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Police vs. Party? Institutional Hierarchies and Agency in Soviet Moldavia, 1944–1952

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2022

Igor Cașu Open the ORCID record for Igor Cașu [Opens in a new window]
Igor Cașu*
Affiliation:
Faculty of History and Philosophy, State University of Moldova, Chișinău, 60 A., Mateevici St., MD–2009, Chisinau, Moldova
*
i.casu@usm.md
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Abstract

This paper addresses an under-researched topic in Soviet post-war history. It is about institutional hierarchies in a newly annexed Western borderland based on recently disclosed archival materials from Chișinău (including ex-KGB and MVD) and Moscow depositories. In contrast to all-Union institutional practices, the Moldavian SSR's case study shows that the party was hardly a hegemonic institution in late Stalinism. Using kompromat and inside information, the political police (NKGB-MGB) controlled the party institution. In contrast to the Baltic republics, Soviet Moldavia was headed by weak first secretaries appointed with the connivance of local police. Agency is an essential variable in explaining the dynamics of institutional design and hierarchies in Soviet peripheries in late Stalinism. Political police's predominance in this period is explainable as Bessarabia – mostly part of Soviet Moldavia – was a contested territory between Romania and the Soviet Union and hence the need to establish a more repressive policy to counteract the mass expectations of a regime change. I also argue that the realities of the immediate post-war Soviet Moldavia do not fit the conclusions of a recent book on ‘substate dictators’ by Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk (2020).

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Contemporary European History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , February 2023 , pp. 79 - 96
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Vladimir N. Khaustov, Vladimir Naumov, and Natalia S. Plotnikova, eds., Lubyanka. Stalin i Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezapasnosti NKVD, 1937–1938 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratiia, 2004), 607–11.

2 Viola, Lynne, ‘Antisemitism in the “Jewish NKVD” in Soviet Ukraine on the Eve of World War II’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 34, 3 (2020), 393–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marc Junge, Lynne Viola and Jeff Rossman, eds., Chekisty na skam'e podsudimykh (Moscow: Probel–2000, 2017). The volume contains a chapter on the Moldavian ASSR as well, which was a part of Ukraine from 1924 to 1940. The Moldavian SSR was created in August 1940 as a result of the merger between half of the interwar Moldavian ASSR and two-thirds of Bessarabia, the latter being annexed from Romania a month prior as a result of the Nazi–Soviet pact of 23 Aug. 1939.

3 Nikita Petrov and Mark Jansen, Nikolai Yezhov – ‘Stalinskii pitomets’ (Moscow: Rosspen, 2009); Lynne Viola, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial. Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

4 V. N. Khaustov, V. Naumov and N.S. Plotnikova, eds., Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘SMERSH’, mart 1939–mart 1946 (Moscow: Materik & Fond Demokratiia, 2006), 14–15.

5 Vladimir Iampolskii et al., eds, Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, vol. 1–8 (Moscow: Rus’, 1995–2008).

6 Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Substate Dictatorship. Networks, Institutional Change in the Soviet Union (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

7 Oleg Khlevniuk, Master of the House. Stalin and His Inner Circle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). On Second World War developments, Khlevniuk, O., ‘Soviet People's Commissariats and Decentralization of Management of the Economy during the Great Patriotic War’, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 90, 5 (2020), 537–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Paul Hagenloh, Stalin's Police. Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926–41 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009), 196–226; David Shearer, Policing Stalin's Socialism. Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 20–5, 126–9, 181–3, 233–7, 291–9.

9 Gorlizki, Yoram, ‘Stalin's Cabinet: The Politburo and Decision Making in the Post-War Years’, Europe–Asia Studies, 53, 2 (2001), 291–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Vladimir Khaustov, ‘Razvitie sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti: 1917–1953 gg’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 42, 2–4 (2001), 357–74 (358–9).

11 James Harris, ‘Dual Subordination? The Political Police and the Party in the Urals, 1917–1953’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 42, 2–4 (2001), 423–46.

12 I mean by agency the capacity possessed by people to act on their own volition understood as arising from and relative to the options made available by a person's position in a political system and society. See more in Karp, Ivan, ‘Agency and Social Theory: A Review of Anthony Giddens’, American Ethnologist, 13, 1 (1986), 131–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Substate Dictatorship, 1–8, 24. The main arguments of this article were formulated and developed before the above-mentioned book had been published. The first draft of the paper was presented at a conference organised by Georgetown University in early April 2020, while the book was out months later, in September 2020. I myself, in turn, had access to both civil and political police archives preserved in Chișinău depositories.

