Day of Remembrance of Victims of the “Greek Operation” of the NKVD
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But while building the vertical of power, Stalin stumbled upon the hidden but powerful resistance of bureaucratic officials. In the nomenklatura environment, a “circular responsibility” was already formed, and the clans formed according to different schemes: former participation in revolutionary work, civil war, as well as countrymen and ethnic ties. It was the latter circumstance that most alarmed Stalin, appearing to be the most dangerous.
It turned out that it was possible to stay in power only with the help of brutal terror. And this method was immediately applied by the hands of faithful performers, devoid of the basic human “flaws” – intellect, conscience, wisdom.
Over the Greeks living in the USSR, the sword of Damocles hung. In the early 30s, at the peak of dekulakization, they were arrested en masse and sent to camps. But it was a class struggle, not an ethnic cleansing, even though the number of people repressed was in the thousands.
On August 7, 1932, the law on the "protection of socialist property" (also known as the "order of seven eighths" and the "law on five spikelets") came into force, according to which even for minor embezzlements, they were allowed to shoot or ten years of camps. And when, on the recommendation of Comrade Stalin, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs is headed by Comrade Yezhov, replacing Comrade Yagoda, an insufficiently active one, the repressive machine finally gains momentum. By the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (Bolshevik) No. P51/94 "On Anti-Soviet Elements" of July 2, 1937, Comrade Yezhov, the secretaries of the regional committees, kraikoms and the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties, a telegram was sent, in which a five-day period was ordered to submit a list of all hostile elements living in the reporting areas involved in anti-Soviet and sabotage actions, the number of persons subject to execution and expulsion.
On the basis of the answers received on July 30, 1937, Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich prepared Order No. 00447 “On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements”, which contained planned figures to be repressed in individual territories. A total of 259,450 people. Of these, 72,950 people should be shot (the first category), the rest (the second category) – sent to camps for a period of 8-10 years. Approved figures were indicative, allowed a “motivated petition” to increase the numbers of the repressed (no one demanded evidence of guilt, just asked: how much can you shoot?). As a result of the “motivated petition”, the initial figures increased by 200 thousand people (and after the repressions, ordinary executors of harsh orders, leaders of all ranks, and Comrade Yezhov himself went after their victims).
The specificity of any totalitarian regime is repression against dissidents. The specificity of the Stalin regime was also the active propaganda of the idea that enemy states were around the country of the Soviets. And inside the country there are enemy spies. Therefore, the Greek operation of the NKVD, in fact, differed little from similar operations against other nationalities – Poles, Estonians, Koreans, etc. - and was the thirteenth. All national operations were prepared and implemented according to the same scenario. The texts of the orders and directives simply changed the name (in any case, it should be noted that the Russian and Ukrainian peoples had the hardest, most of all “got” the most; many national operations were much larger than the Greek, but these two nationalities did not receive special operations against them: repression against them was carried out continuously, thereby causing the greatest losses).
Thus, on December 11, 1937, the text of Directive No. 50215 in the form of a postal telegram of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR entered all republican, regional and regional departments of the NKVD. N. I. Yezhov’s directive determined the date – December 15, when it was necessary “to simultaneously arrest all Greeks suspected of espionage, sabotage, insurgent and nationalist anti-Soviet work in all republics, territories and regions,” and also determined the categories of citizens to be “expropriated.”
Over the next two weeks, the demographic situation in the areas of compact residence of Greeks throughout the country changed radically. The Greeks were "taken" before and after this fateful date, but it was in these two weeks that the nation was stripped of its male core, and the brunt of building communism fell on the fragile shoulders of women and children, who too soon became "doctors of the people."
December 15 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Greek NKVD operation. The result was the shooting of nearly 20,000 people. All of them, as well as those sent to death camps, have been rehabilitated today. But the burial sites of the vast majority of Greeks are still unknown, whose descendants do not even know where to bring two carnations.
On the evening of December 15, when the sun sets, all Greeks whose relatives were caught in the grindstones of the Greek operation of 1937-1938 were arrested for political reasons before or after, lighting memorial candles in their homes and apartments.
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In preparing the text, the materials of the book were used:
Dzhukha, I.G. The Greek Operation: A History of Repressions against the Greeks in the USSR. Aletheia, 2006.