NKVD Order № 00447 by July 30, 1937 (Russian: О репрессировании бывших кулаков, уголовников и других антисоветских элементов) O repressirovanii byvshikh kulakov, ugolovnikov i drugikh antisovyetskikh elementov ("About repression of former kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements") was undersigned by Nikolai Yezhov and approved by Politburo during the Great Purge.[1]
To execute this order, numerous NKVD troikas were created on republican and various regional levels (krai and oblast). Investigation was to be performed by operative groups "in a speedy and simplified way", the results were to be delivered to troikas for trials
The chairman of a troika was the chief of the corresponding territorial subdivision of NKVD (People's Commissar of a republican NKVD, etc.). Usually a troika included the prosecutor of the republic/krai/oblast in question; if not, he or she was allowed to be present at the session of a troika. The third person was usually the Communist Party secretary of the corresponding regional level. The staff of these troikas were personally specified in the Order № 00447.
Protocols of a troika session were passed to the corresponding operative group for executions of sentences. Times and places of executions of death sentences were ordered to be held in secret.
That same order instructed to classify kulaks and other anti-Soviet elements into two categories: the First category (Category I) of repressed was subject to death by shooting, the Second category (Category II) was to be sent to GULAG correctional-labor camps. The order also set upper quotas per territory and category of social classes (proletariat, peasant, kulak, bourgeois, others).
For example, the Byelorussian SSR was estimated to have 2,000 (Cat. I) & 10,000 (Cat. II), a total of 12,000 anti-Soviet social elements. It was specifically stressed that quotas were estimates and could not be exceeded without personal approval of Yezhov. But in practice this approval was easy to obtain, and eventually these initial quotas were exceeded by orders of magnitude. For example, in September 1937, the Dagestan obkom requested the increase of the First Category from 600 to 1,200; the request was granted the next day.
After this Order, the terms First/Second Category became standard abbreviations in NKVD documentation for "the highest measure of punishment" and "placing into corrective labor camps", respectively.
The article III the Order of Conducting the Operation instructed to start the action for securing the anti-Soviet social elements on August 5, 1937 and finish it in four-month term.
The implementation was swift. By August 15, 1937, 101,000 were arrested and 14,000 convicted.
Full text in Russian language