Lists of those rehabilitated under Article 58. Documents about the repressed

Victims of political terror in the USSR in the 1930s, 1937: how to find lists of repressed relatives?

Soviet repressions ground more than one fate in its millstones. Now a search is underway for repressed people, information is being collected bit by bit to help relatives find at least some information about the fate of a loved one.

Is it possible to independently find a repressed person in the existing database, how to use the Book of Memory and who to seek help from? This is what our article will be about.

Where to look for lists of repressed people: databases, Book of Memory

If you are trying to find information about an unjustly convicted relative, then the first thing you will need, in addition to his last name and first name, will be the date and place of birth of the victim of political terror.

Local registry office archives contain materials regarding biological data about a person. If you need information about a relative who was convicted under a political article and was living in Moscow at the time of his conviction, you should contact the Moscow State Archive.

For information about a repressed relative living in Moscow, you should contact the State Archive of Moscow

It is better to start searching for documents of a victim of political repression on the World Wide Web. There are resources where all information from the KGB archives is collected. The opportunity to get acquainted with the surviving materials and files of prisoners has appeared since the 1990s. It was then that access to prisoners' files was opened.

Where else can I look for information?

• In the Archive Database of the Memorial Society
• On the “Open List” service (collects data available for review from “Books of Memory” issued by region)

The services have materials regarding the date of conviction and the article under which the person was prosecuted. If you are lucky, here you can also find information about the number of the criminal case for the specific name of the convicted person.

Information about ancestors can also be “obtained” from those who engage in genealogy (searching for information about ancestors). With them, it will be easier to go through the process of searching for the desired archive, and you will be able to immediately formulate the correct text of the request. And if there is at least some information about a relative imprisoned during the Great Terror, then with such a specialist it will be easier to go in search of the necessary documents.

The International Historical and Educational Society "Memorial" also assists everyone who seeks help in finding information. Its tasks include collecting and storing historical data about prisoners during the years of repression in the post-Soviet space, and other information about the Great Terror. Information support on the resource is provided free of charge.

The starting point for searching on the Memorial resource is the section “Everyone’s Personal Matter”

Here is what you can find out about the victims of political repression through the Memorial society:

• Why was a repressed man shot?
• Number of the article for which the person was sent to a camp or exiled
• The reason for falling under the wheels of a repressive machine

The contact form on the resource is not installed. You can write a letter to the society and send it by mail, you can leave a search request by phone, or you can come and find out all the necessary information in person.

Algorithm for selecting data about a relative - a victim of political terror on the Memorial resource:

• The search begins with the special project “Memorial”.
• The starting point for searches on the Memorial service is the section “Everyone’s Personal Matter.”

The resource provides an online constructor. It “leads” to the archive from which the search for data should begin. Once you know which department’s archives to contact, you can send a request there.

The “Everyone’s Personal File” section is a kind of repository of search histories and comments about possible ways for relatives of victims of the Great Terror to gain access to files.

Video: Information about those repressed in 1937 became available on the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

How to write requests to the archive to obtain information about a repressed person?

The collection of materials about relatives whose destinies were broken by the crucible of repression takes place on open databases, the forum of the All-Russian Family Tree. There are also forums that collect materials about victims of political repression in specific camps, places of exile, and deported peoples.

The archives of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Penitentiary Service could also tell a lot about the repressed. However, all regional services have not had data on those repressed for a long time, since all cases of those arrested on political charges were transferred to the regional information centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The darkness of ignorance about the Great Terror is gradually dissipating

GARF (state archive of the Russian Federation) may also have materials about those repressed. Here you can find:

• cases concerning the revolutionary tribunal
• During the so-called “Red Terror” in the 1920s, emergency commissions were created, the documents for which are now stored in the archives of the Saratov region.

The darkness of ignorance about terror is gradually dissipating. Information about many materials and data was kept silent. That is why the results of the work to perpetuate the memory of the victims, which has been going on for two decades, are extremely disappointing.

One of the main directions of such work, in addition to resurrecting the true appearance of our history, was to erect monuments by region to all victims of political repression. However, in reality, now we can only talk about the installation of foundation stones at the turn of the 1980-1990s.

Among the priorities was the creation of a Russian national Museum dedicated to political prisoners. Only this vector of returning the names of the repressed contains pitfalls: exhibitions of regional historical and local history museums provide negligible information regarding the Great Terror.

Existing memorial plaques erected in memory of those killed in repression do not contain any mention of how tragic the death of our fellow citizens was.

