Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

Few aspects of the Soviet system have received as much scholarly (and popular) attention in the West as the secret police, and in particular its role in implementing the Terror, conducting espionage, and running the G ULAG. As awareness of the vast prison-camp system spread during the Cold War, from Khrushchev's secret speech to the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, even many formerly sympathetic commentators came to identify internal repression as a if not the fundamental feature of Soviet totalitarianism. While writing extensively on the Terror and G ULAG, however, Western historians have devoted significantly less attention to explicating the origins of the security apparatus after the Russian revolutions and Civil War. A notable exception was two scholarly monographs describing the establishment of the security apparatus in the early years of Soviet rule, both published several decades ago.¹

A recent spate of research and the availability of previously inaccessible materials have made possible a more thorough analysis of how the security apparatus originated, developed, and came to occupy such a central place in the Soviet system. In reviewing these new resources, I focus on several important, interrelated issues. First, I look at how changes in the institutional structure of the secret police at the beginning of the New Economic Policy (NEP) solidified rather than diminished its role in the Soviet system. While the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage (Cheka), as its name indicated, was designated as an "extraordinary" and therefore presumably non-permanent body, its successors were considered standing organs, an elemental part of the new polity. Earlier scholars certainly remarked [End Page 299] on this,² but how and why it occurred can now be much more extensively appreciated. In particular, A. L. Litvin, S. V. Leonov, and S. A. Krasil´nikov have convincingly argued that the ability of the State Political Administration (GPU, later OGPU) to retain or reacquire all the Cheka's powers (and then some) was neither predetermined nor insignificant.³ The consolidation of the wartime powers of the security apparatus in peacetime circumstances is a critically important but under-studied phenomenon—in part because it is presumed to need no explanation. This assumption imposes a post facto naturalization on the origins of the secret police and neglects the importance of a detailed history of its development. As Peter Holquist has argued, while most European states had extended mechanisms for mobilizing and watching over their populations during the Great War, Soviet Russia was unique in the way in which these techniques became institutionalized once overt hostilities had ceased. "One way of conceiving the Soviet Union," Holquist writes, "is as a polity whose revolution fixed, or froze, techniques of total war and total mobilization as enduring, rather than transient, features of its political order."⁴

Second, I trace how the institutional apparatus developed over the course of the 1920s, looking both at the internal structure of the GPU and at the duties it still shared with other institutions, in particular the Commissariat of Justice (Narkomiust) and the Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Russian Republic (the RSFSR NKVD). It is evident that the Soviet party-state in the 1920s was characterized by what Michael David-Fox has in another context called "bureaucratic cacophony."⁵ Such bureaucratic, or institutional, cacophony was already present within the security apparatus, especially in the competition [End Page 300] between the GPU and these other policing institutions. S. A. Krasil´nikov and George Lin have both looked at the institutional rivalries that developed, particularly over who would control the burgeoning business of administrative exile. The process by which the GPU emerged triumphant is critical to understanding the origins of the system of mass deportations; and Krasil´nikov, Lin, and Nicolas Werth have shown how Dzerzhinskii and his successors managed to accrue ever-increasing authority over the course of the 1920s.⁶

Third, I investigate the internal structures of the GPU and other organs. Of the various functions of the security apparatus during the 1920s, the one receiving the most attention in recent years has been its role in information gathering and surveillance. V. S. Izmozik, V. K. Vinogradov, and Peter Holquist all demonstrate how fundamental this task was to its raison d'être.⁷ As Nicolas Werth has detailed, however, the information subdivision was a comparatively small organ during the 1920s, overshadowed by the GPU's larger and more energetic policing and quasi-military activities. Combating banditry and insurgent movements and conducting espionage operations were its primary responsibilities. Terry Martin has persuasively argued that despite the already voluminous reports on the "mood of the population," the Soviet regime was still more interested in utilizing the secret police to catalogue and remove its enemies.⁸

Interest in the origins of the Soviet security apparatus has increased noticeably in the past decade, as has dialogue between Russian and Western [End Page 301] historians, as witnessed by a special issue of Cahiers du monde russe entitled "The Political Police in the Soviet Union, 1918-1953";⁹ by several volumes of historical articles issued by the Federal Security Service (FSB);¹⁰ by the publication of a voluminous set of GPU reports from the 1920s and the 1930s;¹¹ by the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies' Internet republication of a 1977 internal secret history of the Committee for State Security (KGB);¹² and by the availability of the NKVD RSFSR collection through the Hoover Institution /Rosarkhiv microfilming project.¹³ These materials and analyses draw for us a far more comprehensive picture of the structure of the security apparatus, the creation of its punitive institutions, its relationships with the Party and with other Soviet organs, the development of its information-gathering systems, and its attempts to exert "control" over the public sphere. We may therefore begin to sketch a composite portrait of how some of the most fundamental Soviet institutions and practices of power came to be.

