The final stage for the victims of the Great Terror was the execution of the sentence approved by the troika. Order 00447 was simple and clear. The troika chairman was to designate the person to carry out the sentence (usually the head of the operational group) and the paperwork was kept to a short excerpt from the meeting of the troika setting the sentence. Executions were to be carried out under conditions of strict secrecy as to time and place. The execution order was to be kept in a separate file, making it more difficult for relatives to learn that their loved one had been executed. Those sentenced to prison were to be dispatched according to instructions from the Gulag administration. Many executions were carried out in killing fields near major urban centers, such as the Butyrskii Poligon near Moscow, but others were carried out in remote locations.
VI. Procedure for Carrying Out Sentences
1. Sentences are carried out by persons according to the directives of the chairman of the troika.
The materials required for the carrying out of sentences are: certified excerpts from the protocol of the meeting of the troika appended by the sentences for every convicted person and a special order signed by the chairman of the troika to the person assigned to carry out the sentence.
2. Sentences of the first category are to be carried out in places and according to the procedures established by directives of the
Commissars of republican NKVDs, heads of administrations and heads of provincial departments of the NKVD with the obligation to maintain full secrecy of the times and places of carrying out the
Sentence.
Documents concerning the carrying out of the sentence are to be attached in a separate envelope to the investigatory material of every convicted person.
3. The dispatch of persons of the second category to camps is carried out on the basis of assignments from the Gulag administration of the NKVD.
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