The coercive measures of influence of the Soviet regime, which are known under the term "repression", unfortunately, occupy a huge part in the history of countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. Repressions in the USSR were of a general nature, being applied for a long period of time to various persons, categories of citizens, mostly for political reasons. At the same time, the history of repressions includes a number of periods in the life of the USSR, each of which is characterized by its own events and motives. Currently, many questions are being raised regarding the search for information about the repressed citizens, their fates. These can be close relatives and distant family members, information about which their descendants are looking for. Considering the general scale of repression and the policy of punishment, it is quite obvious that it was simply impossible to find out the truth about a person and the events associated with him. At present, anyone who wishes has the opportunity to exercise their right to receive reliable information from archival funds, which contain records of arrivals and departures, prisoners in the form of personal cards and medical examination cards, data on incentives and punishments, and movements of prisoners. Thanks to the presence of records and documents, a private detective DASC will be able to find facts and confirm the reprisals against the person of interest, having collected the evidence base. In archival folders for all post-Soviet republics, you can find certificates and diplomas, passports and certificates that reveal details from the life of the person you are looking for. At the same time, extended information is available about the composition of the family, which could also be subjected to influences in the form of deportation to other regions of the country or sentenced to the death penalty - execution. Among other documents, birth certificates of children, documents of marriage and divorce, any available information about a person and his environment, which was collected at the stage of office work before his conviction. Based on the data obtained, the nationality of the sought person, his education, year of birth and death, place of residence and serving of the sentence, and other aspects of interest can be established.
Repression 1918-1922 "Red Terror"
This name marked an insignificant initial period in the life of the new state represented by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1918 to 1922. The civil war of those years left an imprint on the life of the society, which was divided into parts in the field of interests. It is quite obvious that the Bolsheviks suppressed adherents of a different government, calling to account the "class enemies" of society. The very same name "Red Terror" belongs to the decree, which was proclaimed in September 1918. As one of the means of intimidation, the method of terror was necessary to pacify the anti-Bolshevik-minded population. Arrests of counterrevolutionaries were a normal process for those years. At the same time, whole strata of society put up resistance and landowners, priests, Cossacks, nobles, kulaks and industrialists turned out to be outlawed. The repressive measure was partly forced and represented a defensive reaction to the actions of the "white" regime. At the end of the Civil War, the period of repression did not end. Political crimes were one of the most vicious, only in one case of the "Petrograd military organization" the Cheka brought to justice 833 people, some of them went to prison, others were sent to concentration camps or were shot.
Repressed persons during the Stalin period
With the coming to power of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, a tough dictatorial regime was established in the USSR. The 30s passed under the slogan of forced collectivization and dynamic industrialization. Measures against political prisoners were tightened and in 1937-38 led to general repressive processes. Behavioral misconduct, wrong thinking or an unnecessary spoken word could lead to imprisonment, lengthy imprisonment, exile, or even the death penalty. In those years, the number of people affected by the repression was in the millions. The ideology of repression was to destroy the so-called "bourgeois classes" and elements, preserve the country's integrity, eliminate threats of foreign intervention, search for traitors and forestall the restoration of the capitalist system.
A struggle was waged against the opposition and the objectionable, in the USSR there were political isolators, where anarchists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks were placed. The process of collectivization was accompanied by dispossession, implying the destruction of the kulaks as a class. At the same time, not only rich peasants, but also the middle class fell into the category of the latter. The defendants were deprived of their property and, as a rule, evicted to remote, sparsely populated areas of the country. The protests were regarded as "kulak counter-revolution" and were subject to suppression with all the ensuing consequences that caused new repressions. In order to liquidate, as a class of kulaks, the order of the OGPU of the USSR No. 44/21 was issued, which provided for the spread of repression not only to the counter-revolutionary elements themselves, but also to their families. At the same time, the kulaks were shot, families were evicted to Siberia. The term "kulak" included bandits and enemies of the Soviet regime, active White Guards, officers, repatriates, persons involved in the church, sectarians, usurers, speculators, former landowners, representing a broad concept. In this regard, dispossession of kulaks affected the interests of many people, turned their fates upside down. The first wave of evictions alone affected 160,000 people.
