of constitutionalism in international law, this perspective should be complemented by other perspectives, i.e. that of the victims, of the community within the supposed criminal acts took place, and of the larger community that lives under the same legal order. From all these viewpoints, human rights like the right to protection of life and personal dignity belong to the constitutional framework.

The route we should pursue is to restore and strengthen trust in human rights in borderline situations rather than going in the diametrically opposed direction, as commonly seen at present, of a post-multilateral, free-for-all international system. ‘How much criminal justice the world can afford?’ is therefore the wrong question to ask. Instead, what we should be asking is whether the international community, if it is still concerned about establishing trust and peace among nations, can afford to do away with international criminal justice.

A. Cassese, ‘Reflections on International Criminal Justice’, 61(1) The Modern Law Review (1998) 1–11.

Some of the most pressing questions concerning the icc are discussed in R.H. Steinberg (ed.), Contemporary Issues Facing the International Criminal Court (Brill Nijhoff, Leiden, 2016).

Articles 227–230 of the Treaty of Versailles.

See the speech delivered by the Netherlands Minister of Justice at the Conference of Ministers of Justice on the occasion of the 100 th anniversary of the Hague Conference on International Private Law’, Peace Palace, The Hague, 19 May 1993, and the continuous Dutch support for the establishment of the icty , for example, and later for the ictr Appeals Chamber and the icc in The Hague.

Cf. E.M.H. Hirsch Ballin, ‘De zaak Pinochet: commentaar op de uitspraak van het House of Lords van 24 maart 1999’, Ars Aequi (2000) 481–489, 488; Bouterse case, 18 September 2001, Hoge Raad (Court of Cassation of the Netherlands), ecli : nl : hr :2001: ab 1471.

K. Ambos, Internationales Strafrecht: Strafanwendungsrecht – Völkerstrafrecht – Europäisches Strafrecht – Rechtshilfe (C.H. Beck, Munich, 2018) p. 6.

Resolution 1593 of the United Nations Security Council (s/ res /1593 (2005)).

D. Akande, ‘The Legal Nature of Security Council Referrals to the icc and its Impact on Al Bashir’s Immunities’, 7 Journal of International Criminal Justice (2009) 333–352.

N. White, International Conflict and Security Law (Elgar Advanced Introductions, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2014) p. 120.

On the ‘threatened African exodus from the icc ’, see , for instance, the recent paper by C.R. Rossi, ‘Hauntings, Hegemony, and the Threatened African Exodus from the International Criminal Court’, 40(2) Human Rights Quarterly (2018) 369–405, also available at ssrn : https://ssrn.com/abstract=2969130 , accessed 27 October 2017. On the relationship between the icc and the African continent, see also , for example, J.-B. Jeangène Vilmer, ‘The African Union and the International Criminal Court: Counteracting the Crisis’, 92(6) International Affairs (2016) 1319–1342; K. Mills, ‘“Bashir is Dividing Us”: Africa and the International Criminal Court’, 34(2) Human Rights Quarterly (2012) 404–447; V.O. Nmehielle (ed.), Africa and the Future of International Criminal Justice (Eleven International, The Hague, 2012).

See R. Schuerch, The International Criminal Court at the Mercy of Powerful States – An ­Assessment of the Neo-Colonialism Claim Made by African Stakeholders (Asser Press/Springer, The Hague, 2017).

J. Silverman, ‘Ten Years, $900m, One Verdict: Does the icc Cost Too Much?’, bbc News Magazine , 14 March 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17351946 , accessed 27 ­October 2017.

L.I. Shelley, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime, and Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2014).

S. Sassen, Expulsions – Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Belknap Press, Cambridge, ma , 2014).

According to David Luban, this is one of ‘the biggest questions international criminal law must answer’. See D.J. Luban, ‘Hannah Arendt as a Theorist of International Criminal Law’, 11(3) International Criminal Law Review (2011) 621–641, Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11–30, p. 30, available at ssrn : https://ssrn.com/abstract=1797780 , accessed 27 October 2017; also in M. Goldoni and C. McCorkindale (eds.), Hannah Arendt and the Law (Routledge, London, 2017) pp. 425–445, p. 445.

E. de Wet, ‘(Implicit) judicial favoring of human rights over United Nations Security Council sanctions: a manifestation of international constitutionalism?’, in F. Fabbrini and V.C. Jackson (eds.), Constitutionalism Across Borders in the Struggle against Terrorism (­Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2016) pp. 35–51, p. 51.

M. Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (Penguin Books, London, 2012) p. 427.

See on struggles over hegemony G.W. Anderson, ‘Constitutionalism as critical project: the epistemological challenge to politics’, in S. Gill and A. C. Cutler (eds.), New Constitutionalism and World Order (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014) pp. 281–294 (289).

For a skeptical account of the workings of the icc , see S. Nouwen, ‘Justifying justice’, in J. Crawford and M. Koskenniemi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to International Law (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012) pp. 327–351.

António Guterres, Address to the General Assembly, 19 September 2017, https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2017-09-19/sgs-ga-address , accessed 9 January 2018.

S.L. Woodward, The Ideology of Failed States – Why Intervention Fails (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017); White, supra note 9, pp. 119–121.

Tjitske Lingsma, All Rise – The High Ambitions of the International Criminal Court and the Harsh Reality (Ipso Facto, Utrecht, 2017).

A. von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke, In wessen Namen? Internationale Gerichte in Zeiten globalen Regierens (Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2014) pp. 280–281.

This function of international criminal justice is quite often overlooked or left out from overviews of human rights law. It does, however, surface at several instances in D. Shelton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of International Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013).

On victim participants’ views on the icc and its operations, see, for instance, Human Rights Center, uc Berkeley School of Law, The Victims’ Court? A Study of 622 Victim Participants at the International Criminal Court , 2015, https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/VP_report_2015_final_full2.pdf , accessed 27 October 2017.

See also Luke Moffett, ‘Realising Justice for Victims before the International Criminal Court’, 6 icd Brief (September 2014), http://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/upload/documents/20140916T170017-ICD%20Brief%20-%20Moffett.pdf , accessed 27 October 2017, in which it is stated on p. 11: ‘To more effectively achieve justice for victims of international crimes, it requires states to domestically deliver it and for the icc to be a court of last resort. As such, a more victim-oriented approach to complementarity is required, where states are encouraged and monitored to provide redress to victims locally’.

See K. Tibori-Szabó and M. Hirst (eds.), Victim Participation in International Criminal ­Justice – Practitioners’ Guid e (Asser Press/Springer, The Hague, 2017).

The differences in practice are discussed in L. Carter and F. Pocar (eds.), International Criminal Procedure – The Interface of Civil Law and Common Law Legal Systems (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2013).

This idea is a variation on the reverse qualified majority requirement in Article 7 of the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union.

Cf. D. Luban, ‘Treatment of prisoners and torture’, in M. Düwell, J. Braarvig et al. , The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014) pp. 446–453.

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Interrogations of Nikolai Ezhov, former People's Commissar for Internal Affairs.

Russian (original) text

Introduction

We do not know how many interrogations of Ezhov are in existence. All the prosecution materials concerning virtually all the important matters of the later 1930s in the USSR are still top-secret, kept in the Presidential Archives of the Russian Federation. I have simply translated those texts that have been published as of this date (July 2010).

I have compiled and translated these confessions from the following "semi-official" sources:

Briukhanov, Boris Borisovich, and Shoshkov, Evgenii Nikolaevich. Opravdaniiu ne podlezhit. Ezhov i Ezhovshchina 1936-1938 gg. Sankt-Peterburg: OOO "Petrovskii Fond" 1998. Polianskii, Aleksei. Ezhov. Istoriia «zheleznogo» stalinskogo narkoma. Moscow: «Veche», «Aria-AiF», 2001. Pavliukov, Aleksei. Ezhov. Biografiia . Moscow: Zakharov, 2007.

I term these sources "semi-official" since they are quoted unproblematically by all the anticommunist scholars. These scholars ignore them almost completely, and ignore their implications completely, but they do not consider the documents false.

In addition I have used these sources, which are more or less "official":

Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD – NKGB – GUKR «SMERSH». 1939 – mart 1946. Moscow: «Materik», 2006. Petrov, Nikita, and Iansen [Jansen], Mark. «Stalinskii pitomets» -- Nikolai Ezhov . Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008.

A few remarks have been taken from other sources, mainly Vassilii Soima, Zapreshchennyi Stalin , Chast' 1. Moscow: OLMA-PRESS, 2001. Where possible I have checked the text with the versions online at http://perpetrator2004.narod.ru/ , "Documents of Soviet Power and of Soviet-Communist Terror", which has used the sources above.

Here I only present them in English translation for interested students. Naturally they must be studied. I’m doing that but I do not present my results here.

NOTE: We have one very important confession by Mikhail Frinovskii, Ezhov's Assistant Commissar -- that of April 11, 1939. Also published in the Lubianka volume cited above, I have put a translation of it online here.

It should be read in connection with Ezhov's confessions.

Grover Furr July 31 2010

____________________

Ezhov interrogation 04.18 – 04.20.39

According to Pavliukov, this is the 1st Ezhov confession in his file. QQ 519-520 & n. 481 p. 564. Summarized 520-521.

"Question: You have been arrested as a traitor to the party and an enemy of the people. The investigation possesses sufficient facts to expose you completely at the first attempt to conceal your crimes. We propose that you not wait to be exposed but proceed to confessions of your black traitorous work against the party and Soviet power. Answer: It is hard for one such as I, who only lately enjoyed the party’s trust, to confess to betrayal and treason. But now that I am faced with answering before the investigation for my crimes, I wish to be thoroughly frank and truthful. I am not the person the party took me for. Hiding behind a mask of party loyalty, for many years I have deceived and been two-faced while conducting a ferocious hidden struggle against the party and the Soviet State."

Summary of other parts of Ezhov’s statement.

"Ezhov started the history of his ‘fall into sin’ in 1921, when he worked in Tartaria and under the influence of anarcho-syndicalist ideas supposedly joined the local group of the ‘Workers’ Opposition.’ In the following years, the period of inner-party discussions of the 1930s, he also supposedly expressed differences in his political views with the general line of the party. However, the investigators showed no interest in digging so deeply into the garbage-heap of history, and they did not permit Ezhov to deviate long from the basic theme."

"Question: What is the point of this expansive story about these or those ‘political waverings’ of yours? As a long-time agent of foreign intelligence services you must confess about your direct espionage work. Talk about that! Answer: All right, I will go directly to the moment when my espionage ties were formed."

Summary continues:

"Ezhov related that he was drawn into espionage work by his friend F.M. Konar*, who had long been a Polish agent. Konar learned political news from Ezhov and gave them to his bosses in Poland and on one occasion told Ezhov about this and proposed that he volunteer to begin working for the Poles. Since Ezhov had in fact already become an informant of Polish intelligence, since he had transmitted to them via Konar many significant party and state secrets, he supposedly had no other choice than to agree with this proposal.

* F.M. Konar – An assistant Commissar of Agriculture, he was among those convicted and executed in March 1933 for sabotage in agriculture at the height of the serious famine. Konar had also been a friend of the poet Osip Mandel’shtam, according to his daughter Nadezhda (Memoirs).

___________

The Poles supposedly shared a part of the intelligence received from Ezhov with their allies the Germans, and so after a time an offer of collaboration from the latter was also made.

According to Ezhov Marshal A.I. Egorov, first assistant Commissar for Defense, acted as the middleman [between Ezhov and the Germans]. He met with Ezhov in the summer of 1937 and told him that he knew about the latter’s ties with the Poles, that he himself was a German spy who on orders from the German authorities had organized a group of conspirators in the Red Army, and that he had been given a directive to establish close working contact between his group and Ezhov.

Ezhov agreed with this proposal and promised to protect Egorov’s men from arrest."

______________________________

Ezhov interrogation 04.23.39 (04.24.39)

Quotes are same as beginning and end of Ezhov conf. dated April 24, 1939 in Petrov & Iansen, 365-6 and Pavliukov, 522-523.

Pavliukov says 10 pages in length. P&Ia cite same archive, different location, 4 pages in length.

Pavliukov – no sign this confession was forced, or even asked about this (522).

Petrov & Iansen, 365-6:

"I think it essential that I inform the investigation of a series of new facts concerning my moral-personal dissoluteness. I mean my longtime vice of homosexuality. This began in my early youth when I lived as an apprentice to a tailor. At about the age of 15 or 16 years I had a few instances of perverse sexual acts with other apprentices of my own age of the same tailor shop. This vice renewed itself in the old Tsarist army in frontline conditions. Aside from one chance contact with one of the solders of our company I had relations with a certain Filatov, my friend from Leningrad with whom we served in the same regiment. Our relations were "mutual", that is the "female" part was played first by one side, then by the other. Afterwards Filatov was killed at the front. In 1919 I was appointed commissar of the 2 nd base of radio-telegraph formations. My secretary was a certain Antoshin. I know that in 1937 he was still in Moscow and was working somewhere as chief of a radio station. He is an engineer radio technician. In 1919 I had mutual homosexual relations with this same Antoshin. In 1924 I was working in Semiplatinsk [now the city of Semei, Kazakhstan – GF]. My old friend Dement’ev went there with me. On several occasions in 1924 I had homosexual relations with him in which only I played the active role. [Ezhov apparently means Dement’ev played the "female" role. – GF] In 1925 in Orenburg I established homosexual relations with a certain Boiarskii, at that time the chairman of the Kazakh oblast’ trade union council. As far as I know he is now working as the director of an artistic theater in Moscow. Our relations were mutual. At that time he and I had just arrived in Orenburg and were living in the same hotel. Our relations were shot-lived, until the arrival of his wife, who arrived quickly. In the same year 1925 the capital of Kazakhstan was transferred from Orenburg to Kzyl-Orda, whence I also went to work. Soon F.I. Goloshchekin arrived there as the secretary of the regional [Party] committee (he is now employed as a chief arbiter). He arrived as a bachelor, without a wife, and I was also living as a bachelor. Before my departure for Moscow (for about 2 months) I had de facto moved into his apartment and often spent the night there. I quickly established homosexual relations with him as well, and they continued off and on until my departure. As with the others, our relations were mutual. In 1938 I had two instances of homosexual activity with Dement’ev, with whom I had also had relations in 1924, as I stated above. These relations were in Moscow in the autumn of 1938 in my apartment, after I had already been dismissed from the post of Commissar of Internal Affairs. Dement’ev lived with me at that time about two months. A little later, also in 1938, there occurred two instances of homosexual activity between myself and Konstantinov. I have known Konstantinov since 1918 in the army. He worked with me before 1921. Since 1921 we hardly saw each other at all. In 1938 on my invitation he began to visit me often at my apartment and two or three times he was at my dacha. He came twice with his wife; the other visits were without wives. He often stayed the night with me. As I have said above, at that time he and I had two instances of homosexual relations. Our relations were mutual. I should also say that during one of his visits to my apartment with his wife I also had sexual relations with her. All of this was accompanied, as a rule, with heavy drinking. I give this information to the investigation as an additional detail characterizing my moral dissolution. April 24, 1939. N. Ezhov.

