Amir Weiner Getting to Know You

32 AMIR WEINER AND AIGI RAHI-TAMM
their utility in fighting crime, local constituencies had traditionally viewed
the passport as a “fundamental document for ascertaining their citizenship.”
In the spring of 1949, these symbols of citizenship were used by the MVD
to locate scores of individuals who escaped the initial wave of arrests under
the pretense of routine verification of internal passports. 87 Evidently proud
of their performance, the MGB and MVD decorated dozens of employees
with military awards for distinguishing themselves in conducting the
deportations. 88
This said, the entire operation exposed the tension between the
professional accuracy to which they aspired and the modus operandi of
indiscriminate targeting. Thousands of marked people evaded deportation
at the time, requiring additional mop-up operations. But the MGB did
not blink. Forced to execute the deportation on short notice and fulfill a
preset quota, it worked with constantly changing lists of deportees. The
primary goal of fulfilling the quotas was achieved by creating a reserve pool
of thousands of potential deportees. The authorities ended up deporting
30,629 families and 90,844 individuals instead of the originally designated
29,000 families consisting of 87,000 individuals. 89 With such methods,
failure to fulfill a quota was practically impossible.
As the Stalin era was coming to a close, the surveillance system looked
as omnipotent and omnipresent as ever, and the security services seemed
appropriately self-assured. Armed resistance was defeated; and its leaders,
surrounded by Soviet informants, were hunted one by one. “You will not
leave this prison. That means that you will not leave as the person that came
here, your views and attitudes intact,” the MVD chief in L´viv told the wife
of the captured nationalist leader Vasyl´ Halasa during an interrogation in
July 1953. “Your only chance for survival is to be reborn, become different
people. Of course, you would need to make amends to the government,
exculpate your actions and the damage you have done.” Which they did.
Halasa’s wife was allowed to leave Ukraine—without her children and
family, who were still in exile—and with the hope that this was enough to
turn her into an informant on émigré nationalist groups. The reeducation
and conversion of archenemies to informants included tours in industrial
87 Chebrikov, Istoriia, 479; ERAF SM f. 17/1, n. 1, s. 139, l. 250; Elena Zubkova, Pribaltika
i Kreml´, 1940–1953 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2007), 188–90; Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism,
427–29.
88 GARF f. 9479, op. 1, d. 475, ll. 166–69. On 25–26 August 1949, Pravda published lists
of 83 decorated policemen.
89 ERAF SM f. 17/1, n. 1, s. 1, ll. 155–59; GARF f. 9479, op. 1, d. 475, l. 114; ERAF SM f.
17/2, n. 1, s. 306, l. 6; GARF f. 9479, op. 1, d. 475, l. 198; Pasat, Trudnye stranitsy, 485–86.