mass repression Order No. 00447

This essay will explore an excerpt taken from the mass repression Order No. 00447 (thus known as “Order 447”), which was signed and approved by Nikolai Yezhov (nicknamed “Ezhov” on July 30th, 1937. Order 447 clearly outlines the plans for the mass repressions known later as the Great Terror. Yezhov features prominently in the Great Terror, being appointed by Stalin as head of the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD).

Order 447 creates a comprehensive plan of action for punishing anyone deemed an enemy of the state, also showing subordinates and comrades how to classify these elements. The order includes a table based on estimated numbers of insubordinates in various Soviet Republics. Yezhov presents the order as a memorandum, giving unequivocal instructions as the leader of the NKVD. In addition to analyzing the essay in its historical, social, and political context, this essay will also show the significance of Order 447 in understanding the intricacies of Soviet history, policy, and practice.

Order 447 also reveals much about the role of Yezhov in particular, showcasing his power and influence in Stalin’s regime. In July of 1937, Nikolai Ezhov issued Operational Order No. 00447. The excerpt from Order 447 starts with the presentation of alleged evidence of “anti-Soviet groupings,” (Ezhov 1).

The phrase “anti-Soviet” appears eight times in this brief excerpt from Order 447, and even twice in a single sentence: “It has been established that all these anti-Soviet elements have been the main instigators of all sorts of anti-Soviet crimes and acts of sabotage,” (Ezhov 1). The liberal use of the phrase “anti-Soviet” reveals one of the author’s rhetorical strategies: to justify and motivate the mass repressions, terrors, and killing of anyone who has been branded as a threat to the state.

Ezhov insists also that the anti-Soviet elements are “armed,” and thus dangerous, accusing these disparate groups of “crimes and acts of sabotage,” (1). After establishing the presumed necessity of taking immediate action against these threats, Ezhov goes on to outline the NKVD course of action.

That course of action entails swift, decisive elimination of the threats, or as Ezhov puts it, “mercilessly to destroy all this band of anti-Soviet elements, to protect the toiling Soviet people from their counter-revolutionary raids, and once and for all, to finish with their subversive work to undermine the foundations of the Soviet state,” (2). Section II of Order 447 offers a dry classification system. First, the author divides the anti-Soviet elements into two “wide” categories (Werth 218).

The first category includes the “most hostile” elements, which are ordered “TO BE SHOT,” the use of capital letters being part of the original text (Ezhov 2). The second category are “hostile” but less so, subject to “arrest and imprisonment” for a minimum of eight to ten years depending on the severity of their transgressions (Ezhov 2).

Following this terse classification system, which leaves a great deal of discretion to the arresting officials, Ezhov then provides his readers with a sort of census on how many such elements exist in which Soviet Republics or regions. Ezhov actually did receive population data from local officials in the field (Werth 223). Reliance on numbers and quotas became systematically embedded in NKVD policy: known as “figure mania,” (Werth 225).

Finally, Ezhov provides a strict time frame for beginning the purges: August 5, 1937, and mandates that the orders be carried out within just four months (2). The goal of Order 447 is unabashedly “eradication of all marginal strata of the population,” (Werth 219). Ezhov minces no words and makes no pretense of objectivity; his goal in Order 447 is to presumably protect the Soviet people from would-be enemies of the state, labeled such by their having participated in “uprisings” of any sort, or being “non-Russian nationalists,” (1).

One of the ways Ezhov became the “most powerful man in the USSR” was via his genuine belief in the righteousness of the Soviet mission and the need to exterminate all who would come in the way of its glory (Getty and Naumov 1). It was not as if Ezhov was biased, so much that he became passionately, irrationally, even religiously committed to the success of his mission to the point where he would issue something as aggressive as Order 447.

Everything about Ezhov’s background helped to groom him for the position he would assume as leader of the NKVD, a position he used to identify potential fissures in communist leadership, see that figures like Trotsky posed real and meaningful threats to social and political order, and thus to use his power to take cruel yet meaningful action (Getty and Naumov 4). Order 447 did not emerge out of a vacuum and nor was it some reactionary memorandum issued irrationally.

Rather, tension had been building and Yezhov had been warning his comrades about a “grand conspiracy that unified” the anti-Soviet elements he mentions in the Order (Getty and Naumov 6). The “paranoia and xenophobia” that characterize Order 447 and NKVD policy more generally stems from an existential fear that the Soviet mission could be easily destroyed by these subversive elements (Getty and Naumov 7). Purges seemed to be a surefire, relatively simple, and feasible means of addressing the problem Yezhov identified.

Order 447 also came on the heels of an important, and real shift in the balance of power in the remote “countryside” Ezhov refers to several times (1). This shift in the balance of power refers to the kulaks and “dekulakization” process (Getty 220). The kulaks were “anti-Soviet peasants,” who were steadily gaining traction in their respective communities and could have indeed been capable of undermining the Stalin regime via grassroots political movements and uprisings—just as Ezhov fears (Getty 220).

After all, Ezhov does base his fears of the people who are “lying low in the countryside” on reports given to him from police and others loyal to the regime (1). Also, a “blending of enemies” had ensued, in which groups of otherwise disparate people, including the “repressed church activists,” (Ezhov 1) and the “White army officers” (Getty 222) could theoretically bond together under a common united front against the Soviets.

Minorov had expressed initial concerns about the conspiracies and started policy discussions, which culminated in the issuing of Order 447 (Getty 223). The intended audience of Order 447 included the regional troikas, those who would actually be in charge of carrying out the purges as indicated by Ezhov. Establishing the troika system was critical for the success of the NKVD operation; otherwise it would have been “completely impossible to repress so many people so quickly,” (Ellman 916).

As Minorov raised his concerns more vocally, Ezhov helped to establish the critical troika in West Siberia: where the kulak uprisings had been flourishing in 1937 (Ellman 917). Minorov may have fabricated a large portion of the “evidence” used in his claims to conspiracy: about the “enemies lurking everywhere and fear by the regional leaders,” (Ellman 919).

It required “daily interaction” between the centralized Soviet headquarters under Stalin and Ezhov and the regional leaders under the troika system in order to gather the intelligence, create a cohesive strategy under Order 447, and then implement that strategy as the purges (Ellman 919). Using the deliberately ambiguous language in Order 447, such as referring to anti-Soviet elements, empowered the troikas to take action as they saw fit in order to achieve Soviet goals.

Certainly Ezhov mentions specifically the targeted groups but the two-part classification system allows the troikas to make executive decisions on the ground about who to execute, who to imprison in the gulag, and who to classify at all. In other words, Ezhov “suggested additional groups of victims” that might assist in the overall mission of state terror (Ellman 920). Ezhov may even have deliberately overestimated the numbers of targets in the Order 447 chart “to insure themselves against possible under-fulfillment of the plan,” (Ellman 922).

Order 447 may have been secret, aimed at troika leaders, and yet its dissemination also achieved an overarching goal of putting fear in the minds and hearts of those troika leaders in case they should have second thoughts about their role in the Soviet mission. Order 447 was written for both overt and subtle reasons. The overt purpose of Order 447 was to squelch insubordination and dissent, to stamp out anti-Soviet elements throughout the remote countryside and prevent a unified counterrevolutionary force from undermining the integrity of Stalin’s regime.

Ezhov labels several groups as being armed and dangerous, therefore providing some justification for the purges,.