• Memorial signs are being installed at the sites of mass graves of those who were subjected to unjustified persecution by the authorities, but this is only a small part of what has been revealed to date. Information about existing cemeteries near camps and labor settlements cannot be restored. But they number in the thousands!
• Some cemeteries have become wastelands, others have long been plowed up or overgrown with forest. Residential areas appeared on the territory of many of them, while others became the territories of industrial complexes. Until this time, fellow citizens who have lost their loved ones do not know where their parents, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were buried.
• Another task is far from being completed - returning the names of those killed during the years of terror.
• Biographical information about prisoners during the terror, deported to a labor settlement or mobilized into the labor army, are stored in the Memory Books of those arrested under political charges during the period of terror.
• Books are published in small editions in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Millions of people in different countries of the world find information about the fate of relatives whose fate was broken by the Great Terror, thanks to these certificates. Historians, local historians, teachers, and journalists also find a lot of data they need for their work. You simply cannot get the Book of Memory in a bookstore or on a website. And not every library has a complete set of published martyrologies.

All the names of the victims of political terror have not yet been revealed

The Memorial Society, founded in 1998, is a resource that collects information from local Books of Memory, representing a single database.

You can find out about the details of the investigation of someone arrested for political reasons in the FSB archive of a specific region (where the relative was imprisoned) by writing a request. The Archives of the Federal Security Service contain investigative files of prisoners during the period of terror.

Information centers have the following information about prisoners during the period of repression:

• when he was in the camp
• did he have any complaints, did he write statements
• date of death and place where he was buried

Therefore, you need to send a request here if you are interested in the information described above. There is also data on special settlers - dispossessed and evicted, and deported peoples.

A request to the archives of the prosecutor's office can be submitted if you are looking for documents about a person rehabilitated after the Great Terror. Regional courts contain data on those rehabilitated in the 1950s. Some cases may be duplicated by the FSB archive. But in some regions this was not the case.

The search for data on victims of terror should begin with the archives of the FSB, while duplicating requests to the authorities that carried out repressions at one time.

How to write requests to the archive to obtain information about a repressed person?

• The essence of the request can be stated freely, in writing. You can formulate the text in free form. It is necessary to indicate: who you are, for what purpose you are looking for information about the victim of political repression, and why you need access to the case.
• You can send a request by email if a particular archive has a valid email account.
• On the government services website you can fill out a request and send it to the FSB archive. This can also be done through the Web Reception. The mechanism for accessing archival information is also described in detail here.
• Archival information about those repressed is provided upon request free of charge.
• It usually takes one or two months to process the request and prepare a response. In some cases, the response states that the request was forwarded to the archives of another department.

You need to start searching for information about the repressed from the FSB archives

Video: Search for repressed people

What should I do if my request is refused?

• A refusal to request a repressed person can be obtained in the following cases:
  If there is no information about the person
• If the case of a repressed person contains information of national importance that constitutes a state secret. Such information may be in the file of a repressed person who held a high position.
• Sometimes relatives are denied access to the repressed person’s file or to some of the surviving documents. This is due to the law on personal data. The applicant retains the opportunity to appeal the refusal received.
• You can contact the following departments: FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Federal Penitentiary Service for a constituent entity of the Russian Federation or the court. However, a positive outcome is unlikely. One of the arguments of those who received a refusal can be the fact that those who were repressed, witnesses in the case, and informers have long been dead. The law on personal data refers to the living; it does not mention the dead.

What to do if your relative is rehabilitated?

In the case of the repressed, the archives send an archival certificate to the relatives. What should be included in the certificate?

• basic information about the repressed
• detailed information about the article
• sentence

After receiving an archival certificate, the closest relatives of the repressed person (children) can count on receiving social benefits, subject to the rehabilitation of the relative through the court.
The person is rehabilitated through the court. This happens after a review of the decision of the body that subjected the injured relative to criminal prosecution or repression.

Video: E Are there any benefits for victims of political repression?

Instead of going to the archive and poring over a lot of evidence, you can, knowing, for example, only a last name, find a person on the website “Victims of Political Terror in the USSR”. The database can also become a support for scientific research: you can enter the data “clergyman, Kungur” or “peasant, Talitsa”, and the database structures people according to the required values.

The search is based on 13 values ​​for “personal data” and 12 for “harassment data.” In addition to the usual full name, nationality, year and place of birth, you can find address, education, party affiliation and type of activity.

Details of the accusation – “Vlasovite, spy”, etc. – may be included in the data on the persecution.

The updated database now has a convenient and simple interface. Now you can add photos. So far, photographs of repressed Moscow residents have been included.

The search for family connections between relatives that are in the sources has become available. The repetition of names has been practically eliminated - a consequence of the fact that files on one person could, for example, be in the archives of different cities.

From April 2018, users themselves will be able to add information about the repressed if they confirm it with documents.

