Word: nkvd
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...through political terror. A refugee's testimony: "I know it sounds funny to you, but the fact is that to us who escaped to Poland, that country today seems, by comparison, the most wonderfully free, democratic country you could dream of. This is how the MGB (formerly the NKVD) works in our cities: every block is controlled by an MGB boss with his office on the premises. Every house has an MGB informer. The informers control each other. One of them goes to the other and says: 'It's too bad about all this terror in Russia...
...obvious reasons prefers to remain anonymous." Just as obviously, as Eliot concedes in the preface, the book's credibility suffers by its anonymity. But the basic facts are beyond dispute. When the Red Army made its deal with the Nazis and marched into eastern Poland in September 1939, NKVD operatives came tumbling after the army. They arrested tens of thousands of Poles; the author says "more than a million...
...young woman who had been a mathematics lecturer at the University of Lwow was jailed because her father was in trouble with the NKVD. She never saw him again. Some months later she herself was ,in Kazakstan, living mostly on whey, wild roots and tea. Her job on a Soviet dairy farm was explained "in quite a friendly way" by the ouprav (overseer). She was to follow the cows around, gather their dung, smear it over the wickerwork of nearby sheds. In time the dung would dry and then presto, said the overseer, the sheds would be habitable. For this...
...Route" is the broad Moscow avenue down which the Packard limousines from the Kremlin streak every morning before dawn, carrying commissars and marshals to their country dachas after the night's work. Everyone who lives on The Route lives under special surveillance by the NKVD (now the MGB and MVD), and the NKVD has cause for suspicion. The U.S. visitor, James Ferguson, is introduced by his merry Russian friend Mitka to a significant little group of people who meet on The Route as conspirators...
Gregor, another member of the group, had risen in the NKVD as Yagoda's interrogator and a leader in the Terror. A massive and subtle peasant, Gregor concedes that 7,000,000 enemies of the people were purged. "All gondevay," says Mitka gaily. And Gregor, too, as one of the few witnesses still alive, knows he will soon be "gondevay...