Monday, April 30, 2018

Archival Resources and Research of Victims of Soviet Terror

In my previous blog post I described how to search for information about Soviet repressed relatives online. I strongly advise to always start with online research, as it is the easier and faster method of research. You can then use the clues found online to deepen your research at the archives. If you have not found any information in the databases, you should still proceed with the archival research, as the databases are far from being complete.

Archival research tends to be more time- and effort-consuming than online search, but it is also more comprehensive. Archival research on the Soviet repressions can be confusing, so in this post I will provide an overview of the available resources, the general approaches to finding the records, as well as some practical tips on accessing them. I mainly focus on Russia and Ukraine that I am most familiar with, but similar logic applies to other ex-Soviet countries. I hope this will help you find out the destiny of a relative or a whole family who became victims of Soviet terror.

Define the Type of Repression

The materials on Soviet repressions cover the period of 1917/1918 (year of creating the Extraordinary Commission known as Cheka) till 1991 (the dissolution of the USSR). For simplification of the document search, categorize the case you are researching. The most common categories are: 
  • Criminal cases: relate to those persons who were convicted and sentenced by a court of a similar institution to imprisonment, camps or death penalty; by now many of them can be rehabilitated, but some are non-rehabilitated;
  • Filtration cases: relate to the former Soviet citizens, who were in the Nazi captivity in during WWII, including former Red Army prisoners of war, civil population of the occupied territories forcefully taken to German labour camps (Ostarbeiters), other displaced persons who returned to the Soviet Union after the war, and then placed in the so called filtration camps by the NKVD.

Where the records are located

The main difficulty lies in the dispersion of the KGB archival documents across countries and archives.
  • Criminal cases: as a rule, all over the ex-Soviet countries these cases should be located at the central archives of of a respective security service (Central Archives of FSB in Russia, State archives of the SBU in Ukraine etc.) or its local department in the region where the trial took place. However, there can be exceptions.
  • Administrative (non-criminal) cases: the documents are even more dispersed. In Russia they are most often held at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) or at the respective regional department of Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the region of arrest or birth of the repressed person. Some dekulakization and other administrative cases can be located at the state archives of the respective region. In Ukraine such cases are held by the state archives of the central or regional Archives of MIA of Ukraine. The lists of families forcefully re-settled from Poland to Ukraine after WWII are located at the State Archives of Lviv Region, independently of which region they were settled in.
How to find the right documents 

As demonstrated above, the distribution of cases is not always clear, but there are two main strategies you can follow to get started: 

Strategy 1. If you know the researched person’s place of arrest or residence at the time of repression, you should start with request to the departments of security service and MIA of that region in the respective successor country. If you do not know the place of arrest/residence, you can also address the above-mentioned authorities in the region of the person’s birth or punishment/serving sentence/deportation, if known. The key here is to make the best guess possible, but mistakes can happen. If you receive a negative response from these repositories, proceed with Strategy 2.

Strategy 2. If you do not know the place(s) of the person’s birth/residence/arrest/repression, you should send a request to the Main Information and Analytics Department of MIA of Russian Federation in Moscow, asking them to confirm the fact of repression and inform where the archival case is located. This institution has all the information about the persons who were convicted or repressed in some way in the former Soviet Union. In this case, you would still need to know the name, approximate date of birth and repression. You can also address the central archives of the security services and MIA of the successor state. After obtaining the answer about the location of the archival case you need, proceed with Strategy 1.

Of course, if you are willing to take the extra efforts and time, you can go ahead and apply all strategies at once.

How to access records

Who has the right to access the cases of the Soviet repressions? According to the current legislation in most ex-Soviet countries, it is the repressed persons themselves, their close relatives and heirs, their legal representatives or anyone after 75 years since the creation of the documents, with the consent of the repressed person or their legal heir/representatives.

There are three main ways to request records: by mail, by email and in person. There is also a possibility to work with the documents in person in the reading hall of the repository. This should be agreed upon in advance with the archives.

