This book was originally prepared in the 2nd half of 1939 the order of Lavrentiy Beriya, then People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union by the group of authors led by Aleksand Grigorievich Galkin, then chief of NKVD Prisons department.

For years it was a manual for Stalin’s prisons management as it detailed all aspects of the trade.

The book was classified “Top Secret”, and therefore not many copies of it survived, and they are not available in any library.

We are republishing this 1939 edition of Prison Manual for research and information purposes, hoping it will shed some additional light on the inner workings of the system.

The book in Russian language. Out of copyright government publication. Provided for research and information purposes only.