On 16 March 1959, an employee of the Ministry of the Interior writes to the First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party to dispute his arrest and continued custody. He is accused of corruption because, he says, he is suspected of having had a family of deportees freed in exchange for alcoholic drink, which he firmly denies. To support his claims of good faith, he describes in great detail the way he works, making this document a rare description of the daily work carried out after Stalin’s death to respond to the thousands of requests from deportees to be freed.

Letter from a police officer

To the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania

Comrade Sniečkus

From [K., Nikolay Fedorovich]

Arrested by the special inspectorate of the MVD of the Lithuanian SSR

Held in Prison no. 1

Member of CPSU since 1932

Request

I worked up to and including December 1958 as an officer in the 1st Special Department of the MVD [Ministry of the Interior] of the Lithuanian SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic], in charge of complaints from and files on families deported from Lithuania.

In December 1958, after 24 years’ service with the law enforcement agencies I was dismissed and on 3 March 1959 arrested and charged under Articles 109 and 117 of the Penal Code of the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic] for misuse of my official position and bribery. The preliminary inquiry has been carried out since November 1958 by the Special Inspectorate of the MVD of the Lithuanian SSR, which, in search of fictitious accusations and in order to bring me illegally to court, has still not completed its inquiry, as it is still seeking new baseless criminal accusations.

Summary of case

In August 1957 I carried out some of the functions of the former deputy director of the 1st Special Department of the MVD, N., on his oral orders, to examine requests from special settlers and prepare the files on resettled families for re-examination by the Commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR, headed by Comrade Preikšas.

Under the Commission’s instructions, the operational staff of the Commission, of which I was a member, were subject to the following rules:

1.     Present to the Commission only the files of those special settlers whose application for release had received a negative opinion from the operational staff.

 2.     Consider as non-contentious the files of those special settlers whose application for release had received a positive opinion from the operational staff; not to present them to the Commission but to include them directly on the previously prepared list enclosed with the Commission’s draft decision. These non-contentious files, which were not to be reported on during the Commission meeting, were those with the following characteristics:

 a.         The family did not employ any salaried staff, had less than 30 ha of land; there were no convicted persons in the family, or convicted relatives had been living away from the family before their crime.

 b.        The family did not employ any salaried staff, had less than 20 ha of land (and the same objective facts as above): consider this family to have been deported without justification and include them in the list and the Commission’s draft decision, and to be released from deportation with restitution of property confiscated at the time of deportation.

To accurately determine the social and land-owning status of the family and the day-to-day relations between convicted and unconvicted relatives, we based ourselves on the written statements of the Executive Committee of the district where a given family was living before deportation. Under these instructions from the Commission, their operational staff examined the files of special settlers either following their initial complaints or requests, or subsequent ones if these included new elements presented by the applicants that justified the reasons of a given family.

Those were the instructions from the Commission given to me by N., former deputy director of the 1st Special Department of the MVD, who was on exceptional leave.

In June 1957, one of the Commission’s operational staff (K.), in line with the Commission’s instructions as described above, examined the file concerning the return from deportation of the family of F. A., who, according to the Executive Committee of the district and the regional council, owned 16 ha of arable land, employed no salaried labour and whose farm had not been included in the kulak category. This implied that F. A.’s family had been wrongly deported as kulaks. However, considering that one of the sons had been convicted of collaboration with the German occupiers, after the family’s deportation, K. in examining the file came to the following conclusion: to release this family from deportation on exceptional grounds with no restitution of the confiscated property. The F. A. file was thus included in the Commission’s draft decision, without being examined by the Commission, as a non-contentious file, and the draft was then signed and approved.

In August 1957, the MVD received a second request from one of the deportee F. A.’s sons, enclosing written statements from the Executive Committee of PanevėžysDistrict and the regional council, indicating that F. A.’s convicted son had been called up in 1942 into a German labour battalion by the German occupiers, and had no longer been materially dependent on his family after that time. Other evidence in the file showed that this convicted son had had no further relations with his family from his entry into a German labour battalion, that he lived in Vilnius (and his family in Panevėžys District) and that his collaboration with the German occupiers was not the cause of his family’s deportation and had not been mentioned in the deportation decree in 1948.

In delegation of the functions of N., deputy director of the 1st Special Department on leave at that time, I instructed the Commission employee who had worked in the prosecutor’s office, S., to examine this second request. He examined all the documents in the file again and after consulting me concluded that F. A.’s family were not kulaks, that the convicted son had been living apart from his family since 1942 and that consequently the family had been wrongly deported. The family was therefore to be released from deportation as wrongful deportees and their confiscated property returned. Only the convicted son, who after completing his sentence had joined his family in deportation, was to be released with no restitution of property.

I agreed entirely with S.’s conclusions and recommended he should terminate the A. file, giving as reasons that the family was to be released from deportation as wrongful deportees and the property returned that had been confiscated at the time of the deportation, and that the convicted son was to be released with no restitution of property, and S. did this.

The file for release from deportation with restitution of confiscated property for the A. family was included a second time in the Commission’s draft decision, with the conclusion that made it a non-contentious file not to be examined by the Commission. It was approved and signed.

