July 26, 1938
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov sent Stalin a note with the names of 139 people:
I am sending a list of those arrested and subject to trial by the Military Collegium of the first category.
"First category" meant execution. And Stalin's sanction meant that the names on the list belonged to people who were not ordinary—high-ranking military commanders, politicians, and security officers. Among them were two women— Evgeniya Kogan, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow City Council Bulganin and Kuibyshev's second wife, and Faina Nyurina, acting prosecutor of the RSFSR.
Of the 137 men, more than 60 were military leaders, including army and navy commanders. Among them:
- Boris Bazenkov - pilot, division commander, one of the leaders of the Red Army Air Force
- August Bergholz - aviation division commander, senior director of the Red Army General Staff Academy
- Joachim Vatsetis - the first commander-in-chief of all the Armed Forces of the RSFSR, 2nd rank army commander, professor
- Mikhail Viktorov - Commander of the Baltic, Black Sea, Pacific Fleets and the Naval Forces of the Red Army
- Sergei Gribov, Commander of the North Caucasus Military District
- Ivan Gryaznov, Commander of the Central Asian Military District
- Dmitry Kuchinsky - division commander, teacher, first head of the General Staff Academy
- Alexander Svechin is a military theorist, author of the classic work "Strategy", division commander
- and many others
One of the first in the alphabetical list was the 2nd rank army commander Yakov Alksnis. A year earlier, he was a member of a special judicial body that, on June 11, 1937, sentenced to death a group of military leaders led by Marshal Tukhachevsky.
Large-scale repressions in the Red Army during the Great Terror led to a significant personnel shortage. Historians estimate that in 1937, there was a shortage of 34000 career officers, and by 1938, the shortage had risen to 39000. World War II was just a year away.
"For the execution of all 138 people. I. St., V. Molotov" (handwritten resolution on the first page of Yezhov's "execution list")
138 people were executed in the coming days and weeks. Except for one – the marshal's name. Alexandra Egorova Stalin crossed it off the list.
Egorov was executed six months later, on February 23, 1939.
Yezhova will be shot on February 4, 1940.