We have been talking about the NKVD a lot in our War Against Humanity episodes and in several Between Two Wars episodes. If you found this video to be interesting, I can highly recommend you try our B2W episode on the Great Terror and Military Purges in 1938. It provides some crucial context that we couldn't expand on in this special episode. You can find it right here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g7SefpN9ptXdfaM.html Cheers, Joram Other videos about the NKVD we mentioned in this special are: - War Against Humanity episode covering the Katyn Massacre: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ncpljMuZs8mnZGg.html - War Against Humanity episode covering the Great Prison Massacre: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/od-bg9ik3s3ef6s.html - Biography episode on Richard Sorge: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nNRpgdyDy8i3f6M.html Before commenting, read our rules of engagement at community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518

"Why has the NKVD replaced the army all over Moscow? I'm smiling, but I am very fucking furious"- Georgy Zhukov, 1953

Channels like you guys' and The Great War are the MVPs of the internet. I'm glad to be a supporter. You guys rock.

Last time I was this early trotsky didn't have an icepick in his head.

Spartacus has the best suits. Dressed to the nines.

When we had "Kazakh literature" classes, I remember that we studied works of so many writers whose life ended in 1937-1938.

The uncle of my grandpa was a Polish policeman, murdered by NKVD in Katyń. Our family didn't know his fate until early 1990s when the so-called Katyń List was published. Hundreds if not thousands of Polish families hoped for decades their loved ones will come back. In communist Poland talking openly and honestly about Katyń was punishable with prison. Only rumors were circulating among people as to what really happened with them in the east.

The NKVD: when "the shootings will continue until morale improves" wasn't a joke.

Stalin: I'm suspicious of the Poles NKVD: Did you hear that comrades unleash the bureaucracy!

And SMERSH is a weird abbreviation. Stems from "smert" (death) and "shpion" (spy) and is a sort of a slogan actually: "Death for the spies!". Russian is not my native language but it is pretty similar to Bulgarian (at least 90% of the entire vocabulary).

When Stalin was asked by Polish Goverment in Exile about their POWs he said: "Idk where they are, maybe they escaped to Manchuria".

Just to mention the role of Felix Dzerzhinsky , nicknamed "Iron Felix". Born into Polish nobility, from 1917 until his death in 1926 Dzerzhinsky led the first two Soviet state-security organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing a secret police for the post-revolutionary Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror

These guys were brutal. Thanks for making a video about this formation. Always wonder if they interviewed ex service men about their brutal tasks.

It's really sad how the NKVD's crimes are rarely taught in schools anymore, this is why channels like this are so important. Thank you Time Ghost for making these videos!

I read this book called "Government House". One of the people the author followed rose through the ranks of the NKVD. What a I found interesting was his vivacious wife. She loved the privileges of being his wife. From access to beautiful clothing, fine dining, social activities, vacations on the Black Sea, and staying in the homes of the former Russian aristocracy. She appeared to be oblivious her loving husband was a key architect in developing the NKVD killing machine. Of course her husband reached the revolution eating its children moment and he was liquidated.

One of those families was my uncle Salek, who somehow got out with his wife and son to Palestine and escaped the fate of my grandparents and other family members trapped in Warsaw.

I’m sorry, some sort of upbeat Christmas ad played literally a second before Spartacus said Babi Yar and I think the mood whiplash may have given me a small aneurysm.

The SMERSH units were heavily heroified during and after the war. A popular Soviet novel "Moment of Truth: August 44" follows a SMERSH unit as they ride around the immediate rear in a lend-leased truck hunting Polish resistance groups and Nazi left-behinds. There is a 2000 Russian movie adaptation, which is pretty good... if you forget the _less heroic_ stuff SMERSH was involved in.

"The NKVD: Just your average ministry of internal affairs." Well ok then

Spartacus, what was the typical background for an NKVD operative? We know what the average man of the SS was like, however I can't find much info about your "average" NKVD agent. Where they typically Russian or ranging from far areas? Came from poverty? Any insights will help me find an answer to this question!

With all of what happened before '39, it's still hard to imagine Stalin would be so cruel as to give up fellow communists. This is the sort of stuff that makes Lenin's cruelty seem like kid's play... he was a monster, but Stalin was the monster monsters have nightmares about.

