Mikhail Rodionovich Matveyev (Russian: Михаил Родионович Матвеев; 1892–1971) was a senior NKVD executioner, sent to begin the mass shootings at Sandarmokh in Karelia in the late 1930s.
After completing two years of education at a village school, the young Matveyev moved to St Petersburg where he held various occupations: he was a doorman at an apartment block, for instance, before becoming in 1913 an assistant to a metal-worker at the Vulcan works.
[3] Matveyev was personally involved in the shooting of the prisoners of the "lost Solovki transport" between 27 October and 3 November 1937, who included many members of Ukraine's Executed Renaissance.
Their deaths were followed over the next 13 months by those of a further 3,500 inhabitants of Karelia and 4,500 workers from the White Sea Canal, leading to a total of 9,500 killings, with the bodies buried in 236 communal pits.
Released early when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, during the Leningrad Blockade Matveyev was made komendant (chief executioner) of the NKVD internal prison in the city.
[1] Certain of those involved in selecting, escorting and then shooting the Solovki transport were questioned and investigated after Stalin's death as part of the process of rehabilitating their victims.