In 1920 the Belarusian Cheka moved into the building constructed in 1915 for the Peasants' Mutual Agricultural Insurance Society. The building later housed the United State Political Directorate, and from 1934 the NKVD of the BSSR; today it is the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus. Interrogations of detainees took place in the investigators' offices here. Some, unable to endure the abuse, attempted to take their own lives.
For example, on 21 June 1937 at 12:00 Mikalai Haladzed, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the BSSR, who had been arrested and was being interrogated, threw himself from a fifth-floor window of the NKVD building. He died twenty minutes later. For negligence and dereliction of duty by operative officers of the 3rd department of the UDB NKVD BSSR—junior lieutenant of state security Rulev and assistant operative officer, junior lieutenant of state security Turbin—Commissar Yezhov ordered their arrest and trial, and ordered a severe reprimand for the deputy head of the 3rd department, lieutenant of state security Gepshtein.
A little later, during the 'Great Terror' of 1937–38, NKVD investigators received direct authorization from Moscow to use unlimited physical measures against suspects. Investigations were conducted at an accelerated pace and according to simplified procedures.
The head of the 3rd department of the UDB NKVD BSSR, Gepshtein, later stated during interrogations after his arrest: "In the second half of October 1937 I returned from Moscow... Berman (People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the BSSR – I.S.) told me that we had, it turned out, fallen far behind all the Union NKVDs without exception, that 2,000 people had been exposed in Leningrad, 4,000 in Ukraine, and therefore we urgently need to radically reorganize all our work. Berman suggested I convene a meeting of investigators at which he would give instructions..."
To implement the plans set from above, Chekists ran conveyor-belt interrogations, deprived prisoners of sleep for days, and created so-called 'suffocation' cells where people were packed like herring in a barrel: they could neither lie down nor sit, only stand pressed tightly against one another. In addition, investigators widely used various devices and methods of torture.
The report of the Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on establishing the causes of the mass repressions against members and candidate members of the Central Committee elected at the 17th Party Congress (9 February 1956) noted that in the NKVD of the BSSR beatings and tortures of detainees, which in some cases reached sadism, were a mass phenomenon during investigations and became the primary method of investigators. It was considered shameful if an investigator did not obtain at least one confession a day. 'In the Commissariat there was continuous moaning and screaming that could be heard a quarter of a mile from the Commissariat. The investigative department was especially distinguished in this,' the document recorded. This practice spread very quickly and widely to all other departments of the Commissariat.
At the same time, as the results of the 1940 commission of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Belarus on the transfer of cases to the Prosecutor's Office of the BSSR testify, oversight by the Prosecutor's Office of investigations into counter-revolutionary crimes, of places of detention—especially internal prisons—and of the execution of sentences by courts and extrajudicial bodies was absent. Moreover, during the 'Great Terror' the Prosecutor of the BSSR, Novik, even forbade considering complaints from those sentenced to death.
Prisoners were often beaten until they lost consciousness. Some did not withstand the sadistic abuses, and prison doctors recorded the death of the suspect.