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 nationa ...
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 Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...
. 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 "On liquidation of Polish sabotage and espionage groups and units of P.O.W." (P.O.W. stands for the Polish Military Organization, 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, 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 State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...
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 ...
, 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 Kingdo ...
or 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 relat ...
.
*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 Troikas introduced by July 30, 1937 NKVD Order No. 00447.
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, No. 81.
As an example, during the German Operation of the NKVD (July 1937-November 1938) of 55,005
convicted Germans in Russia 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