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CC POLITBURO's RESOLUTION No. P13/144 OF MARCH 5, 1940

STRICTLY SECRET

All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks). CENTRAL COMMITTEE

N^o P13/144.
Com. Beria.
March 5, 1940

Excerpt from the minutes N^o 13 of the CC Politburo's meeting

Resolution of 5.III.1940

144. - The Matter of the NKVD USSR.

I. Instruct the NKVD USSR:

1) the cases of 14 700 people remaining in the prisoner-of-war camps - former Polish Army officers, government officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence agents, military policemen, settlers and jailers,
2) and also the cases of arrested and remaining in prisons in the western districts of Ukraine and Belorussia people in the number of 11 000 - members of various counter-revolutionary spy and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish Army officers, government officials and fugitives - to be considered in a special manner with the obligatory sentence of capital punishment - shooting.

II. The consideration of the cases to be carried out without the convicts being summoned and without revealing the charges; with no statements concerning the conclusion of the investigation and the bills of indictment given to them. To be carried out in the following manner:

a) people remaining in the prisoner-of-war camps - on the basis of information provided by the Directorate of Prisoner-of-War Affairs NKVD USSR,
b) people arrested - on the basis of case information provided by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and NKVD of the Belorussian SSR.

III. The responsibility for consideration of the cases and the passing of the resolution to be laid on a troika that consists of c.c. Merkulov, Kabulov and Bashtakov (Head of the 1-st Special Division of the NKVD USSR).

SECRETARY of the CC

[translation by Electronic Museum Canada from the Soviet official Russian language original]

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