"Traitor of the Motherland family members" ( ru , ЧСИР: члены семьи изменника Родины , translation = members of the family of a traitor of the Motherland) was a term in

Article 58 Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times. In particular, its Article 58-1 was updated by the listed sub-articles and ...

of the Criminal Code of

RSFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

(as amended from the original wording of 1927). The amended Article dealt with the criminal prosecution of wives and children (

kin punishment Kin punishment is the practice of punishing the family members of someone who is accused of committing a crime, either in place of or in addition to the perpetrator of the crime. It refers to the principle in which a family shares responsibility fo ...

) of all people who were arrested and convicted as "traitors of the Motherland" 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 Stalinist purges of the 1930s and later. The practice of automatically convicting wives and children was a base element 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 ...

. It introduced a new category of inmates: the family members of a person who was recognized as a "Traitor of Motherland"; some Soviet

labor camps A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...

were designated specifically to this category.

History

The

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. ...

Order No. 00486 instructed about repression of wives and children of

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 ...

convicted to execution or imprisonment. It was dated August 15, 1937 and signed by Nikolai Yezhov acting both as chief of NKVD and General Commissar of State Security (chief of

GUGB The Main Directorate of State Security (russian: Glavnoe upravlenie gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, Главное управление государственной безопасности, ГУГБ, GUGB) was the name of the Soviet most importa ...

). The order implemented a resolution by

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states. Names The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contraction ...

. The corresponding parts of

Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times. In particular, its Article 58-1 was updated by the listed sub-articles and ...

were modified accordingly. As an element of the rollback of the

, on October 17, 1938, the later NKVD Order No. 00689, signed by

Lavrenty Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...

, said not to arrest wives automatically, together with their husbands, but only after consideration by a single NKVD officer. Only wives that were deemed "politically untrustworthy or socially dangerous" or who knew about the "counter-revolutionary activity" of their husbands were to be arrested. In 1940 a Politburo decree "On prosecution of traitors to the Motherland and their family members" and some other documents specified exile to the Far North of the family members of "traitors of the Motherland" who fled across the border. It primarily concerned the population of the territories newly acquired by the Soviet Union during the early years of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

: the

Baltic States The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...

Western Belarus Western Belorussia or Western Belarus ( be, Заходняя Беларусь, translit=Zachodniaja Bielaruś; pl, Zachodnia Białoruś; russian: Западная Белоруссия, translit=Zapadnaya Belorussiya) is a historical region of mod ...

and

Western Ukraine Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( uk, Західна Україна, Zakhidna Ukraina or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austria ...

taken from

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, and

Northern Bukovina Bukovinagerman: Bukowina or ; hu, Bukovina; pl, Bukowina; ro, Bucovina; uk, Буковина, ; see also other languages. is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe (or both).Klaus Peter Berger ...

taken from

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

. On June 24, 1942 the State Defense Committee issued top secret resolution No. 1926SS "On the Family Members of Traitors of the Motherland" that was signed by Stalin and restored some of the original wording.

Order No. 00486

All cases were to be considered by the

Special Council of the NKVD Special Council of the USSR NKVD (Особое совещание при НКВД СССР, ОСО) was created by the same decree of Sovnarkom of July 10, 1934 that introduced the NKVD itself. By the decree, the Special Council was endowed with t ...

. Wives were subject to imprisonment into

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

s for terms of "at least 5–8 years". "Socially dangerous" children were to be placed in

s, corrective

labor colonies A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

, or special-regimen

orphanage An orphanage is a Residential education, residential institution, total institution or group home, devoted to the Childcare, care of orphans and children who, for various reasons, cannot be cared for by their biological families. The parent ...

s (see also:

Orphans in the Soviet Union At certain periods the Soviet state had to deal with large numbers of orphans in the Soviet Union—due to a number of turmoils in the history of the country from its very beginnings. Major contributors to the population of orphans and otherwise h ...

). The remaining orphaned children were to be placed in ordinary orphanages or with non-convicted relatives (if the latter wished). Personnel of the orphanages to house the children of the convicted were to be purged and refitted with politically reliable staff to properly supervise the "correction" of the children.Catriona Kelly, ''Children's World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991'', New Haven: Yale UP, 2007, 238. Article 5 of the Order stated wives with breast-feeding children, those who were ill, or with ill children were not to be arrested. Article 17 further specified that they were to be placed to labor camps later: breast-feeders after the verdict, those with illness after the recovery. Article 16 of the Order instructed to place the wives of the "traitors to the Motherland" into the Special Department of

Temlag Temlag (Темла́г), Temnikovsky Corrective Labor Camp (Темниковский исправи́тельно-трудово́й ла́герь), or Temnikovsky ITL (Темниковский ИТЛ) was a camp of the Gulag labor camp system of ...

. Article 18 specified various kinds of facilities to imprison "socially-dangerous" children. During the Great Purge, the orphanages became overcrowded, and the country was flooded with runaway orphans, greatly increasing

juvenile delinquency Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. In the United States of America, a juvenile delinquent is a person ...

, as had occurred during the

Russian Civil War , date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...

References

External links

* *{{Wikisourcelang-inline, ru, Приказ НКВД № 00689, Full text for NKVD Order № 00689 in Russian language NKVD Government documents of the Soviet Union Collective punishment Soviet phraseology

History

Order No. 00486

See also

References

External links