Repressed people and execution
Repression was a characteristic feature of Stalin's rule and lasted during the Great Patriotic War until the death of the leader in 1953. According to various estimates, the number of repressed during this period reached 9 million people, and if we evaluate the situation in general, including in the list of victims of the resettlement and those who died from hunger, those who became participants and suffered from the regime, then their total number may reach 100 million. Many repressed people were shot, especially in 1937. The scale of the repressive regime speaks for itself, emphasizing the relevance of searching for information about repressed persons in our time. With the departure of the leader, the number of repressions dropped sharply, and the so-called "thaw" began, which was accompanied by rehabilitation. Meanwhile, the persecution of "dissidents", who were characterized by alternative political positions, continued, but to a lesser extent. This process took place almost until the beginning of the 1980s, providing for liability under the law for propaganda and anti-Soviet agitation, which ceased to exist as a law only in September 1989.
During the Great Terror, the so-called national operations of the NKVD were carried out. In the period 1937-1938, special units of the NKVD carried out the most severe repressions and pogroms along ethnic lines. The persons of nationalities foreign to the USSR suffered the most: Poles, Germans, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Jews. Today historians believe that the alleged purpose of these repressions was contrived and justified the actions of the NKVD. Since the explanation for such pogroms and repressions was the conduct of "national operations", such as the struggle and extermination of sabotage-insurgent and espionage groups. From August 1937 to November 1938, almost 340 thousand people were convicted within the framework of all "national operations", of which 250 thousand people were sentenced to death, that is, 75%. Also, Ukrainians and Belarusians got into national cleansing. Jewish pogroms in Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev, Kharkov were accompanied by arrests and alleged investigations for several days, accusing Jewish families of espionage and subversion. Almost all men from the age of 18 were shot without trial, and women and children were sent to Siberia. But the Poles suffered the most, since Poland at that time was an enemy state and all Poles, regardless of the time and circumstances of their arrival in the USSR, were confirmed to be arrested.
Repressions of 1937 in Ukraine and Belarus
The peak of the repression came in 1937, when almost 800,000 people were convicted during the year alone, 353,000 of whom were sentenced to capital punishment. It should be noted that during the period from 1947 to the beginning of 1950, the death penalty was absent in the Soviet Union, and some of the repressed escaped capital punishment. A system of forced labor camps and colonies existed and functioned as isolation zones for the repressed. The system of the Main Directorate of camps and places of detention only on the territory of the RSFSR included 122 camps, throughout the Union there were more than 200 such camps. Most of the repressed were from the RSFSR, since other Union republics were less populated and could not compete with Russia in territory. However, during dispossession of kulaks, Ukraine and Belarus suffered greatly. The attack of Nazi Germany in 1941 was perceived by many residents of Lvov as salvation from the ruinous regime. At that time, city prisons were overcrowded with political prisoners who did not share the interests of the current authorities and resisted them in every possible way.
The number of victims - statistics of repression
The repressive policy of that time became the subject of controversy and interest of many generations, which in one way or another affected the processes taking place in the USSR. The number of political criminals in the country was colossal! For three decades, from the 23rd to the 53rd year, this is 40 million people. Given the fact that all of them were of active age, over 14 and up to 60 years old, the repressions affected every third resident of the country. In the RSFSR, the number of court proceedings opened for political reasons during the specified period amounted to 39.1 million. On average, a conviction was issued and brought into effect in every second case.
Archival search for repressed people in the USSR
The problem of repression has affected almost every family and has become the imprint of an entire era marked by the political regime. Therefore, the search for repressed persons is relevant, despite the fact that almost a century has passed since the beginning of the repressions. Relatives continue to look for their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, trying to find their burial places, find out the truth about their fate, establish the details of their lives, and other information. During the years of the existence of the USSR, it was not possible to find out such information about the political prisoners of the GULAG. Even now, when there are many open sources on this issue, a search from a non-professional can take more than one year. Specialists: detectives and analysts of the DASC agency, from the first days of the company's existence, focused their work on the global problems of society, including the search for people. In particular, the search for a person consists of a number of stages, including analytical and practical work. By no means always, as is the case with prisoners of a political regime, it may be necessary to find a person alive. The reason for this is the limitation period of the events, in connection with which many of the persons in question, simply, could not survive to this day. In addition, the very conditions of the GULAG contributed to the high mortality rate, which was statistically underestimated, like other statistics related to prisoners.