The requests can be completed in a free form, but make sure to include these elements:
  • Name of the institution addressed and the addressee (head of the institution)
  • Your full name, address and contact details 
  • Your relationship to the researched person (supported with documents)
  • The goal of the request (photocopies, archival certificate, other) 
  • Full name of the researched person 
  • Date and place of birth of the researched person (if not known, make the best guess)
You should also include any additional details about the person or repression, as it will help the search to be successful.

The requests should be submitted in the official languages of the respective country (Russian in Russia, Ukrainian in Ukraine etc.). If you cannot write in this language, I recommend you to prepare the request yourself and then have it translated by a friend/relative or a professional. Do not use googletranslate or other translating software for this purpose. Any misunderstanding or misinterpretation may affect the whole research.

Foreigners can also request information via International Red Cross organizations, but this would mean a longer waiting time, as it involves an intermediary. Addressing the right repository directly will yield the results in the fastest manner. Note that requesting time with most repositories is 30 days, which can be extended to 45 days, but it may vary in different archives.

Sources and further readings:

Monday, April 16, 2018

Top Online Resources for Tracing Victims of Soviet Terror



As I described earlier in this blog post, genealogy can be a means of dealing with traumatic events, such as genocides or political repression. These events usually lead to an increasing interest in personal history, in particular, publications of the so-called Books of Remembrance or Martyrologies, which list the victims and tell their stories. These records make a precious source for genealogy research, providing an opportunity for the relatives to remember the innocent victims of political regimes, discover details of their life, and possibly re-connect with lost family members.

One of such tragic pages in Eastern European history was the Soviet terror that happened on a truly massive scale. The estimates of the number of victims vary significantly, partly because of the difficulties of the definition. The most moderate accounts suggest about 10 million people were executed, imprisoned, sent to labour camps, expelled, deported etc. In this note I will list the best online resources to use when searching for an ancestor or a relative who became a victim of the Soviet totalitarian regime.

A few technical notes. While there is an abundance of smaller local projects, I will focus on the most comprehensive resources. They are primarily based on archival documents and testimonies from family members and witnesses. Although none of the databases has a complete account of the victims, they are constantly being developed and extended. The databases contain names, surnames, dates and reasons for arrest, destiny etc. Most of them, with some exceptions, are in Cyrillic characters, therefore using them would require some basic knowledge of the alphabet or googletranslating names and data.

Without further due, let us look into the online databases.