_________________________

Ezhov interrogation of 04.26.1939 (published separately)

Ezhov’s April 26 1939 confession belongs here (from Lubianka )

_______________________________

Ezhov interrogation 04.30.39

Ezhov interrogation, Pavliukov 525-6 & n. 489 p. 564. Short Q from interrogation on 525-6.

Acc. to Pavliukov 526, Ezhov named 66 names of fellow conspirators in this one interrogation.

"The first stage of the investigation was completed on April 30, 1939. In the course of the interrogation that took place on that day Ezhov told about the method of recruiting his subordinates in the Cheka into the anti-Soviet conspiracy and about the basic direction of the sabotage work in the NKVD. This sabotage consisted in massive arrests without any basis, falsification of investigative materials, forgeries, and reprisals against undesirable elements."

Quotation (Pavliukov 525-6)

"All this was done in order to cause widespread dissatisfaction in the population with the leadership of the Party and the Soviet government and in that way to create the most favorable base for carrying out our conspiratorial plans."

Ezhov interrogation 05.05.1939

Pavliukov summarizes it 526. No QQ, no note.

"…at his interrogation of May 5 1939 Ezhov recounted the work of the ‘conspirators’ in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. Here at that same time took place the beginning of the large-scale purge (after the removal of M.M. Litvinov, the director of the division of foreign political affairs). Therefore the theme of subversive activity in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs was especially timely in those days.

Ezhov stated that the goal of this activity was the creation of conditions for the victory of Germany and Japan in the inevitable war with the USSR. Specifically, they undertook attempts to create disagreements between the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek and the Soviet authorities, for the purpose, in the last analysis, of facilitating Japanese seizure of the Soviet Far East.

At the beginning of May 1939 confessions were obtained from several arrested NKVD employees concerning the fabrication, at Ezhov’s instruction, of the so-called mercury poisoning. Interrogated on this point Ezhov confirmed the fact of the falsification and explained that this initiative was undertaken with the goal of raising his authority even higher in the eyes of the country’s leadership."

________________________

Ezhov interrogation May 11 1939 by Kobulov

Long quotes in Polianskii 222-226. Acc to Polianskii, this is where Kuz’min’s report of Dec. 12 1938 about Sholokhov and Ezhova is located.

"It is not altogether clear why the closeness of these persons to Ezhova [Ezhov’s wife – GF] appeared suspicious to you. Ezhova’s closeness to these people was suspicious insofar as Babel, for example, as I knew, had written almost nothing during the past few years, circulating all the time in a suspicious Trotskyist milieu and, besides that, had close ties to a series of French writers who could by no means be considered among those who were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Not to mention the fact that Babel demonstratively refused to write off his wife, who had been living in Paris for many years, but preferred to go to see her. Ezhova had a special friendship with Babel. I suspect – in truth, just on the basis of my personal observations – that there must have been ties of espionage between my wife and Babel. On what factual basis do you make this statement? I know from my wife’s own words that she had been acquainted with Babel since 1925. She always insisted that she had never had intimate relations with him. Their ties were limited to her desire to maintain an acquaintance with a talented, singular writer. Babel visited us at home a few times at her invitation, where, of course, I also made his acquaintance. I observed that in his relationship with my wife Babel was demanding and rude. I saw that my wife was simply afraid of him. I understood that this was not a question of my wife’s literary interests, but of something more serious. I excluded any intimate relations because I thought that Babel would hardly treat my wife with such rudeness when he knew what social position I occupied. To my questions to my wife whether she had the same kind of relations with Babel as she had with Kol’tsov she either remained silent or weakly denied it. I always supposed that with this indefinite answer she simply wished to hide from me her espionage ties with Babel, evidently not wishing to confide the numerous channels of this kind of relationship with me… What you have said about Babel is not a sufficient basis for suspecting him of taking part in espionage for England. Aren’t you just slandering Babel? I am not slandering him. Ezhova definitely never said that she was linked with Babel in her work for English intelligence. In this case I am only expressing that supposition, based upon my observation of the nature of the mutual relations between my wife and the writer Babel. What do you think in general about, shall we say, Ezhova’s friendship with cultural figures? This whole specific milieu of people who were tied with the interests of the Soviet people with very thin threads, could not fail to arouse my suspicions. What can you tell us about her relations with the writer Sholokhov? I seem to recall that, I think last spring, my wife told me that she had meet Sholokhov, who had come to Moscow and dropped in at the journal "SSSR na stroike". There was nothing surprising in this, Ezhova always tried to meet writers and never missed an opportunity to do so. I was very well informed about this. Good. And what did you do when you found out about the intimate relations between Ezhova and Sholokhov? I did not know anything about such relations; this is the first time I have heard about them. Don’t lie, Ezhov. In June and August of last year upon your instructions Alekhin arranged to monitor the letter "N" at the phone number of the Hotel "Nationale", where Sholokhov was staying. ____________ For Alekhin see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/gb13.htm ____________ I issued no such instructions. Ezhova may have showed up under the letter "N" solely by chance. But you did know that the intimate relations of Sholokhov with your wife were recorded. Here, take a look at this. [Here reads Kuz’min report of Dec. 12 1938, acc. to Polianskii 224-5] Do you admit that a few days after you received the transcript you brought it home and showed the document to your wife, and then berated her for betraying you? No such event happened. No one ever gave me this transcript of the intimate relations between Ezhov and Sholokhov, and in general I never showed my wife documents from my work and never told her what they contained. Of course you can deny this, Ezhov. But we have the confessions of Glikina, Ezhova’s close friend and a German spy, who is now arrested and is under investigation. Glikina confesses that Ezhova was beaten by you and complained to her and told her about everything. Therefore let me remind you that lying will not help you!" _____________

The following short extract from Ezhov's interrogation-confession of May 11, 1939 is printed in Viktor Fradkin, Delo Kol'tsova . Moscow: Vagrius / Mezhdunarodnyi Fond "Demokratiia", 2002. Published under the auspices of the "Memorial" society, there is every reason to believe that the documents reproduced in this volume are genuine.

Question: Besides Zinaida Glikina, whom you have already named, was anyone else connected with your wife Ezhova E.S. [Evgeniia Solomonovna - GF] in espionage work? Answer: I can only reply with more or less precise suppositions. After the journalist M. Kol'tsov arrived from Spain his friendship with my wife grew much stronger. This friendship was so close that my wife even visited him in the hospital when he was ill. Kol'tsov also worked in the commission -- or committee -- on foreign literature, that is, where Glikina also worked and, as far as I know, Kol'tsov obtained this job for Glikina upon Ezhova's recommendation. I became interested in the reasons for my wife's closeness with Kol'tsov and once asked her about this. My wife at first put me off with general phrases, but then said that this closeness was connected with her work. I asked her, with which work, the literary or the other, and she answered: "With both the first and the second." I understood that Ezhova was connected with Kol'tsov in her espionage work for England.

_____________________

Ezhov interrogation 05.17.39

Interrogation re: murder of Slutsky, organized by Ezhov. Pavliukov 527. No QQ, no note. See Pavliukov 531-2 on Frinovskii’s testimony at Ezhov’s trial on February 3, 1940, where Frinovskii discussed Slutsky’s murder.

"The interrogation of May 17 1939 was devoted to the circumstances surrounding the death of the former head of the Foreign division of the GUGB of the NKVD M. M. Slutsky. Ezhov informed us that the murder of Slutskii was organized according to his instructions, and was done because of the feat that Slutsky, whose arrest had become inevitable, might reveal during his interrogation the facts he knew about the criminal activity of the conspirators. "

_______________________

Ezhov interrogation 06.16.39 by Rodos, selections – Polianskii 230-233

"Do you confirm Kosior’s confessions about your collaboration in working for Polish intelligence? Where, when and what secret information did you transmit to Kosior, and whom else did you recruit for this work?" … Perhaps you did not know Radek and Piatakov well and did not receive any instructions from Trotsky through them? I never received any instructions from Trotsky from anybody. I knew Radek very poorly, I met him at Piatakov’s apartment a few times, but that was about ten years ago! Were you friends with Piatakov? Never. Mar'iasin, the president of the Gosbank, introduced us. We would get together for a drinking bout sometimes at his place, sometimes at Piatakov’s. And then I always got angry with Piatakov. All right, then. When was this? In 1930 or 1931, I can’t remember now. And what did you do with him? When he was drunk Piatakov often played the hooligan, made fun of those present. Once I was sitting next to him at the table. Piatakov quietly stuck me with a pin and then pretended that it was not he who had done it. A little while later he did it again even harder. I did not hold back and hit Piatakov in the face and split his lip. That evening I went away angry with him and never made it up with him and never had any doings with him at all. … You lie well, you bastard. Only I am not Piatakov, I won’t stick you with a pin, but I will force you to tell the truth. … I’ll tell you everything, don’t beat me. My guilt before the party and the people is so great that it’s senseless to justify myself."

Ezhov interrogation June 19 1939

No QQ. Re: nephews Viktor and Anatolii, and Mikhail Blinov, husband of his niece.

Pavliukov 528; 537.

Pavliukov 528:

"In particular, during the course of the interrogation of June 19 1939 Ezhov told about his conversations of a counterrevolutionary nature, which he supposedly had with his nephews Viktor and Anatolii, and also with the husband of his niece Mikhail Blinov. They supposedly agreed completely with his anti-Soviet views, and Viktor also shared, in Ezhov’s words, even his terrorist intentions, although he [Ezhov] never gave him any assignments of that nature."

Pavliukov, 537:

"As has already been mentioned earlier, during the course of the interrogation of June 19 1939 confessions were beaten out of Ezhov according to which Anatolii and Viktor shared his anti-Soviet views and even sympathized with his terrorist orientation. After that they went after his nephews in a serious way. They succeeded in breaking Anatolii first. He not only ‘confessed’ that he knew about Ezhov’s terrorist orientations but also stated that together with his brother Viktor he was read to do anything to help bring about these criminal plans."

[There is NO evidence that Ezhov beaten or tortured to get these confessions – only "supposed" by Pavliukov, 527 bot. - GF]

"As concerns confessions of a personal nature, to obtain some of them the investigators, probably, had to have recourse to the practice of interrogation "with partiality" [i.e. to beat Ezhov – GF]. Otherwise it is hard to understand now, for example, they were able to obtain from Ezhov confessions compromising his nearest relations."

Ezhov interrogation 06.21.39 by Rodos, fm Polianskii 235-238

- summarized by Pavliukov 527 bot.

"If you intend to lie again and make fun of the investigation, then we will not waste our time. I’d prefer to send you back to prison for a week or so to think it over."

Ezhov had already thought about the beginning of his dialog with the investigator and began to talk quickly:

"I admit that I was connected with Zhukovskii in espionage work for Germany since 1932. The fact that I tried to conceal that circumstance from the investigation can be explained only by my cowardice, which I showed at the beginning of the investigation when I tried to minimize my personal guilt, and since my espionage link with Zhukovskii concealed my even earlier ties with German intelligence, it was hard for me to speak [about them] at the first interrogation."

_____________

For Zhukovskii see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/gb169.htm

______________

"When did you become a German spy? I was recruited in 1930. In Germany, in Königsberg. How did you happen to be there? I was sent to Germany by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture. In Germany I was well treated and shown every attention. The most assiduous attention I received from the prominent official of the Economic Ministry of Germany Artnau. Having been invited to his estate near Königsberg I spent the time happily enough, partaking excessively of alcoholic drinks. In Königsberg Artnau often paid the restaurant bills for me. I did not protest. All these circumstances made me feel close to Artnau and often without holding back I blurted out to him all kinds of secrets about the situation in the Soviet Union. Sometimes, when I was drunk, I was even more frank with Artnau and gave him to understand that I personally was not wholly in agreement with the Party’s line and with the existing Party leadership. Things got to the point that during one of the conversations I directly promised Artnau to discuss a series of questions in the government of the USSR concerning the purchase of livestock and agricultural machinery, in which Germany and Artnau were very much interested. And how did German intelligence recruit Zhukovsky? Did his recruitment take place through you? I established espionage ties with Zhukovskii in 1932 under the following circumstances. Zhukovskii was then working as assistant trade representative of the USSR in Germany. At that time I was the chairman of the Raspredotdel of the Central Committee of the Party. When he somehow found himself in Moscow Zhukovskii applied to me with the request to take him along to the negotiations. Before this I had not been acquainted with Zhukovskii and saw him for the first time in my office at the CC. I was astonished that Zhukovskii began to report to me about the situation in the Berlin trade representative office of the USSR concerning questions which had nothing to do with my position. I understood that the basic reason for Zhukovsky’s visiting me was, obviously, not to initiate me into the situation of the affairs of the office of the Soviet trade representative in Berlin but in something else entirely, about which he preferred to remain silent for the time being, awaiting my initiative. Not long before Zhukovsky’s arrival there arrived at the office of foreign groups, which at that time was also a part of the Raspredotdel of the CC of the Party and was under my supervision, there had arrived materials that characterized Zhukovskii in an extremely negative way. From these materials it was obvious that Zhukovskii had carried out a number of trade operations that had been unprofitable for the Commissariat of Foreign Trade. From these materials it was also obvious that in Berlin Zhukovskii was involved with the Trotskyists and spoke in their defense even at official Party gatherings of the Soviet colony. On that basis the Party organization of the Soviet colony insisted that Zhukovskii be recalled from Berlin. Knowing that these materials would have to come before me Zhukovskii obviously expected that I would be first to begin a talk with him concerning his further work abroad. After Zhukovskii had finished his report I reminded him about the failures in his work. Zhukovskii gave me his explanations and at the end of the conversation asked me my opinion as to whether he might continue his work in the office of the Soviet trade representative or be recalled to Moscow. I avoided any answer and promised to deal with the materials and report the results. At the same time I decided to transmit all the compromising materials on Zhukovskii to Berlin so that Artnau might be able to use them and to recruit Zhukovskii to collaboration with German intelligence. I considered Zhukovskii my man, and he unhesitatingly fulfilled all my assignments concerning espionage for Germany. Zhukovskii had the essential conditions of free access to all materials of the Commission of Party Control, and he made use of them whenever German intelligence demanded from him materials on this or that question. I also created for him in the NKVD such conditions that he was able to use for espionage work information through the secretariat of the NKVD on any questions.*

* Senior major of State Security Semion Borisovich Zhukovskii was shot on January 24, 1940. He has been rehabilitated (Polianskii, p. 393).