From Extra-Ordinary to Revolutionary Legality

The reformation of the Cheka into the GPU and the means by which the GPU retained and expanded its jurisdictional authority were an immensely important process. The adaptation of a wartime combat institution to "ordinary" circumstances reflected the civil-war mentality of Lenin and his lieutenants, a vision of the world unblinkingly focused on "who devours whom."¹⁴ In fact, the situation at the end of the Russian Civil War was anything but ordinary. Workers had fled the cities, epidemics were commonplace, and a massive famine was ravaging the heartland Volga region. The much-heralded revolutions in Europe either failed to materialize or were swiftly crushed, and Soviet Russia found itself entirely isolated. The communist leadership was deeply troubled by the pervasive discontent [End Page 302] in the countryside and especially by the Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921. The decision to jettison war communism and the proclamation of NEP caused enormous consternation among the party faithful. At the very moment of triumph, the glorious Revolution was giving the fruits of its enormously hard-earned victory back to its inveterate foes.

In early 1921, chekists were warned that current conditions necessitated an intensification of vigilance. "Having lost the battle on the external front," one internal directive declared, "the counterrevolution is focusing its efforts on overthrowing Soviet power from within. It will use any means for the attainment of this goal, using all of its rich experience, all its techniques of betrayal."¹⁵ The sense of urgency accorded to the struggle on the internal front became particularly acute after Kronstadt, following which repression increased against real and perceived political foes. Much of the impetus for this campaign originated with the Cheka's deputy head Iosif Unshlikht, whom the exiled Menshevik Fedor Dan called "the actual chairman of the Cheka" while Dzerzhinskii was preoccupied with his other posts.¹⁶ In a memo to the Politburo in June 1921, Unshlikht outlined an ambitious plan for an "organized and systematic struggle with counterrevolutionary movements," including the Orthodox Church, striking workers, rebelling peasants, and members or former members of other political parties. Of particular importance was the cleansing of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) from unions, agricultural cooperatives, government organs, and other positions of influence, to be followed by the final liquidation of the central organs of the respective parties.¹⁷

The beginning of NEP was therefore marked by anything but a relaxation of vigilance; by the second half of 1921, deportations of Mensheviks and SRs had begun en masse. At the same time, more pragmatic Bolshevik leaders recognized the need for some form of legal standardization. The expediency of the Civil War years was thus to be replaced by what Lenin termed "revolutionary legality," a turn toward normalizing the actions of the Soviet state. The foremost proponents of revolutionary legality, and in particular Lev Kamenev, took this to mean that the Cheka had outlived its usefulness and should be replaced by an organ with a significantly reduced scope. Lenin seemed to agree with Kamenev [End Page 303] and Commissar of Justice Dmitrii Kurskii that the role of the courts must be restored and the Cheka's activities curtailed. Last but not least, the Cheka was to have its name changed (despite Unshlikht's heated objections) to signify the restoration of normalcy and to pacify critics of its "excesses."¹⁸

Western and contemporary Russian historians concur that the limitations on the extralegal powers of the newly rechristened GPU not only did not last very long but also served to incorporate the powers of the secret police into the legal structure of the Soviet state.¹⁹ The formal subordination of the GPU to the NKVD—which meant little while Dzerzhinskii headed both institutions—had the effect of giving it a legitimacy it did not have previously. In addition, as V. N. Khaustov has noted, the reformation of the Cheka into the GPU was accompanied by measures to ensure more direct Politburo control over it.²⁰ Lenin's advocacy of a more substantial role for the judiciary in no way signified an end to the struggle against "anti-Soviet forces," and he chided Kurskii for failing fully to grasp this fact. He argued that the Commissariat of Justice should also be intimately involved in "intensifying repression against political enemies of Soviet power and agents of the bourgeoisie (especially the Mensheviks and SRs)," and he asserted that the criminal code drafted in the spring of 1922 should institutionalize both capital punishment and exile for combating enemies of the revolution. "The courts should not eliminate the terror—to promise this would be deceitful and delusional—but provide a foundation for it and legalize it on principle, clearly, without falsity or embellishment."²¹

