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".




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