On Arrests, Prosecutorial Oversight, and the Conduct of Investigations: Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the VKP(b), November 17, 1938

To the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Union and Autonomous Republics, the heads of NKVD Directorates of krais and oblasts, the heads of okrug, city, and raion NKVD departments.

To the Prosecutors of the Union and Autonomous Republics, of krais and oblasts, and to okrug, city, and raion prosecutors.

To the Secretaries of the CC of the National Communist Parties, of kraicoms, obcoms, okrugcoms, and raicoms of the VKP(b).

The Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b) note that during 1937-1938, under the leadership of the party, the organs of the NKVD carried out a great deal of work in smashing the enemies of the people and cleansing the USSR of the numerous espionage, terrorist, sabotage, and wrecking cadres drawn from the Trotskyists, Bukharinites, SRs, Mensheviks, bourgeois nationalists, White Guards, fugitive kulaks, and common criminals, who constituted a serious base of support for foreign intelligence services in the USSR, particularly those of Japan, Germany, Poland, England, and France.

At the same time, the organs of the NKVD carried out a great deal of work in smashing the espionage and sabotage agency of foreign intelligence services that had penetrated the USSR in large numbers from abroad under the guise of so-called political emigrants and defectors -- Poles, Romanians, Finns, Germans, Latvians, Estonians, Harbinites, and others.

The cleansing of the country of sabotage, insurrectionist, and espionage cadres played a positive role in ensuring the further successes of socialist construction.

However, it should not be supposed that the task of cleansing the USSR of spies, wreckers, terrorists, and saboteurs has been completed.

The task now is to continue the merciless struggle against all enemies of the USSR while organizing this struggle by means of more refined and reliable methods.

This is all the more necessary because the mass operations conducted by the organs of the NKVD in 1937-1938 for the smashing and uprooting of hostile elements, carried out with a simplified procedure of investigation and trial, could not but lead to a number of the gravest deficiencies and perversions in the work of the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy. Moreover, enemies of the people and agents of foreign intelligence services who had wormed their way into the organs of the NKVD, both in the center and in the localities, and who continued to carry on their subversive work, sought in every way to confuse investigative and intelligence cases, deliberately perverted Soviet laws, carried out mass and groundless arrests, while at the same time shielding their accomplices from exposure, particularly those ensconced in the organs of the NKVD.

The principal deficiencies recently identified in the work of the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy are the following:

First, the workers of the NKVD have completely abandoned intelligence and informant work, preferring to act by the simplified method of mass arrests, without concerning themselves with the completeness and high quality of investigations.

The workers of the NKVD have become so unused to painstaking, systematic intelligence and informant work, and have acquired such a taste for the simplified procedure of handling cases, that until the most recent time they have continued to raise the question of granting them so-called "quotas" for conducting mass arrests.

This has led to the intelligence work, already weak, falling even further behind and, what is worse, to many NKVD personnel losing their taste for intelligence measures, which play an exceptionally important role in Chekist work.

This has ultimately led to a situation in which, in the absence of properly organized intelligence work, the investigation as a rule failed to fully expose arrested spies and saboteurs of foreign intelligence services and to fully uncover all their criminal connections.

Such an underestimation of the significance of intelligence work and an inadmissibly frivolous attitude toward arrests are all the more intolerable given that the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b), in their decrees of May 8, 1933, June 17, 1935, and finally March 3, 1937, gave categorical instructions on the need to properly organize intelligence work, restrict arrests, and improve the conduct of investigations.

Second, a major deficiency in the work of the organs of the NKVD is the deeply rooted simplified procedure of investigation, in which, as a rule, the investigator limits himself to obtaining from the accused a confession of guilt and makes no effort whatsoever to support this confession with the necessary documentary evidence (testimony of witnesses, expert findings, physical evidence, etc.).

Often the arrested person is not interrogated for a month after arrest, sometimes longer. During interrogations, the records are not always kept. Not infrequently, the testimony of the arrested person is recorded by the investigator in the form of notes, and then, after a considerable lapse of time (a week, a month, or even longer), a general record is drawn up, completely failing to comply with the requirement of Article 133 of the Code of Criminal Procedure concerning the verbatim, insofar as possible, recording of the arrested person's testimony. Very often the interrogation record is not drawn up until the arrested person confesses to the crimes committed. Not infrequently, the interrogation record does not include testimony by the accused that refutes one or another element of the charges.

Investigation files are sloppily prepared: rough pencil drafts of testimony, corrected and crossed out by unknown persons, are placed in the file; unsigned and uncertified records of testimony appear; unsigned and unapproved indictments are included, and the like.

For their part, the organs of the Procuracy do not take the necessary measures to eliminate these deficiencies, reducing their participation in the investigation, as a rule, to the mere registration and rubber-stamping of investigative materials. The organs of the Procuracy not only fail to eliminate violations of revolutionary legality but in fact legitimize these violations.

Such irresponsible treatment of investigative procedure and gross violations of the legally established procedural rules have not infrequently been skillfully exploited by enemies of the people who had wormed their way into the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy -- both in the center and in the localities. They deliberately perverted Soviet laws, committed forgery, falsified investigative documents, brought criminal charges and made arrests on trivial grounds or even without any grounds at all, creating provocative "cases" against innocent people, while at the same time taking every measure to shield and save from exposure their accomplices in criminal anti-Soviet activity. Such facts occurred both in the central apparatus of the NKVD and in the localities.