While Narkomiust did become more involved in matters formerly handled by the Cheka, Lenin's efforts to have it share responsibility for the terror did not materialize as he said he expected. Instead, as S. A. Krasil´nikov has described, the GPU aggressively defended its field of jurisdiction and moved to reacquire its extralegal capacities. In May, Unshlikht proposed to the Politburo that the GPU be given the right to exile anti-Soviet elements [End Page 304] either internally or abroad for terms of up to two years.²² By the end of the summer, the Central Executive Committee formally endorsed such a use of administrative or extrajudicial exile; and, while it was formally charged to the NKVD, this distinction, for the time being, did not much matter.²³ The campaign to remove "anti-Soviet" intellectuals commenced at the same time as Unshlikht's initial request, well before the decree was formally implemented. Lenin unequivocally assigned the expulsions to the GPU, to be conducted in an "administrative" manner.²⁴

It is important to note that those who had pressed for the abolition of the Cheka and the establishment of "revolutionary legality" not only did not object to the GPU's handling of the expulsions but also were active participants in the process. Unshlikht's colleagues on the troika appointed by the Politburo to oversee the deportations of intellectuals were none other than Kamenev and Kurskii.²⁵ It is for this reason, as well as the fact that the GPU and Narkomiust were cooperative partners in the handling of the SR show trial, that we must be careful not to overemphasize the vagaries of institutional competition. While Krasil´nikov is correct in positing that the beginnings of a decade-long turf war were visible during the establishment of the Soviet legal (and extralegal) system,²⁶ we must also recognize that there was little opposition within the regime to the GPU's re-expansion of its powers at this time. In addition, as Litvin has shown, the broadening of the GPU's capacities during 1922 took place both through its prominent role in the expulsions and the SR trial and through its less public expansion into a number of security activities, from censorship to border patrols.²⁷

The decrees of 10 August 1922 and subsequent instructions in October 1922 and January 1923 officially established summary deportation within the Soviet legal system and created a special NKVD commission on administrative exile. Vysylka, or deportation from a particular place, was usually accompanied by a "minus six" or "minus twelve" of cities and regions where the convicted person was not permitted to live, including Moscow, Petrograd, provincial centers, and border regions. The more restrictive ssylka referred to instances where the deportee was confined to one location. By October 1922, forced labor was [End Page 305] explicitly added to the punitive weapons at the NKVD and GPU's disposal.²⁸ Leading operatives emphasized that exile and confinement in concentration camps were prophylactic and not strictly punitive measures, since their primary aim was to isolate harmful elements from segments of the population vulnerable to corruption. With this in mind, "bandits" and recidivist criminals, who were considered no less "socially dangerous" than political opponents, were added to the list of those who could be exiled.²⁹ It was also made explicitly clear that while membership (or former membership) in another party was a definite reason for deportation, one did not have to have any specific organizational affiliations to be considered a counter revolutionary.³⁰ As Werth observes, "the definition of what was considered a counter revolutionary crime" continued to broaden.³¹

Peter Holquist has contended that the techniques of the Soviet regime in identifying, observing, and eliminating its opponents developed into a holistic system for constructing a socialist society. What differentiated the Soviet Union from other modern states was the institutionalization of wartime practices. Even after the Civil War, the urge to cleanse remained: "as the military threat receded and NEP was being introduced, Soviet authorities pursued a systematic 'filtering' of unreliable elements from the population."³² While mobilization for the purpose of total war was a common goal of state actors at the time, the use of such methods in the name of a millenarian revolution was unique to Bolshevik Russia. [End Page 306]

The Organization of the Security Apparatus in the Mid-1920s

Increasingly, deportation and confinement in camps of such "unreliable" or socially dangerous elements came to be seen as the most effective means to isolate them from the rest of the population. The apparatus was already functioning well by the winter of 1922-23, although, as was frequently the case at the time, the exact institutional divisions were blurred. One of the primary statements that can be made about the Soviet party-state in the 1920s was that it was characterized by institutional cacophony. While it is natural for historians to focus on the OGPU, its policing and surveillance functions were shared until 1930 with the NKVD RSFSR and, to a lesser extent, Narkomiust. An analysis of the institutional development of the security apparatus must take this into account, and in particular the jurisdictional rivalries that developed after the separation of the GPU and NKVD in the summer of 1923.³³ The availability of the voluminous NKVD RSFSR collection (GARF fond 393) through the Hoover /Rosarkhiv microfilming project has facilitated a re-examination of the institutional history of the original Internal Affairs Commissariat, and George Lin's compact analysis of its rise and fall is a first important step.³⁴

