Agency and terror: Evdokimov and mass killing in Stalin's Great Terror

This article presents an account of the history of Soviet repression, which integrates our current understanding of the scale and nature of repression with a history of the agents responsible for carrying out these operations. It notes that the major shifts in the nature of repression were accompanied by shifts in the operational leadership within the security forces, and that it was largely the same groups of individuals who were responsible for the mass killing operations during the civil war, collectivization and the Great Terror. These were the groups associated with Efim Georgievich Evdokimov, which operated in Ukraine during the Civil War, in the North Caucasus in the 1920s, and in the Secret Operational Division within OGPU in 1929-1931. Evdokimov transferred into party administration in 1934 when he became party secretary for North Caucasus Krai. But he appears to have continued advising Stalin and Yezhov on Security matters, and the latter relied upon Evdokimov's former colleagues to carry out the mass killing operations that are known as "The Great Terror" in 1937-1938. © 2007 School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.