NKVD: Taking state within a state to the next level

I would argue that if Stalin is the prototype of Big Brother from "1984", than Yagoda's face inspired Orwell for the rat - Winston's atavistic fear...

Forest Brothers were good at taking down the NKVD many times one time they even managed to kill 500 NKVD soldiers.

Savage. Thats what I think when the NKVD is mentioned. Dog eat dog, stab in the back, murder at will... Even Shakespeare couldnt have dreamed these guys up.

Thank you from the heart for reminding the western audiences about the Katyń forest Massacre. I hope to see a special episode about creating the Polish Army in USSR, Sikorski-Majski agreement, or exodus of Gen. Anders' Army from USSR to Iran, Middle East, Egypt, Libya and finally Italy. Keep up the great work! Never forget - Always remember

Good video. I have to point out that Kirov wasn't just the "chief of Leningrad", he was the vicepresident at the time.

I’m reading now a book called Man is Wolf to Man surviving Stalin’s Gulag by Janusz Bardach . Bardach was a Polish Jewish student conscripted into the Red Army in 1939. He soon afterwards is sent to various Soviet prison camps in Siberia. This story is amazing how he could survive. He talks about the horrors and power the NKVD enforce over the prisoners.

The NKVD, where the origin of "Go to Gulag" started...

The first time that I heard NKVD when I played the very first Call of Duty in 2003. When playing as Alexei Voronin, they are storming a tank factory in Poland and you will hear two soldiers talking about NKVD.

1:49- Behind Yagoda is little Nikita K.

Seems like "dying under mysterious circumstances" has been so very popular in Russia under the Tzars, then for 70 years under the Bolsheviks, and now for the last 30 years under Vlad And Friends. All so mysterious. And popular.

I just realized that I’d love to see Spartacus cosplay as Adam Savage and Indy cosplay Jamie Hyneman. Sparty is already half 3/4 of the way there, we just need to make his hair a little more Einsteiny. It’d be hilarious to see Indy in a walrus mustache and beret!

The servicemen of the NKVD troops showed unparalleled resilience in all the hardest battles and battles: in the defense of the Brest Fortress, Riga, Tallinn, Mogilev, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Tula, in the Moscow and Stalingrad battles, in the battles in the Caucasus and the Kursk Bulge. In total, military units of 58 divisions and 23 separate brigades of the NKVD troops participated in battles of varying duration. The soldiers of the 132nd separate battalion of the NKVD troops located in the Brest fortress fought to the last bullet. On the walls of the battalion's barracks, the famous inscription remained: “I am dying, but I am not surrendering. Goodbye, Motherland. 20.VII.41 ". The garrisons of the 9th and 10th divisions of the NKVD troops for the protection of railway structures, guarding transport communications on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, even when surrounded in the deep rear of the enemy, continued to defend objects for a long time until the last soldier. More than 70% of the soldiers and officers of these formations remained missing, but they did their duty to the end. In the battles for Leningrad, five divisions and two brigades of the NKVD troops distinguished themselves. So, the 21st Rifle Division of the NKVD troops of Colonel M.D. Papchenko defended the southern approaches to the city and subsequently, thanks to the courage of the soldiers of the division, became the 109th Red Banner Leningrad. 1st Rifle Division of Colonel S.I. Donskoy for special distinction became the 46th Luga Order of Suvorov, 2nd degree. 20th Rifle Division of Colonel A.P. Ivanova acted on the famous "Nevsky Pyatachok", lost more than half of its personnel, but did not retreat. Airborne troops were sent from the division to the rear of the enemy, which, according to the recall of Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov, "they showed miracles of courage everywhere."

Thank you for covering this. This is an often overlooked part of history.

Thank you guys for providing a completely unbiased and historically accurate view of past events it really helps educate those who weren't there

"Yagoda" literally means "a strawberry". How sweet... On the other hand "Yezhov" means "a hedgehog".

At Nuremberg the Soviet Union tried to put the blame on Germany for the Katyn massacre.

How about the NKVD being placed behind attacking troops to stop them from retreating

A couple of really nice elements to this tie, but compared to some of the absolute gems we've seen thus year, this yellow effort falls just a little short. You keep raising the expectations!! 2.5/5

Yagoda just looks like a comic book villain

8:50 when the mass murderers discover your mass graves and think you a barbarian

Great voice. Well written, researched, and looks completely spontaneous. Bravo!

