[1][2] The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II.

[3] First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR,[4] the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps.

[5] During the Great Purge in 1936–1938, on Stalin's orders, the NKVD conducted mass arrests, imprisonment, torture, and executions of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens.

Hundreds of thousands of NKVD personnel served in Internal Troops divisions in defensive battles alongside the Red Army, as well as in "blocking formations," preventing retreat.

However, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the Workers' and Peasants' Militias staffed by proletarians were largely inexperienced and unqualified.

It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions if that was deemed necessary in order to "protect the Russian socialist-communist revolution."

The rest of GUGB was abolished, and staff were moved to the newly created People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB).

The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union through massive political repression, including authorized murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations, and mass deportations.

[citation needed] Use of "physical means of persuasion" (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD themselves.

Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "public enemies") in a given region (e.g., the quotas for clergy, former nobles, etc., regardless of identity).

Gas vans were used in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge in the cities of Moscow, Ivanovo, and Omsk[11][12][13][14] A number of mass operations of the NKVD related to persecution of entire ethnic categories.

Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as Pavel Sudoplatov and Iskhak Akhmerov were established in nearly every major Western country, including the United States.

The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as Mark Zborowski to aristocrats such as Martha Dodd.

Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business, [18] where enemies of the USSR either disappeared or were openly liquidated.

[19] The NKVD's intelligence and special operations (Inostranny Otdel) unit organized overseas assassinations of political enemies of the USSR, such as leaders of nationalist movements, former Tsarist officials, and personal rivals of Joseph Stalin.

Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were: Prominent political dissidents were also found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Walter Krivitsky, Lev Sedov, Ignace Reiss, and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg.

[28] In 1937, Andrés Nin, the secretary of the Trotskyist POUM, and his colleagues were tortured and killed in an NKVD prison in Alcalá de Henares.

The Soviet Union allegedly deported hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to Nazi territories as unwanted foreigners.

According to the work of Wilhelm Mensing, no evidence that which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as "anti-fascists" for deportations to Nazi Germany.

During World War II, NKVD Internal Troops were used for rear area security, including preventing the retreat of Soviet army divisions.

Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used at the front, for example during the Battle of Stalingrad and the Crimean offensive.

After the fall of Kiev, NKVD agents set fire to the Nazi headquarters and various other targets, eventually burning down much of the city center.

The declaration stated that archival material "not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.

These included: The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas.

Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the gulag, colloquially known as sharashkas.

After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov.

Andrei Zhukov singlehandedly identified every single NKVD officer involved in 1930s arrests and killings by researching a Moscow archive.