  • Victims of Political Terror in the USSR (Жертвы политического террора в СССР) is the biggest and most comprehensive database of its kind for all Soviet Union. It has been developed by the Memorial society since in 1998, mainly by processing the Books of Remembrance (Книги Памяти) published in various regions of the former Soviet Union. By December 2017 the updated database with over 3 million names has been presented. According to the project developers, this represents about one-forth of the total number of the Soviet terror victims. The old version of this database is still available, but lacks some of the latest updates.
  • The Open List (Открытый Список) is a Wikipedia-style online database of victims of political repression during the Soviet era (1917 - 1991), launched in 2016 by the Russian charitable foundation Reach Out. This project uses the data published by the above-mentioned Memorial society, as well as several other projects. It has a Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarussian sections (each in the respective language), incorporating several projects from these countries. Specifically, the Belarussian sections is based on Stalin’s Card-Index (Картатэка Сталіна) with over 60 thousand names. For Ukrainian data they used The National Data Bank of the Repressed, described in more details below. The Georgian part is very small at this time, only has cca 600 names.
  • All-Russian online Book of Rememberance “The Repressed Russia” (Общероссийская электронная Книга Памяти «Репрессированная Россия») is developed by the Russian Association of Victims of Illegal Political Repressions. The database contains over 1.4 mln names. It includes some data from the Memorial project, but is also supplemented by the original work performed by cross-institutional working groups and researcher teams from over 60 regions of Russia.
  • The Immortal Barrack (Бессмертный барак) is an ambitious pilot project launched in 2015. The project’s authors declared the goal to grow its database to 6 mln names. The database is using otherwise available Books of Remembrance, but it offers a convenient unified search in them. Its main feature called Monument” (Памятник) contains portraits and personal stories added by relatives of the listed victims. It makes this database stand out as the most interactive and socially engaging among similar projects.
  • The Stalin’sLists database contains information on those who were prosecuted by the personal order of Stalin and his close comrades, known as the “Great Purge” of 1936-1938. Strikingly, the lists from 1937-1938 contain 43 768 names, while between 1940 and 1950 – 1160 names. The database is searchable by name and by region.
  • The Shot Generation or 1937 is a smaller database containing names of the victims of repressions in 1937 and beyond. There is a search by names and by categories of people (e.g. academics, party members, priests etc.). Although the navigation is not the most convenient, the project uses original sources other than Books of Remembrance, like historical books, encyclopedias and directories.
  • The Reclaimed Names (Возвращенные Имена) is based on the index called "Books of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions in the USSR", published in 2004. It is a relatively small database, containing 209 647 names, but it can serve as additional source in Soviet terror related genealogical research.
  • The Gulag Online project contains data and visuals on the GULAG prisoners, with special focus on the victims from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. Although the website offers a relatively small number or personal stories, it is a convenient English-language resource, with useful maps and a 3D visual of the camps.
  • National bank of victims of political repressions of the Soviet era in Ukraine (Національний банк даних жертв політичних репресій радянської доби в Україні) is a result of a Ukrainian project, started in 1992. It includes the names of the residents of then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic who were prosecuted by the Soviet regime for political reasons. Although this database is not very large (209 465 names), the project has gathered original information that will be especially useful to those with Ukrainian ancestry. Search can be done by name, place of birth, place of residence and full text search.
  • The Holodomor database (Голодомор 1932-1933) is another Ukraine-specific project, dedicated to the famine of 1930s in Ukraine known as the Holodomor. The website features a map to search by regions. On the downside, the database is not very informative, only contains names, places of residence, year and reason of death, without references to the source. The website has no information on the number of names there in the database. At the same time, this resource can be useful in Ukrainian research. Apparently, this database is based on the The National Book of Remembrance of the Holodomor Victims 1932-1933  (Національна книга пам’яті жертв Голодомору 1932-1933) which can be also viewed and searched online in separate pdf files by regions.
  • Index of the Repressed (Indeks Represjonowanych) is a Polish project completed in 1988 - 2013 with support of the Institute of Popular Memory in Poland. It is mainly based on the Memorial society’s database, offering over 300 thousand names of Poles or those from the Polish territories at the time, who were subject to the Soviet repressions. Similar data is contained in the Kresy-Siberia database. Another useful online resource for Polish research is the Killed in Katyn index publication. It was a joint project of the Memorial society and Polish center "Karta", completed in 2015, listing the Polish prisoners of war shot by the Soviet authorities in 1940. The index is available as a pdf file, and can be downloaded and full text-searched.
  • Political arrests in Estonia, 1940–1988 (Politilised arreteerimised Eestis, 1940–1988) was a collaborative project of several Estonian institutions, including the Estonian Repressed Persons Records Bureau and the Information and History Committee of the Estonian Association of Illegally Repressed Persons MEMENTO. This Book of Remembrance in 12 volumes was published in 1996 and holds information on the Soviet regime victims from Estonia. Available for full text search in pdf files by the link above.
I will continue to monitor the online resources on the victims of Soviet terror and will be making updates to this post with new links.

Once you find a relative in a database, or if you have not, but have enough reason to think a family member was under Soviet repression, you can then proceed with a deeper research in the archives. In the next posts I will be covering how to do archival research of the victims of the Soviet terror.


UPDATE:
  • Victims of Anti-Polish Terror in the Soviet Union 1934-1938 (Ofiary antypolskiego terroru w Związku Sowieckim 1934-1938 / Жертвы антипольского террора в Советском Союзе 1934-1938) is a new database by the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Mutual Understanding.  The database search is available in Polish and Russian languages. A related page (available in English) is dedicated to the "Polish Operation" of NKVD 1937-1938, which was especially brutal (139 835 victims, including 111091 shot, according to the database). Overall, it is estimated that at least 200 thousand ethnic Poles who were Soviet citizens were killed in the "Great Purge".