Chornaya Rabota

Chornaya Rabota
(Black Work)
   The Communist Party leadership in Joseph Stalin’s time used the term chornaya rabota to refer to legal and extralegal executions. Stalin ordered the service to carry out extralegal executions of associates, friends, and doomed lovers, such as Kira Kulik, the wife of Marshal Grigory Kulik, and Zinaida Raikh, the wife of Vsevold Myerhold, as well as famous Jewish intellectuals. These killings apparently were commissioned out of personal spite by Stalin and his security generalissimo Lavrenty Beria. In the 1970s the KGB also used the term mokroye delo (wet work) to refer to executions or assassinations.

Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence. . 2014.

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  • Blokhin, Vasily Mikhailovich — (1895–1955)    Possibly the most prolific executioner of the 20th century, Blokhin acted as chief of the headquarters branch that ran Lubyanka prison from the 1930s through 1953. As such, he personally shot leading party members and two former… …   Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

  • Mokroye delo — (Wet Work)    The NKVD used the terms mokroye delo (wet work, or wet affair) and chornaya rabota (black work) to describe executions and assassinations. Later the KGB used mokroye delo for foreign assassinations. In the 1930s the NKVD’s… …   Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

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