Sources of invaluable data, which, in fact, are the book of life for many millions of people, are the vast archival information that has survived to this day. The information in them reflects a complete list of prisoners in the camps at different periods of time. A private detective DASC will analyze information from federal archival funds, select data according to the specified criterion among the information reflecting the gradual arrival of convicts. In every camp in the USSR, scrupulous records were kept, which, despite the secrecy and the general concept of hiding data, now allows you to find information about people whose fate remained behind the "Secret" column in the archives of the former KGB and NKVD, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Cheka, "Smersh" and OGPU. Data from various municipal archives, local authorities, as well as information obtained from the analysis of information from sources through the NKVD can act as relevant sources of information.
The archives of ministries and departments will be checked for the search for a person. In addition, the archival search should be started by studying the lists of rehabilitated persons. Rehabilitated persons are people who have been found not guilty and released from serving their sentences or found innocent posthumously. These lists are very extensive and it is rather difficult to find a rehabilitated person in them, since there is no general search form. Incomplete lists of repressed and subsequently rehabilitated persons are posted on the Internet. Work with the original source is required. Moreover, the primary sources for each region are different, for Ukraine one, for Belarus another, for Leningrad - the third, etc. Ultimately, the search is a large-scale analytical work, which will involve various specialized specialists of the DASC agency, if necessary, our colleagues and partners. The depth of the archival search is more than 100 years, allowing us to search for data on repressed and rehabilitated persons, starting from the moment of the formation of the USSR and the times of the Civil War. At the same time, the information can be invaluable for those who need to compile a family tree and establish their roots, while receiving weighty arguments confirming the truth of the information provided. The result of the work will be a detective's report, which includes a complete selection of copies of archival materials that touch upon search issues and reflect data about the desired person. At the same time, the specifics of the work allows, in most cases, to search for data remotely, getting the result in the shortest possible time.
To start search for the repressed, just enter the required surname and first name in the search box! Search goes on more than 50 specialized sites, on which there are lists, databases, books of memory or any information about the repressed. In practice, the search covers all the data available on the Internet today.
1. If you know surname, name and patronymic repressed, it is better to enter all this data into the search line at once. This will allow you to immediately get the desired result.
2. If you only know surname and name, then it is recommended to enter data in the line in the format "Surname Name"- signs " " allow you to search for an exact match of the last name and first name.
3. If only known surname or are you looking for all data by a specific surname, then only the surname can be entered in the line - the system will sort the data itself and select the pages where this surname occurs the largest number of times. You can search through the selected pages (as a rule, they have a large number of surnames sorted alphabetically) through the standard search of your browser by pressing the key combination Ctrl + F- enter the required surname or its initial letters into the line.
4. The system allows you to search any data: Full name, locality (village, city, district, region, camp, etc.), nationality, article, etc.
5. The system covers most of the data available on the Internet, which were created based on different sources, but this data far from complete- for example, it is not always possible to find information in them about dispossessed- since they were expelled according to the administrative procedure, and so far not all families have been rehabilitated.
6. Do not stop, if you managed to find general information about the repressed in the lists, and, moreover, do not stop if it was not possible to find it. Look for additional information, write inquiries, visit the archives ... As part of the work of the Practical School of Searching for the Repressed, you can get a free consultation on the search.
»Documents about the repressed
I asked my good friend Vitaly Sosnitsky to write this section, who was engaged in the search for information on his repressed relatives, and now he helps other people a lot in search of information on the IOP and SVRT forums.