14 The Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republic of Moldova, former MVD of Moldavian SSR (hereafter AMAIRM-MVD), Fond 16, Delo 1, List 47; Delo 48 (Osobaia papka Ministra MVD MSSR); The Archive of Social-Political Organization of the Republic of Moldova (hereafter AOSPRM), Fond 51, Opis’ 4, Delo 51, Spetssoobshcheniia, spravki i perepiska s Ministerstvom Gosbezopasnosti MSSR, 14.01.1946–21.12.1946; 5, 70, Perepiska s s Ministerstvom Gosbezopasnosti MSSR, 15.01.1946–30.12.1947; 71, Perepiska s Ministerstvom Vnutrennikh Del MSSR, 14.01.1947–29.12.1947; 72, Perepiska s MVD MSSR, 21.02.1947–23.12.1947; 7, 101, Spravki i perepiska s MGB, MVD, Ministerstvom Justitsii, organami prokuratury i Verkhovnym Sudom MSSR, 31.01.1948–06.12.1948; 187; 9, 54, Perepiska s MGB, MVD, gorodskimi i rayonnymi prokuraturami MSSR, 06.01.1950–22.12.1950.

15 Valeriu Pasat, RSS Moldovenească în perioada stalinistă, 1940–1953 (Chișinău: Cartier, 2011), 130–57. In April 1949–July 1950, the Moscow bureau was transformed into the institution of the plenipotentiary, with a smaller personnel and limited prerogatives. Similar bureaus functioned in the Baltic republics in 1944–7. Elena Zubkova, Pribaltika i Kreml’ (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008), 139–45.

16 Nikita Petrov and Konstantin Skorkin, eds., Kto rukovodil NKVD, 1934–1941 (Moscow: Zven'ya, 1999), 137–8; Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 196–7.

17 The Soviet military counterintelligence and repressive organ established in April 1943 and disbanded in May 1946.

18 Pavel Moraru, Serviciile secrete și Basarabia. Dicționar, 1918–1991 (Bucharest: Editura Militară, 2008), 162–4.

19 Lavrenti Beria was appointed deputy chief of the all-Union NKVD in September 1938 and head of the NKVD two months later, serving until December 1945. Between December 1945 and March 1953, he was deputy chairman of the Soviet Union's government (Council of Ministers since March 1946) in charge of state security. He was executed in December 1953. Viktor Abakumov was Beria's rival, head of the SMERSH (1943–6) and chief of the MGB (1946–51). He was executed in December 1954.

20 ASISRM-KGB, Delo po operatsii IUG, 46–7, 78; AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 86, 60–1; Shearer, Policing, 64–93, Hagenloh, Stalin's Police, 195–226.

21 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 45, 5–10, Dokladania zapiska ‘O sostoianii sekretno-mobilizatsionnogo Deloproizvodstva i sokhrannosti gostain v Narkomatakh i Upravleniakh Moldavskoi SSR’; Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 200–2.

22 Marius Tărâță, Lilia Crudu, et al., eds., Instituțiile și nomenclatura sovietică și de partid din RASSM și RSSM, 1924–1956 (Chișinău: Cartdidact, 2017), 248; ASISRM-KGB, Soversheno Sekretnye prikazy NKGB-MGB MSSR za 1946 g., 6, Delo 5, f. 118; 6, 6, 35; Pocius, ed., Lietuvos, 151–53; Zubkova, Pribaltika, 144.

23 The best on this subject is Andrei Cusco, A Contested Borderland: Competing Russian and Romanian Visions of Bessarabia (Late 19th–Early 20th Centuries) (Budapest: CEU Press, 2017), and Charles King, The Moldovans. Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000).

24 AOSPRM, 51, 5, 84, 85–91.

25 Igor Cașu, ‘The Quiet Revolution: Revisiting the National Identity Issue in Soviet Moldavia at the Height of Khrushchev's Thaw (1956)’, Euxeinos, 12, 5–6 (2014), 77–91.

26 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 73, 24–27, Informatsiia o sostoianii okhrany imushchestva, zhilykh i nadvornykh postroyek, ostavlennykh khrety'anami payonov Moldavskoi SSR, otselennymi iz 25-kilometrovoi prifrontovoi polosy; 51, 2, 47, 67–69, Postanovlenie no. 037 Voennogo Soveta 3-go Ukrainskogo Fronta ‘Ob otselenii grazhdanskogo naseleniia iz 25-ti prifrontovoi polosy” ot 5 maia 1944 g.’

