The Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation No. 81 was issued jointly by the

Sovnarkom The Councils of People's Commissars (SNK; russian: Совет народных комиссаров (СНК), ''Sovet narodnykh kommissarov''), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (Совнарком), were the highest executive authorities of ...

and

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, – TsK KPSS was the executive leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, acting between sessions of Congress. According to party statutes, the committee direct ...

(undersigned by Molotov and

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

) on November 17, 1938. It officially marked the end of 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 ...

Marc Jansen Marc or MARC may refer to: People * Marc (given name), people with the first name * Marc (surname), people with the family name Acronyms * MARC standards, a data format used for library cataloging, * MARC Train, a regional commuter rail system o ...

Nikita Petrov Nikita Vasilyevich Petrov (russian: Ники́та Васи́льевич Петро́в, born 31 January 1957, Kiev) is a Russian historian. He works at ''Memorial,'' a Russian organization dedicated to studying Soviet political repression. Pet ...

, ''Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940'', 2002,
p 158
The decree declared that during 1936-1938 NKVD did a good job in cleansing the country of numerous "spies, terrorists, diversionists and wreckers <...> which provided a significant support for foreign intelligencies in the USSR..." The decree further noted that NKVD was both sloppy and the same time overzealous and put the blame on the "

enemies of the people The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...

" who infiltrated NKVD. The decree formally banned

Mass operations of the NKVD Mass operations of the People's Comissariate of Internal Affairs (NKVD) were carried out during the Great Purge and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Commis ...

and ordered the strict accordance to the codes of criminal procedure and the supervision of the NKVD investigations by prosecutors. The order of the implementation of the Decree was detailed in the NKVD Order No. 00762 (Приказ НКВД СССР № 00762 «О порядке осуществления постановления СНК СССР и ЦК ВКП(б) от 17 ноября 1938 г.»).

References

* Political repression in the Soviet Union Government documents of the Soviet Union Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation 1938 documents {{Soviet-stub