September 17, 1937. #OTD Maria Platonovna Orakhelashvili, who led the People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros) in Georgia, was executed at age 51. Maria Platonovna was a party member and wife to fellow Georgian Bolshevik Mamia Orakhelashvili, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) in Georgia, Deputy Director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, and a central figure in the Sovietization of the Caucasus. He was executed on December 11, 1937. Their son-in-law, Evgeny Semenovich Mikeladze, was the chief conductor of the Georgian Opera and Ballet Theatre, and an Honored Artist of the Georgian SSR. He was executed on December 22, 1937. Their daughter, Evgeny Semenovich’s wife Katevan Mamievna Orakhelashvili-Mikeladze, was an actress. She was sent to Kazakhstan to do forced labor at the Akmola camp for wives of traitors to the Motherland. She survived. Maria Platonovna Orakhelashvili’s execution was signed off on by Stalin himself. She is no. 267 on the execution list shown. Her husband appears just above her on the same list, at no. 266.

October 25, 1937. #OTD Ivan Nikolaevich Ershkov, the chairman of the 6th Congress of Soviets Kolkhoz, a small collective farm in Odintsovo village in Moscow Oblast, was executed at age 41. This farm was named after the 1931 Congress that reshaped collectivization policy, notably by tying each worker’s wages to his or her output, and ending the former policy which had been modeled on Marx’s famous slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Ershkov was a Russian national, not a party member, and came from a peasant family in Tula Oblast. He had only a primary school education. Ershkov was accused of membership in a terrorist organization, and executed at Butovo about 5 weeks after his arrest. Ivan Nikolaevich Ershkov was rehabilitated in 1957.