While a similar examination of the OGPU is more difficult due to limited access at the FSB archive, the institutional rivalries and overlapping spheres of influence make the NKVD collection useful for this task as well. In addition, Nicolas Werth has been able to describe in admirable detail the OGPU's basic structure in 1924 on the basis of reports located in Dzerzhinskii's personal collection.³⁵ Werth concludes, inter alia, that the organization of the OGPU was not as confused as it later would be, that it had not yet taken on its eventual bewildering complexity.³⁶ This relative simplicity, however, was in large part [End Page 307] due to the fact that the OGPU still (unhappily) shared its duties with the NKVD RSFSR and other institutions—an even greater organizational morass than would later obtain. Nevertheless, Werth's examination of the composition and relative magnitude of the OGPU's various departments provides a highly informative analysis of its structure.

As Werth notes, in terms of sheer numbers, the OGPU's Secret Operational Directorate (sekretno-operativnoe upravlenie) was by far the most important of the divisions, encompassing approximately 19,000 agents (not including those funded by the "secret budget") in its various departments. These included the Transport, Secret, Operative, Counterespionage, Foreign, and Special departments, the Department of Political Control, and the Information Department. In addition, there were agents funded out of a secret budget (neglasnye sotrudniki), whose main task was infiltration and surveillance, including tens of thousands of non-staff informants (osvedomiteli).³⁷ The largest departments of the Secret Operational Directorate in the mid-1920s were the Transport Department, which had the enormously important task of defending the railroads and combating banditry, and the Secret Department, whose eight subdivisions specialized in the eradication or vigilant monitoring of various "counterrevolutionary" elements, including monarchists and Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), socialists, anarchists, kulaks, former members of the workers' opposition, clergymen and sectarians, and intellectuals and students.³⁸ Also of growing significance was the Counterespionage Department, which conducted provocational work, in particular among émigré groups. Its greatest successes included luring committed opponents such as Boris Savinkov and Vasilii Shul´gin into returning to the Soviet Union.³⁹ By the end of 1922, [End Page 308] extensive infiltration of émigré student organizations had already taken place.⁴⁰

While the majority of recent writing on the secret police in the 1920s has focused on its role as purveyor of information, it is important to recall that this was one of the smaller departments (although it did, of course, work with a large army of unpaid non-staff informants). The vast majority of the OGPU's budget and full-time staff was still directed at eradicating opposition, both organized and anarchic. This does not mean that surveillance was not one of its central tasks; all departments engaged in it—from the Secret Department's monitoring of higher educational institutions to the Counterespionage Department's tracking of those with suspicious foreign contacts.⁴¹ As Terry Martin convincingly argues, however, this surveillance most often served the security apparatus itself, and most often with the goal of detecting and liquidating potential enemies rather than any constructivist endeavor.⁴² We must therefore be careful not to overemphasize the relative importance of the Information Department because of the exceptional availability of its materials.

In 1924-25, a protracted debate over OGPU funding pitted Dzerzhinskii against the Commissariat of Finance and prominent party leaders like Bukharin.⁴³ As Werth suggests, this demonstrates that during NEP the security apparatus was still subject to economic oversight from other Soviet institutions. Nevertheless, it is perhaps more important to recall, as Izmozik does, that the OGPU won this particular struggle, that Stalin and his colleagues concurred with the arguments of Dzerzhinskii and Iagoda that circumstances required maintaining a high level of vigilance, that "the current internal position due to the onslaught of all the anti-Soviet forces, spies, and bandits is very tense."⁴⁴ The OGPU's triumph over those who would have reined in its powers and limited its competence may thus be seen as yet another plank in a series of victories that built on its already burgeoning, if still incomplete, extralegal autonomy. As Werth himself notes, the OGPU's penal authority was dramatically increased soon after.⁴⁵ [End Page 309]

Like many other Soviet institutions during the 1920s, the OGPU's reach and influence decreased markedly in the provinces. Regional plenipotentiaries often dealt roughly with what they perceived to be a hostile or at best indifferent peasant mass. As Werth has documented, agents on the peripheries were sparse and spread out: as of 1924, more than one-fifth of the OGPU's personnel was concentrated in the Moscow region, and a significant percentage of the remainder was in Leningrad and Ukraine.⁴⁶ By contrast, the Oriental Department, responsible for all of Central Asia and the Caucasus, was considerably undermanned, even as it fought a bloody war of conquest against the Basmachis, "bandits," and other holdouts against the regime lasting well into the 1920s.⁴⁷ In troublespot regions, the OGPU retained its primary Civil War role as a true counterinsurgency organization.