All these utterly intolerable deficiencies noted in the work of the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy were possible only because enemies of the people who had wormed their way into the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy sought in every way to detach the work of these organs from the party organs, to escape party control and leadership, and thereby facilitate for themselves and their accomplices the continuation of their anti-Soviet subversive activity.

For the purpose of decisively eliminating the above-mentioned deficiencies and the proper organization of investigative work by the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b) decree:

1. To prohibit the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy from carrying out any mass operations of arrest and deportation.

In accordance with Article 127 of the Constitution of the USSR, arrests are to be made only by court order or with the sanction of a prosecutor.

Deportation from border zones is permitted with the authorization of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b), upon the special submission of the relevant obcom, kraicom, or CC of the National Communist Party, coordinated with the NKVD of the USSR.

2. To liquidate the judicial troikas created pursuant to special orders of the NKVD of the USSR, as well as the troikas attached to the oblast, krai, and republican directorates of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia.

Henceforth, all cases are to be referred for consideration, in strict accordance with the applicable laws on jurisdiction, to courts or to the Special Conference of the NKVD of the USSR.

3. In carrying out arrests, the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy are to be guided by the following:

a) Consent for arrests is to be obtained in strict accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b) of June 17, 1935;

b) In seeking the sanction of prosecutors for arrests, the organs of the NKVD are obliged to submit a motivated resolution and all materials substantiating the necessity of the arrest;

c) The organs of the Procuracy are obliged to carefully and substantively verify the validity of the resolutions of the organs of the NKVD on arrests, demanding, where necessary, the performance of additional investigative measures or the submission of additional investigative materials;

d) The organs of the Procuracy are obliged to prevent arrests without sufficient grounds.

It is established that for every wrongful arrest, the prosecutor who sanctioned the arrest bears responsibility alongside the NKVD personnel.

4. To require the organs of the NKVD, in conducting investigations, to strictly observe all the requirements of the codes of criminal procedure.

In particular:

a) To complete investigations within the time limits established by law;

b) To interrogate arrested persons no later than 24 hours after their arrest; after each interrogation, to immediately draw up a record in accordance with the requirements of Article 138 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with a precise indication of the time of the beginning and end of the interrogation.

The prosecutor, upon reviewing the interrogation record, is obliged to make a notation on the record of his review, indicating the hour, day, month, and year;

c) To seal documents, correspondence, and other items seized during a search immediately at the scene of the search, in accordance with Article 184 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, compiling a detailed inventory of everything sealed.

5. To require the organs of the Procuracy to strictly observe the requirements of the codes of criminal procedure in exercising prosecutorial oversight of investigations conducted by the organs of the NKVD.

In connection with this, to require prosecutors to systematically verify compliance by the investigative organs with all the legally established rules for the conduct of investigations, and to immediately eliminate any violations of these rules; to take measures to ensure that the accused are afforded the procedural rights guaranteed to them by law, and the like.

6. In connection with the growing role of prosecutorial oversight and the responsibility placed on the organs of the Procuracy for arrests and for the investigations conducted by the organs of the NKVD, to recognize as necessary:

a) To establish that all prosecutors exercising oversight of investigations conducted by the organs of the NKVD are to be confirmed by the CC VKP(b) upon the recommendation of the relevant obcoms, kraicoms, CC of the National Communist Parties, and the Prosecutor of the USSR;

b) To require obcoms, kraicoms, and the CC of the National Communist Parties, within a period of one month, to review and submit for confirmation by the CC VKP(b) the candidacies of all prosecutors exercising oversight of investigations by the organs of the NKVD;

c) To require the Prosecutor of the USSR, Comrade Vyshinsky, to designate from among the staff of the central apparatus politically verified, qualified prosecutors for the exercise of oversight of investigations conducted by the central apparatus of the NKVD of the USSR, and to submit them for confirmation by the CC VKP(b) within a period of two dekads [twenty days].

7. To approve the measures of the NKVD of the USSR for putting in proper order the investigative procedure in the organs of the NKVD, as set forth in the order of October 23, 1938. In particular, to approve the decision of the NKVD to organize special investigative sections within the operational departments.

Recognizing the special significance of the proper organization of the investigative work of the organs of the NKVD, to require the NKVD of the USSR to ensure the appointment as investigators, in the center and in the localities, of the best, most politically verified, and qualified party members who have proven themselves in their work.

To establish that all investigators of the organs of the NKVD in the center and in the localities are to be appointed only by order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

8. To require the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor of the USSR to issue instructions to their local organs for the precise implementation of the present decree.

* * *

The Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b) call the attention of all workers of the NKVD and the Procuracy to the necessity of decisively eliminating the above-noted deficiencies in the work of the organs of the NKVD and the Procuracy, and to the exceptional importance of organizing all investigative and prosecutorial work on a new basis. The Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the CC VKP(b) warn all workers of the NKVD and the Procuracy that for the slightest violation of Soviet laws and of the directives of the party and government, every worker of the NKVD and the Procuracy, regardless of person, will be held to severe judicial accountability.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR
V. MOLOTOV

Secretary of the Central Committee of the VKP(b)
I. STALIN

R. Kosolapov. A Word to Comrade Stalin. Pp. 154-160;
Organs of State Security of the USSR on the Eve of the Great Patriotic War. Collection of Documents. Vol. 1. On the Eve. Book 1 (November 1938 - December 1940). Moscow, 1995. Pp. 3-9.