Ezhov confession 06.25.39 Rodos re poisons

- fm perpetrator2004 Yezhov1.doc; Soima; Polianskii 241-245.

FROM THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERROGATION OF N.I. EZHOV BY INVESTIGATOR RODOS ON JUNE 25 1939: "How did you use this NKVD laboratory in your espionage and conspiratorial activities?" asked Rodos, glancing at Kobulov who was sitting beside him. "ANSWER: I knew that such a laboratory existed and that Iagoda made use of it in his conspiratorial activities. But when I came to the NKVD Frinovskii explained to me that we could not do without the activities of this laboratory, and that it was necessary for our intelligence activities in the Foreign Division abroad. But I did not know anything about what they were doing. I did not even hear about all these experiments about which Zhukovskii spoke, probably Frinovskii allowed him all this. True, once – I don’t remember when – Frinovskii told me that Alekhin had in the laboratory some substance which, if a person ingested it, would cause death like that from a heart attack. Such a substance is essential when it’s necessary to eliminate enemies abroad. But it had to be tested to see whether it would leave traces on the organism that could be discovered by experts upon autopsy. Frinovskii said that they had a doctor who for this purpose needed to carry out research on the corps of a person who had died from this substance. The doctor needed to carry out experiments on three or four persons. What’s the difference how they die, poison is even easier than a bullet in the back of the head. Therefore I agreed, but I never heard anything more about this laboratory and about what they were doing there. QUESTION: Once again your answer is not to the point. Name the persons whom you liquidated in your espionage and conspiratorial activities by the use of the poisons which you received from this laboratory. ANSWER: I have no idea about these poisons, I have never seen them. KOBULOV: Ezhov is lying again, he thinks that somebody will believe him. We remind him that he gave the directive to poison Slutsky. Both Frinovskii and Alekhin have given testimony about this. Did you hear what we are asking you about? How did you organize the poisoning of Slutsky? – asked Rodos. Frinovskii actively spoke against Slutsky. He said that this was Iagoda’s man and that we could never trust him under any circumstances. But here Frinovskii does not view Slutskii at all in the way you do – Kobulov suddenly said. Slutskii head the INO (International section) and could have had access to information from abroad about your espionage links. You feared that and poisoned Slutskii after putting your own agent Shpigel’glas in his place. But you didn’t manage to cover your tracks. Shpigel’glas figured everything out, uncovered your whole band of spies. You had to take care of your agents in the INO and abroad in the most meticulous manner. Tell us in detail how you organized the murder of your wife Evgeniia Solomonovna Ezhova by means of poisoning. I did not organize such a poisoning. She died from a sedative, she drank a large dose. And here your chauffer confessed in the investigation that a day before Ezhova’s death you asked him to take chocolate candies and fruit to her in the hospital. You poisoned these products. Who gave you the poison? Zhukovsky? Alekhin? My wife died November 21. At that time both of them had already been arrested. And then, I don’t’ remember that I sent my chauffer to her with a present. KOBULOV: Don’t play the fool, Ezhov, we are not children here, and we will not believe that such a hardened bandit and spy as you are did not keep poison and did not know how to use it. I do not recall the exact date when I saw my wife in the hospital for the last time. Probably it was the 17 th or 18 th . She told me that she did not want to live, that in any case they would soon arrest her, that she felt there were serious crimes on her account. She asked me that I bring her some kind of poison the next time… Did you arrange your wife’s suicide? Yes. She knew a lot about my subversive activities, my accomplices, and my criminal plans. But I decided not to give her poison. I did not have any special poison. Normal poison I could of course obtain, but such a poisoning could have brought suspicion upon me, that I had put her to death myself or through accomplices, or simply had given her poison for suicide. I knew that a large dose of sedative could cause death. I told her that I did not have any poison, but I did have a very great deal of sedative. She understood everything. On the 20 th I took a box of chocolate candies and put a packet of Luminal in it. Then I put the box into a basket with grapes and apples and told my chauffer to take all this to the hospital. Of course I committed a serious crime, but she herself asked me about this. She wanted to end her life."

[Soima: "Earlier he had confirmed to Rodos that with the aid of poison Ezhov had put his wife to death.]

__________________________

Ezhov interrogation 06.29.39 by Rodos re Kedrov’s report

- fm Polianskii 250-252

Tell us about your espionage connections with the agent of German intelligence Mnatsakanov. I never had such connections with him. And if you think about it the right way. When did you become acquainted with him? That was, it seems, in 1935. I was going to Vienna for treatment together with my wife. Then I was already a secretary of the Central Committee and Slutskii had the task of security for our trip abroad. He, so to speak, attached this Mnatsakanov to me. He had been a consul or a vice-consul, had an automobile, and drove us around the town. Yee-es. And he drove you around so well that once you were Commissar you immediately dragged this villain to a leading post in the INO knowing that he was a German spy, that his wife was linked to Polish intelligence, and that his brother was an experienced Trotskyist provocateur! I didn’t know any of this. Slutskii had simply worked with him in Vienna, had a high opinion of him, and decided to take him into the INO apparatus. I supported Slutsky, not because I knew Mnatsakanov a bit. I did not spend much time on INO matters and completely relied on Slutskii in matters of cadre. So it turns out that it was Slutskii who is to blame. He foisted a German agent onto you, and you knew nothing about him. Is that the way things were? I do not wish to blame Slutskii for anything. He did not foist Mnatsakanov onto me. In my opinion I did not see this Mnatsakanov in the NKVD even once. In the INO at that time I only met with Slutskii about the work, sometimes with Shpigel’glas, and with Boris Berman. Why then did Mnatsakanov call you and ask you to intercede for him when they unmasked him and began to expel him from the Party? He could not have called me. I had a direct connection only with the heads of departments and their assistants. Who among them would even let Mnatsakanov near such a telephone, much less since they wanted to expel him from the Party. That is impossible. I remind you that he called at that time from Kedrov’s office. About Kedrov I know that he was just a simple worker in the INO. From his telephone it was also impossible to reach me.

That’s all, we are finished with lying. You have two days to think hard about your espionage work with Mnatsakanov, to remember all the details. And especially how you warned him in Duilov’s office not to give any confessions. If you continue to lie and mock me, I’ll have your head.

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Ezhov interrogation 07.02.39 by Rodos re Mnatsakanov

- fm Polianskii 252-260

When and how did Mnatsakanov enter into espionage relations with you? This was in 1935 when I went to Vienna for the second time to get treatment for my lung disease. You had been there before, when? In 1934, I was alone then, and the next time I went with my wife. I was treated the whole time by the famous Professor Norden. German intelligence summoned you to him, he was an agent of theirs? Not. The Kremlin medical directorate sent me to him. Many important workers and their wives were treated by him. He had been in Moscow several times, already in the 1920s. And Norden could hardly have been connected with German intelligence. I was told while still in Moscow that this professor was a monarchist and supporter of Franz-Josef and no lover of Hitler, that’s why he moved from Berlin to Vienna, so the fascists could not persecute him. And also, he is very old. Tell us about your first trip to Vienna, with whom did you meet there? In Vienna Slutskii met me. He had received a special directive about this from Iagoda. From Iagoda? That is interesting. Did you yourself ask Iagoda to do this? No. I did not talk with Iagoda about this. At that time I was an assistant department head in the CC and traveled to Austria under a false name. Therefore the CC gave a directive to Iagoda that he should take care of guaranteeing my security. Well, and who was it who took care of your security then, Mnatsakanov? No, then Mnatsakanov was not yet working in Vienna, I think. It was Slutskii himself who brought me to Norden at first, and then, twice, some collaborator of his. To be honest I do not remember his name and never met him again. And when did Mnatsakanov approach you? In 1935. He met Evgeniia Solomonovna and myself at the station and drove us to the plenipotentiary’s office to Slutsky. Then he took us to Norden and showed us the city. He was very polite and kind to us. I’ll bet. Did he connect with you by some code word in the name of German intelligence? No. He gave me a greeting from Artnau and I understood everything. Thereupon I communicated secret political information to him. What kind of information? I don’t remember exactly now, but in my opinion Mnatsakanov was interested in information about industry and about the weaponry of the Red Army. Not long before this I headed the industrial division of the CC, and I was very familiar with this information. Probably that’s why the Germans asked me such questions. He gave you tasks of a subversive and sabotage character? Yes, he did. But in general. What do you mean "in general"? At that time I had already become a secretary of the CC, head of the department of leading Party organs, chairman of the Party Control Commission, and chairman of the Commission on Foreign Assignments. German intelligence knew this very well, and I received from Mnatsakanov the task of performing sabotage while in these positions, of subverting Party work. Be more concrete. Well, how shall I say it? In my hands at that time was in fact all the work of reassigning of leading cadres. Choosing their activities, punishments, directing them for work abroad. So I did everything that a saboteur could do in such positionis. I directed to leading positions people who were weak in professional, political, and moral sense, people who could ruin production, undermine the fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan. To compromise the Party. In the Party Control Commission I managed things so as to cover-up and not disclose elements hostile to the Party, and to deprive of Party membership and shut out in every way those who were loyal to the Party. Abroad I tried to send those who would probably become spies or non-returnees. What a scoundrel you were anyway, Ezhov – hissed Rodos with pleasure through his teeth. Why, after that there is no place for you on this earth. I understand that I caused enormous harm to the Party and the country, I repent fully of my crimes and am ready to bear the punishment I deserve for them, -- said Ezhov, as if by rote, glancing in fear at the investigator. Were you familiar with Mnatsakanov’s wife, Erna Boshkovich? Yes, he introduced us to her in Vienna. Did you know that her first husband was a Polish spy and that she herself works for Polish intelligence? No. I did not even know that she had been married before Mnatsakanov. Did your wife meet with her alone? I seem to remember that not long before our departure Mnatsakanov and Boshkovich took her shopping, and at that time I was in the office of the trade representative. What do you think? Could Ezhova have established espionage connections with Boshkovich in Vienna? What information do you have about that? I have no information about that. Evgeniia and I never spoke about Boshkovich. She never told me anything about espionage connections either with her or with Mnatsakanov. That doesn’t mean that there were no such connections. It is already proven now that Ezhova was an English spy and you even confirmed this to the investigation. Tell us honestly, do you know about any meetings with Boshkovich after her arrival in Moscow? My wife told me almost nothing about her espionage work. But I concede that she might have had espionage connections with Boshkovich in Moscow, since the English and Polish intelligence services often work together. You called Mnatsakanov to Moscow specially in order through him to get into contact with the Gestapo. Did he ask you about this? Yes. Before my own departure from Vienna he expressed such a wish and I ordered Slutskii to have him recalled for work in the NKVD as soon as I became the Commissar. Did you conduct your conspiratorial contact with him in the NKVD building? Yes, we had that kind of contact right up until his exposure and arrest. ... What tasks did Mnatsakanov give you? Did you hand over to him secret NKVD information? He was not interested in secret NKVD information. In the leadership of the Commissariat on the level of heads of departments and their assistants were Gestapo agents. Then many of them were exposed, as was Mnatsakanov himself. These agents knew more detailed information than I did. So I told him about Politburo sessions, CC plenums, conversations with Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich and other leaders, related to him the contents of secret letters and telegrams of the Central Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars. You did good work. And why didn’t you rescue him when he fell? For he asked you to help him. There was nothing I could do because he was completely exposed and confessed his espionage work. Were you afraid that he would give you up? No. No one would have believed him. You are lying, Ezhov! We have evidence against you. When investigator Dulov was interrogating Mnatsakanov you went specially to his office and told your collaborator: "You are writing? Well, write, write." This meant you were warning him in this way that he should keep silent about you, and then arranged it so that he would be shot as quickly as possible. Wasn’t it like that? Yes, I remember what happened. I was afraid that Mnatsakanov would expose me as a German spy. I wanted him to be shot as quickly as possible, and I achieved that. On this occasion Rodos was satisfied with his suspect. His confessions fit into the plan that had been thought out in advance and covered many unclear points. He nodded to Ezhov, who had deserved a cigarette, to the packet lying on the table. While the former Commissar lit up Rodos took a copy of a typewritten text from a file. This was some kind of unrelated and unidentified communication from either a suspect or an interrogator, and perhaps just an excerpt from an anonymous denunciation. In the NKVD it was considered impermissible to take an interest in the source of operational information and, having received this paper from Kobulov, Rodos did not add any details to it. Someone had informed about an amorous contact between Ezhov and a certain Stefforn, a Czech and German female spy, that had taken place in 1934. Before this Rodos had read the text about three times but still did not understand who this Stefforn was – an NKVD collaborator, the wife of a colleague in the INO in Berlin, or both at the same time. Supposedly Ezhov had asked her to marry him but she had refused, and then regretted it. But soon she found herself a new husband, one Petrushev. When Stefforn was imprisoned for espionage Petrushev had asked Evgeniia Ezhova to intercede for her with her husband, but that did not help. That was all the information. Rodos thought. Ezhov had already named about ten German spies with whom he was working in Moscow, therefore the Czech woman Stefforn was hardly essential here. But she might have played a role in Ezhov’s moral dissolution, which was now very important. Did you know a woman named Stefforn? Perhaps. Remind me who she is. I will. She was your lover, a Czech whom you even wanted to marry, but she preferred somebody named Petrushev to you. Maybe that’s Elena Petrusheva, a friend of Evgeniia, they had met in Germany at the end of the 1930s. But… Tell me about her in detail. My wife told me that Lena’s father was a German Jew from Prague and her mother was either a Czech or a Pole. She was married to a Soviet citizen working abroad and lived with him for some time in Germany. Was this husband an employee of the INO of the OGPU? I don’t know, that wasn’t mentioned in the conversation. Sometime in 1930 she left him and went to Moscow. I don’t know the husband’s last name. Then she married Petrushev. I met them a couple of times, a respectable-looking man. He said that his father had been a well-known pre-Revolutionary photographer, the best one in Russia, and very rich. And Petrushev himself worked in some publishing house or other either as a photographer or, maybe, as an artist. The wife told me that he could draw very well, his pictures were hanging in their home. Don’t go off on me about pictures, stay with the main point of the question. Petrushev asked your wife to get you to help his wife Stefforn when she was arrested for espionage on behalf of Germany. Evgeniia Solomonovna never said anything about that to me. In general she and I agreed that she would not ask me about government employees and saboteurs who were under arrest. Once she did ask me to help the husband of a friend, who had been seized for sabotage in a factory, and I told her that I could not do that because my real activities might be uncovered and then we would both burn. Since that time she did not trouble me with such questions. Be that as it may, Ezhov. But you are avoiding the question about your amorous relations with this Stefforn, or Petrusheva. Tell me now about that. Elena was an interesting woman and she pleased me. She came to our apartment a few times – that was, it seems, at the end of 1934. With her there was another woman. We drank. When she and I were smoking together in another room I began to embrace her and wanted to arrange to meet at her apartment since she had said that her husband Petrushev was resting at a spa in Kislovodsk. I asked for her telephone number so I could call her the next day. But she said that they had no telephone. I remembered that my wife had called her at home. That meant that she did not want to get together with me. What, she didn’t work and sat at home all the time? As I remember she was a typist at home, but I might be mistaken. And what, you didn’t meet with her again. Was it really that hard to get her to go to bed? I didn’t try to do that again. After 1934 I didn’t see her again. Zhenia [= Evgeniia] did not invite her to our place any more. How so? Elena had unpleasant conversations with her, anti-Party, politically harmful. About the hunger in the Ukraine, where some of her relatives lived. No doubt she was trying to see how my wife would react to that. In addition Evgeniia heard from one of her friends that Petrusheva had gotten a little drunk and hinted to her that she was collaborating with the NKVD. Ezhov, there is no point in lying. We have information and evidence that you lived for a long time with this woman, wanted to leave your wife for her, gave her expensive gifts and told her state secrets when you were drunk. I don’t have the time to drag every word out of you. Today in this room you’ll be given a pencil and paper, and you write in detail about your grimy ties with this slut. And don’t forget to tell had your complete moral degeneration led to your becoming a spy and traitor. OK. And something else. For a long time you have been hiding your attraction to men, what’s called homosexuality. But this became known after you agreed to the shameful affair of citizen V. from the Commissariat of Water Transport in your apartment, and before that in V’s presence you amused yourself with his wife in bed. Do you understand how far you have fallen? You are simply a monster, Ezhov, a filthy person and a pervert. I’m disgusted to look at you. At that time I was very drunk… What’s that, justification? No, but I don’t remember anything, I woke up in the morning and they were no longer there. The chauffer then told me that he took them away at 3 a.m. I could have done anything at all then… I’m not interested in that. But we know that you told V. about your passion for homosexuality since childhood and that men could completely replace women for you. You should write in detailed when you became a homosexual and with whom you then became involved in this filthy business…