No mention of Dzerzhinsky!? He basically built the Cheka and was immensely popular both within the system and generally - he was one of the few men that could standup to Stalin and one of even fewer that could have (potentially) challenged his power!

Never ask: Woman age Man his salary NKVD where did the Polish officers go...

Amazing any Poles survived being trapped between the Soviets and the Nazis. History still seems to hang like a dark cloud over Poland when I went there a couple years ago.

Amazing work as always!

Man, Sparty is getting better and better at this. Awesome work guys!

Greatest KZfaq channel ever!

Thank you fo bringing the Katyn masacre topic. For many years in cointires in soviet block the talking about this was prohibitet. Soviets also puts a lot of misinformation about this. Thanks once more

It's just crazy the amount of photos there are compared to that of the Holocaust.

Thanks for the video

Good episode. Nice link to future events like Anders Army and Germans discovering Katyn graves and starting to cover their own atrocities by burning bodies.

Do organizations like this naturally attract paranoid sociopaths, or does it turn almost every member into one? Many groups issue a list of employees who are retiring or have transferred elsewhere. The NKVD sent out a monthly list of funeral notices with the list of promotions stapled to it.

NKVD: You’re not tied to a chair, this fight isn’t fair

Describing the NKVD as bloodstained bureaucrats only becomes more fitting when you look at some of the anecdotes about them. Like executioners having to use german pistols when they purged soviet occupied poland from reserve officers because firing that number of bullets from a TT or nagant put too mutch stress on their wrists. It´s the equivalent of getting yourself an ergonomical mouse for your desk job. But with more dead poles.

I knew a man that survived the Soviets and Germans in Poland.

Do a special on the Kenpeitai!

you and your buddy sure turn out some great content...as i mentioned to him it should be available as part of the school curriculum here in UK. it would have saved me having to watch all them war movies in the 70s 80s that turned out to be just wrong...thank you for the clarity and the easy conveyance of this subject matter.....thank you

We find bright spots where we can - I heard "manifold" as" manyful" and enjoyed that newly minted word very much!

NKVD be like: "You know you're life is pretty much done when the Big Boss lights up his smoking pipe and says "Send him east" while pointing out your ass" x.X

Nice to see a video on Stalin's personal hit squad. Great job.

Great work, Spartacus, Time Ghost Army, et al

Excellent.You are such a good teacher.Greetings from Greece.

Although it is outside of the timeframe you're looking at, I'm surprised you didn't end by talking about what the NKVD gets renamed into in the 1950s--the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, more popularly known as the KGB.

How so many people stood by and let Stalin take control is just beyond me.

Excellent video.

Yes, there were cases, often in the special forces were just guys 18 years old. They gave me a light.

6:38 A man has fallen into the river of Lego City!

A good friend of mine (sadly gone from us) from Estonia told me that during the fall of Tallinn in 1941 and the failed attempt of the Soviets to pull off a Russian Dunkirk, the special targets for Estonians were striped shirts (Naval Infantry) and green hats (NKVD). No mercy.

Leonardo Conti the Reich Health Leader and the head commissioner on Katyn investigation died suddenly while in British custody . he refused to sign confession taking the blame for the massacre .

A good video Spartacus I liked it.

An nkfd special not apart of the war against humanity series? Seems they'd fit in..

Interesting. I hope you guys can do a video about food one day about the different rations the soldiers were eating

I find it amusing how Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria, the troika of State Security each had a falling-out with their bosses, were purged, and all died sobbing and begging for their lives. These men were all pleading, mewling cowards who displayed not a shred of dignity when faced with their own deaths.

These guys were every bit as ruthless as the Gestspo and SS.

Dying under "mysterious circumstances" seems to be a reoccurring trend in the Soviet Union....

Why isn't this a part of the War Against Humanity series?

Excellent video. You should make a video about Cheka, Lavrentiy Beriya and SMERSH

"the NKVD's tentacles..." My reaction was literally an enthusisatic "oooooh" and then "wait no, the NKVD is bad"

Looking flash Sparty.

My great aunts family was deported to Siberia by NKVD.

(In the last year, to the question "who is the best leader of Russia"? Stalin was named by 55-60% of respondents)

These guys we're just crocodiles in human form. The most evil acting men in history I've ever read of.