F. A.’s family returned from deportation and the property confiscated when they were deported was returned to them.

In October 1958, just over a year after F. A.’s family’s return from deportation, the 1st Special Department of the MVD, suspecting that this family had been wrongly released, carried out a special further investigation into their social position by questioning witnesses from the family’s place of residence in Panevėžys District. It was then discovered that the A. family had had a nanny before their deportation, who, after bringing up the family’s young children, had continued to work for the family as a farmhand (batrak) in the fields, evidence of the family’s kulak status.

This investigation also showed that all the written statements from the Executive Committee in Panevėžys District, dated 1957, signed by the chairman of the District Executive Committee, and the written statements from the regional council were on the basis of which the A. family file had been examined in June and August 1957, were inaccurate. Their statements omitted the family’s use of salaried labour and thus their kulak status.

On the basis of the special investigation report, the A. family file was presented to the Commission, which issued its written decision: to invalidate the August decision to return the confiscated property to F. A.’s family as an inappropriate decision, and to open an inquiry.

Since then, the inquiry is still continuing at this time, I was arrested on 3 March this year and am under investigation. I am accused of corruption, because in delegation of N.’s function as deputy director of the 1st Special Department of the MVD, who was then on leave, I inserted into the Commission’s draft decision the file on the A. release from deportation with restitution of confiscated property.

But did not staff member S. come to these conclusions, like me, on the basis of an analysis of the file and in line with the Commission’s instructions, basing ourselves on the official written statements signed by the chairman of the Panevėžys District Executive Committee himself and other documents that fully justified us in considering that the A. family, not being kulaks and separated from their convicted son, had been wrongly deported in 1948? Could S. and I really have known or guessed that these official written statements were inaccurate, when S. and I trusted these official statements as we had those written statements from Executive Committees in hundreds and thousands of files? The A. file was for that reason considered non-contentious and since no doubt arose was included in the Commission’s draft decision.

I ask myself why I should bear the responsibility for this case and not the Panevėžys District Executive Committee whose written statements were the main evidence for F. A.’s family’s release from deportation with restitution of confiscated property.

I am accused of not having informed the Commission about the A. family file, and of having directly included it in the Commission’s draft decision on the basis of S.’s conclusions. But, under the Commission’s instructions, a file of this sort, for which the operating staff had given an opinion in favour of release from deportation with or without restitution of property, was not to be brought before the Commission, like all the thousands of similar files that have been included in the Commission’s decisions with no concrete evidence, under the Commission’s technical instructions valid at that time. Consequently, to accuse me of this is poorly thought out and totally baseless. Neither S., who suggested the conclusion to the A. file, nor I ever thought that this non-contentious file that aroused no doubts should be presented to the Commission.

I am accused of having included in the Commission draft the release from deportation of the A. family as wrongly deported after being treated to alcoholic drinks by an acquaintance of mine, close to that family, Citizen B., amounting to an interested motive.

This baseless accusation invented by I don’t know who is totally devoid of reality. I have known Citizen B. since 1950, as a former member of the security authorities. I have drunk with him more than once, almost every year. But not one of these drinking occasions had any connection with the release of the A. family from deportation and I have not received any remuneration from him in favour of that family. On the contrary, B. sometimes drank at my expense, having no money himself. For example, in December 1957, he borrowed 50 roubles from me to drink, a sum he has still not repaid.

All the other accusations of bribery levelled against me are purely imaginary and baseless. They have been brought by some person to cover the Panevėžys District Executive Committee, who gave inaccurate written statements concerning the family of special settler A., and to falsely accuse me of having wrongly released this family from deportation as wrongly deported.

Since the special MVD inspectorate investigating my case has still not understood the instructions of the Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR valid in 1957, concerning the review of deportee files and the actual reasons behind the release of the A. family as wrongly deported, they are collecting a whole pile of unverified or false evidence to falsely accuse me and thus obtain from the public prosecutor support for my arrest.

I was arrested and have now been in prison for two weeks, although I do not understand and have no feeling of fault about all the things I am reproached for. I am nearly 49, with 35 years of my adult life given to my motherland, first as a workman — plumber, mechanical engineer, machine builder in a defence industry enterprise in Moscow, then posts of responsibility in the USSR NKVD central apparatus with the troops — head of a counter-espionage corps, specially seconded as deputy director of one of the largest shipbuilding factories, and other functions. I have always fulfilled my obligations, for which I have been awarded with nine decorations and medals, which were illegally taken from me on my arrest.

As a member of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] since 1932, I have always been guided by the interests of the Communist Party and our Soviet government throughout my career, in civilian life, at the front in the Great Patriotic War, where I served from Moscow to the fall of Berlin and the Reichstag. I have always believed in my duty of service to the Motherland and, whatever my daily concerns and moods, I have never been involved in the commission of any crime.

My arrest, based on the illegal release from deportation of the A. family, is an act of gross violence and a violation of Socialist legality that is not compliant with the standards of the legislation on criminal procedure.

After a concussion to my forehead, I have suffered from severe nervous exhaustion and my imprisonment has considerably worsened my condition; I can no longer stand this act of violence against me. I no longer have the strength to prove my innocence to the inquiry, which is collecting all sorts of imaginary and mendacious evidence in the attempt to accuse me of crimes I have not committed.

I request you to intervene in my favour and to take measures to ensure that an objective inquiry is held, and to release me from this provisional custody, which isolates me from society in a precipitate and illegal manner.

16 3 1959

[K.]

City of Vilnius

Prison N° 1

(Manuscript letter of 12 pages)

 Source: Lithuanian Special Archives, f. 1771, ap. 205, d. 23, ff. 99-103