Kilde: Brev fra Ordzjonikidze til Stalin om straffearbejdere, 20. marts 1936

USSR
People's Commissar
of Heavy Industry
March 20, 1936
Moscow
No. 70

Top Secret

To the Central Committee, All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)
To Comrade STALIN

This year work at the Lake Balkhash Basin Construction Trust [Pribalkhashstroi-PBS] is expanding with great energy. The plan allocated 140 million rubles to it, with the goal that in 1937 it will already yield copper.

The construction of PBS, as we know, is proceeding under very difficult conditions, and the problem of the PBS labor force is never easy to solve.

Last year, in agreement with the NKVD, prisoners were brought in to work on the PBS construction project. This year the NKVD is taking them away and transferring them to the Far East krai. Our negotiations with the NKVD have gone nowhere.

In view of the great importance of the PBS and its especially difficult working conditions, I request the NKVD be instructed to leave the prisoners at the PBS until construction is completed.

Comrade Mirzoian has also telegraphed Comrade IAgoda and us to leave the prisoners at the PBS.

[signed] S. Ordkhonikidze

[Upper right corner, handwritten words read:] "Not sent."

RTSKhIDNI, fond 85, op. 29, d. 357, l. I.