One NKVD officer, Vasily Blokhin is said to likely be the individual who personally killed the most people in history, having executed tens of thousands during his decades-long career, including about 7 000 of the victims of the Katyn massacre. Eventually, he killed himself, after suffering from alcoholism and other mental problems in his retirement.

Great episode. I know terrible the nazi participation in the Holocaust was but it always bothered me how little mention of the soviets there usually is, even when the reds get a cursory mention it usually gets pushed aside and forgotten while whole libraries are written up over the nazi horrors. Part of this comes from the very real fact that there is little written or photographic record in existance due to the difference in attitude between the communists and the nazis. The nazis took pride in their butchery while the reds were very thorough in wiping out any evidence of their crimes. Decades after the events there is still piles of nazi records to sort through while the communists made sure little could be traced back to them. The evidence that has been uncovered is all partially anecdotal. Something in the range of twenty to forty million dead can be attributed to Stalin and his henchmen. After they seized what would become eastern europe millions were taken away and sent to the labor camps and gulags from where few ever survived. German pows were worked to death and even german civilians were killed or allowed to starve in the millions many as the result of polish, czech hungarian etc efforts at retaliation all under the watchful eye of the red authorities. Today some soviet era records have been released but only in tiny driblets. We may never know the full extent of the communist Holocaust. Another factor that makes it difficult to uncover the truth is the fact that while the nazis worked under a fanatical racial agenda the soviets did not or at least not to the same level. The apparent glee with which the nazis carried out their efforts at extermination are lacking on the soviet side. Also I leave this bit for last because it has been known to produce an angry response, but it is still part of the historical record, ever since the advent of electronic media just over 100 years ago for one reason or another movie studios, radio and newspapers and finally TV all saw a large proportion of their ownership fall under control of a jewish element, not from any Zionist conspiracy but simply good business practice. During the war allied governments used the media to produce film, radio and print anti fascist propaganda. Because the soviets were our allies any evidence of atrocity perpetrated by them was covered up, then after the war the cold war shifted some of the thinking in the west but by then the discovery of death camps by allied troops helped create even more anti nazi fervor. It was considered to be too provocative in the growing cold war to mention soviet crimes. In the meantime as part of a real effort to drum up support for a jewish home in the middle east a vast amount of literature, films and television was focused on the Holocaust. There just wasn't room for a discussion on the soviet crimes. They were buried once more. Today very little is left, and to be honest it is possible the soviet crimes were not as great as that of the nazis but it is not really right to try and rate who was the worse? That makes a game out of horrible subject, but as a historian I hate to see the crimes of the reds to be brushed aside once more. It is great to find programs such as yours and i will just conclude by saying keep up the good work

Great work, now let's try to put all that aside, Merry Christmas to all ! (or happy holidays)

Sir......that suit!! wow!

My great great grandfather was in the nkvd in ww2

Hi there, i just started watching the episode and it seems like there is a mismatch in the subtitles at the start. at 1:26 the Subtitles state "in 1934, the NKVD sees a change of leadership" while Spartacus says "When Genrikh Yagoda rises to control the umbrella of the organization". After that the subtitles goes on t "Genrikh Yagoda has already been active with the OGPU Secret services before, where he was on of the founders of a poison factory. Well, using the techniques developed there Yagoda slowly poisoned his boss...." This is not what Spartacus is saying. Im guessing that there is a mismatch in the scripts but it really threw me for a loop XD

I wish I had Sparty's style man that suit and gold tie are poppin

Hey guys was wondering if in the future you’d be able to provide information for students to reference you, I’ve referenced the Great War in the past but I’m not sure if it was 100% correct. Thanks a lot

From pen pusher to killer....that would apply to Stalin. Stalin was appointed as Party Chairman under Lenin's govt because it was thought that was just a paper pushing job How wrong they were.

Be careful what you revolt for.

Tbh this Yagoda's photo makes him look quite similar to the Big Brother

man, life could be hell those days

Every time I hear about the NKVD I think of the death of Stalin movie lolol

it's sad to see that Russia still employs these tactics as there was never any Nuremburg for the Soviet war of agresion and crimes against humanity

Cool threads Sparty!

My grandfather was an NKVD counterintelligence officer during World War II and was in the legendary "Smersh" unit. He fought in Warsaw, Prague, Berlin