Pavlov, Karp Aleksandrovich

(1895–1957)

   Pavlov was deputy chief of the Kolyma River forced labor camps in 1937 when the Yezhovshchina began. He apparently ensured that his boss, Eduard Berzin, would be purged, and he was rewarded with Berzin’s job. Under Pavlov’s rule, conditions for prisoners worsened dramatically. There were a high number of political executions. Deaths due to malnutrition and overwork skyrocketed. The winter of 1937–1938 was the worst in the history of these terrible camps. Pavlov’s career took off after 1938. He was given increasing responsibility for gulag projects across the Soviet Union during World War II. These projects took the lives of hundreds of thousands of zeks (prisoners). In 1942 and 1943, more than 20 percent of the camps’ population perished: a total of 620,368 men and women. Pavlov received the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner. He was promoted to colonel general in 1945, and he retired in 1949. He committed suicide in 1957.