Heirs of Comrade Yezhova

On February 18, the Supreme Court refused to declassify the documents of the NKVD for the “Charbin case”, according to which 53,906 people were repressed in the late 1930s
My grandfather Stepan Ivanovich Kuznetsov, who worked on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CVD), served 15 years on charges of espionage in favor of Japan. The beginning of mass repressions against the employees of the CRC and repatriates from Manchuria laid a letter signed by the head of the NKVD of the USSR Nikolai Yezhov No. 60268 of September 20, 1937 “On terrorist, sabotage and spy activities of Japanese agents from the Harbinians”. In 2011, this document was declassified in Ukraine, I came across it when I studied the personal file of my grandfather and other “Harbinists”. In the FSB of Russia, I was informed that the letter still has a “secret” griff, and they refused to provide it. Then I turned to the Moscow City Court, who refused to declassify the document, the same decision was now made by the highest instance court.

In accordance with the Law “On State Secret” and the Decree of President Boris Yeltsin of June 23, 1992 “On the removal of restrictive vultures from legislative and other acts that served as the basis for mass repressions and encroachments on human rights” the document must be declassified, especially since the entire content of the letter refers to the work exclusively of Japanese intelligence and does not contain any methods, plans, forces, forces, means of reconnaissance. The USSR, therefore, the letter cannot contain state secrets. At the same time, the persons mentioned in Yezhov’s letter as “Japanese intelligence agents” were not such - documents on their rehabilitation testify to this. The Supreme Court has not yet provided the motivating part of its decision, and in the decision of the Moscow City Court it was said that the secrecy of the document is determined by the fact that it may contain information that revealing the forms and methods of operational-search activity.

Representatives of the FSB could not cite evidence that the security of the state could be damaged if the letter of Yezhov is declassified and published. Information about the possible damage was absent in the presented conclusion of the FSB experts, and in the decision of the Interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets, which on March 12, 2014 extended the secrets of the secrets of this and all other classes of the KGB of the Soviet period for another 30 years.

The last paragraph of Yezhov’s letter says: “Use the present closed letter during the operation in the Harbin residents, in accordance with my order No. 00593.” And this confirms the fact that the letter is the basis for the repression, and, therefore, in accordance with the president’s decree, it is subject to declassification. For all these arguments, the representative of the FSB in the Supreme Court limited reference to the fact that the “secrecy” of the letter was confirmed by the experts of the FSB and the conclusion of the interagency commission on GOSTIN. Not a word about the content of the appeal or on my speech.

When in the debate I tried to announce the protocol of the interrogation of the NKVD investigator, who was conducting the case of the Harbin residents, which said how their affairs were falsified and what directives came from the leadership of the NKVD, the judge suggested that I “not be nervous” and wait for the decision that followed in half an hour: “The decision of the Moscow City Court to satisfy the appeal to refuse to refuse ...”