Ezhov interrogation 07.08.39 by Rodos

- fm Polianskii 262-268

"Tell us how and when you recruited Uspenskii in the espionage-sabotage organization in the NKVD that you had created. I turned my attention to Uspenskii already at the beginning of 1936. That was when he was still the assistant commandant of the Moscow Kremlin for internal security? Yes. Where did you find out about Uspenskii’s hostile anti-Soviet views. Did he express them to you himself? No. Veinshtok and Frinovskii told me about that. They knew him well and believed that he’d be very suitable for espionage work. Did you recruit Uspenskii personally? Yes. That was right after my arrival in the Commissariat. He quickly agreed and I told him that we needed our own men in the provinces. That was why I sent him to Western Siberia. What kinds of assignments did you given him then? He was supposed to recruit agents into our organization from among the Chekist cadre and to promote them to leading positionis so that they could seize power in the event of war or a coup. In November 1937 you sent Uspenskii a coded message with the following content: "If you think you are going to sit in Orenburg for five years, you are mistaken. Very soon, it seems, I will have to promote you to a more responsible post. What is the meaning of this message? At that time the leadership of our organization decided to move to active measures. There was a lot of evidence against Leplevskii and Zakovskii showing that they were spies and enemies of the people. It was impossible to hide such matters, and we had to get rid of these people, we couldn’t use them, they could cause everything to fail. We decided to replace them with Uspenskii and Litvin. I gave Uspenskii a coded message so that he would find out about his forthcoming departure from Orenburg and would switch all the sabotage-espionage work over to other people whom he had been able to recruit there. OK. And now tell us how you warned Uspenskii about the fact that they wanted to arrest him. Did Dagin tell you about the fact of Uspenskii's forthcoming arrest? Yes, I think it was he. He came to my office and told me about that. And didn’t he tell you that he had listened in on the telephone conversation between comrades Stalin and Khrushchev about Uspenskii? Yes, I remember that he told me about the telephone conversation about Uspenskii which he had listened in on, but he did not say that that was Stalin’s conversation. Dagin, on my instructions, listened in on all telephone conversations of the Politburo and immediately told me about them so that I would be up to date. After that you called Kiev and warned Uspenskii. What did you tell him? I said: ‘You are being recalled, your situation is bad.’ Something like that. I was afraid to send him a coded message, they could intercept it, since I had already lost trust and was under suspicion among the Party [leaders] as a hostile element. Did Dagin also tell you about the recall of Litvin from Leningrad? I did not know anything about the recall of Litvin to Moscow and did not warn him. There was no need to do so. Why was that? I had an agreement with him that in the event he was exposed he would commit suicide. Was that your order? No. In September of that year Litvin was in Moscow and used to come to my dacha. He told me that the arrival of Beria at the NKVD was the beginning of the end and soon we would all be arrested, since the Party was most likely aware about our plot. And he also said that he would not give himself up alive and that if they unexpectedly recalled him to Moscow he would shoot himself. That’s what happened. Did you support him in this intention? No. But I didn’t try to dissuade him either. That means that you admit that you de-facto gave your accomplice an order to commit suicide in the event of failure? Yes, that was de-facto the case. When did you include Litvin in your espionage work? That was in 1931, when I transferred him to Moscow. Why did he agree to become a spy? Already in the 1920s when I was getting together with Litvin I noticed his inexplicable relationship to Trotskyism. Openly he was not a supporter of Trotsky, but in his circle at that time there were many exposed Trotskyists and I think that in his inner being he had always been a Trotskyist. You wish to say that even then Litvin was a double-dealer? Yes. He was a double-dealer and, as later turned out, was a supporter of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist line. Therefore he willingly agreed to my proposal to become a German spy. I think because at that time the Left opposition had already suffered its final failure and Trotsky had been driven out of the USSR altogether. In 1933 Litvin upon your recommendation was named the chief of the cadre section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine. Was that done on the instruction of German intelligence? Yes, I received that instruction from Artnau. What directives about espionage did Litvin receive from you? These directives were of a subversive and sabotage nature. I asked him to appoint to leading positions people who could by their actions cause arouse the dissatisfaction of the population of the Ukraine, people who would carry out sabotage, ruin foodstuff and livestock, disrupt the fulfillment of industrial plans. These were hidden Right and Left Oppositionist, who also carried out assignments for Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov and other enemies. Litvin was included by you in the basic plan for sabotage that German intelligence gave you? Did you also take him into the NKVD upon the assignment of the fascists in order to organize there the espionage-conspiratorial organization? Yes, that’s how it was. When you came to work in the NKVD you also brought with you there another of your collaborators, Isaac Shapiro. * When was he recruited by you?

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* For Shapiro see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/gb537.htm

I had known Shapiro since 1930. He worked in the cadre section of the Commissariat of Agriculture in which I was a chief. He and I had a good friendship and I valued his zeal and literacy. And when Artnau recruited me and asked me to find people for espionage work I thought right away about Shapiro, who was personally devoted to me and it had always seemed to me that he did not like Soviet power very much and disapproved of the political line of the Party. Did Shapiro carry out sabotage activity in the Commissariat of Agriculture on your instruction? Yes, he did. But for a short time only. I decided to take him into the Central Committee, since there I needed people for subversive work. He knew that you were a German spy? Yes, I told him that together we would work for German intelligence, so as later to overthrow the government and come to power if there were a war with Germany. What assignments of yours did Shapiro carry out in the NKVD? He was de-facto my main assistant. Indeed I first appointed him the chief of the secretariat, and then made him also chief of the first special section. He had a lot of possibilities for sabotage in the NKVD and he carried out all my assignments of an espionage-subversive nature, both mine and Frinovskii's. And when Beria arrived at the NKVD he immediately found out that Shapiro was an enemy and arrested him in November of ’38. I know that. It would be better for you to tell me how you recruited Liushkov and how you helped him escape to Japan. I recruited Liushkov right after his return from Leningrad from the investigation of Kirov’s murder. At that time I was already secretary of the Central Committee and Liushkov knew that I was beginning to oversee the NKVD. Therefore, when I called him to my office and hinted that I had information about his ties with the Petliurovists during the civil war in the Ukraine and other incriminating facts, he was frightened and immediately agreed to work for me as a German-Japanese intelligence man. Did you really have that kind of information? No, I did not have. I made it all up in order to recruit Liushkov. But I guessed that he was a hostile element with a foul past, and turned out to be correct. Liushkov agreed to become a spy. How did you order Liushkov to flee to the Japanese? Ezhov thought for a few seconds. He could not think of a reason why Frinovskii, one of the leaders of the conspiratorial group in the NKVD, had suggested arresting his colleague Liushkov. But then he found a solution. Frinovskii often told me that he did not like Liushkov. He was cowardly and could betray us all at any moment. Upon our orders he was carrying out important espionage tasks for Japanese intelligence and knew a great deal about our subversive and sabotage work. Frinovskii said that we had to get rid of him, that means, kill him. And he told me that he would take care of that himself. I decided not to hinder him. Did Frinovskii say how he wanted to kill Liushkov? No. But I think that he wanted to arrest him first, and then in the inner prison to poison him or put him to death somehow. What a gang! And who warned Liushkov anyway about the danger? I don’t know. But Frinovskii wanted to appoint Gorbach from Novosibirsk to Liushkov’s place and recall the latter to Moscow, supposedly for a new job, but in reality to arrest him. Liushkov, most likely, found out that Gorbach was already on route to Khabarovsk, and fled across the border.

Ezhov ochnaia stavka w. Zhukovskii 07.21.39 – Rodos & Esaulov present

["ochnaia stavka" = "face-to-face confrontation"]

- Polianskii 269-272; B&S 138-139.

Do you know this man? Yes. Who is it? Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov. And you? Rodos asked Ezhov. Yes, that is Semion Borisovich Zhukovsky. Suspect Ezhov. Confirm your confessions concerning the conspiratorial, sabotage, and terrorist activities of the former assistant Commissar of the NKVD Zhukovsky, that you gave at the interrogation of July 17 of this year. Investigator: When did you become a German spy? Ezhov: I was recruited in 1930 in Germany, in Königsberg.

[Here Ezhov repeats word for word the confession included above in the section "Ezhov interrogation 06.21.39 by Rodos, fm Polianskii 235-238" ]

In Germany I was well treated and shown every attention. The most assiduous attention I received from the prominent official of the Economic Ministry of Germany Artnau. Having been invited to his estate near Königsberg I spent the time happily enough, partaking excessively of alcoholic drinks… (In Königsberg Artnau) often paid the restaurant bills for me… I did not protest… All these circumstances made me feel close to Artnau and often without holding back I blurted out to him all kinds of secrets about the situation in the Soviet Union… Sometimes, when I was drunk, I was even more frank with Artnau and gave him to understand that I personally was not wholly in agreement with the Party’s line and with the existing Party leadership. Things got to the point that during one of the conversations I directly promised Artnau to discuss a series of questions in the government of the USSR concerning the purchase of livestock and agricultural machinery, in which Germany and Artnau were very much interested….

[Here the source continues with new material, not printed earlier as a part of this confession.]

