How the Great Terror Worked in the USSR

On 30 July 1937, Nikolai Yezhov, People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs of the USSR, acting on a decision of the Politburo, signed Operational Order No. 00447, “On the Operation to Repress Former Kulaks, Criminals, and Other Anti-Soviet Elements.” The document became the basis for the largest mass operation of the Great Terror and provided for cases to be reviewed by extrajudicial troikas.

The materials in the J-Doc digital archive clearly show how the repressive system worked during the Great Terror — in particular, the case file of Benzion (Beni) Leibovich Bikvan, an accountant at a Voentorg sewing workshop in the Ukrainian border town of Mohyliv-Podilskyi.

Bikvan was arrested on 16 July 1938 during the NKVD’s “Romanian Operation.” He was charged with treason against the Motherland under Article 54-1(a) of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. The accusation rested solely on the fact that he had lived in Romania in the 1920s, as well as on suspicions of involvement in smuggling: Mohyliv-Podilskyi was located directly on the border with Romania.

The investigation relied on fabricated witness testimony, which included allegations of smuggling, buying up gold, and anti-Soviet attitudes. Bikvan allegedly called Soviet power “poverty” and a “Bolshevik contagion.”

Initially, Bikvan denied the accusation of espionage. During a subsequent interrogation, however, he fully “confessed” and gave detailed “testimony.” During the Great Terror, confessions extracted under interrogation became one of the main tools for fabricating criminal cases.

On 7 October 1938, a special troika sentenced Benzion Bikvan to death. The sentence was carried out the very next day.

In 1989, the prosecutor of Vinnytsia Oblast issued a decision fully rehabilitating Benzion Leibovich Bikvan.

The case materials can be viewed in the J-Doc digital archive.