27 Khaustov et al., eds., Lubyanka, mart 1939–mart 1946, 441.

28 Alexandr Livshits, Igor’ Orlov eds., Sovetskaia povsednevnost’ i massovoye soznanie, 1939–1945 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2003), 386.

29 Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London: Penguin, 1967), 70–3; Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (London: Viking, 2002), 24–38.

30 Iz'yaslav Levit et al, eds., Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voyne Sovetskogo Soyuza, 1941–1945, vol. 1 (Chișinău: Știința, 1975), 328.

31 The NKGB seemingly sided with the Red Army on this issue, albeit striving to combat various crimes amongst its own ranks. ASISRM-KGB [The Archive of the Service for Information and Security of the Republic of Moldova, ex-KGB of MSSR], Delo s Direktivami NKGB MSSR za 1944 g., 6, 1, 17, [Prikaz narodnogo komissara gosbezopasnosti Moldavskoi SSR/Mordovets/ o inventarizatsii imushchestva], 29.05.1944; Delo s Soversheno Sekretnymi i po lichnomu sostavu prikazy NKGB MSSR za 1944 g., 8, 27, 22–23, Prikaz NKGB MSSR ‘O sneatii s raboty i predaniia sudu starshego sledovatelea Sledstvennogo Otdela NKGB Sheimana E. Ia.’, 30.05.1944.

32 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 62, 23–31, Spravka o narushenii postanovleniia Kishinevskogo Gorispolkoma i Gorkoma KP(b) Moldavii ot 25 avgusta 1944 goda po zaniatiiu pomeshchenii dlya uchrezhdenii i zhilykh domov.

33 It was also a way to punish those who belonged to the wealthier classes or, after 1944–5, war collaborators. See more in Mark Meerovich, Nakazanie zhilishcem. Zhilishchnaia politika v SSSR ka sredstvo upravlenia liudmi, 1917–1937 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008). For the post-war, see Rebecca Manley, ‘"Where Should We Resettle the Comrade Next?" The Adjudication of Housing Claims and the Construction of the Post-war Order’, in Julianne Fürst, ed., Late Stalinist Russia. Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London: Routledge, 2006), 233–45; Vanessa Voisin, L'URSS contre ses traîtres. L’épuration soviétique, 1941–1955 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015), 289, 293, 437, 438, 443–8.

34 AOSPRM, F. 51, op. 2, 62, 23–31.

35 The fact that Chișinău was one of the most destroyed cities due to war operations made the competition for housing among the elites the more stringent. AOSPRM, 51, 2, 62, 36, Postanovleniia Kishinevskogo Gorispolkoma i Gorkoma KP(b) Moldavii ot 25 avgusta 1944; Nauchnyi Arkhiv Instituta Istorii Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk [Scientific Archive of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences], hereafter NA IRI RAN, 2, razd. IV, 21, 13, 5–6.

36 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 62, 50–5, O narushenii postanovleniia TsK KP(b) Moldavii o poryadke pereezda iz g. Soroki v g. Kishinev; Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil, 325–6.

37 Compromising information collected for use in blackmailing, discrediting, or manipulating someone, typically for political purposes.

38 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 62, 52, O narushenii…

39 Constantinov was criticised also by Fyodor Butov, the chief of Moscow Bureau in Soviet Moldavia. Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 157–8.

40 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 62, 62–9, Dokladnaia zapiska sekretariu TsK VKP(b) tovarishchu Malenkovu; 24–5, 33, Spavka o narushenii….

41 AOSPRM, 51, 2, 45, 18, 23, [Soobshchenie] Mordovets [NKGB] Salogoru[TsK KP(b)M], 21.09.1944; 01.11.1944.

42 Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 185.

43 ASISRM, Prikazy po lichnomu sostavu za 1945 g., 8, 1, 14, 36, 86, 113, 120–1, 178, 135–6, 150–2, 158, 163–4, 173, 175–83, 195–7, 213; Prikazy po lichnomu sostavu za 1946 g., 6, 5, 164–94; Prikazy po lichnomu sostavu za 1947 g., 8, 9, 2, 6–10, 30–43, 51–2, 56, 59–60, 69–70, 87, 97–8, 110–6, 124–31.

