Word: nkvd
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...succeeded by a shrieking little man named Nikolai Yezhov, who wanted to get back at the world for the years he had spent in bitter poverty. He began his reign by purging the ranks of the NKVD, successor to the OGPU. Next he purged Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and practically the entire High Command of the Red Army. He gave his name to two of the Red Terror's maddest years (1936-38), the "Yezhovshchina." In the Yezhovshchina, the most fantastic denunciations were accepted at face value by the NKVD; no one was safe. Terror was completely indiscriminate, torture equal...
...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...
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...