The album procedure (russian: в альбомном порядке, v albomnom poryadke) was a simplified procedure of extrajudicial conviction by

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

, introduced in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

during the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...

. The level of punishment (execution or imprisonment) of the arrested persons was decided by local organs during the investigation, the lists of the convicted were sent to NKVD headquarters, where they were approved ''en masse'' and returned for immediate application of the punishment. The name of the procedure came about because the lists collected by mid-range NKVD organs were bound into albums.

Procedure

The procedure was introduced in the August 11, 1937

NKVD Order No. 00485 The Soviet NKVD Order No. 00485 was an anti-Polish ethnic cleansing campaign issued on August 11, 1937, which laid the foundation for the systematic elimination of the Polish minority in the Soviet Union between 1937 and 1938. The order was calle ...

"On liquidation of

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

sabotage and espionage groups and units of P.O.W." (P.O.W. stands for the

Polish Military Organization The Polish Military Organisation, PMO ( pl, Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, POW) was a secret military organization which formed during World War I (1914-1918). Józef Piłsudski founded the group in August 1914; it adopted the name ''POW'' in Novem ...

, Polska Organizacja Wojskowa.) The order specifies the process as follows: *During investigations all arrested are to be classified into two categories: First Category, subject to

execution by shooting Execution by shooting is a method of capital punishment in which a person is shot to death by one or more firearms. It is the most common method of execution worldwide, used in about 70 countries, with execution by firing squad being one particula ...

, Second subject to placement into prisons and

GULAG The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

labor camps. (Since the time of the Purges, the euphemisms "First Category" and "Second Category" have been in use for a long time, both in legal parlance and in common speech.) *Every 10 days, lists of the convicted with brief summaries of the cases are to be sent to the Soviet NKVD. *The lists are compiled by local NKVD organs and the categories (first or second) are assigned by NKVD chiefs and prosecutors of the

republic A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...

oblast An oblast (; ; Cyrillic (in most languages, including Russian and Ukrainian): , Bulgarian: ) is a type of administrative division of Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as the Soviet Union and the Kingdom of ...

krai A krai or kray (; russian: край, , ''kraya'') is one of the types of federal subjects of modern Russia, and was a type of geographical administrative division in the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR. Etymologically, the word is relate ...

. *After the approval by the NKVD of the Soviet Union and the

Procurator General of the Soviet Union The Procurator General of the USSR (russian: Генеральный прокурор СССР, Generalnyi prokuror SSSR) was the highest functionary of the Office of the Public Procurator of the USSR, responsible for the whole system of offices ...

, the convictions are immediately put into action. The procedure was supplementary to convictions performed by

NKVD Troika NKVD troika or Special troika (russian: особая тройка, osobaya troyka), in Soviet history, were the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD which would later be the beginning of the KGB) made up of three officials who issued ...

s introduced by July 30, 1937

NKVD Order No. 00447 NKVD Order No. 00447 of July 30, 1937 (russian: О операции по репрессированию бывших кулаков, уголовников и других антисоветских элементов, "About operation to repress ...

. Still, the number of convictions was so overwhelming that on September 15, 1938 the lower, regional level Special Troikas were introduced, with the rights to impose death penalties and immediately execute them. Jansen, Marc & Petrov, Nikita, ''Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940''
p. 137
/ref> Both NKVD Troikas of all levels and "album procedure" were officially discontinued by November 17, 1938,

Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation The Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation No. 81 was issued jointly by the Sovnarkom and Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (undersigned by Molotov and Stalin) on November 17, 1938. It ...

No. 81. As an example, during the

German Operation of the NKVD NKVD Order № 00439, signed by Nikolai Yezhov on July 25, 1937, was the basis for the German operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938. The operation was the first in the series of national operations of the NKVD. See also *Anti-German sentiment *Fligh ...

(July 1937-November 1938) of 55,005 convicted

Germans in Russia The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory militar ...

41,898 were executed, with the shares of "album" and "Troika" shooting being 24,910 and 16,988 respectively. Other convictions: "albums": 5,624, "Troikas": 7,483.Н.Охотин, А.Рогинский, Москва. Из истории “немецкой операции” НКВД 1937-1938 г�
Chapter 2
/ref>

References

{{reflist Political repression in the Soviet Union NKVD 1930s in the Soviet Union