Since I knew about Zhukovsky’s cowardice and stubbornness I did not consider it necessary to keep him up to date about conspiratorial matters. I only introduced him fully to these matters in the Spring of 1938. Then he was appointed my assistant and headed the whole accounting of the NKVD and the GULAG. We conspirators had special plans about the GULAG about which I have given detailed confessions, and I decided to bring Zhukovskii up to date. By this time the people who could have exposed Zhukovskii along the lines of his Trotskyist and espionage connections were already condemned and the danger of Zhukovsky’s arrest had passed. I told Zhukovskii about the existence of the conspiracy in the NKVD, that the conspiratorial organization is connected with governmental circles of Germany, Poland, and Japan. I don’t remember exactly now, but I think that I told him about our desire to get into contact with the English. Then I told him about the leading members of the conspiratorial organization and about our plans, specifically about our terrorist plans… What assignments did you give Zhukovskii concerning the GULAG? The conspiratorial assignments concerning the GULAG that I gave to Zhukovskii consisted in this: we sent to work the GULAG a very great quantity of compromised people. We could not leave them in the operational work, but we kept them in the GULAG for the purpose of forming a sort of reserve for conspiracies in the case of a coup in the country. I assigned Zhukovskii to maintain these people, but not to connect himself with them along conspiratorial lines, but to carry out all conspiratorial assignments that came to the GULAG through these people… Investigator: Did you give these terrorist assignments to Zhukovskii at the time of his work in the section of operational technology? Did you talk with him about the terrorist tasks of the conspiracy. Ezhov: Yes, I talked to him. There were two variants of our plans. The first variant: in the case of war, when we proposed to carry out the arrests of the members of the government and their physical removal. And the second variant: if there were no war in the immediate future, then to get rid of the leadership of the Party and the government, especially Stalin and Molotov, by carrying out terrorist acts against them. I firmly remember that I told Zhukovskii about this after I had entrusted him with the existence of the conspiracy. Investigator: Suspect Zhukovsky, did you receive from Ezhov the criminal assignments about which he has just spoken? Zhukovsky: I did not receive any such criminal assignments and am hearing about terrorist tasks for the first time at this face-to-face confrontation. You have nothing else that you want to tell the investigation? [ asked Rodos to Zhukovskii and, having received a negative answer, pushed the button to call the guards to take them away.]

Ezhov interrogation 07.24.39 by Rodos, including a quotation from a Frinovskii interrogation

- Polianskii 272-275

Recently Frinovskii gave confessions about your terrorist activity. Now I shall read them to you: "When Zhukovskii was chief of the 12 th section, Ezhov gave him an assignment to develop poisons with the aim of using them in carrying out terrorist acts. Ezhov, speaking with Zhukovskii in my presence, said that it was necessary to work on the question of poisons that would work instantaneously, which could be used on people but without [leaving] visible traces of poisoning. Ezhov also clearly said that we needed these poisons for use within the country." Do you confirm his confession, Ezhov? I cannot confirm that. At one of the interrogations I said that I had no relation to this laboratory. Frinovskii and Zhukovskii took care of it. I did not give them any tasks concerning poisons and did not have any conversations about these poisons. Stop lying! You are incriminated not only by Frinovskii but by Zhukovsky, Alekhin and Dagin. You stood at the head of the conspiracy and gave directions to prepare poisons for the villainous murder of leaders of the Party and government. Here is some more of what Frinovskii confessed about this: "I must say that the open use of servants for a terrorist act was not essential, servants could be used secretly, because the laboratory and the preparation of products were in the hands of Barkan and Dagin, they could poison the products in advance, and the servant, not knowing the products were poisoned, could give them to the members of the Politburo. Ezhov gave Zhukovskii directives about the preparation of poisons, after he left the 12 th department Zhukovskii transmitted these directives to Alekhin, and I and Ezhov confirmed these directives more than once. In 1937 and 1938 there were several joint conversations in Ezhov’s office between myself, Ezhov, and Alekhin. We were constantly concerned with how to carry out this work in the laboratory. The point is that those poisons that were being developed in the laboratory had had some kind of taste or left traces of their use in the human organism. We set the task of developing in the laboratory poisons that would be without any taste, so that they could be used in wine, drink and food, without changing the taste and color of the food and the drink. We proposed to invent separately poisons of instantaneous and of delayed action, and also whose use would not cause any visible destruction in the human organizing so that it could not be determined by autopsy of the body of the person killed by poison that poisons had been used to murder him. What do you say to this? I seem to remember a few conversations with Frinovskii about poisons. But I do not remember that I gave him any directives about their preparation and use. But you will remember, think about it. I am convinced that the memory of traitors and scoundrels such as yourself is quickly restored in punitive cells and isolation cells. Everybody remembers after a few days. The use of poisons for the purpose of terror against the government was discussed by use, when our original plan of a coup d’état and seizure of power fell apart. Tell us about this in more detail. Already in the summer of last year [1938 – GF] our organization took the decision to organize a military coup on the 7 th of November. Who was present at this assembly and where did it take place? It took place at my dacha. Present were Frinovskii, Evdokimov, Dagin, Zhurbenko, Zhukovsky, and Nikolaev-Zhurid. That was, so to speak, the general staff of our subversive organization. Oh, I forgot, Litvin was also there, he was coming to Moscow at that time on official business. Did you call together this meeting specially so that your general staff of bandits could take part? Yes. The staff’s presence was essential, as the coup was to take place also in Leningrad and the staff was supposed to guarantee everything. It was for this purpose that you also moved Zhurbenko to be the head of the UNKVD for Moscow and Moscow oblast’, so that he could be there to guarantee your treasonous conspiracy? Yes, that is so. I specially appointed Zhurbenko to this position before Beria’s arrival in the NKVD. Continue. What did you discuss there at the dacha? We decided that the interior troops [of the NKVD – GF] that were in Moscow and were under the command of Frinovskii as first assistant to the Commissar would carry out the coup. As for him, he should prepare a fighting group that would annihilate the members of the government in attendance at the parade. Then we decided to confirm a final plan for the coup in September or October and to send around directive to our people in the republics and oblasts’ about what they should do on the seventh of November. And this meeting took place, who was present at it? There were only three of us: Frinovskii, Zhukovsky, and I. Either the end of September or the beginning of October we met in my office. And what did you discuss? At that time the possibilities of our organization had been seriously disrupted by the arrival of Beria in the NKVD. He replaced Frinovskii, and we could no longer use the internal troops. But why, he must have had his agents there? Yes, he did have his agents, but obviously Beria already had information about our conspiracy and arrested almost all of them in September. I could not prevent these arrests or I would have exposed myself. Then Frinovskii proposed that we put off the coup and take power by means of poisoning the members of the government and in the first place Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov. Their deaths would have immediately caused confusion in the country and we would have taken advantage of this and seized power. We calculated that we could then arrest all the people in the government and the NKVD who were unsuitable for us, and to claim that they were conspirators guilty in the deaths of the leaders. What low-lifes! What could have stopped you hoodlums? Frinovskii then said that Dagin would carry out the poisoning, and that Alekhin and Zhukovskii would give him the poisons. But it would be necessary to prepare the poisons, and we decided to carry out this terrorist act when the requisite poisons were collected. We agreed to meet when Dagin had the poisons and to put together a detailed plan for the coup. But Zhukovskii was unexpectedly arrested, a few days after this meeting, and after him Alekhin and Dagin, and I do not know whether or not Dagin received the poisons.

Ezhov interrogation 08.02.39 by Rodos

- Polianskii 275-280 (plain text); Briukhanov & Shoshkov 139-142 ( italics) ; in both of them ( underlined).

Tell us in detail about the sabotage activities that were carried out by you and your colleagues on the economic properties of the NKVD – said Rodos, preparing to write down the confessions. In addition to the large quantity of economic properties that had been under the direction of the NKVD under Iagoda and which had developed greatly during the years 1937-1938, that is Kolyma, Indigirka, Norilstroi and others, I succeeded in significantly increasing the economic activity of the NKVD by means of new properties. During these years I succeeded in carrying forth in the government the question about the transfer to the direction of the NKVD of many forest regions of the Commissariat of Forests, in connection with which the production program of the forest camps of the NKVD in the preparation and export of wood products in 1938 comprised almost half of the whole program of the Commissariat of Forests. Into the direction of the NKVD were transferred the construction of railroad lines that had the most important defense significance, such as the Baikal-Amur railway, the line from Ulan-Ude to Naushi, the Soroka-Pliasetskaia, the Ukhto-Pecherskaia line, and others. Among the purely defense-oriented properties I achieved the transfer under the direction of the NKVD of the construction of the Archangel shipbuilding factory and almost all the powder cellulose factories in Archangel, Solikamsk and other places, at the same time having organized the construction of ten smaller cellulose factories. On the initiative of the NKVD, on top of the programs confirmed by the government, the NKVD was given the construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric station – the Kuibyshev hydro network.

Sabotage and mismanagement in the construction sites flourished with complete impunity. We managed to go over completely to questions of defense construction, achieving practical control over a significant part of it. This gave us the possibility in case of need in our conspiratorial goals to vary and carry out different subversive measures which could help accomplish the defeat of the USSR in wartime and our coming to power. …The greatest population of prisoners was the border regions of the far Eastern borders. Here it was very easy for us to take over different economic tasks of a defense nature because of the lack of workers. However the camps of the Far Eastern Region were situated not only near to the borders but we sent there mostly prisoners sentenced for espionage, diversion, terror and other more serious crimes, and we sent almost no so-called "ordinary" prisoners. In this way along the borders of the FER, in the direct rear of the Red Army was prepared the most active and embittered counterrevolutionary force, which we planned to use in the widest possible manner in case of complication or of war with the Japanese… A significant quantity of prisoners were concentrated on our western borders of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Leningrad oblast’, and the Karelian ASSR, especially in road construction. … The whole conspiratorial plan of the regime we created for the prisoners consisted in that the most privileged conditions were created for the prisoners sentenced for the most serious crimes (espionage and terrorism), since that was the qualified force that would often be used for directing the administrative and economic work in the camps. In their hands was concentrated also all the cultural and educational work of the prisoners. It is clear in what spirit they were educated. Finally the regime created in the camps often permitted the counterrevolutionary activity of the prisoners to continue with complete impunity. In the camps the work of the so-called 3 rd sections was so badly organized and the camps were guarded so poorly, that the prisoners had the possibility of creating their own counterrevolutionary groups in the camps and to associate with each other at will. Facts like this were many. The guard of the camps was extremely small, made up of unreliable people, the material situation of the soldiers and the command staff was very poor, and, finally, the prisoners themselves were used in many cases in the capacity of guards. As a result of a security organized like this there were many cases of mass escapes from the camps. We fought against this evil poorly and did so consciously, in the hopes that the escapees from the camps would continue their counterrevolutionary activity and would become a force that would spread all kinds of anti-Soviet agitation and rumors.

I achieved the transfer under the direction of the NKVD a series of working factors of the defense industry. The reason for that could not have been the use of the labor of prisoners, since among them were the Pavshinskii factory, the Tushinskii factory of aviation motor construction, and others. Besides that, the NKVD organized a series of new factories on its own initiative, which carried out defense production… What, do you think we called you here to report on behalf of the NKVD about the successful fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan! You are a bandit, a conspirator, a saboteur, a terrorist, and a traitor. Answer the question asked you to the point. Sabotage and mismanagement in the construction sites flourished with complete impunity. I’ll bet, with a Commissar like that. – said Rodos with a grimace, not stopping his note-taking. We managed to go over completely to questions of defense construction, achieving practical control over a significant part of it… Who is this "we"? Well, our conspiratorial organization. Myself, Zhukovsky, Frinovskii, and others. I have already named them all earlier. This gave our organization the possibility in case of need in our conspiratorial goals to vary and carry out different subversive measures which could help accomplish the defeat of the USSR in wartime and our coming to power. In which areas was the subversive activity of your organization mainly distributed? The greatest population of prisoners was the border regions of the far Eastern borders. Here it was very easy for us to take over different economic tasks of a defense nature because of the lack of workers. However the camps of the Far Eastern Region were situated not only near to the borders but we sent there mostly prisoners sentenced for espionage, diversion, terror and other more serious crimes, and we sent almost no so-called "ordinary" prisoners. In this way along the borders of the FER, in the direct rear of the Red Army was prepared the most active and embittered counterrevolutionary force, which we planned to use in the widest possible manner in case of complication or of war with the Japanese. Did you send Liushkov there specially. What assignments did you give him? At the beginning of 1937 Frinovskii and I conferred with each other and decided that we had to have our own man in the Far East, through whom we could maintain contact with Japanese intelligence. In the event of an attack by the Japanese he was to let the counterrevolutionaries out of the camps, seize with their help the stores of arms and military supplies, and then head terrorist-diversionist work in the rear of the Red Army. We thought about this and chose Liushkov for these purposes, whom I had already recruited to our organization in 1936. Then I transferred him from the Azovo-Chernomorskii region and made him the head of the NKVD in the Far Eastern Region. In which other areas did you create the same kind of espionage-diversionist centers? We also did this in the western borders of the USSR. A significant quantity of prisoners were concentrated on our western borders of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Leningrad oblast’, and the Karelian ASSR. In Leningrad oblast and Karelia Litvin was in charge for you, of course? Yes. I sent him there specially at the beginning of 1938 instead of Zakovskii, whom I could not fully trust. And in the Ukraine? There Uspenskii all the assignments, including contact with Polish and German intelligence. That is why I made him Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukraine. When was he recruited by you? At the beginning of 1937. He came to Moscow from Novosibirsk before he was appointed to the position of chief of the UNKVD for the Orenburg oblast. I knew that Uspenskii was anti-Soviet, anti-party, and for that reason he immediately agreed to work in our organization. In Belorussia you sent Boris Berman? Did you know that he was an old German agent? Yes. Artnau told me that Berman was working for German intelligence as soon as I became Commissar of Internal Affairs. He had been recruited at the beginning of the ‘thirties, when he was

[Soviet] resident in Germany. I immediately established espionage contact with him, then he was the assistant chief of the INO. In 1937 I specially sent him from our organization to Belorussia and made him Commissar of Internal Affairs. There he met with German agents and received assignments and instructions. That means your widespread espionage organization in the case of an attack on the USSR by Japan and Germany could seize power not only in Moscow but in border areas, opening the road to the invaders. Do I understand this correctly from your confessions? Yes. That was exactly what we had planned. It’s useless to deny such things. Tell me, was counterrevolutionary work carried on by your confederates in the camps for the purpose of establishing there bases for sabotage and anti-Soviet activity? In the camps the work of the so-called 3rd sections was so badly organized and the camps were guarded so poorly, that the prisoners had the possibility of creating their own counterrevolutionary groups in the camps and to associate with each other at will. Facts like this were many. The guard of the camps was extremely small, made up of unreliable people, the material situation of the soldiers and the command staff was very poor, and, finally, the prisoners themselves were used in many cases in the capacity of guards. As a result of a security organized like this there were many cases of mass escapes from the camps. We fought against this evil poorly and did so consciously, in the hopes that the escapees from the camps would continue their counterrevolutionary activity and would become a force that would spread all kinds of anti-Soviet agitation and rumors… [At that moment the telephone on Rodos’s table started to ring.]

