Terror Calendar

We remember the victims and perpetrators of Stalinist terror, one day at a time. #OTD
by @aksinia00447 and @tupacisoverit

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1/2 "[...] the so-called organs of the NKVD are in the main a degenerate organization of unprincipled, dissolute, well-kept functionaries who, enjoying the former authority of the Cheka, seeking to satisfy the pathological suspiciousness of Stalin (I fear to say more), pursuing

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August 25, 1938. #OTD Karl Gustavovich Martin, an Estonian by nationality and a party member, was executed at Kommunarka. He was 56.

His execution was signed off on by Stalin himself. He is no. 170 on the execution list shown.

Martin was the director of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Veterinary Medicine in Moscow.

He was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR for “participation in a counter-revolutionary terrorist organization” and shot on the day he was sentenced.

Martin was rehabilitated by that same body on November 10, 1956.

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A fantastic guest post from our friend @Stern_66

August 25, 1937. #OTD Tamara Vsevolodovna Lizinskaya, a student from Moscow, was executed.

Tamara spent much of her youth in Berlin and Paris, where her mother Alexandra Lizinskaya worked until 1931; this foreign experience may have been what put her under scrutiny. Another possible reason for her arrest was her relationship with Abel Yenukidze, a prominent Old Bolshevik, former Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and godfather of Stalin's second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Yenukidze had been expelled from the party in 1935 and was executed in 1937.

On February 8, 1937, Tamara was arrested in Moscow. She spent more than 6 months in custody at Lubyanka before being put on trial on August 25. Her name was already on an "Execution List" signed by Stalin when she went on trial. She was sentenced to death for “membership in an anti-Soviet terrorist organization.” Judge Vasily Ulrich noted in her file: “Execute immediately.” She was shot 3 days after her mother, who had also been arrested on February 8, 1937, and had been executed on similar charges on August 22, 1937. We will do an entry on her.

Tamara Vsevolodovna’s son, Pyotr, was 7 at the time. He lived with relatives and adopted their name to avoid the label of “Child of a Traitor to the Fatherland.” Pyotr later researched his mother's story and published it. Lizinskaya is today one of the more well-known cases of an ordinary person executed during the Terror. Her face has been used in anti-Stalinist protests.

She was rehabilitated on March 1, 1958.

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August 24-25, 1936. The sixteen defendants in the "Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center" were tried on false premises of terrorism and conspiracy, without any defense or material evidence, sentenced to death, and executed on the grounds of Moscow's Lubyanka prison.

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August 24, 1937. #OTD Samuil Fedorovich Abayantsev, a disabled musician from Krasnoyarsk, was executed at age 49.

Abayantsev trained at the Tomsk Musical Technical School, specializing in choir and choral arrangements, and became an instructor and specialist in this discipline, working for Krasnoyarsk’s Philharmonic Society, teaching at the People’s Conservatory, and in several other roles.

Samuil Fedorovich’s career was cut short when he acquired tuberculosis and lost all mobility in one of his hips and legs rendering him a “2nd degree invalid.”

He was rehabilitated on July 12, 1957 by the Military Tribunal of the Siberian Military District. We’re looking into the fate of his wife and child, differing accounts out there.

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August 23, 1937. #OTD Afanasy Alekseevich Abramov, a carpenter from the Ledovo settlement in Moscow oblast, was executed at Butovo. He was 44 years old.

Abramov had no known political affiliations, but was accused of counterrevolutionary agitation of a malicious nature. He was rehabilitated on September 17, 1960, due to lack of evidence of a crime.

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August 23, 1937. #OTD Vasily Vasilievich Vlasov, a peasant from Novlenskoye village in Moscow oblast, was executed at Butovo. He was 50 years old.

Vlasov was charged with counterrevolutionary agitation. A grand total of 18 days elapsed between his arrest and his execution.

Vasily Vasilievich was rehabilitated on July 1, 2001, due to lack of evidence of a crime.

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@bWqiqx5aLZwt4UD What is the source of your claim above that he attacked people with a knife including a woman who he fatally wounded?

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August 23, 1937. #OTD Vasily Efremovich Vinogradov, a 16-year-old Russian boy born and raised in Moscow oblast was executed at Butovo.

We do not know his charge except that it was on the No. 00447 mandate to “repress former kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements.”

We also don’t know if this teenager, Vasily Efremovich, was ever formally rehabilitated. It’s pretty awful that this is all we know about a murdered child’s biography.