A brief look at the apparatus of administrative exile demonstrates the institutional cacophony characteristic of the security apparatus during NEP. As the NKVD special commission established in 1922 had no permanent standing body, the responsibility for its functioning fell once again to GPU deputy chair Iosif Unshlikht and his subordinates, including Iagoda. In 1923, the NKVD apparatus featured a bewildering array of departments and subdepartments (at both the central and local levels), of which the GPU was only one special case. Oversight of the Special Commission on Administrative Exile was handled by the Administrative Department (administrativnyi otdel) of the Administrative Organizational Directorate, and more specifically by the Subdepartment for Administrative Surveillance (podotdel administrativnogo nadzora). An examination of the paper trail makes clear that the NKVD Administrative Department queried the GPU Juridical and Special departments (iuridicheskii otdel and osobiiotdel) when it needed to refer matters to the Commission on Administrative Exile, and the Secret Department (sekretnyi otdel) when these matters involved politicals or counterrevolutionaries.⁴⁸

In the summer of 1923, the GPU was renamed the OGPU and made directly accountable to the Council of People's Commissars. While the formal subordination of the GPU to the NKVD was thus terminated, the previous lines of communication were maintained during a period of transition. The [End Page 310] All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) formally authorized the OGPU's use of exile and concentration camps in the fall of 1923. A newly formed OGPU "Special Convention" on Administrative Exile was given exclusive control over deporting counterrevolutionaries, smugglers, counterfeiters, and currency speculators.⁴⁹ The NKVD remained involved in deporting recidivist and other non-political criminals, but it resented the loss of prestige associated with the OGPU's handling of politicals and counterrevolutionaries. As Lin and Krasil´nikov have both shown, the struggle over the institution of administrative exile was a defining event in the development of the security apparatus, resulting in the abolition of the RSFSR NKVD in 1930 and the transfer of its responsibilities to the OGPU.⁵⁰ A similar turf war took place over control of the rapidly developing camp system, to which the majority of exiles began to be sent by the mid-1920s.⁵¹

The emphasis of Krasil´nikov, Lin, Litvin, and Michael Jakobson on the extent to which the development of the security apparatus in the 1920s depended on interagency bickering is an important corrective to under developed depictions of a Soviet monolith. At the same time, focusing too much on institutional rivalries can obscure the Bolsheviks' common ideological imperatives: even those, such as Kamenev, who had initially pressed to limit the Cheka's powers in 1921 worked closely with its successors. While the results of the jurisdictional struggles were not predetermined and had significant consequences, they took place within a still-small circle of elites who shared a fundamental commitment to guarding the Revolution by any means necessary.

The central shared ideological tenet concerned the need for social prophylaxis. As the GPU made clear, administrative exile was intended "not as a judicial punishment, but as a measure of social defense."⁵² While Jakobson is [End Page 311] quite correct that the redefinition of recidivist criminals as "socially dangerous elements" allowed the GPU to argue that they belonged within its jurisdiction, it also represented a shared perspective on the need to remove threatening people from a sensitive location. The Commissariat of Justice ruled that the designation "socially dangerous" could be applied to individuals not charged with a specific misdemeanor, if "circumstances nevertheless convince the court of the connections of the accused with a criminal milieu in the given location or, in general, of his social dangerousness due to his previous behavior or convictions."⁵³ As Werth argues, "the law thus not only punished intentional transgressions but also proscribed possible or unintentional acts."⁵⁴ Moreover, as Litvin and A. M. Plekhanov have both pointed out, while legal standards remained a point of reference, they were made increasingly irrelevant by the ever-growing number of situations in which the OGPU could employ extrajudicial repression.⁵⁵