44 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's General: Georgy Zhukov (New York: Randon House, 2012), 22, 221; Nikita Petrov, Ivan Serov. Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB (Moscow: Materik, 2005), 67–70; AOSPRM, 51, 2, 62, 33–4, Dokladnaia zapiska [o zapreshchenii vyvoza za predely g. Soroki mebeli]; 59–61, Dokladnaia zapiska [o faktov grubeishego narusheniia zakonnosti rabotnikami NKVD].

45 Moshe Lewin, ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: The New Press, 1985), 121–41.

46 AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 39, 132–3, Dokladnaia zapiska o khode obmolota kolosovykh i vypolnenii plana khlebopostavok edinolichnym sektorom v Orgeevskom uezde na 20.08.1945.

47 AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 39, 151–2, Dokladnaia zapiska o khode khlebozagotovok po Kagul'skomu uezdu na 05.09.1945.

48 Ellman, Michael, ‘The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24, 5 (2000), 613CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 181–204.

50 Valeriu Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldavii, 1940-e–1950-e (Moscow: Terra, 1994), Document no. 6, On the speech delivered at the meeting of MGB-MVD of MSSR officers [by N. Golubev], 231–3.

51 In March 1946, both all-Union and republican commissariats were renamed into ministries.

52 AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 26, 28–9, Zapiska po VCh Ministru MVD SSSR tovarishchu Kruglovu, 03.05.1946; 33, Otchetnyi doklad MVD MSSR za pervyi kvartal 1946 g.; 34, Otchetnyi doklad MVD MSSR za vtoroi kvartal 1946 g.

53 AMAIRM-MVD), 16, 1, 39, 295, Spetssoobshchenie o popytkakh razgrableniia skladov Zagotzerno v Orgeevskom in Benderskom uezdakh, 02.05.1946; Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 269–73.

54 On speaking Bolshevik, see Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University Press of California, 1995), 198–237.

55 AMAIRM-MVD), 16, 1, 39, 295, Spetssoobshchenie o popytkakh razgrableniia skladov Zagotzerno v Orgeevskom in Benderskom uezdakh, 02.05.1946; Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 269–73.

56 See more in Igor Cașu, Virgiliu Pâslariuc, ‘Moldavian SSR's Border Revision Question: From the Project of Greater Bessarabia to project "Greater Moldavia" and the Causes of Its Failure (1946)’, Archiva Moldaviae, II (2010), 275–370 (documents in original Russian and Romanian translation, twenty-page introduction in Romanian and two-page summary in English). Salogor's stance resembles to a certain extent the position taken in the interwar years by other national-communists, such as Mir Said Sultan-Galiev and Mykola Skrypnyk. See more in Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 229–30, 256, 307; 141, 147, 364, 371, 433–34.

57 Pasat, Trudnye, 226–9.

58 AOSPRM, 5, 5, 61, 85–6. The document represents a letter sent by Salogor to A. A. Kuznetsov, VKP(b)'s responsible for cadres’ policy. Back in 2011, the late Moldovan historian Anton Moraru told me he asked Salogor personally why he was demoted in 1946. The answer was that the moustache-man, coded reference to Stalin, did not approve of him. The question why remains open.

59 ANRM [The National Archive of the Republic of Moldova], R–1936, 1, 14, 412–5, O razbazarivanii, khishcheniakh i porche khleba na zagotovitel'nykh punktakh Moldavskoi respublikanskoi kontory Iugotzerno Ministerstva Zagotovok Soiuza SSR. On the same phenomenon in other parts of the Soviet Union, see RGASPI [The Russian State Archive of Social-Political Organizations, ex-party archive of CPSU], 17, 122, 169, 1–13, O zloupotrebleniiakh na Borovskoi tekstil'noi fabrike Krasnyi Okt'iabr’ Kaluzhskoi oblasti, 33–35, Spavka o proverke rabotnitsy Kushchevskogo zernozavoda Mikhailovoi Iu. N., 12.06.1946; 70–97, O rezul'tatakh proverki zaiavlenii demobilizovavshikhsea, 27.07.1946.

