Letter
from Dimitrov to M. Frinovsky about the conditions of political
émigrés in the USSR seeking to secure residency permits.
Top secret.
To comrade FRINOVSKY.[i]
Recently,
when issuing residence permits to foreigners, the Department of Visa and
Registration of foreigners has been requiring that they present [their]
national passports. As a result, a significant number of political
émigrés are unable to obtain documents to stay in the USSR.
Without Soviet documents, the political émigrés lose their jobs
and apartments: they are fired from work and denied registration in the houses
where they dwell. Thus, they find themselves in an extremely difficult situation.
The
majority of the political émigrés came illegally, without
national passports. Others had national passports, but they have expired.
Until
now, the political émigrés, who have not taken Soviet citizenship
and who had no national passports, received residence permits through the CC
MOPR of the USSR and through the ECCI.
As
is known, the ECCI Secretariat firmly carries out the policy of returning the
political émigrés to their countries, or sending them to other
countries abroad. However, since it requires time and significant preparation,
it is essential during this period to secure legal residence in the USSR for
these political émigrés. There are also political
émigrés who cannot be sent abroad without risking their lives due
to their health situation or given the character of their sentences (i.e.,
capital punishment).
Based
on the above facts, we ask you to resolve this problem in such a way as to
retain the policy of issuing documents for political émigrés
which had existed until recently, i.e., to issue residence permits to those
political émigrés without national passports for whom an appeal
would be filed by the CC MOPR of the USSR and the ECCI’s Cadres Department.
/G. DIMITROV/
2
March 1938
No.
168/ld.
RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 60, l. 24.
Original in Russian. Typewritten.
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[i] Mikhail Frinovsky was deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs from October 1936. Until April 1937, he was also head of the Main Board of Frontier and Internal Guards of the NKVD of the USSR. He was Ezhov’s associate in organizing the mass repression. On 3 February 1940, he was convicted and shot.