«In overwhelming majority they are agent of the Japanese Inteligence service ..»: «Harbinian» order of the NKVD of the USSR № 00593 and the confidential letter to it

Abstract

The documentary publication contains the operation order of the USSR NKVD № 00593 («Harbinian» order) and enclosed to it a closed letter № 60268 «On the terrorist, sabotage and espionage activities of Japanese agents among Harbinians». At a meeting of the Political Bureau of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on September 19, 1937, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the USSR Yezhov N.I. presented a draft closed letter № 60268, which reported on the directions and scale of the «activity of Japanese intelligence» in the Soviet state territory. The measures that ensued from this letter were set forth in draft order № 00593. The latter was also presented by Yezhov N.I. to the members of the Political Bureau of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Thus, the closed letter was the justification for the beginning of a mass punitive action against the so-called «Harbinians», and the order was an instrument of carrying out of this action. The operative documents sent out September 20, 1937 to the regions of the USSR, set the algorithm for the operation, outlined the target categories and determined the scale of repression. NKVD officers classified the «Harbinian» operation as «national» («linear»). However, the ethnic aspect was clearly expressed in the texts of documents. Victims of repression should have been not «nationals» and titular groups and the first Russian. The text of the letter and the order, in fact, identified two major target categories: «Harbinians» as former employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway and re-emigrants from China, as well as «Japanese spies». The dependence between the «Harbinian» operation and «Japanese espionage» is obvious. In practice, the expansion of target categories at the expense of «agents of Japanese intelligence» should lead to an increase in arrests under Order No. 00593. Both of the interrelated documents received the highest party sanction and previously haven’t been published together.