The thirty-seventh year has forever remained in the memory of people, especially the older generation. For some he brought grief at the loss of family and friends, for others he was remembered for the atmosphere of fear and oppressive foreboding of misfortune. Of course, the repressions did not arise under Stalin - they began immediately after the October coup, but it was 1937 that became the year of mass terror. During 1937-1938, more than 1.7 million people were arrested on political charges. And together with the victims of deportations and convicted "socially harmful elements" the number of repressed exceeds two million.
Any loss of rights and benefits, legal restrictions associated with illegal prosecution, imprisonment, unjustified conviction, sending children to orphanages after the arrest of their parents, illegal use of compulsory medical measures is considered repression.
I. The first mass category - people arrested by the state security organs (VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB) on political charges and sentenced by judicial or quasi-judicial (CCO, "troika", "deuce", etc.) instances to death or to different terms of imprisonment in camps and prisons or to exile. According to preliminary estimates, between 1921 and 1985, between 5 and 5.5 million people fall into this category. Most often, memory books included information about people who suffered in the period 1930-1953. This is explained not only by the fact that during this period the most massive repressive operations were carried out, but also by the fact that the process of rehabilitation, begun in the Khrushchev era and resumed during perestroika, primarily affected the victims of the Stalinist terror. Victims of repressions of the earlier (before 1929) and later (after 1954) periods are found less frequently in the databases: their cases have been reviewed to a much lesser extent.
The earliest repressions of Soviet power (1917-1920), dating back to the era of the revolution and the Civil War, are so fragmentary and contradictory documented that even their scale has not yet been established (and can hardly be established correctly, since during this period mass extrajudicial reprisals against "class enemies", which, of course, was never recorded in the documents). The available estimates of the victims of the "red terror" range from several tens of thousands (50-70) to over a million people.
II. Another mass category of those repressed for political reasons are peasants, who were administratively expelled from their place of residence in the course of the campaign "to destroy the kulaks as a class." In total for 1930-1933, according to various estimates, from 3 to 4.5 million people were forced to leave their native villages. A minority of them were arrested and sentenced to be shot or imprisoned in a camp. 1.8 million became "special settlers" in uninhabited regions of the European North, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. The rest were deprived of their property and resettled within their own regions, in addition, a significant part of the "kulaks" fled from repression to big cities and industrial construction sites. The consequence of the Stalinist agrarian policy was the mass famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which claimed the lives of 6 or 7 million people (average estimate), however, neither those who fled from collectivization, nor those who died of hunger are formally considered victims of repression and are not included in the books of memory. The number of dispossessed "special settlers" in the books of memory is growing, although at the same time they are sometimes registered both in the regions from which they were deported and in those where they were deported.
III. The third mass category of victims of political repression are peoples who were completely deported from places of traditional settlement to Siberia, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The most large-scale administrative deportations were during the war, in 1941-1945. Some were evicted preemptively, as potential accomplices of the enemy (Koreans, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians), others were accused of collaborating with the Germans during the occupation (Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Caucasian peoples). The total number of those deported and mobilized into the "labor army" reached 2.5 million people. To date, there are almost no books of memory dedicated to deported ethnic groups (as a rare exception, one can name the Kalmyk book of memory, which was compiled not only from documents, but also from oral interviews).
All these repressions were reflected in various documents, archival and investigation files, which are now kept in the departmental archives of law enforcement agencies and special services. Only a small part of them was deposited in the state archives.
In order to preserve the memory of the victims of repression and help people restore the history of their families, in 1998 the Memorial Society began work on creating a unified database, bringing together information from the Memory Books already printed or just prepared for publication in different regions of the former USSR.
The result of this work was the 1 album "Victims of Political Terror in the USSR" released in early 2004, where more than 1,300,000 names of victims of repression from 62 regions of Russia, from all regions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, two regions of Ukraine - Odessa and Kharkov were presented.
Despite the tremendous changes that have taken place in recent years in all countries on the territory of the former USSR, the problem of perpetuating the memory of victims of state terror remains unresolved.
