The information gathered in the 1990s in Russia’s Books of Remembrance about “victims of political repression” mainly derives from the records of the Soviet police and security services. Even that thin evidence provides glimpses of human suffering that are shocking both in scale and persistence. These examples from the 1930s begin with the forced collectivization … Continue reading Deported, Rearrested, Imprisoned, Shot
Great Terror*
Those who did not return
“I would like to recall them all by name, but they’ve taken the list, there’s no way to find out” Anna Akhmatova wrote Requiem, from which this famous couplet is taken, over almost thirty years (1935-1961). In Russia the poem could not be published in full until 1987. Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova and their son Lev (1915) … Continue reading Those who did not return
Thirty Years On …
On 23 June 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued Edict no 658, declassifying legislative and other acts that “served as the basis for mass repressive measures and violations of human rights”. This clearly applied to KGB [NKVD] archives and the Great Terror of 1937-1938. Yet as Sergei Krivenko and Sergei Prudovsky of Memorial noted in … Continue reading Thirty Years On …
Victims remembered
On the official Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, up to fifty people gathered outside Severodvinsk to commemorate those who worked and died in the Yagrinlag camp complex, building what is now the second largest city in the Arkhangelsk Region. Among those attending were relatives of the deceased prisoners and local historians, … Continue reading Victims remembered
Remembrance (4), “No smoke without fire?”
The OGPU investigation of the Pokrovsky brothers in summer 1932 helps us put faces to four names. Ivan was executed in Moscow, one death in the maelstrom unleashed by the forced industrialisation of the USSR and the dekulakisation of the countryside. Alexander was shot four years later at Sandarmokh, a victim of the Great Terror. … Continue reading Remembrance (4), “No smoke without fire?”
The Dmitriev Affair 