About 40,000 people were executed only in Moscow; tens of thousands were arrested during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union (summer 1937 — autumn 1938).
The project Big Museum notes that the monthly performance of an ordinary Moscow-based NKVD investigator could be more than 30-40 political criminal cases.
Studying the investigation documents of 1937-1938, the researchers suggested that probing into each case was nothing but as day-to-dayness for representatives of the Stalin secret police who might have felt stuck in ruts. If a person is bored, they usually make some drawings, and there are many of them in the materials of political cases, experts stress.
The ‘Lithuanian underground’ case: Iosif Mitskevich–Yushko and Bronislav Pushinis-Leonas were arrested in 1938. It was reconsidered in 1939.
The Glavryba case: Ivan Targulov, Ilya Razumovsky, Ivan Krasovsky-Solovei (aka Vygarnitski), Boris Y. Vostrikov were arrested in the winter of 1938. In 1939, Targulov was sentenced to six years in the labour camp.
The defendant, Mefody Shcherbakov, was dekulakized and exiled in 1928. In 1932, he was re-arrested, the case was reviewed.
The defendant, Pyotr Zhivin, was arrested in 1938, he spent two years in prison, but was acquitted in 1940.
The Glavryba case.