User:DreaK89/sandbox

Article Evaluation
Evaluating article entitled "NKVD troika"

While all the information is relevant to the article it feels very bare bones. It does link to articles within wikipedia detailing more about the specific subcategories of the NKVD troika, however those articles are also sparing.

The article appears to be an unbiased accumulation of facts, however the sources listed leave much to be desired. While two appear to be scholarly archives from Russia, they are from the same source. Two others redirect directly to a page that is a search engine for articles, the article sources themselves are not presented.

Based on the grammatical errors and the source pages being Russian and French respectively, I would infer that the article was written by someone for whom English is a second or third language.

Based on a review of the talk pages there is not much activity going on, indeed it appears that most others commenting simply pose questions but no one has attempted to edit the information. or do further research.

The article is rated start class of mid importance and is part of both the Russia and Soviet Union Wikiprojects and the History of Russia taskforce.

While the concept of the troika was touched upon in the class assigned readings I do not recall any specific information on the types of trials being conducted nor the title NKVD troika, though that may be due to this article being a rough translation from Russian sources thus not being fully translated into English concepts. I am actually quite interested in researching this topic further.

Group project: Editing NKVD Troika article
Adding information on the types of trials the Troika presided over. Fill out section on Order 00447, National operations, perhaps splitting those down into regions? The destruction of the Agro-joint operation as an example of what the troika were used for.

The American Jewish Joint Agricultural Cooperation and Birobidzhan (Jewish Autonomous Region)
The American Jewish Joint Agricultural Cooperation, 1924-1938 (Agro-Joint) worked to permanently resettle Jews from Shtelts (small Jewish settlements) into new agriculture based settlements across Southern Ukraine and Crimea. Agro-Joint had aided in the resettlement of German-Jewish doctors to help grow the living standards of the communities. Germans were among the top nationalities being repressed and eliminated in Soviet Russia during the thirties while Stalin prepared for war with Hitler. During the Great Purge, 1937-38, there was a directive to rid the Soviet lands of all those with outside (non-Soviet) ties or connections. Members of the Agro-Joint, as well as foreign colonies and national diasporas such as the settlements they established, fell squarely within those parameters. Although the Agro-Joint was never intended as a permanent program the swiftness and fierceness with which it was dismantled by the Soviet Regime shocked those involved, in particular it's leader Joseph Rosen, whose network of internal Soviet connections fell to the purges.

In total around 60 high ranking members of the Agro-Joint staff were arrested, the bulk of which were tried and sentenced by NKVD Troikas on the grounds of being counter-revolutionaries, nationalists, or spies.

Happening in conjuction with the resettlements by the Agro-Joint was the Soviet Union's attempt at giving the Jewish population a homeland. This was the Jewish Autonomous Region commonly referred to by it's central city Birobidzhan established in 1928, though not officially recognized as an Autonomous Region by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of USSR until May 1934. Though conditions were tough and approximately 2/3rds of the original settlers left upon seeing that things were not as promised, those that remained founded Birofeld, the first Jewish collective farm in 1928. In 1936, barely a year after the official recognition as an Autonomous Region, The Great Terror began and the Jewish Party leadership both in Moscow and Birobidzhan was decimated by arrests and fast trials (by troika), resulting either imprisonment or execution on charges such as "bourgeois nationalism" or being spies for the Germans. Prominent Jewish writer Moyshe Litvakov confessed to being an agent for the gestapo.

Katyn Massacre
The Katyn Massacre was a mass execution of around 15,000 Polish military officers carried out by the NKVD during the spring of 1940. The killings took place in the Katyn forest in Russia and other cites. After a request from Polish general, Władysław Anders, on the whereabouts of the 15,000 Polish POWs in 1941, the Soviet Union replied that the soldiers had fled and were not able to be located. The whereabouts of these prisoners remained unknown until 1943. Approximately 4,000 bodies of the victims were found by German soldiers at the Katyn location. Physical evidence suggested that the soldiers were shot in the back of the head and then buried in large piles. The Soviet Union went on to deny these killings until 1990 when Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that the Soviet Union was in fact responsible for the deaths. Many of the documents surrounding the massacre were destroyed, and others were not made public until 2010. According to the released documents, the executions were authorized by a troika consisting of Vsevolod Merkulov, Bogdan Kobulov, and Leonid Bashtakov. On April 7, 2010 a commemoration ceremony was held marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre. Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, and Polish Prime Minister took part, making it the first time the leaders of Russia and Poland held a joint ceremony honoring the victims.

Deportation of Germans
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the NKVD was tasked with deporting thousands of Germans from the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This decree issued from Moscow in 1941 was the responsibility of the Troika and all measures of decrees execution were left in the hands of the so called three who made up this particular Troika.