60 AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 41, 74–76, Spetssoobshchenie [o krazhakh rabotnikami Tiraspol'skogo konservnogo zavoda imeni 1 maia], 13.06.1946; AOSPRM, 51, 23, 319, 6–7, Dokladnaia zapiska ‘O sostoianii bor'by s prestupnost'iu i narushenii zakonnosti za 1-e polugodie 1963 goda [v Moldavskoi SSR]’. On corruption broadly defined in late Stalinist period, see James Heinzen, The Art of Bribe. Corruption under Stalin 1943–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

61 AOSPRM, 51, 5, 84, 85–91, Informatsionnoe pis'mo [voennogo prokurora Voisk MVD MSSR]; AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 59, 31–2, Spetssoobshchenie o narushenii revoliutsionnoi zakonnosti nachal'nikom 22-go pogranichnogo otreada, 11.03.1947; 40, O vyborakh v Verkhovnyi Sovet Moldavskoi SSR, 17.02.1947.

62 Robert W. Davies, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger. Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 144–81; Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe. Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 97–122; Hagenloh, Stalin's Police, 48–88; Shearer, Policing, 19–63.

63 A. Țăranu et al., eds, Golod v Moldove, 1946–1947 (Chișinău: Știința, 1993), 245–51; Nicholas Ganson, The Soviet Famine of 1946–1947 in Global and Historical Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 32; Khlevniuk et al., Politburo, 221–5.

64 Ganson, The Soviet Famine, 33, 58.

65 Shearer, Policing, 67; AOSPRM, 51, 4, 427, 25–27, Postanovlenie Soveta Ministrov MSSR i Biuro TsK KP(b) Moldavii ‘Ob utverzhdenii raspredeliia dopol'nitel’nogo pitaniia sovpartaktiva na 2-i kvartal i limitnykh promtovarnykh knizhek na 1946 g.’; 46, Rasporeazhenie no. 2703-r-s Soveta Ministrov MSSR ‘Ob utverzhdenii raspredeliia dopol'nitel’nogo pitaniia sovpartaktiva na dekabr’ 1946 g.; 49–51, Postanovlenie Soveta Ministrov MSSR ‘Ob utverzhdenii raspredeliia dopol'nitel’nogo pitaniia sovpartaktiva na 1-i kvartal 1947 goda’.

66 Țăranu et al., Golod v Moldove, 311–3, 379–81.

67 Pasat, Trudnye, 231–3, 228. For more on that see Igor Cașu, ‘Do Starving People Rebel? Hunger Riots as Bab'y Bunty in Spring 1946 Soviet Moldavia and the Resistance Debate’, New Europe College Yearbook, 2021, 3–47.

68 AOSPRM, 51, 5, 22, 396–7, O vyiavlenii kulatskikh khoziaistv v uezdakh Moldavskoi SSR i oblozhenii ikh nalogami, 30.08.1947.

69 ASISRM-KGB, Delo po operatsii IUG, 100–1.

70 Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 311. It was important for the collectivisation to start at the same time in all the newly annexed territories. Andrei Zhdanov, a secretary of all-Union CC, for instance, criticised the Estonian party organsation in February 1947 for starting collectivisation on their own. Zubkova, Pribaltika, 169.

71 AMAIRM–MVD, 16, 1, 72, 53–4, Dokladnaia zapiska ‘Ob operativnoi deiatel'nosti Ministerstva Vnutrennikh Del Moldavskoi SSR za 1946–1948 gody’, 05.09.1948.

72 AMAIRM– MVD, 16, 1, 72, 185–94, Dokladnaia zapiska ‘Ob aktivizatsii antisovetskoi podryvnoi deiatel'nosti kulachestva v Moldavskoi SSR i neobkhodimosti, v sveazi s etim, izoleatsii ego’, 12.10.1948; Pasat, Trudnye, 327–333; King, The Moldovans, 63–119.

73 ASISRM-KGB, Delo po operatsii IUG, 256–7, 314.

74 ASISRM-KGB, Delo po operatsii IUG, 75–83.

75 Pasat, Trudnye, 431–3.

76 The conflicts continued after the deportation. AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 200, 15, [Spetssoobshchenie i.o. Ministra MVD MSSR Babushkina Ministru MGB MSSR Mordovtsu], 21.06.1950.

77 AMAIRM-MVD, 16, 1, 105, 110, Informatsionnaia svodka no. 1, 06.07.1949; 149, Dokladnaia zapiska ‘Ob itogakh raboty po priyomu ot organov MGB i otpravke vyselentsev iz Moldavskoi SSR’, 145–57 (156), 12.07.1949; ASISRM-KGB, Delo po operatsii IUG, 240.

