Russia destroys archives with data repressed in the USSR

In Russia, the only archives are destroyed with the data repressed in the USSR on the basis of a secret interdepartmental order from 2014, reports Kommersant newspaper with reference to the statement of the Director of the Museum of the History of the Gulag, Roman Romanov.

Фото: Depositphotos

According to the newspaper, Romanov wrote a letter with relevant information to the head of the Human Rights Council, Mikhail Fedotov. He promised to sort it out.

“If a prisoner died or died in the camp, his personal file was sent for indefinite storage. And if a person was released, then his file was destroyed, but an archival card was compiled, which indicated his full name, year and place of birth, the movement of the prisoner between camps and camp points, as well as the date of release,” explained Romanov.

One of the museum’s partners, researcher Sergey Prudovsky, learned about the practice of card destruction. He was looking for information about the repressed peasant Fedor Chazove, whose brother Gregory survived the execution, was able to reach the chairman of the All-Russian CEC, Mikhail Kalinin, in 1938, and was again sent to be shot. Fyodor Chazov was sentenced to five years in the camps and exiled to the Magadan region.

“I requested the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Magadan region. They replied that the prisoner's personal file had been destroyed in 1955, according to the order of those years. At the same time, it turned out that the archive record card was also destroyed, ”said Prudovsky.

To his question on what grounds this was done, Mikhail Seregin, head of the information center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Magadan Region, said that there is an interdepartmental order under the “12 February 2014” stamp for official use. The order was signed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Drug Control Service, the Federal Customs Service, the Federal Security Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Courier Service.

According to him, “the storage period of cards for convicts is until they (convicts) have reached 80 age. The storage period of the card for Chazov Fyodor expired in 1989, the card was destroyed according to the act of 11 September 2014. ”

This is not the only example of the destruction of materials, found “b”. In 2014, a resident of the Moscow region, Nina Trushina, tried to find information about her relative, who was convicted in 1939, and received a reply from the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Magadan region that the registration card was postponed for destruction on the basis of an official order.

According to Fedotov, the destruction of cards means the complete removal of information about the presence of convicts in the GULAG system and can lead to disastrous consequences for studying the history of the camps and obtaining data on victims of repression.

How many people were killed in the USSR during the “Greater Terror” 1937-1939, as well as before and after it is still unknown, and the Russian authorities are now trying not to recall Stalin’s repressions.

According to official data, in 1930-1953, 3,8 million people were convicted in OGPU-NKVD-MVD cases, and 1923 thousand people were shot for 1953-800 years.

Historians believe that these data are understated by several times.

Memorial Society was able to accurately confirm the information about more than 2,6 million citizens of the USSR, who were subjected to political repression in those years. Their names are precisely known by whom they were, where they lived and for what they were arrested. But many victims remain unknown.

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