Word.ws English Dictionary

NKVD

NKVD proper noun: the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — the Soviet interior ministry known for its secret police, forerunner of the KGB.

Proper noun

NKVD

  1. The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — the Soviet interior ministry known for its secret police, forerunner of the KGB.
    • On the defensive side, Stalin had made equally thorough preparations. Lenin’s personal guard consisted of two men, later increased to four after the attempt on his life by Fanny Kaplan. Stalin’s was several thousand strong, and the NKVD in addition kept other units at a state of readiness. The road...1968, Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, pages 546–547

Forms of NKVD

alternative formN.K.V.D.

Origin of NKVD

Borrowed from Russian НКВД (NKVD), through phonetic spelling of Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних де́л (Naródnyj komissariát vnútrennix dél) and the use of acronym.

Questions about NKVD

What does NKVD mean?
NKVD means the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — the Soviet interior ministry known for its secret police, forerunner of the KGB.
What part of speech is NKVD?
NKVD is a proper noun.

Words near NKVD in the dictionary

  1. NKs
  2. NKU
  3. Nkulengu rail
  4. Nkulengu rails
  5. nkunya
  6. NKVD
  7. nkwobi
  8. NKY
  9. NL
  10. NLA
  11. Nlaka'pamuctsin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: NKVD (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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