This applies to all aspects of the problem - whether it is the rehabilitation of illegally convicted persons, or the publication of documents related to repressions, their scale and causes, or the identification of the burial places of the executed, or the creation of museums and the installation of monuments. The issue of publishing the lists of victims of terror has not yet been resolved either. Hundreds of thousands of people in different regions of the former USSR (and in many countries of the world where our compatriots live) want to find out the fate of their relatives. But even if a person's biography is included in some of the books in memory of victims of political repression, it is very difficult to find out about this: such books are usually published in small editions and almost never go on sale - even the main libraries of Russia do not have a complete set of published martyrologists.
There are several on-line databases on the web. As practice shows, these databases contain information that is absent in Memorial's publication “Victims of Political Terror in the USSR”.
Here are some of them:
1) Project "Returned names" http://visz.nlr.ru:8101
2) List of citizens repressed in the 1920s on the territory of the Ryazan province, rehabilitated by the prosecutor's office of the Ryazan region http://www.hro.org/ngo/memorial/1920/book.htm. There is information on the convicted conditionally or released.
3) Site of Krasnodar "Memorial" http://www.kubanmemo.ru
5) The names of those shot at the Stele of the Central Cemetery in Khabarovsk http://vsosnickij.narod.ru/news.html, http://vsosnickij.narod.ru/DSC01230.JPG.
6) Site of the Lviv Memorial- http://www.poshuk-lviv.org.ua
7) Books in memory of victims of political repression of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, volume 1 (A-B), volume 2 (C-D) http://www.memorial.krsk.ru
8) New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the XX century, http://193.233.223.18/bin/code....html?/ans
9) St. Petersburg Martyrology of the Clergy and the Miryan, http://petergen.com/bovkalo/mart.html
10) The project "Open Archive", which the newspaper "Moskovskaya Pravda" has been implementing with the Directorate of the FSB of the Russian Federation in Moscow and the Moscow Region, for nine years
11) Project "Repressed Russia" - 1422570 persons, http://rosagr.natm.ru
12) Thematic database on the repressed Poles who lived in the Altai Territory and were convicted in 1919-1945. under article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, http://www.archiv.ab.ru/r-pol/repr.htm
What does such a variety of sources indicate? First of all, that many thousands of surnames of the repressed still, in spite of everything, remain unknown. You, and only you, can find out the unknown pages of the life of your relatives and restore their honest name from oblivion.
Search procedure (a general case, from my own experience and using the site recommendations www.memo.ru) :
1) If you unknown where the relative lived at the time of arrest. In this case, you must send a request to the Main Information Center (GIC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (117418, Moscow, Novocheremushkinskaya st., 67).
In the request, you must indicate: the last name, first name, patronymic of the repressed, the year and place of his birth, the date of arrest, place of residence at the time of arrest. The request must contain a request to inform the place where the investigation file is kept.
After receiving the answer, you should write to the institution where this most investigative file is kept. In this request, it will already be necessary to indicate what you want - to receive some specific certificate, extract or the opportunity to get acquainted with the investigation file.
2) If you known where the relative was born (and / or lived) at the time of arrest.
In this case, you need to send a request to the FSB Directorate of the region where your relative was born and / or lived at the time of arrest.
The request indicates the same data of the repressed as in the previous case.
It does not matter whether this region is now part of Russia or not - the mechanism is the same throughout the territory of the former USSR. The only difference is that if the file is stored on the territory of Russia, then it can be sent to the FSB of the region where you live, so that you can familiarize yourself with it on the spot.
From abroad, cases are not sent (although there are exceptions), but a certificate or extract is made. Alternatively, you can ask the holders of the case to send it for review to the regional city closest to your place of residence.
If the answer from the FSB is negative (that is, they do not have such a person), then you should write to the Information Center (IC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the same region. If the answer is negative there too, write to the Main Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.
Remember that according to the law, you have the right to "receive the manuscripts, photographs and other personal documents preserved in the files" of your repressed relatives.
If your situation is special and goes beyond this general case - please ask questions, we will try to help you. Requests can be posted on the forum www.vgd.ru (section "Repressed") or on the website http://www.vsosnickij.narod.ru.
