1/2 "[...] the so-called organs of the NKVD are in the main a degenerate organization of unprincipled, dissolute, well-kept functionaries who, enjoying the former authority of the Cheka, seeking to satisfy the pathological suspiciousness of Stalin (I fear to say more), pursuing

October 26, 1938. #OTD Olga Erikhovna Anderson, a Leningrad resident of Finnish origin, was executed on charges of “anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation” at age 49. She was a specialist in the development of photographs at the Kirya Publishing House at the Palace of Labor in Leningrad. Her husband, Evert Iohannovich Anderson, also 49, had been executed a year prior, on November 15, 1937, and their only son, Olaviy Anderson, had been serving a sentence in the GULAG since 1932 and died just months prior to his mother, in June 1938. He was 24 when he died. Olga Erikhovna’s work at the publishing house, along with her and her family's status as Finns living near the Finnish border, are likely what contributed to their repression. Neither Olga nor her husband or son led political lives. Olga Erikhovna Anderson was rehabilitated by the Military Tribunal of the Leningrad Military District on May 8, 1958. Her husband, Evert, was rehabilitated by the same body on May 29, 1958. And their child, Olaviy, was rehabilitated on March 19, 1958. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a picture of him.

October 25, 1937. #OTD Ivan Nikolaevich Ershkov, the chairman of the 6th Congress of Soviets Kolkhoz, a small collective farm in Odintsovo village in Moscow Oblast, was executed at age 41. This farm was named after the 1931 Congress that reshaped collectivization policy, notably by tying each worker’s wages to his or her output, and ending the former policy which had been modeled on Marx’s famous slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Ershkov was a Russian national, not a party member, and came from a peasant family in Tula Oblast. He had only a primary school education. Ershkov was accused of membership in a terrorist organization, and executed at Butovo about 5 weeks after his arrest. Ivan Nikolaevich Ershkov was rehabilitated in 1957.

October 21, 1938. #OTD Abram Meerovich Ginzburg, a Polish Jew who was a theatre student in Moscow, was executed at age 27. Ginzburg was from the Polish town of Danilovichi, and went to Moscow for his education. He spent a year in NKVD custody on charges characterized as “ties to Trotskyist terrorists” and “regretting leaving Poland” (kind of understandable in his predicament). Abram Meerovich Ginzburg was murdered and buried at Butovo. He was rehabilitated in 1989.

October 21, 1937. #OTD Yadviga Semenovna Ambrushkevich, a pensioner, was executed at Butovo. She was a Belarus-born Pole, from Grodno, and only 40 years old. She was convicted of “Trotskyist agitation.” She was rehabilitated on September 11, 1969. This is all we know about her.

October 20, 1937. #OTD Amos Anfimovich Vikulov, a carpenter at the Tomsk-2 railway station in Tomsk in western Siberia, was executed at age 42. Vikulov was from the small village of Kukushki in Tyumen Oblast. According to his grand-niece, Olga, his patronymic, Anfimovich, comes from the rare Old Believer name Anfim, and is sometimes misspelled as Amfilovich, causing difficulties in her efforts to trace her family history. She is searching for information about her great-grandfather, Anfim Vikulov, in particular, who is believed to have been repressed in the early 1930s. He worked in wool processing in that same village, Kukushki. In the second picture you can see Amos Anfimovich Vikulov with his wife, Alexandra.

October 19, 1938. #OTD Giuseppe Gio Venini, a communist since 1921, was executed at age 48. He had only a primary school education yet headed the Italian section at the House of Political Emigrants in Moscow. He was arrested, predictably, on Article 58-6 charges of espionage, spying for Italy. He spent about 7 months in NKVD custody before he was killed. Giuseppe Gio Venini was rehabilitated on July 16, 1956, by the Military Tribunal of the Moscow Military District. He was executed and remains interred at Butovo.

October 16, 1941. #OTD Nina Evgenieva Tukhachevskaya, the third wife of one of the first Marshals of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who at one time worked as a translator for the magazine 'Zarubezhnik,' or Foreign Military Review, was executed at Butovo at 42 years old. She'd previously been sentenced to eight years in the GULAG for being "a member of the family of a traitor to the motherland," in 1937. Tukhachevskaya was born in 1900 into the family of a high-ranking officer, Evgeny Klementievich Grinevich, who, himself, was persecuted in 1931 (from what we understand, he was on the side of the Whites in some form or another during the Civil War). Her first husband, who she divorced after meeting Tukhachevsky in 1921, was Lazar Naumovich Aronshtam, an ethnic Jew and Red Army commissar who was also executed, in 1938. He was accused of "participation in a military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army," presumably Tukhachevsky's, as Aronshtam was under his command during the Civil War. The whole family of Tukhachevsky was ravaged after his fall and subsequent secret trial. The couple's daughter, Svetlana Mikhailovna, who was born the year after they met, fell twice to the Terror, in 1937, with her mother in exile, and in 1944. In the latter case, she was sentenced under article 58-10 of the USSR penal code for "anti-Soviet agitation aimed at discrediting the measures of the party and the Soviet government, as well as spreading slanderous fabrications against the leaders of the Soviet state." Svetlana was rehabilitated in 1957, after early release under amnesty a decade earlier, and lived the rest of her life in Moscow, where she passed away at 61, in 1982. In addition to her daughter, Tukhachevskaya's three sisters-in-law, Sofia Nikolaevna, Olga Nikolaevna, and Maria Nikolaevna, and her mother-in-law, Mavra Petrovna, all faced repression of various degrees of severity during the Terror. Mavra died in exile, along with Sofia. Olga and Maria served their sentences in exile and were rehabilitated in 1956 and 1953, respectively. Both passed away in 1995. Nina Tukhachevskaya was rehabilitated in 1956, fifteen years after her execution.