78 Nikita Petrov, Kto rukovodil organami gosbezopasnosti, 1941–1954 (Moscow: Zven'a, 2010), 356–7; Igor Cașu, Dușmanul de clasă. Violență, represiuni politice și rezistență în R(A)SS Moldovenească, 1924–1956 (Chișinău: Cartier, 2014), 278; AOSPRM, 51, 68 (Osobaia Papka), 16, 1–14, Osoboe reshenie Biuro TsK KP(b) M o tov. Tutushkine, 17.01.1950. Markeyev repeated Tutushkin's fate only after serving as MVD chief in Mari ASSR (1946–1949).

79 Khaustov, ‘Razvitie’, 358–9.

80 RGASPI, 573 [Biuro TsK VKP(b) po Moldavii] 1, 43, 24 [Pismo Rud'ia G. Ia. sekretariu Partkolegii pri TsK KP(b) Moldavii tov. Kozyrevu], 04.11.1949.

81 RGASPI, 573, 1, 43, 18–64 (18–20), O nekotorykh faktakh zloupotreblenii sluzhebnym polozheniem predsedatelea Soveta Ministrov Moldavskoi SSR t. Rud’ G. Ia, 18.01.1950.

82 AOSPRM, 51, 34, 77, 209.

83 Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Substate, 8.

84 Instead, he was appointed as member of the State Commission for the Revision of the Counterrevolutionary Files in July 1954, i.e. to revise his own deeds before 1953. AOSPRM, 51, 68, 21, 23–4.

85 AOSPRM, 51, 9, 3, 92–110.

86 The proof that Mordovets was behind or at least influenced Coval's removal is the fact Turkin quotes often MGB's chief reports on sensitive issues, including those built on kompromat. RGASPI, 573, 1, 43, 20. At the same time, among charges directed against him in 1955 upon his removal as the MSSR KGB chief is the fact Mordovets used illegal surveillance of the local party personnel. AOSPRM, 51, 34, 77, 209.

87 Khlevniuk et al., eds., TsK VKP(b) 185–97, 248–51, 252–9; Zubkova, Pribaltika, 300–20; David Brandenberger, Stalinskii russotsentrizm. Sovetskaia massovaia kul'tura i formirovanie russkogo natsional'nogo samosoznaniia, 1931–1956 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2017), 261–74.

88 On Brezhnev in Soviet Moldavia, see Mark Sandle and Igor Cașu, ‘Leonid Brezhnev in Soviet Moldavia, 1950–1952: the Making of a GenSek?’, Plural. History, Culture and Society, 4, 2 (2016), 122–55; Susanne Shattenberg, Leonid Brezhnev. Velichie i tragediia cheloveka i strany (Moscow: Rosspen, 2019), 149–82.

89 Shattenberg, Brezhnev, 154–6, 169–73; Pasat, RSS Moldovenească, 196–7; Nikolai Anisimovich Shchelokov was to become later the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union (1966–83).

90 Pocius, Lietuvos, 169–71.

91 Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Substate, 48–9, 36.

92 AOSPRM, 51, 13, 335, 4, Vopros o rabote Komiteta Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov MSSR, 13.10.1954; 68 (Osobaia papka), 21, 27–8, O nedostatkakh v rabote Komiteta gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Moldavskoi SSR, 14.07.1954.

93 ASOPRM, 51, 34, 77, 209, Personal'nye dela kommunistov. O Mordovtse I. L.; 56, 220, Khodataistvo Frunzenskogo raikoma KP Moldavii o sneatii partiinogo vzyskaniia c Mordovtsa Iosifa Lavrent'evicha, 04.09.1973.

94 Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (1914–84) was the chief of the KGB from 1967 to 1982, serving as CPSU's Secretary General (1982–4) after Brezhnev's death.

95 Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace. Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 171.

96 AOSPRM, 51, Opis 28, 48, 149.

97 For more on that, see Igor Cașu, ‘Why Shoot Starving People? Policing the Soviet-Romanian Border during the Post-War Famine, 1946–1947’ (Spring 2022, forthcoming). According to Nikita Petrov and Amir Weiner, the two important historians of the Soviet political police, whom I talked to, both Mordovets’ and Ashakhmanov's fate are the exception rather than the rule.

98 Khlevniuk et al., eds., TsK VKP(b), 8–9, 115–17; Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Substate, 36.

99 Even though Romania became a Sovietised country after the Second World War, the interwar dispute over Bessarabia erupted again in the early 1960s and played an important role in Soviet-Romanian relations. See more in King, The Moldovans, 103–6.