Note by wire

Top secret
Leningrad NKVD branch
to L.Zakovsky from Yagoda
N 55709
March 25th, 1935

1. Carry out the operation of clearing the border strip of Leningrad region and Karelia from kulaks and anti-Soviet elements in repression order in two lines. The first line – 22-km border strip, the second – 100-km border strip (special border districts and areas) and 50-km border strip of Karelia.

2. Start the operation's first stage on April 1st and finish on April 25th. Contemporaneously begin the preparations for the second stage of operation.

3. Persons, in respect of which carried out a preliminary investigation on charges of concrete actions against the revolution, must be distinguished from the rest of the crowd with expulsion and arrest. Carry out the urgent investigation, then hand their files into the District Court of the NKVD's special Advisory Board.

4. Throughout the operation security of the borders must be strengthened using all units of Border Department with the involvement of assistance bases. Take all measures to prevent escaping repressed persons across the border. Use internal security units to the required extent to assist the operation in depth of the border strip, preventing them from the border line and without weakening the objects' protection.

5. Execute the operation of border strip clearing by personnel of the NKVD of Leningrad region. To aid them I give permission to use the Leningrad Third Border Guard school's listeners and the students of Highest Party school, however, do not assign them to commandants of echelons. Operational groups should be assisted by the activists of Party Komsomol.

6. Your planned number of deportees in the first line – 3547 families – is approved. Execute the eviction simultaneously on the whole district.

7. Deportees are sent: one thousand families to Tajikistan, 316 families from Karelia to Western Siberia, the rest to Kazakhstan.

8. During the operation prevent the eviction of former Red partisans, families of Red Army's regular cadres, families of members of Red Army's territorial units and families of foreigners.

9. Make the selection of deportees strictly individually, register them in accordance with the OGPU Bureau order № 042 of 1933. Every family must be drawn a decision of the NKVD of the Leningrad Oblast Council.

10. Only families that have at least one able-bodied member in composition are to be evicted.

11. All of the evicted should be provided with a two-month supply of food, including brown bread all the way route, also with clothes and shoes. For every five families provide one horse, and, if possible, a cow. Evicted are allowed to take household objects up to thirty pounds, and an unlimited amount of money. To provide the evicted with hot food on the way, supply every echelon with two field kitchens by adding two carriages into every echelon.

12. Send deportees by echelons. Self-departure of the deportees is strictly prohibited. Security of the evicted along the way and allocation of echelon commandants is assigned to NKVD of the Leningrad Oblast Council without involving units of the external and border security.

13. Five-seven days before the eviction arrest all heads and able-bodied members of the evicted families.

14. To manage the operation send operatives and personnel of Leningrad NKVD on an assignment to provide efficient procedures for the operation and sustainable condition of the border areas.

15. In course of daily operations report through the wire by 8 o'clock PM, indicating: the number of arrested individuals and households heads, the results of investigations, the facts on counter-revolutionary activities identified during investigative activities, the number of confiscated weapons, counter-revolutionary literature, etc., the number of households and the number of accidents and excesses.

Translated by Ilya Kuznetsov, 2013