An Apparatus for Surveillance, Information, and Control

After the creation of the GPU in February 1922, T. P. Samsonov, the director of the Secret Department, reminded his operatives that the reorganization in no way diminished their duties, and in fact made them more demanding. "GPU organs must now develop their work in conditions immeasurably more difficult and complex than previously existed for the organs of the VChK," he told them. "In the new conditions many things are much easier to overlook, to fail to notice. The enemy has succeeded in perfecting how and by what means it conducts counterrevolutionary work."⁵⁶ To combat this ever-more insidious enemy, the GPU needed to expand its surveillance capabilities, and this required the involvement of all party members. The first step was the creation of so-called "bureaus of assistance" (biuro sodeistviia) to report on the activities of suspicious individuals in public institutions. The immediate goal was to discover and eliminate SRs and [End Page 312] Mensheviks from Soviet economic organs and cooperatives.⁵⁷ Soon, however, the bureaus were also established in private enterprises and higher educational institutions, and their tasks merged with the broader surveillance of the population in the effort to detect "counterrevolutionary elements."⁵⁸ Provincial party committees exhorted their members to become more involved in informing, particularly after budget cuts left local security organs short of the necessary personnel.⁵⁹

A standardized system was in place by mid-decade. As Volodymyr Semystiaha explains, local organs mirrored the central apparatus: informants provided information on an ongoing basis, while more specialized agents (agenty) followed particular individuals. As with much of the Soviet state structure during the 1920s, the network was much more extensive and efficient in Moscow and Leningrad than elsewhere. Provincial information apparatuses consistently failed to meet the center's expectations.⁶⁰ The Party's voracious appetite for information meant that secret informers were increasingly recruited by means of cajoling and threats, and from among those sentenced to exile and other punishments. In addition to developing this ever-growing network of informers, the GPU also expanded the use of other means of uncovering what was on the minds of the population, including tapping phone lines and the perlustration of letters.⁶¹ The latter, which, as Izmozik notes, "represented a tradition going back to Catherine the Great," served as an alternate means of observing the thoughts of the literate part of the population. By the mid-1920s, voluminous monthly reports were issued in Leningrad and other important centers.⁶² [End Page 313]

During the fall 1922 deportations, Dzerzhinskii stressed to his deputy Iosif Unshlikht that the gathering of information was among the GPU's most crucial tasks, and one that needed to be better systematized. "It is necessary to work out a plan, constantly correcting and supplementing it," he instructed.

We need to divide the entire intelligentsia into groups. For example: (1) belletrists; (2) publicists and politicals; (3) economists (here we need subgroups (a) financial, (b) fuel, (c) transport, (d) trade, (e) cooperators); (4) technicals (here also subgroups (a) engineers, (b) agronomists, (c) doctors, (d) military officers); (5) professors and instructors, etc., etc. [...] For every intellectual there should be a file; each group and subgroup should be elucidated from all sides.⁶³

It was not long before the sort of taxonomic database that Dzerzhinskii proposed was expanded to other groups of the population. While dividing the population into genus and species, however, the most important variable remained an individual's determined degree of loyalty. In most cases, a person's degree of loyalty was calibrated to his or her determined class status—for example, kulaks were always suspect.⁶⁴ But at the same time, as Dzerzhinskii's directive concerning the intelligentsia makes clear, the task of surveillance and categorization was supposed to take on an individualized character.

This desire for a detailed database of individuals from particular suspect groups led to the development of the practice of uchet, or registration, which Terry Martin contends was at the basis of the entire system of surveillance in the 1920s.⁶⁵ Martin disagrees with Holquist's conclusion that surveillance had at its root the constructivist goal of re-forming every individual into a Soviet citizen. Instead, he argues, the Soviet information system in the 1920s was still largely defensive in nature, its true goal remaining the detection and elimination of potential enemies. Martin marshals much convincing evidence, in particular casting doubt on how much the high party leadership actually utilized reports [End Page 314] on the "mood" of broader groups of the population in making policy decisions.⁶⁶ I would emphasize in addition that the data provided by Werth in his analysis of the OGPU structure in 1924 show that the overwhelming majority of its resources went toward combating banditry and establishing the system of exile and camps. While the information apparatus has received a large portion of recent historiographic attention, we must remember that within the OGPU structure, the general gathering of information about the population was still secondary to the more direct struggle against the enemy.

