NKVD and Alphabet Soup

Chances are, you have probably never heard of the NKVD. (And if you have, well, that's a couple 100 points for you.)

So... What or who were the NKVD?

In Russian, NKVD stands for the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. (That's a big help, right?!)

Okay, let's put it this way. Ever heard of the KGB? The easiest way to describe the NKVD is to tell you that they eventually became what we know today as the KGB. (We'll skip over some details about the GUGB and the GUPVO.)

By now, maybe you think you're swimming in alphabet soup. So, to make the answer even simpler, how about this... The NKVD were the Secret Police.

The Soviet Union in the late 1930s, under Stalin's reign, became a place of paranoia and fear. Neighbor turning in neighbor. Children enticed to betray their parents. The NKVD were the guys that knocked on your door at midnight to ransack your house and arrest you as "an enemy of the people."

The NKVD were the ones who ran the Gulags (forced labor camps). They were adept at using torture to get confessions, and infamous for their mass executions.

That's reason enough for why these guys were feared. In fact, they often didn't trust one another. It wasn't that rare for an NKVD operative to suddenly find himself a prisoner (or dead).

There's an old joke that goes like this:

Q: Why do NKVD men always come in threes?
A: One to write a report, one to read it, and one to check up on the two intellectuals.

So, why are we telling you this? Because the NKVD play such an important part in our film, Under Jakob's Ladder. In fact, come to think of it, if there had been no such thing as the NKVD... we wouldn't have a movie... Or at least, it'd have to be a different movie.