I am leaving right away, I will be back at four o’clock for sure. We shall continue the interrogation tomorrow, and you remember what concretely sabotage work you carried out with your confederates in the economic properties of the NKVD.

Ezhov interrogation 08.03.39 by Rodos

Polianskii 280-284

"The overwhelming majority of the prisoners were so-called vicious "refusers", as a rule people who had not fulfilled the assigned norm of work, in connection with which these latter were deliberately extremely poorly provided, something we also did for sabotage purposes. This circumstance, and a series of other subversive measures of the conspiratorial organization caused the necessity of more and more prisoners being brought to Kolyma. The government every year devoted enormous expenses to the development of Kolyma, spending hundreds of millions of rubles. If these means had been rationally spent, the mining at the rich Kolyma sites could have been significantly mechanized. Mechanization would not only have reduced the necessity of holding a large quantity of prisoners in Kolyma and of bringing to them a huge amount of foodstuffs and other supplies, but would have increased the yield of metal and sharply lowered its cost. Meanwhile mechanization was slowed down by sabotage and all the extraction was based on muscle power alone. As a result already in 1938 more than 100,000 prisoners were brought to Kolyma. The whole area of Kolyma is rich not only in gold, but in many other ores. Specifically, in Kolyma there are huge supplies of coal and other forms of fuel. With any kind of careful economic approach to the matter it would have been possible without any difficulty to satisfy the demands of Kolyma with coal and even with oil without the costly transporting of them from the European part of the USSR. However the coal deposits of Kolyma are not exploited at all. In Kolyma it would unquestionably be possible to wholly cease the importation even of explosive materials and of the simplest equipment, which also is brought in every year in great quantities. For this purposes it would be necessary to build in Kolyma a very simple mechanical factory of modest size or, even better, workshops that could manufacture the simplest equipment and spare parts. Just as easily and quickly could and should be built in Kolyma an explosives factory of modest size, since almost all raw materials necessary for this exist there. Finally, in Kolyma the importation of foodstuffs could be significantly reduced. Such a possibility is completely obtainable for Kolyma, where meat, fish and even vegetable production could be developed. All this was deliberately ignored by us, and the supply of Kolyma was wholly laid upon the shoulders of the state. I have already said that the region of Kolyma together with the gold-bearing regions are rich also in a whole series of other rare ores. So, for example, there are rich industrial supplies of tin, antimony, copper, micas, and other ores. These extremely valuable ores that have enormous economic and defense significance are not worked at all or are extracted in tiny quantities, like tin, while in Kolyma there are all the possibilities of setting up the extraction of these ores at the same time as that of gold, the more so since the regions with these ores are nearby. It is clear that the parallel extraction of gold and of other valuable ores that are so territorially adjacent where, consequently, it would be possible to set up a unified, energetic, mechanical economic unit, and to reduce to a significant extent the cost of gold and of other rare metals. These questions we deliberately and as an act of sabotage ignored, and did not even present to the government. What role in this was played by the foreign intelligence services with which you were collaborating? They, of course, knew what we were doing and encouraged and supported our subversive work in every way. But as far as I know they did not specially give any assignments either to me or to their other agents, since, no doubt, they were certain that we ourselves knew where we should best carry out the sabotage. Name the concrete properties where sabotage was carried out according to your instructions. The construction of the Ukhto-Pechersk road has a decisive meaning for the development of the extraction of coal, oil, and other valuable products, without which the economic development of the Northern region as a whole is impossible. Meanwhile the construction of this road was retarded by us deliberately and in every way, under various pretexts and the resources allotted to it were spread over a large area of work and did not have any effect. The retardation in the construction of the Ukhto-Pechersk railroad is explained in the main by the lack of a satisfactory plan, which the Commissariat of Roads and Rails should present. The saboteurs in the GULAG and in the Commissariat of Roads and Rails with our support organized a never-ending dispute about the choice of the direction of the roads, which has been going on for a long time now, and the planning and even the exploratory works in many sectors have not been begun to this day. Finally, it was essential not to spread out our resources over a broad front of works, but to concentrate on the decisive sections for the export of production. And precisely the construction of the Ukhto-Pechersk line should have been strictly divided into several stages. In the first part should have been concentrated all the forces and resources to finish the construction of the Vorkuta-Abez’ section, for the purpose of exporting coal. But we hindered that, insofar as all decisions were mine. Further, the construction of the section from the oil-bearing areas of Ukhta to Kotel’nich should have been organized, and these works could have been fully developed from two directions, both from Kotel’nich and from Ukhta. Only in the final stage could have been finished those sections that unite the coal-rich Vorkuta areas with the oil-bearing Ukhta areas and that give in this way an outlet for coal and oil in two directions. But nothing of this was done because of our sabotage. What subversive, espionage and sabotage activity did you carry out in the GULAG itself? * We understood, that the expansion of the economic functions of the NKVD must express themselves in the worsening of our basic operative work. We proposed to widely use the system of camps so as to send there the compromised part of NKVD workers. There are not only drunkards, idlers and wastrels. Among them were people with a Trotskyist past, Rights who sympathized with Bukharin, and Iagoda’s people. De-facto they were all recruited by us since, in sending them to the GULAG, we were hinting to them that we had evidence against them that could be investigated at any moment. In this manner we created a special reserve of people read to carry out any conspiratorial task. But there were many anti-Soviet elements in the GULAG even without this. The conspiratorial leadership of the GULAG remained, for all practical purposes, unreplaced. At the time of my arrival in the NKVD the GULAG was headed by the conspirator of Iagoda’s group Matvei Berman, Boris Berman’s older brother. He had put together a large anti-Soviet group of people who occupied more or less responsible posts in the GULAG. Among these people were a great many Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Rights, and it was easy to attract them to our side after Berman left when the GULAG was headed by Ryzhov, a participant of the conspiracy recruited by men, who was sent to this work on my initiative in order to carry out sabotage assignments. And after his departure for the Commissariat of Forests, the GULAG was headed by the conspirator and spy Zhukovsky, who was connected with me and who was at the same time my assistant. In the summer of 1938 the Central Committee of the Party more than once pointed my attention to the fact that I was surrounded by suspicious people who had come with me to work in the NKVD. In the Central Committee the question of removing Tsesarskii was raised, it was proposed to me that I remove Shapiro, Zhukovsky, and Litvin from the work. That put me on my guard, inasmuch as all these men were my confederates, and that meant that something might be known to the Party about the conspiracy. In order to somehow conceal my anti-government activity I had to agree with the demands of the Central Committee and I decided to send Zhukovskii packing without any fuss, away to the countryside. I carried out this attempt but it did not succeed, since about that time Beria began to work and Zhukovsky, instead of going to the place I had assigned him as director of the Ridder polymetallic combine, was arrested."

__________________

* From this point on the text given in Polianskii here is given in B&S but attributed to Ezhov’s August 2 1939 interrogation.

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Ezhov August 4 1939 Confession (published separately)

Ezhov August 4 1939 Confession belongs here.

Ezhov ochnaia stavka with Bulatov 09.20.39

Pavliukov 528 – very brief discussion plus the two sentences quoted below.

Discussion: "There were also those who continued to offer resistance [to the investigation – GF]. For example, in the course of the face-to-face confrontation held on September 20 1939 with his former associate in the Central Committee apparatus D.A. Bulatov, the latter rejected all accusations directed against him and left the interrogation unbroken."

Ezhov interrogation 10.25.39 by Esaulov

Polianskii 285; 286-289.

"Listen", implored Ezhov, "What kind of spy am I? I have a ‘tail’ behind me at all times, my chauffer or a guard. What kind of a resident could I meet with? And no one recruited me in Germany in 1930. I have been lying a lot. And I lied about Slutsky. I did not give Frinovskii the assignment to poison him, and Alekhin and Zakovskii have nothing to do with it. Slutskii died by himself, from his heart. And lied about everything. You should not lie… … In various documents you stated contradictory and untrue information about yourself. The verification has proven this. Did you do this out of espionage and sabotage motives? Yes. I deliberately distorted my biography. I did this for careerist purposes, to be promoted in the Party. You thought up another biography for yourself not out of careerist, but out of provocateurist motives, in order to deceive the Party, to insinuate yourself into its leadership, and corrupt it from within by means of sabotage and espionage. Was that so? Yes. I did this out of sabotage and prevocational motives in order to struggle against the Party. Now let us move on to an explanation of those facts that you have deliberately distorted. In official documents you lied that you were born in Petrograd. No information about your birth in that city have been found. Where were you born in reality? ... I only know about the place I was born from my mother’s words, from memories of my early childhood. Mother said that I was born in the city of Mariampol, in the former Suval’sk guberniia of Lithuania. Afterwards I went to Petrograd. By means of the facts about my birth in Petrograd I wanted to portray myself in the guise of a deeply-rooted proletarian and old revolutionary. Did you also lie when you said your father was a worker? Yes, I also lied about this for the same reason. Who was your father in reality? My father, Ivan Ezhov, from near Tula by birth, was from a peasant family. Were they well-off? Yes. He served in the army, in a musical unit, as a senior musician in Mariampol. There he also married the servant girl of a choirmaster. What did your father do after demobilization? He was a forester and a switchman on the railroad. In a prerevolutionary Peterburg handbook an Ivan Ezhov is mentioned who was owner of a saloon. Was that your father? For a time my father owned a tea house. We have information that this tea house also served as a front for criminal activities. Is that so? Yes. It was in reality a house of assignation… A bordello. It was a bordello, and my father lived on the proceeds. When they shut down the tea house, he became a painter. Did he hire other workers? I don’t deny that in later years father had one or two hired workers and was something like a contractor. Did you also lie deliberately about working as a mechanic in Petrograd factories? I did this to pretty up my background. I worked very little as a mechanic, my main work was always the trade of tailor. And now tell us what your real nationality is. I have always considered myself a Russian and identify myself as such on official documents. I was born into a Russian peasant family. Aren’t you concealing your real nationality? After all, your mother was from Lithuania. In official documents my nationality is recorded more or less correctly. What does "more or less" mean? That means that my mother was born in Lithuania and therefore was a Lithuanian by nationality. In one of your [biographical] forms you wrote that you know both the Lithuanian and the Polish languages. Did your mother teach them to you? No. My mother and father knew Lithuanian, but never spoke it at home. I served in Vitebsk in the Tsarist army, and there were many Poles and Lithuanians. That’s where I learned a few words and sentences. But I do not know how to speak these languages and wrote on the form that I know them for prevocational purposes. The investigation possesses information that you know Yiddish. Why do you conceal this? I do not know Yiddish, if you do not count a few words and expressions that I learned from my acquaintances who were Jews. And here we have information that you often spoke Yiddish with your wife. That is some kind of mistake. I cannot speak Yiddish. Even my wife, in my opinion, knew Yiddish poorly and never spoke it with any Jewish people.

Ezhov protocol of end of investigation 02.01.40

Pavliukov, 529, Polianskii 290, say this was presented by Esaulov.

B&S 144-145, and Soima says it was Sergienko.

Text identical in Polianskii & Soima; very close to this in B&S.

No text in Pavliukov.

1. Was the leader of an anti-Soviet conspiratorial organization in the armed forces and the organs of the NKVD. 2. Betrayed his fatherland by carrying out espionage work in the service of Polish, German, Japanese, and English intelligence services. 3. Toward the goal of seizing power in the USSR prepared an armed uprising and the commission of terrorist acts against leaders of the Party and the government. 4. Undertook subversive, sabotage work in Soviet and Party apparatuses. 5. For adventurist and careerist goals created a case about an imaginary "mercury" poisoning of himself, organized the murder of a series of persons who were inconvenient to him and who could have exposed his treasonous work, and had sexual relations with men (homosexuality).

Pavliukov 529:

"The last interrogation took place on January 31 [1940], and on the very next day the assistant chief of the investigative section of the NKVD of the USSR A.A. Esaulov composed a protocol of the conclusion of the investigation. Ezhov was given for his perusal 12 volumes of his criminal case. He read through it and declared that he confirmed all the confessions given by him at the preliminary investigation, and that he had no additions to make."

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Ezhov’s Concluding Statement at Trial (published separately)

A transcript obviously exists, but it is still secret.

Transcript of Ezhov’s final words at trial belongs here.

The following is from Pavliukov, 531-532:

"Then the protocol concerning the conclusion of the investigation was announced, in which Ezhov had confirmed the truth of his confessions with his own signature. Ezhov stated that at that moment he had not retracted these confessions, but that he was retracting them now. He had no connections with any intelligence services, had not planned any terrorist act on Red Square on November 7 1938, and had never taken part in any conspiratorial activity.

It was necessary for the court, setting aside its preliminary intention to do without witnesses, to call into the courtroom one of them, Ezhov’s former assistant M. P. Frinovskii. That same day he too was supposed to appear in court and probably was somewhere nearby.

Frinovskii stated that soon after his appointment as Commissar of Internal Affairs Ezhov had recruited him into the conspiratorial organization in the NKVD organized by himself. At first they prevented the exposure of the participants of the Right-Trotskyite bloc as much as possible, and at the end of 1937 they set to the creation of a terrorist group within the NKVD.

Besides that Frinovskii discussed the falsification, in accordance with Ezhov’s directives, of the so-called mercury poisoning, the murder on Ezhov’s order of the chief of the Foreign Division of the GUGB of the NKVD A. A. Slutsky, and of the poisoning by Ezhov of his own wife.

