Terror

in the campaign “The Great Terror in Chechen-Ingushetia (1937-1940)”

On the morning after the night arrests of 31 July 1937 the bureau of the oblast committee of the party resolved: to hold meetings in all kolkhozes "with an explanation of the political situation in the countryside", and by 5 August - district and Komsomol meetings "on the results of the operation"[1]. On 3 August 1937 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (the TsK VKP(b)), by telegram No. 1178, obliged the oblast committees of the party: to organize "in each oblast, by districts, 2-3 open show trials" of assigned "wreckers of agriculture" - "covering the course of the trials widely in the local press"[1]. The newspaper "Groznensky Rabochy" ["The Grozny Worker"] covered the open trials from August 1937 - on 20 August under the headline: "The Trial of the Former Managers of Chechingtorg"[1]. From 11 September 1937 the same newspaper printed denunciations in waves, day after day: 11 September: "Untangle the Bourgeois-Nationalist Tangle" - with a report on a meeting at which "of the 587 members and 132 candidate members of the party present at the meeting... 520 people spoke"; 15 September: "Enemies of the Chechen-Ingush People: Root Out and Smash to the End the Band of Bourgeois Nationalists"; 16 September: "Enemies of the People Have the Run of Chechingizdat: the Wolf Pack Is Headed by the Dyed-in-the-Wool Nationalist Arsanukayev"; 17 September: "Expose and Smash the Vile Band of Bourgeois Nationalists! - Such Is the Common Voice of the Party Organizations of Chechen-Ingushetia"; the newspaper denounced people by name - Gorchkhanov, Salamov, Mekhtiev, Vakhayev, Okuyev, Khaniev, Matsiev, Yandarov[1]. On 27 September the newspaper printed an announcement: "Wreckers of Grain: Toward the Coming Trials" - three days before the report on the trial itself; on 12 October, under the headline: "The Trial of the Wreckers from the Artemovsky Elevator" - the newspaper reported: "the workers and housewives who filled the hall met the verdict with stormy applause"; on 3 November, under the headline: "The Trial of the Wreckers of the Second Oil Refinery"[1]. In March 1938 the participants of a rally in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny demanded of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR the shooting of "rabid fascist dogs"[1], "Groznensky Rabochy" on 11 March printed an open letter of the Pioneers of Grozny school No. 3 demanding "the physical annihilation of the bestial enemies of the people"[2], and of the trial of 16-26 March the historian K. G. Dendiev writes: the proceedings in the case of the "Bourgeois-nationalist Trotskyite-Bukharinite counter-revolutionary group of Abastov, Kebiev, Zarmayev and others" "were heard in open session, with the participation of a state prosecutor and an organ of the defense", and the indictment was printed by "Groznensky Rabochy"[1].

ID: C1179.T0022
Technique:  Terror
Start: July 1937
End: December 1940
Contributors: decolonial.ist project

References