Here are examples of what can be learned from the archive-investigative files of the repressed:
- Date and place of birth (questionnaire of the arrested person, interrogation protocols);
- Patronymic (there was a case when even the daughter of a repressed person believed that her father's patronymic was Andreevich, and from his profile it turned out - Andronovich);
- Composition of the family, place of residence and composition of property before 1917 (questionnaire of the arrested person, interrogation protocols, certificates, metrics and other documents of a personal nature, attached to the case);
- Composition of the family, place of residence and composition of property up to repression;
- Information about the arrested person (height, color of eyes, hair), information about the family, place of work, composition of property and place of residence in the special settlement and / or arrest (questionnaire of the arrested person);
- Information about the place (places) and nature of work in custody, fingerprints, date and cause of death (personal file of the prisoner);
- Photos, letters from relatives, metrics, birth (death) certificates, autobiography, information about training, sending to the active army, removal from a special settlement and other documents.
Friends, please click on the social media buttons, this will help the development of the project!
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Marina Voloskova- the author of a number of articles about the repressed Old Believers, whose biographies she reconstructs from archival documents. She often receives letters from descendant readers who are trying to find out details about the fate of their ancestor. Today Marina tells how to find information about the repressed relative.
***
Several years ago I asked myself a question: where can I find information about the fate of a repressed person? Then the historical forums on the Internet and the researcher helped me to answer such a difficult question. S. B. Prudovskiy... Now I, as the author of articles about repressed Old Believers, receive letters from descendant readers who are trying to find out details about the fate of their ancestor. Therefore, I will tell you how to find information about a repressed relative.
Who is the victim of political repression?
A person who has been subjected to unreasonable persecution by the state for political and religious beliefs, on social, ethnic and other grounds is considered to be repressed. According to law " On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression"Dated October 18, 1991, political repressions are various measures of coercion applied by the state for political reasons, deprivation or restriction of the rights and freedoms of people who have been recognized as socially dangerous for the state or political system since October 25, 1917.
The purpose of the Law of October 18, 1991 is the rehabilitation of all victims of political repression who have been subjected to such repression on the territory of the Russian Federation since October 25, 1917, restoration of their civil rights, elimination of other consequences of arbitrariness and provision of compensation for material damage that is currently feasible.
The victims of repression can be divided into the following categories
- Citizens arrested on political charges by the state security organs (VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB) and sentenced by judicial or extrajudicial authorities, for example, “ threes», To death, to various terms of imprisonment in camps or to exile;
- Peasants who were expelled from their permanent place of residence during the so-called collectivization, that is, the campaign “ the destruction of the kulaks as a class". Many of them ended up in camps, and the rest were sent to special settlements in Siberia, Kazakhstan and the North;
- Peoples deported from places of settlement to Siberia, Central Asia and Kazakhstan;
- Peoples expelled and mobilized in " labor army"(Germans, Koreans, Kalmyks, Karachais, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and others).
The total number of those arrested on political charges between 1918 and 1953 is several million people... Many of those arrested were shot according to judgments of judicial and extrajudicial bodies. Others became victims of mass deportations (peasants during the years of collectivization), and the rest were deported to “ labor army". During the Great Terror (1937-1938), more than one and a half million people were arrested.
How to find information about a repressed person?
Finding information about a repressed relative is often not as easy as it seems. Most often, difficulties arise due to the fact that access to archival information today is somewhat complicated. To a certain extent, this is due to the free interpretation of legislative norms in various regional archival structures. In most constituent entities of the Federation, archival investigation files on rehabilitated persons have not yet been transferred from the FSB to the state archives. However, this does not mean at all that access to files is closed, because according to Federal Law No. 25 "On archival affairs in the Russian Federation", access to archival documents that may contain information about personal and family secrets is limited for 75 years. If 75 years have passed since the end of the case (sentencing), then you cannot be denied access to the case. Why exactly 75? It is generally accepted that during this time there is a change of two generations, direct memory is lost and possible damage is reduced.