Starting at the end of the Civil War, the Cheka and GPU collated weekly or periodical svodki and obzory (reports and digests) on the political and economic situation in the Soviet Union. These have been the object of much recent scholarly interest because of the publication of several comprehensive volumes of these documents.⁶⁷ The compilers of one set argue that despite admitted biases, the reports are a valuable source of "objective" information concerning "the economic and political position in the Soviet countryside."⁶⁸ Whether or not this is truly the case, the reports are of undoubted value for what they tell us about the GPU's representation of its work in combating banditry, liquidating anti-Soviet groups, monitoring workers and peasants, and so on. With the notable exception of the materials accompanying certain special reports analyzed by Nicolas Werth, they do not, however, usually tell us much about the actual internal structural workings of the secret police.⁶⁹ [End Page 315]

As V. K. Vinogradov notes, the system of reports originated out of Bolshevik anxieties over their precarious position at the end of the Civil War. Kronstadt in particular convinced Lenin and his colleagues that a more comprehensive information-gathering apparatus was imperative. The Cheka was therefore charged with compiling data gathered from the provinces for the consideration of the party leadership. The Information Department, with subdepartments on state, secret, and foreign information, was formed at the end of 1921. While names changed and staff was reduced with the establishment of the GPU and then the OGPU, the basic structure remained the same. The development of this apparatus over the 1920s is indicative, however, of the difficulties of state-building in this period. Despite repeated exhortations from Unshlikht, Iagoda, and other Cheka-GPU leaders, the securing of accurate and useful information from their provincial colleagues proved an elusive task, although the situation improved somewhat after the mid-1920s.⁷⁰

While the extent to which historians may use the svodki to reach a better understanding of larger social realities is a matter of some dispute,⁷¹ they are directly indicative of the concerns of their authors and compilers. Izmozik suggests that GPU reports to the party leadership were designed to maximize the sense of present danger and therefore to emphasize the continued importance of the security forces, in particular during a general financial squeeze when complaints concerning the lot of operatives were common. The reports' conclusions concerning the population's "political mood" and its attitude toward the Soviet regime frequently tended toward hyperbole.⁷² Alarmist information was the best argument for the continued necessity of an active and unchecked security apparatus and against further staff cuts.⁷³

Despite this tendency to craft reports designed to serve its own needs, the OGPU continued to provide what it deemed instrumental information for the regime whose purposes it served. As G. L. Olekh has concluded, it is misleading [End Page 316] to suggest that the security apparatus had institutional interests that were somehow at odds with those of the Central Committee. Even the increasing surveillance of the party bureaucracy itself, he argues, was at the behest of its leadership.⁷⁴ Although the GPU's staff was only 50.8 percent communist in 1923, this was much higher than in other commissariats.⁷⁵ G. N. Sevost´ianov similarly emphasizes that changes in the methods and types of information supplied by the OGPU can be traced directly to changes in the party-state.⁷⁶

Werth identifies seven categories of GPU reports during the 1920s: (1) a comprehensive monthly digest (obzor) of the country's political and economic status; (2) weekly reports on more specific questions; (3) synthetic thematic reports; (4) work files on specific questions tracked over a longer period of time (one or two years); (5) reports preceding a specific operation, campaign, or initiative; (6) detailed regional and district reports; and (7) highly individualized reports on the mood in a specific factory or concerning a particular strike or other event.⁷⁷ As Werth notes, many of these reports are present in the Central Committee files (RGASPI fond 17). In addition to the numerous svodki included in the "Sovershenno sekretno" and Sovetskaia derevnia volumes, there have been a number of other more specific publications of either collections of or single instances of such information reports, including those relating to Kronstadt, the intelligentsia, and Ukrainian separatism.⁷⁸

Vladlen Izmozik defines "political control" in the Soviet Union as a "system of regular supply and analysis of information by different branches of the state apparatus concerning society's moods, the relationships of its different strata to the actions of the regime, and the behavior and intentions of extremists and anti-government groups."⁷⁹ During the 1920s, the OGPU Information Department had not yet secured unique authority over all such matters, sharing jurisdiction with other parts of the security apparatus, most notably the RSFSR Commissariat of Internal Affairs. This was particularly the case vis-à-vis the registration and surveillance of non-governmental social organizations and of their [End Page 317] conferences and congresses, a process examined in admirable detail in a recent monograph by I. N. Il´ina.⁸⁰