In answer to the questions of the chairman V.V. Ul’rikh Ezhov called everything Frinovskii said to be vicious slander. He did not poison his wife and did not send her luminal, and in relation to Slutskii had had a directive from "directive organs" not to arrest him but to get rid of him by another means, "as otherwise our whole foreign intelligence service would have fled". The need to get rid of Slutskii was dictated, in Ezhov’s words, by the fact that there were very weighty confessions of the former assistant commissar for internal affairs Ia. S. Agranov.

Ezhov continued that he did not take part in the anti-Soviet conspiracy together with Frinovskii. Evdokimov, Dagin, and the other persons whom he had named in his confessions as participants in the conspiracy were in fact not such, or in any case he did not know anything about that."

Comments on Ezhov’s last words from Briukhanov & Shoshkov, 153:

"Reading ‘the Last word’ it is impossible not to notice that Ezhov said nothing about the essence of the accusations leveled against him. He rejected them all, but spoke mainly about his services in exposing "enemies and spies of various types and intelligence services" while stating at the same time he had "such crimes for which I could be shot", promising to discuss them, but admitted guilt only in that he "did not purge enough" enemies.

Ezhov denied his participation in a secret organization directed against the Party and the government, saying that, on the contrary, he had taken all measures to expose the conspirators who had murdered S.M. Kirov. But was there a conspiracy in the organs of the NKVD? Or did those 14 thousand NKVD men whom Ezhov purged act individually – each one on his own?

Judging from the transcript [of Ezhov’s trial] such a question was not raised at the trial: Everything was clear to the court as it was. The "sincere confessions" in his "Last word" did not ring true. Ezhov was careful to avoid any sharp corners. He even distorted the episode that had already figured in the trial of Bukharin, Rykov and the others, concerning the falsification of a terrorist act against himself. As it turned out the "terrorist act" was planned and executed – if we can even use that word in this case – by Ezhov and by the former chief of the counter-revolutionary section Nikolaev in order to increase the authority of the "iron commissar." Having consulted with specialists about the conditions for mercury poisoning Nikolaev had rubbed mercury into the upholstery of the soft furniture in Ezhov’s office and submitted a piece of cloth for laboratory analysis. In the "terrorist act" they blamed NKVD man Savolainen, on whom a vial of mercury was planted. After the necessary "working over" Savolainen confessed to everything.

And Ezhov’s attempt to deny the accusation about dissolution in his morals and private life, to convince the court that he was supposedly loved for his modesty and honesty.

As a whole the ‘Last word’ creates an impression of something not thought through, rambling, incomplete, and dishonest. And yet Ezhov, in essence, had nothing to lose. He could have spoken more frankly."

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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Russian offensive campaign assessment, march 27, 2024.

  Christina Harward, Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 27, 2024, 5:10pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:15pm ET on March 27. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 28 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) released its 38th report on the human rights situation in Ukraine on March 26, confirming several of ISW’s longstanding assessments about Russia’s systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in occupied territories and towards Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs). [1] The HRMMU report details activities between December 1, 2023 and February 29 2024, and includes new findings about Russia’s abuse of Ukrainian POWs during this timeframe, based on interviews with 60 recently released male POWs. [2] Nearly all of the POWs that HRMMU interviewed detailed how they were tortured by Russian forces with beatings and electric shocks and threatened with execution, and over half of the interviewees experienced sexual violence. HRMMU also reported that it has evidence of Russian forces executing at least 32 POWs in 12 different incidents during the reporting period and independently verified three of the executions. ISW observed open-source evidence of several POW executions during this reporting period: the execution of three Ukrainian POWs near Robotyne, Zaporizhia Oblast on December 27, 2023; the execution of one Ukrainian POW near Klishchiivka, Donetsk Oblast on February 9, 2024; the executions of three Ukrainian POWs near Robotyne, the execution of six Ukrainian POWs near Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, and the executions of two Ukrainian POWs near Vesele, Donetsk Oblast on or around February 18, 2024; and the execution of nine Ukrainian POWs near Ivanivske, Donetsk Oblast, on February 25. [3] The summary execution and mistreatment of POWs is a violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. [4] The HRMMU report also details the forced Russification of Ukrainian populations in occupied areas, including the imposition of Russian political, legal, and administrative systems onto occupied Ukraine in violation of Russia’s international legal obligations as an occupying power. [5] ISW has reported at length on the specifics of Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine, consistent with the findings of the UN HRMMU report. [6]

Russian officials are tying the US and the West to a broader set of “terrorist” attacks against Russia following the Crocus City Hall attack, likely to intensify rhetoric about alleged Western and Ukrainian threats to generate greater domestic support for the war in Ukraine. The Russian Investigative Committee and Prosecutor General’s Office stated on March 27 that they will consider an appeal from the Russian State Duma to investigate American and Western financing and organization of terrorist attacks against Russia. [7] The Russian Investigative Committee, Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Duma Deputies that made the appeal did not explicitly reference the Crocus City Hall attack. [8] Kremlin officials have previously tied Ukraine and the West to the Crocus City Hall attack but have yet to make a formal accusation, and the Kremlin may refrain from issuing an official accusation as all available evidence continues to show that the Islamic State (IS) is very likely responsible for the attack. [9] Russian officials routinely describe Ukrainian military strikes against legitimate military targets in occupied Ukraine and Russia as terrorism and consistently claim that Western actors help organize these strikes. [10] The Kremlin likely aims to seize on wider Russian social fears and anger following the Crocus City Hall attack by portraying Ukraine, the US, and the West as immediate terrorist threats. The Kremlin likely hopes that perceptions of Ukrainian and Western involvement in the Crocus City Hall attack will increase domestic support for the war in Ukraine, and Russian officials will likely invoke a broader view of what they consider terrorism to further cast Ukrainians as terrorists and the West as a sponsor of terrorism. [11] The Kremlin may still formally accuse Ukraine of conducting the Crocus City Hall attack if it believes that these other informational efforts are insufficient to generate the domestic response it likely desires. [12]

Russian authorities are increasing legal pressure against migrants in Russia following recent Russian officials’ proposals for harsher, measures against migrant communities in response to the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack. BBC News Russian Service stated that there has been a significant increase in the number of cases related to violations of the rules of entry for foreign citizens into Russia following the Crocus City Hall attack. [13] BBC News Russian Service reported on March 27 that 784 such cases have been registered since the morning of March 25, as compared with 1,106 during the entire previous week. A Russian lawyer who often works with Tajik citizens reportedly told BBC News Russian Service that over 100 people waited for a Moscow district court to hear their cases on March 25 alone and that Russian authorities are especially targeting migrants from Tajikistan during searches. BBC News Russian Service reported that representatives of the Tajik diaspora in Russia are expecting Russian authorities to conduct a large wave of deportations following the Crocus City Hall attack. A Russian insider source claimed on March 27 that unspecified actors gave the Moscow Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) an “unspoken” order to “not spare” migrants and for MVD employees to use their own judgement in the field. [14] The insider source claimed that a source suggested that Russian authorities are not preparing to conduct raids on migrant communities but will apply the “strictest measures” to migrants in “controversial situations.” Kremlin newswire TASS stated on March 27 that Russian police and Rosgvardia conducted a raid at the Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast to check the documents of migrant workers, and Russian opposition outlet Baza reported that Russian authorities detained 21 people during the raid. [15] Several Russian ultranationalist milbloggers complained that the way Russian-language schools in Tajikistan are teaching about Russia’s historical imperial occupation of Tajikistan is discouraging Tajik migrants from integrating into Russian society, essentially blaming migrants for the alienation that Russian society subjects them to. [16] Select Russian officials recently called for the introduction of several anti-migrant policies, which Russian authorities are unlikely to enact given Russia’s reliance on migrants for its force generation and labor needs. [17] Russian authorities may continue the practice of raiding migrant workplaces and increase crackdowns at border crossings to temporarily placate emotional cries for retribution following the March 22 attack as the Kremlin continues to develop a cogent and practical response.

Key Takeaways:

• The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) released its 38th report on the human rights situation in Ukraine on March 26, confirming several of ISW’s longstanding assessments about Russia’s systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in occupied territories and towards Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs).
• Russian officials are tying the US and the West to a broader set of “terrorist” attacks against Russia following the Crocus City Hall attack, likely to intensify rhetoric about alleged Western and Ukrainian threats to generate greater domestic support for the war in Ukraine.
• Russian authorities are increasing legal pressure against migrants in Russia following recent Russian officials’ proposals for harsher, measures against migrant communities in response to the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka and southwest of Donetsk City on March 27.
• Russian Storm-Z personnel continue to complain about their poor treatment by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) as the MoD tries to posture efficacy in its force generation and social benefit allocation system.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports. 

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Positional engagements continued along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on March 27, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka and Lake Lyman; southeast of Kupyansk near Ivanivka; west of Kreminna near Terny and Yampolivka; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka. [18] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced near Terny, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim. [19] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov stated that elements of the Chechen Akhmat Spetsnaz “Aida” detachment are operating near Bilohorivka. [20]

Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces struck Kharkiv City with a D-30 universal joint glide munition (UMPB), a guided glide bomb, on March 27. [21] Ukrainian officials noted that the strike was the first Russian glide bomb strike against Kharkiv City since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022. [22] Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration Head Oleh Synehubov stated that the UMPB D-30 has a range of up to 90 kilometers and that Russian forces can launch the bomb from aircraft or ground-based Smerch multiple rocket launch systems (MLRS). [23] Russian forces struck Myrnohrad, Donetsk Oblast with three UMPB D-30SN guided glide bombs on March 10. [24]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces reportedly advanced west of Bakhmut, although there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in the area on March 27. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced west of Bakhmut along a railway line and a section of the O0506 (Khromove-Chasiv Yar) highway by 1.15 kilometers in depth and 1.85 kilometers in width. [25] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the 98th Airborne (VDV) Division are advancing near Ivanivske and are within 500 meters of the city limits of Chasiv Yar (west of Bakhmut). [26] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu credited elements of the Russian 102nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (150th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) with seizing Ivanivske on March 24, although ISW has yet to observe visual evidence confirming that Russian forces have seized Ivanivske. [27] Positional fighting continued northeast of Bakhmut near Vesele; northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka; and south of Bakhmut near Shumy and Pivdenne. [28] A Ukrainian military observer reported that Russian forces have intensified transfers of equipment and personnel along ground lines of communication (GLOCs) through Kadiivka, Pervomaisk, and Popasna (all east of Bakhmut), but did not specify the destination of these transfers. [29] Kadiivka, Pervomaisk, and Popasna all lie along the T0504 Luhansk City-Bakhmut highway that runs directly from the Russian rear in occupied Luhansk Oblast into Bakhmut, however.

Russian forces recently advanced west of Avdiivka amid continued positional fighting in the area on March 27. Geolocated footage published on March 27 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced within Berdychi (northwest of Avdiivka) and in Orlivka (west of Avdiivka). [30] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces entered Semenivka (northwest of Avdiivka) and are attacking Ukrainian positions within the settlement but that Ukrainian forces are actively counterattacking in the area. [31] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced 200 meters west of Orlivka on the western bank of the Durna River, 200 meters west of Tonenke (west of Avdiivka), 200 meters in the direction of Umanske (west of Avdiivka), 300 meters south of Tonenke towards Pervomaiske (southwest of Avdiivka), and 100 meters south of Nevelske (southwest of Avdiivka). [32] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims. Positional fighting continued northwest of Avdiivka near Berdychi and Semenivka; west of Avdiivka near Orlivka, Tonenke, and Umanske; and southwest of Avdiivka near Vodyane, Nevelske, and Pervomaiske. [33]

Russian forces recently advanced southwest of Donetsk City amid continued positional fighting west and southwest of Donetsk City on March 27. Geolocated footage published on March 27 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced within central Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City). [34] Positional fighting continued west of Donetsk City near Heorhiivka and Krasnohorivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka and Pobieda. [35] Elements of the Russian 5th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps [AC]) are reportedly operating near Krasnohorivka. [36]

Positional engagements continued south of Velyka Novosilka near Staromayorske and Urozhaine in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on March 27. [37]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on March 27, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Positional engagements continued near Robotyne, near Mala Tokmachka (northeast of Robotyne), northeast of Novoprokopivka (south of Robotyne), and northwest of Verbove (east of Robotyne). [38] Elements of the Russian 71st Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) reportedly continue operating within Robotyne. [39]

Positional engagements continued in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast, including near Krynky, on March 27. [40]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Russian forces conducted a series of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine on the night of March 26 to 27 and on March 27. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 13 Shahed-136/131 drones from Kursk Oblast and that Ukrainian forces shot down 10 drones over Kharkiv, Sumy, and Kyiv oblasts on the night of March 26 to 27. [41] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian drones struck civilian infrastructure in Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast. [42] Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast Head Oleh Synehubov stated that a Russian Kh-35U subsonic anti-ship cruise missile struck Kharkiv City on the morning of March 27. [43] Ukraine’s Eastern Air Command reported that Ukrainian forces shot down an unspecified Russian cruise missile over Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on March 27. [44] Ukrainian officials stated that Russian forces struck an industrial enterprise in Mykolaiv City with an Iskander-M ballistic missile on the afternoon of March 27. [45]

Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Colonel Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces have stored “several dozen” Zircon missiles in military facilities in occupied Crimea. [46] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Major Ilya Yevlash stated that Ukrainian air defense systems, such as Patriot and SAMP/T systems, can intercept Zircon missiles when they slow down to about 3,700 kilometers per hour on approach to a target. [47]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian Storm-Z personnel continue to complain about their poor treatment by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) as the MoD tries to present the efficacy of its force generation and social benefit allocation system. Russian opposition outlet Mobilization News posted a video appeal from Storm-Z fighters from Kaluga Oblast on March 27 wherein one fighter claimed that after signing contracts with the Russian MoD, Russian command sent a Storm-Z unit of 230 people to the frontline, of whom only 38 survived combat. [48] The Storm-Z fighter complained that he has been unable to receive combat veteran status or promised payments from the Russian authorities for his service. [49] Mobilization News released another video on March 27 wherein relatives of killed and wounded Storm-Z fighters complain to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russian authorities have not issued the Storm-Z fighters combat status or granted payments in the event of their death or injury in Ukraine. [50] The relatives of the Storm-Z fighters blamed the Russian MoD and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the poor treatment and lack of benefits for Storm-Z fighters. The Russian MoD relies heavily on Storm-Z recruits from penal colonies to carry out costly infantry-led frontal assaults against Ukrainian positions and is very unlikely to address complaints concerning their poor treatment. The Russian MoD claimed on March 27 that it is issuing electronic combat veteran certificates and streamlining and digitizing the process for veterans to obtain payments and social benefits — but these privileges evidently do not apply evenly to all personnel who have signed contracts with the Russian MoD. [51]

Russian news outlet Vedemosti reported that US-sanctioned Russian company Baikal Electronics is struggling to domestically package semiconductor chips to produce processors and that over half of its domestically produced processors are defective. [52] Vedemosti reported that Baikal Electronics began to experiment with domestically packaging chips in Russia at the end of 2021 and that outdated equipment and a lack of experienced employees caused the large amount of processor defects.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Russian drone developer Albatross LLC told Kremlin newswire TASS that Russian forces used the Albatross M5 long-range reconnaissance drones to guide aviation and artillery strikes while repelling recent pro-Ukrainian Russian raids into Belgorod Oblast. [53] Albatross LLC noted that the modernized Albatross M5 drone has a maximum range of 60-80 kilometers.

Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti reported that Russian T-72B3, T-72B3M, T-80BVM, and T-90M tanks operating in Ukraine use Reflex-M guided weapon systems with the Invar-M/M1 anti-tank guided missiles to strike Ukrainian and Western-made vehicles. [54]

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

ISW is not publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine today.

Russian officials are weaponizing international responses to the Crocus City Hall attack to accuse the West of espousing Russophobic policies and to baselessly blame Ukraine of involvement in the attack. Russian Ambassador to Austria Dmitry Lyubinsky claimed on March 27 that while the Austrian government reacted to the Crocus City Hall attack, it did not use the words “terrorist attack” or condemn the attack. [55] Lyubinsky accused Austria of having “taken a very special position in its hypocrisy” and a “daze of permissiveness” towards Ukraine and reiterated the Kremlin narrative baselessly connecting Ukraine to the attack. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova reported that Russia has received 24-hour non-stop words of support from around the globe following the attack, but immediately pivoted to accuse Ukraine of involvement in the attack and blame NATO members of monopolizing the global fight against terror. [56]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Nothing significant to report.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[1] https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/2024-03-26%20OHCHR%2038th%20Periodic%20Report.pdf

[2] https://ukraine.un.org/en/264368-un-says-russia-continues-torture-execute-ukrainian-pows

[3] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-20-2024 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-18-2024 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-10-2024 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-3-2024 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-20-2024 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-27-2023

[4] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-treatment-prisoners-war

[5] https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/2024-03-26%20OHCHR%2038th%20Periodic%20Report.pdf

[6] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/24-210-01%20ISW%20Occupation%20playbook.pdf

[7] https://t.me/tass_agency/240300 ; https://t.me/astrapress/52521 ; https://t.me/tass_agency/240322

[8] https://ria dot ru/20240327/rassledovanie-1936142056.html ; https://meduza dot io/news/2024/03/27/deputaty-gosdumy-potrebovali-ot-sk-rassledovat-akty-terrorizma-kotorye-ssha-sovmestno-so-stranami-nato-i-spetssluzhbami-ukrainy-osuschestvlyayut-v-rossii

[9] https://isw.pub/UkrWar032324 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar032424 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar032524 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar032624

[10] https://t.me/tass_agency/239253%C2%A0;%C2%A0https://isw.pub/UkrWar020624%C2%A0;%C2%A0https://isw.pub/UkrWar031824%C2%A0 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-calls-ukrainian-attack-belgorod-terrorism-promises-more-strikes-2024-01-01/ ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2024 ; https://isw.pub/RusCampaignOct10

[11] https://isw.pub/UkrWar032324

[12] https://isw.pub/UkrWar032324

[13] https://t.me/bbcrussian/62850

[14] https://t.me/vchkogpu/47045

[15] https://t.me/bazabazon/26432 ; https://t.me/bazabazon/26440 ; https://meduza dot io/news/2024/03/27/politsiya-i-rosgvardiya-priehali-s-reydom-na-sklad-wildberries-v-podmoskovnoy-elektrostali-u-rabotnikov-proveryayut-dokumenty-nekotoryh-uvozyat-v-voenkomat ; https://t.me/tass_agency/240303 ; https://t.me/tass_agency/240290

[16] https://t.me/rybar/58588 ; https://t.me/notes_veterans/16295 ; https://t.me/historiographe/12011 ; https://t.me/voenacher/63252

[17] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-26-2024 ; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-24-2024

[18] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://t.me/mod_russia/37036 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/19025 ; https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/17835 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/19025

[19] https://t.me/dva_majors/38313 ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8702

[20] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/4620

[21] https://suspilne dot media/714544-zelenskij-zminiv-sekretara-rnbo-zvit-oon-sodo-stracenih-ukrainskih-polonenih-763-den-vijni-onlajn/?anchor=live_1711553688&utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=ps ; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2024/03/27/boyeprypas-yakym-rosiyany-vdaryly-po-harkovu-mozhe-letity-na-vidstan-do-90-km-oleg-synyegubov/

[22] https://suspilne dot media/714544-zelenskij-zminiv-sekretara-rnbo-zvit-oon-sodo-stracenih-ukrainskih-polonenih-763-den-vijni-onlajn/?anchor=live_1711553688&utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=ps; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2024/03/27/boyeprypas-yakym-rosiyany-vdaryly-po-harkovu-mozhe-letity-na-vidstan-do-90-km-oleg-synyegubov/

[23] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2024/03/27/boyeprypas-yakym-rosiyany-vdaryly-po-harkovu-mozhe-letity-na-vidstan-do-90-km-oleg-synyegubov/

[24] https://isw.pub/UkrWar031024

[25] https://t.me/RVvoenkor/64758; https://t.me/basurin_e/10068 ; https://t.me/rusich_army/13845

[26] https://t.me/rusich_army/13845

[27] https://t.me/mod_russia/37029 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2024

[28] https://t.me/mod_russia/37044 ; https://t.me/mod_russia/37051 ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Lh7wn9dDbMDZcCSUP4kHDoHuABYPPUB5vnfakuyQw21x2MKXQ1fcsLqAgYeuSQVWl ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8702 ; https://t.me/negumanitarnaya_pomosch_Z/16170 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/19025 ; https://t.me/rusich_army/13845 ;

[29] https://t.me/samotniyskhid/4868

[30] https://t.me/creamy_caprice/4888; https://t.me/kultshturmovika_ukraine/1773 ; https://t.me/creamy_caprice/4889; https://t.me/c/1595839251/3625; https://x.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1772981767139430744?s=20

[31] https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8702 ; https://t.me/dva_majors/38373 ; https://t.me/negumanitarnaya_pomosch_Z/16183 ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8724 ; https://t.me/rybar/58575

[32] https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8720

[33] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Lh7wn9dDbMDZcCSUP4kHDoHuABYPPUB5vnfakuyQw21x2MKXQ1fcsLqAgYeuSQVWl ; https://t.me/mod_russia/37044 ; https://t.me/mod_russia/37051 ; https://t.me/dva_majors/38313 ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8720 ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8702 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/19025 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/55225

[34] https://t.me/tivaz_artillery/3650; https://t.me/creamy_caprice/4893

[35] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Lh7wn9dDbMDZcCSUP4kHDoHuABYPPUB5vnfakuyQw21x2MKXQ1fcsLqAgYeuSQVWl ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://t.me/dva_majors/38313 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/19025 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/118101 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/55225

[36] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/118105

[37] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://t.me/mod_russia/37044 ; https://t.me/mod_russia/37052 ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Lh7wn9dDbMDZcCSUP4kHDoHuABYPPUB5vnfakuyQw21x2MKXQ1fcsLqAgYeuSQVWl

[38] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Lh7wn9dDbMDZcCSUP4kHDoHuABYPPUB5vnfakuyQw21x2MKXQ1fcsLqAgYeuSQVWl ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://t.me/SJTF_Odes/7591 ; https://t.me/rybar/58575 ; https://t.me/dva_majors/38313 ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8715 ; https://t.me/DnevnikDesantnika/8692 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/19025

[39] https://t.me/batalyon15/4045

[40] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rxTJAPqhSGh5mqY7C4XDTQiRjiVX25K4Tmx6tT6GCypPhjw8tmKBZAmRa5jaETbGl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02ReTBwNLG8czu42xB89ixKbv1WzZE2LqsgMcXwngSeHHpRjAXoaR3esPk1eCxZiZ8l ; https://t.me/dva_majors/38313

[41] https://t.me/kpszsu/12330

[42] https://t.me/pgo_gov_ua/22717 ; https://armyinform.com dot ua/2024/03/27/vijska-rf-atakuvaly-izyum-shahedamy-poshkodzheno-gimnaziyu-poraneno-ohoronczya/ ; https://t.me/synegubov/8827?single

[43] https://t.me/synegubov/8827

[44] https://www.facebook.com/pvkshid/posts/pfbid0LGmUtBDdzmxud8zZ23FDoN8eKarYJkLS6YrsSUzB62HVo7uSrXWhxPxnnzAhuSUyl

[45] https://t.me/mykolaivskaODA/8840 ; https://t.me/dsns_mykolaiv/4948 ; https://t.me/SJTF_Odes/7600

[46] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2024/03/27/u-sylah-oborony-povidomyly-pro-kilkist-rosijskyh-czyrkoniv-u-krymu/

[47] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2024/03/27/u-povitryanyh-sylah-povidomyly-pro-sposoby-zbyttya-rosijskyh-czyrkoniv/

[48] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/18111

[49] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/18111

[50] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/18114

[51] https://t.me/mod_russia/37031

[52] https://www.severreal.org/a/bolshe-poloviny-rossiyskih-protsessorov-baykal-okazalis-brakovannymi/32879476.html ; https://www.vedomosti dot ru/technology/articles/2024/03/26/1027924-razrabotchik-protsessorov-baikal-lokalizuet-odin-iz-etapov-proizvodstva

[53] https://t.me/tass_agency/240240 ; https://t.me/tass_agency/240241 ; https://t.me/tass_agency/240268

[54] https://ria dot ru/20240327/rakety-1936068479.html

[55] https://t.me/RusBotWien_RU/4869

[56] https://t.me/MID_Russia/38112

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ANTI-SEMITIC ATTITUDES OF THE MASS PUBLIC: ESTIMATES AND EXPLANATIONS BASED ON A SURVEY OF THE MOSCOW OBLAST

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JAMES L. GIBSON, RAYMOND M. DUCH, ANTI-SEMITIC ATTITUDES OF THE MASS PUBLIC: ESTIMATES AND EXPLANATIONS BASED ON A SURVEY OF THE MOSCOW OBLAST, Public Opinion Quarterly , Volume 56, Issue 1, SPRING 1992, Pages 1–28, https://doi.org/10.1086/269293

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In this article we examine anti-Semitism as expressed by a sample of residents of the Moscow Oblast (Soviet Union). Based on a survey conducted in 1920, we begin by describing anti-Jewish prejudice and support for official discrimination against Jews. We discover a surprisingly low level of expressed anti-Semitism among these Soviet respondents and virtually no support for state policies that discriminate against Jews. At the same time, many of the conventional hypotheses predicting anti-Semitism are supported in the Soviet case. Anti-Semitism is concentrated among those with lower levels of education, those whose personal financial condition is deteriorating, and those who oppose further democratization of the Soviet Union. We do not take these findings as evidence that anti-Semitism is a trivial problem in the Soviet Union but, rather, suggest that efforts to combat anti-Jewish movements would likely receive considerable support from ordinary Soviet people.

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International Criminal Law and the Role of Narrative in the War in Ukraine, 36 Pace Int'l L. Rev. 363 (2024)

Seton Hall Law School Legal Studies Research

37 Pages Posted: 17 Jun 2024

Jonathan Hafetz

Seton Hall Law School

Date Written: June 10, 2024

This article examines the multiple ways that international criminal law (ICL)—the body of international law that seeks to impose criminal responsibility on individuals for international crimes—has impacted the conflict in Ukraine. Most violations remain unpunished, and ICL’s legal accountability mechanisms continue to face significant obstacles.  But even absent prosecutions and trials, which remain contingent on an array of shifting factors, ICL has affected the Ukraine conflict in multiple ways. 

The article focuses on how ICL has helped shape narratives about the war in Ukraine.  In doing so, the article cautions against a strict law/politics dichotomy and instead focuses on the more dynamic and multi-faceted interaction between international law, policy, and politics.  It offers some broader conclusions about the opportunities as well as the challenges that a reliance on narrative presents for ICL’s overarching aim of holding individuals accountable for mass atrocities through prosecutions.  As the article explains, narrative can advance ICL’s goals, but harnessing narrative’s full potential requires a more consistent commitment to ICL’s norms and principles, especially from the most powerful states.  Further, an overreliance on narrative, without judicial enforcement, carries significant risks, particularly in today’s digital world, where facts can be distorted, stories manipulated, and disinformation widely and rapidly disseminated. Extensive reliance on narrative, moreover, can dilute the norms on which ICL is based, weakening its status as law and breeding cynicism.  Thus, the more disputes about atrocity crimes are resolved through competing narratives rather than by courts, the more blurred the distinction may become between ICL’s regime of individual responsibility and the world of international power politics.

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Jonathan Hafetz (Contact Author)

Seton hall law school ( email ).

One Newark Center Newark, NJ 07102-5210 United States

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