DOCUMENT № 3

Non-disclosure pledge signed by Chauffeur Pavel Maslov, dated 1 October 1939

PLEDGE

1 October 1939

city of Kyiv

I, the undersigned, Pavel Platonovich Maslov, chauffeur and intelligence officer of the first category, employed by the First Section of the Third Special Department within the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, hereby submit this non-disclosure pledge to the Head of the Third Special Department of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, Captain of State Security, comrade Zavgorodny.[1]I pledge to keep in the strictest secrecy all that is known to me concerning the operation carried out during the night of 30 September – early morning of 1 October of the current year and to not disclose it to anyone, anywhere. In the event of any breach, I shall bear responsibility to the full extent of the law.[2]

Signature

Pledge has been collected

Head / Deputy Head of the Department

Signature

1 October 1939

chauffeur – Maslov

Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (Haluzevyj deržavnyj archiv Služby bezpeky Ukrajiny, hereafter SSA SBU), f. 16, op. 1, spr. 368, ark. 247.

[1]      Mikhail Zavgorodny (1900–1983): Soviet state security officer. Starting 1939, he headed the Third Department of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1941–1943, he served the Chief of the Combat Security Department at NKVD, subsequently heading NKVD directorates in the Stavropol Territory, as well as in the Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk) and Izmail oblasts.

[2]      The phrasing is characteristic of investigative and administrative documents of the NKVD from the late 1930s. Under the provisions of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (and Article 54 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR), which prescribed the death penalty as the highest measure of punishment for a wide range of so-called “counterrevolutionary” acts, such a warning in practice amounted to a threat of execution.