This large young woman, who was a medical nurse, was tried. She was charged with the worst crime—Article 58-1b, treason against the Motherland committed by a military person…
While writing down a transcript [of the hearing], I could not find any espionage activity in her testimony. She admitted that, while a prisoner of the Germans she signed a collaboration agreement with the German intelligence. That was all, but the fact of this recruitment, even in the absence of any espionage activity, was enough for the military tribunal. Even though she herself had told the court about the recruitment and there was no independent proof of it.
A guilty verdict and speedy execution followed.40
During the war, military tribunals sentenced more than 2.5 million Soviet military men and women.41 Of these, 472,000 men were sentenced for counter revolutionary activity, i.e. under Article 58, and a total of 217,000 were shot; of those, 135,000 were sentenced by military tribunals of the Red Army. Death sentences were usually executed by an OO (later SMERSH) officer or a Red Army platoon attached to the OO/SMERSH Department, before the eyes of the formation.
The enormity of these executions becomes evident from a comparison with death sentences in foreign armies. British military tribunals sentenced 40 servicemen, while French tribunals sentenced 102, and American tribunals sentenced 146 servicemen to death.42 The German field military tribunals sentenced 30,000 servicemen to death, and approximately the same number of German deserters was shot at the end of the war without trial, mostly by the SS blocking units and military gendarmes.
Notes
1. A division of crimes into two groups, (a) crimes against the new political law and order, and (b) all other crimes already existed in the first Russian Federation Criminal Code of 1922 (Article 27). Criminal codes of the other Soviet republics had the same article as Article 58 but with a different article number—for instance, in the Ukrainian Criminal Code it was Article 54.
2. For an English translation of the paragraphs of Article 58 see Jacques Rossi, The Gulag Handbook: An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Soviet Penitentiary Institutions and Terms Related to the Forced Labor Camps, translated from the Russian by William A. Burhans (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 539–50. The main section of this volume is an invaluable dictionary of Gulag jargon and terminology.
3. Document No. 13, in Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo. Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie materialy. Mart 1953–fevral’ 1956, edited by A. Artizov et al., 77 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2000) (in Russian).
4. Joint decision of VTsIK (All-Russian Central Executive Committee, predecessor of the USSR Supreme Council) and Sovnarkom, dated July 20, 1934. Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov o repressiyakh, edited by Ye. A. Zaitsev, 161 (Moscow: Respublika, 1993) (in Russian).
5. NKVD report to Stalin, dated October 5, 1938 (FSB Central Archive, Fond 3, Opis’ 5, Delo 79, L. 281); quoted in Arsenii Roginsky and Aleksandr Daniel, ‘Arestu podlezhat zheny…’ Polit.ru, October 30, 2003 (in Russian), http://www.polit.ru/research/2003/10/30/628134.html, retrieved September 4, 2011.
6. Organizational details of persecutions of chsiry, including children, were given in NKVD Operational Order No. 00486, dated August 15, 1937; in Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov, 86–93.
7. Quoted in Yulian Semenov, Nenapisannye romany (Moscow: DEM, 1989), Chapter 27 (in Russian), http://virlib.ru/read_book.php?page=31&file_path=books/9/book04207.gz, retrieved September 5, 2011.
8. Report of Yu. D. Sumbatov to Beria, dated January 29, 1939 (FSB Central Archive, Fond 3, Opis’ 6, Delo 839, L. 35), quoted in Roginsky and Daniel, ‘Arestu podlezhat zheny.’
9. Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, dated May 31, 1941. Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, no. 25 (1941) (in Russian).
10. Safonov’s report to Andrei Vysinsky, dated December 22, 1941. Document No. 212 in Deti GULAGa, 1918–1956, edited by S. S. Vilensky, A. I. Kokurin, G. V. Atmashkina, and I. Yu. Novichenko, 376 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2002) (in Russian).
11. Details in S. Lakoba, Abkhazia posle dvukh imperii. XIX–XXI vv. (Moscow, 2004), 111–22 (in Russian).
12. Politburo decision P19/277, dated August 17, 1940. Document No. 124 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 184.
13. Victor Levenstein, Po-nad narami tabachnyi dym… (Moscow: Russkii put’, 2008), 149 (in Russian). L. Ye. Vlodzimersky (1903–1953) headed the NKVD/NKGB/MGB Investigation Department for Especially Important Cases (OVD) until 1946.
14. Menachem Begin, White Nights: The Story of a Prisoner in Russia, translated from the Hebrew by Katia Kaplan (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977), 81.
15. Anna Yatskova, ‘Istoriya sovetskogo suda,’ Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 2 (2003) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/oz/2003/2/iackov.html, retrieved September 4, 2011.
16. M. Delagrammatik, ‘Voennye tribunaly za rabotoi,’ Novyi Mir, no. 6 (1997) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/1997/6/delagr.htm, retrieved September 4, 2011. This source gives examples of a number of standard cases tried by military tribunals.
17. Vyacheslav V. Obukhov, Pravovye osnovy organizatsii ideyatel’nosti voennykh tribunalov voisk NKVD SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: MVD Moscow University, 2002). Candidate of Sciences Dissertation, 41, 96 (in Russian). I am indebted to Professor Jeffrey Burds (Northeastern University, Boston, MA), who pointed out this source.
18. From 1943 to 1945, the USSR Supreme Court also included the Military-Railroad Collegium and the Military-Transportation Collegium. From the end of 1944 till April 1954, there was also the Collegium of Labor Camps Courts. Nikita Petrov, GULAG, Chapter 11, http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava11.htm, retrieved September 4, 2011.
19. Details in Obukhov, Pravovye osnovy, 89–101.
20. In early 1942, the Directorate of Military Tribunals was renamed the Main Directorate of Military Tribunals which consisted of the Directorate of Military Tribunals and Directorate of the Navy Tribunals. Also, the Department of Military Tribunals of the NKVD troops became the Directorate of Military Tribunals of the NKVD troops. Ibid., 42 and 96.
21. Details in ibid., 48.
22. Interview with Zyama Ioffe, former member of a divisional military tribunal, February 5, 2009 (in Russian), http://www.iremember.ru/drugie-voyska/ioffe-zyama-yakovlevich.html, retrieved September 4, 2011.
23. Delagrammatik, ‘Voennye tribunaly.’
24. See whole texts of paragraphs 193-17, 193-20–23 in Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy. Voina 1941–1945 gg. v materialakh sledsvenno-sudebnykh del (Moscow: Terra, 2006), 281–6 (in Russian).