In the summer of 1922, in conjunction with the other measures designed to limit the activities of "anti-Soviet groups among the intelligentsia," the Politburo ordered the establishment of a system of registration and surveillance of non-government societies and associations.⁸¹ A special commission under the aegis of the NKVD Central Administrative Directorate (tsentral´noe administrativnoe upravlenie) began to examine the materials of existing groups in the fall of 1922. A second commission was responsible for considering requests from organizations for permission to hold national or regional congresses. As in the case of administrative exile, much of the work of these commissions was de facto a joint operation of the NKVD and the GPU. As Il´ina remarks, while opinions were solicited from "interested" Soviet institutions, it was the GPU's conclusion that usually carried the most weight; in fact, a secret instruction issued simultaneous to the formation of the NVKD commission made the GPU's input the decisive factor.⁸² Soon after the commission began to function, a number of those groups that had come under particular fire during the events that provoked the deportations of intellectuals were denied permission to continue to operate.⁸³ Official patronage was often critical for scientific and professional organizations in the registration process.⁸⁴

While the NKVD commission prohibited the existence of only a minority of those organizations that applied for official recognition (as Il´ina notes, most of the refusals during NEP came in 1922-23),⁸⁵ it interfered in the activities of [End Page 318] many more. Instructions guiding the work of the commission made clear that the organizational charters under review must fall within strictly defined limits. Any attempt to claim for the society the rights of a full "juridical individual" was to be denied. To guard against the continued existence of exclusivist "corporate" organizations, it was made clear that membership must be open to all qualified individuals, and in particular to members of the Communist Party. In addition, secret proceedings were not to be tolerated, and all activities were to be open to government observers. GPU informants were assigned to observe the activities of the more significant societies. Specific individuals who had run afoul of the regime were often prohibited from taking part in proceedings, to the great consternation of their colleagues.⁸⁶ Further difficulties were caused by the inability to convene on a national scale if registration was held up. When organizational congresses were given permission to convene (as the majority were), several tickets to attend were routinely requested by the NKVD commission and then passed along to the OGPU.⁸⁷

A review of the activities of the commissions on registration of societies and their congresses serves to highlight the interactions and cooperation of the NKVD and OGPU in group surveillance, even after their institutional separation in 1923. Here as elsewhere, the fundamental principle was first to eliminate "anti-Soviet" tendencies and, most critically, to prevent these perceived tendencies from achieving organizational form. It would be a mistake, despite the jurisdictional competition that obtained, simply to portray the ill-fated RSFSR NKVD as the more "moderate" or institutionally legitimate arm of the Soviet security apparatus. This is demonstrated by its insistence on the closure of even benign scientific societies like the All-Russian Association of Engineers and the Russian Technical Society as early as 1924, at a time when Bukharin and other party leaders were promoting restraint.⁸⁸ Ironically, the RSFSR NKVD did not itself long outlast these scientific-professional societies, both of which were eliminated during a mass of closures at the end of the decade.

Our review of recent research and available sources leads us to several principal conclusions concerning the development of the state security apparatus in the 1920s. The first is that the reconstitution of the Cheka into the GPU and the OGPU's reassertion of authority over the course of the decade represented an [End Page 319] affirmation of its central place within the Soviet system. This is not a new idea, but it needs to be reiterated in light of recent research if we are to avoid a post facto naturalization of the transformation from extra-ordinariness to ordinariness. It was not certain at the time (or, rather, not certain initially) that the GPU would retain all the functions and authority of its predecessor. How this occurred is in the process of being described in greater detail and complexity.

A second, related point is that policing needs to be understood within the framework of "institutional cacophony," of shared jurisdiction over matters of security and surveillance. While the Cheka-GPU-OGPU was the most authoritative and prestigious of these organs, during the 1920s it shared duties with the NKVD RSFSR and even the Commissariat of Justice. It was not entirely clear how various policing, surveillance, and punitive functions would be divided among the several institutional organs responsible for state security. One of the central stories to be told is that of the consolidation of power in the hands of the OGPU during the course of the decade. At the same time, it is important to avoid a simplistic bifurcation into "hard-line" and "soft-line" institutions, since they all served the same master, the Communist Party.⁸⁹

Finally, our overview allows us to distinguish the various activities in which the GPU was already engaged. The development of an information-gathering and surveillance apparatus (of both individuals and institutions) was, as has been shown, already a critical component of policing society. At the same time, although the supply of information was certainly one of its important services, the security apparatus always focused on the detection and elimination of perceived enemies, and the gathering of information was meant first and foremost to support this purificatory task. The Cheka had arisen as a wartime institution, and its successors never relinquished the civil-war mentality, nor did they deviate from their central mission of liquidating the sometimes very real opposition that continued through the early years of Soviet rule.