In my research practice, there were difficulties with acquaintance with cases in the Centers for Documentation of Contemporary History (it is in them that archival investigative cases come from the FSB). So, for example, I requested a case against a repressed Old Believer who was not my relative. 75 years have passed since the end of the case, but they refused me, explaining that I was not a relative of the repressed. A month later, a friend of mine demanded the same case from them, and he was not only allowed to familiarize himself with the case, but even copies were sent. Apparently, this situation depended on the mood of the archive staff? But this is rather an exception, because in the future, the Documentation Centers of Contemporary History sent copies of cases without any problems. But for a fee, since the repressed is not a relative.
Before proceeding with the search for information about the repressed, you need to clarify his full name, year of birth and place of residence at the time of the repression (at least the region). Without this data, the search can be difficult, because you can “ bump into»To the full namesake of the repressed. Records of birth, marriage, death can be found in the archive of the registry office. But it is worth noting that in the registry offices of small cities there are no electronic databases, and the employees of the registry office will flip through multivolume records of civil status acts without much enthusiasm. Therefore, it will be better if you have at least some information about the repressed relative.
If you want to know which camp your relative was transferred to, you need to send an e-mail a written request about the place of serving the sentence to the Main Information and Analytical Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or to the IC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the place of conviction. Having received the answer, in the reference book "The System of Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: 1923-1960" you can see where the archive of the camp is, and then send a written request there. Unfortunately, not all camps have archive location data. You can also send a request to the IC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the location of the camp to find out where the person was convicted, the date and sentence, the cause and place of death.
How to correctly compose a request to the archive?
Now let's talk about the most important thing, about how to get acquainted with the archival investigation file and get copies of the most important sheets (questionnaire, sentence, data on its execution). First you need to write a request to the FSB Archive. It will be more convenient if you know in which region the repressed person lived at the time of arrest. If this is known, the letter is sent to the address of the FSB of the region known to you, if not, then to the Central Archives of the FSB (Moscow), where your appeal will be considered and sent to the region where your relative was arrested. The appeal to the FSB can be sent by e-mail, which will significantly save time. The e-mail addresses of the territorial bodies of the FSB of Russia can be viewed on the website of the FSB in the section "Territorial bodies of the FSB of Russia". Article 7 of the Law of the Russian Federation "On State Secrets" dated July 21, 1993 No. 5485-1 defines documents on the facts of violation of human and civil rights and freedoms as " Information not subject to classification as state secrets and classification". Law of the Russian Federation of 18.10.1991 N 1761-1 "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression" Article 11 determined that the procedure for familiarizing other persons with the materials of terminated criminal cases is carried out in the manner prescribed for state archives - the Law "On Archival Affairs in the Russian Federation" dated October 22, 2004 N 125-FZ. Article 25, paragraph 3 of this Law removes the restrictions related to the information contained in the files about personal and family secrets and their private life after the expiration of the 75-year period. Thus, any citizen has the right to get acquainted with discontinued criminal cases and receive copies of documents from cases, the sentences of which were passed more than 75 years ago. Article 29, paragraph 4 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation states that “ everyone has the right to freely seek, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information in any legal way. The list of information constituting a state secret is determined by federal law».
So, in the appeal, it is imperative to mention that, in accordance with article 25, paragraph 3, of the Federal Law "On archival affairs in the Russian Federation" dated October 22, 2004 N 125-FZ, the 75-year term of restrictions associated with the contained in the case of information about personal and family secrets and private life. In the appeal, you should indicate all the information you know: name, date of birth, place of residence, date of arrest. It is better to write in the letter right away: I ask you to provide me with copies of existing documents. Many regions send copies without problems, with the exception of Moscow, in the same place, even if you live in the Far East, they will not send you copies, but they will offer you to come and get acquainted with the case in person. For familiarization, you need to take a pen and sheets of paper with you so that you can make extracts. You can also take a camera, but its necessity is questionable, since photographing may not be allowed. Before you familiarize yourself with the case, all the secret will be closed in it (first of all, information about informers, about investigators). The case may contain things or photographs that, most likely, can be returned to you.