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@bWqiqx5aLZwt4UD Damn that is not consistent with the info I have. Could you link me to your source on this so I can verify and correct the entry please.

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August 23, 1937. #OTD Gavril Ilyich Voytin, a Russian baker from the Orenburg region, was executed at the age of 65.

He had no known political affiliations and only a primary school education. First arrested in 1930 and sentenced to a “dekulakization” program and exile in a special settlement, he was paroled after 3 years.

Four years later he was arrested again and shot after a month in custody, this time on charges of being a cossack insurgent allied with counterrevolutionaries in Kazakstan.

Voytin was rehabilitated on July 26, 1989.

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August 22, 1936. #OTD Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky, a Soviet politician and trade union leader, best known for his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and his role as a leading member of the moderate or "right" Bolshevik opposition, shot himself in the head to avoid the torment of the NKVD's denunciation machine shortly after word of his implication in conspiratorial crimes during the first Moscow Trial became known to him.

He was posthumously found guilty by the Supreme Court of the USSR for these supposed crimes. In 1988, he was rehabilitated by the party and restored to full membership, alongside his factional comrades, Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov.

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August 22, 1937. #OTD Mark Franzevich Dzyubek, a communist party member who worked at a mechanical bearings factory in Moscow, was executed at the age of 36.

Dzyubek can be seen as number 27 on the execution list shown. The list was signed by Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kosior, and Kaganovich on August 20, 1937. He was shot two days later. His charge was “participation in an anti-Soviet counterrevolutionary organization.”

Dzyubek was rehabilitated by the Military
Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on December 6, 1963.

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Another excellent guest post from our zek @Melitaalsole

August 21, 1937. #OTD Artur Karlovich Stashevsky was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad at age 46.

Stashevsky, a Jew born Artur Hirschfeld in the town of Mitava in the Russian Empire (now Jelgava, Latvia), was a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) from 1906.

In 1908 he emigrated to Western Europe, working in factories in Paris and London.

In 1918 he moved to Moscow, joined the Russian Communist Party, and attended the Lefortovo School of Red Commanders. In rapid succession he attained positions as head of a partisan detachment, commissar of a brigade in the 4th Rifle Division, and finally commissar of the entire Division.

In late 1919, Stashevsky moved into intelligence, leading that work for the Revolutionary Military Council for the Western Front, and then, during the years 1921-1924, as the first resident of the joint mission of the INO and Soviet military intelligence in Berlin, under cover as the secretary of the RSFSR's trade mission. From 1925 to 1935, he worked at the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade.

During the Spanish Civil War, Stashevsky served as a trade representative of the USSR in Republican Spain from 1936 until his arrest on July 8, 1937.

Artur Karlovich was rehabilitated in 1956.

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August 21, 1940. Lev Davidovich Bronstein, (AKA Leon Trotsky) legendary Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Left and United Oppositions, and leader of the international anti-Stalinist movement, was murdered at age 60 in his home in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, an NKVD assassin.

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August 21, 1933. #OTD Valerian Vladimirovich Kryukov, a 20-year-old Komsomol member and instructor at a factory, was executed on charges of “active participation in a counterrevolutionary terrorist group.”

His supposed group, 7 young friends, were all arrested and 3 were executed, including Valerian’s brother Roman Vladimirovich Kryukov. Due to the effort of their older sibling, the brothers were rehabilitated in 1955.

Below is an excerpt from a furious note written by the relative of one of the young arrested boys, and a link to the whole thing (in Russian)

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August 21, 1937. #OTD Adolf Warski, (born Adolf Jerzy Warszawski) Polish communist revolutionary and close political ally of Rosa Luxemburg, died after being imprisoned for his opposition to the Stalinization of the Communist Party of Poland, at the age of 69.

[Zaur @AbrekZaur]

An entire generation or two of revolutionaries wiped out. And the following ones forever divided by this trauma.

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@ElSalariado @Melitaalsole Yes but he wasn’t on our lists! Thank you very much, he has been added

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A very special guest post from our Berliner commie friend @Melitaalsole

August 20, 1938. #OTD Margarete Mengel was executed at Butovo, together with her partner, Alois Ketzlik.

Mengel was born on May 12, 1901, in Düsseldorf to a Jewish family. From 1929 to 1930, she worked as a clerk and later as chief secretary at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where she met her future partner, Hannes Meyer, a Swiss architect who directed the institute from 1928 to 1930.