As for the copies of the sheets of the case, everything is individual here. In one region, “ be generous»And send you copies of almost all sheets of the archival investigation file. And then in front of you in all " beauty»Will be the testimony of the informers, their personal data and the names of the investigators. However, these materials are not secret, especially since many of them were convicted: informers - for giving false testimony, investigators - for falsifying cases. Almost all the sheets will also be sent from another archive of the FSB, but they will first cover up the names of the investigators and other third parties with a stroke. And from the other - less than half of the case. But as they say, little is better than nothing at all. If your relative was dispossessed or deported, then information about the date and reason for expulsion, the composition of the family at the time of expulsion, and the place of exile can be found by sending a request to the IC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the place of residence of the relative at the time of the repression. If you already know the place of exile, you can find out at the IC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the place of serving the sentence the date of release from exile, deregistration, information about the birth and where the person came from. To receive copies of the decision of the village gathering on dispossession, a document with information on deprivation of voting rights, send a request to the State Archives at the place of dispossession.
Why can they refuse the right to get acquainted with the archival investigation file?
You may be denied the right to familiarize yourself with the case of a repressed person only if he has not been rehabilitated. If this is your relative, you need to obtain rehabilitation in court and get a certificate of rehabilitation. A request for a certificate should be sent to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation or to the prosecutor's office at the location of the internal affairs body that made the decision to use repression.
How to find the burial place of the repressed?
If a person was sentenced to capital punishment, then it seems almost impossible to find the place of his burial. Unfortunately, information about the places of execution is either classified or not available. But local residents of a certain city may have information. How do they know this information? First of all, from those who lived during the period of repression, I heard something, someone talked about the places of execution. So, only folk memory can answer this question. But there can be no complete confidence in the reliability of the answer.
However, in some cities, the places of mass graves of the executed are known for certain. This includes Butovo polygon in Moscow; Special object " Kommunarka"In the area of the village. Kommunarka at the twenty-fourth km of the Kaluzhskoe highway in the Novomoskovsk administrative district of Moscow; Volyn cemetery in Tver; Levashov Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg; firing range of the NKVD in the Sandarmokh tract in the Republic of Karelia; Menduri training ground near Yoshkar-Ola, Kashtachnaya mountain and Kolpashevsky Yar in the Tomsk region and others.
Where else can you find information about the person persecuted?
Information about the repressed can also be found in the database of the human rights society Memorial"Victims of political terror in the USSR", which contains information from Memory books printed or prepared for publication in different regions of the former USSR. The main content of these books is the surname lists of the repressed with brief biographical information. At the moment, Memorial has a base of several million names. Separately stand out "Stalin's execution lists" - lists of people convicted on the personal sanction of IV Stalin and his closest associates in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). Of particular interest to those whose relatives lived in Moscow during the years of the totalitarian regime may be the base MosMemo, where the list of those arrested and executed is sorted by Moscow addresses. You may be interested in the database dedicated to 1244 monuments to victims of political repression on the territory of the former USSR (some monuments also contain lists of names).
And as a separate source - Books of Memory. The Memorial Archives in Moscow, as well as some of the regional Memorials, store large collections of personal files of the repressed and collections of memoirs, which include collections of letters, diaries, essays and articles. Perhaps the testimonies of a fellow inmate or inmate can create a feeling of involvement in what your relative had to endure. In addition, there is a possibility that in one of the memoirs there is also a memory of your relative.
Lists of the repressed are also presented on the sites:
St. Petersburg coordination center of the project "Returned names", Ryazan, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yaroslavl "Memorials", on the website of the Irkutsk Association of Victims of Repression and many others.
Basically, three steps are used to find information about a repressed person:
1. Search on the Internet (for example, the database of the repressed "Memorial")
2. Search in the "Books of Memory"
3. Work in archives
Now access to archival investigation files is relatively free. Many people are looking for information about the repressed, some manage to find out secret information (full questionnaires of investigators, third parties). The media have repeatedly told about researchers S. B. Prudovsky and D. Karagodin, who managed to find information not only about their repressed relatives, but also about the people who were repressed along with them. Such stories give hope that the family memory will gradually return to many families in which, until that time, it was unacceptable to touch upon the topic of repression.