The compilers admit that there are still several shortcomings, most often technical ones. For example, the same formula in a search can have multiple values. Thus, both a clergyman and a church activist can be written under the term “clergyman.” The search can independently change the word, mistaking the letters for a typo - “Garif” in “tariff”. Often you will need more than one value to search. For example, the database does not define some names of settlements.

The database programmers continue to correct errors.

Work on the database began back in 1998, and the latest version was published in 2007. The project leader is Jan Rachinsky, a member of the board of the Memorial society, and the scientific director is Arseny Roginsky. In Perm, it was presented by the chairman of the Perm branch of the Memorial society, Robert Latypov, and the leading employee of Memorial, Ivan Vasiliev.

For example, information about one of the heroes of the 37/17 section looks quite detailed:

Tatyana Margolina, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Perm Territory from 2005 to 2017, emphasized the importance of this project. According to her, in recent years, projects related to the history of political repression have not been without difficult discussions. This applies to the development of a government document to perpetuate the memory of victims of repression, and to the creation of memorial complexes, and to the creation of this base.

“Discussions always involve people with different worldviews. During the development of the government document, it became clear that future activities in this direction would be difficult, because there is no consensus in society on this matter.”

Tatyana Ivanovna reported that there was even an option not to continue the work, because it was unpleasant for society. However, after the adoption of the concept, the idea arose to create an interdepartmental working group with the participation of federal ministries and the public. It also included four regional human rights commissioners, among whom was the Perm Ombudsman. The purpose of this commission was to coordinate activities to perpetuate the victims of political repression. One of the ideas is to create a national monument of memory by 2017. Members of the working group also discussed the work of federal ministries in this direction. For example, together with the Ministry of Education, it was decided to introduce Memory Lessons on October 30 throughout the country.

Tatyana Margolina Photo: Timur Abasov

“Only three people took part in the very short and deep opening ceremony. A year ago, when we discussed the conceptual ideas of the entire work on perpetuating memory, at a meeting of the working group there were tough discussions about Natalya Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna’s proposal to take four meanings: to know, to remember, to condemn, to forgive. Part of the working group opposed the word “condemn”, and part against the word “forgive”. I think that this meaning became official after Vladimir Putin invited the author of these words to name them publicly.”

To get started search for repressed people, Just enter the desired last name and first name into the search bar! The search is in progress on more than 50 specialized sites, which contain lists, databases, books of memory or any information about the repressed. In practice, the search covers all data available on the Internet today.

1. If you know last name, first name and patronymic repressed, it is better to enter all this data into the search bar at once. This will allow you to immediately get the desired result.

2. If you only know last name and first name, then it is recommended to enter data into the line in the format "Last name First name"- signs " " allow you to search for an exact match between last name and first name.

3. If known only surname or are you looking for all data by a certain surname, then you can enter only the surname in the line - the system itself will sort the data and select the pages where this surname occurs the greatest number of times. You can search through selected pages (they usually contain a large number of surnames, sorted alphabetically) through the standard search of your browser by pressing the key combination Ctrl+F- enter the desired 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. 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 the dispossessed– since they were expelled administratively, and still not all families have been rehabilitated.

6. Do not stop, if you managed to find general information about the repressed person in the lists, and, especially, do not stop if you could not find it. Look for additional information, write requests, visit archives... As part of the Practical School for Searching for Repressed Persons, you can get a free consultation on search.

Soviet repressions destroyed more than one fate. And to this day the search for those repressed has not stopped. People are trying to find at least some information about the fate of their relatives using small pieces of information.

You can start searching for information about repressed relatives on the Internet. The most famous resource for this is the Memorial Society.

The main task of the project is to search and preserve information about the repressed. In addition, they will help those who are looking for information about their repressed ancestors (when they were shot, where they were sent, what was the reason for the repression, etc.) absolutely free of charge. Anyone can apply: by mail, by phone or in person.

If a person has no idea where to start searching for information, then it is better to go to the website of a special project of Memorial, which is called “Everyone’s Personal Business”

The website has developed a constructor that tells you where to go with requests about repressed people (organizations depending on the information available about the relative).
In addition, on the site you can read stories and advice from those who found the information and were able to access it.

“Open List” is another large database that includes the names of those repressed from 1917 to 1991. Its structure is reminiscent of Wikipedia. Here you can not only find a person, but also add information about a famous repressed person.

The site is updated every day with new names - with photographs of repressed people, scans of documents, etc. To date, the database contains information about more than 3 million people.

Of course, not all people who were subjected to repression are listed in the databases, so there is no certainty that the right person is included. But in any case, the sites can direct you to an archive in which you can independently make a request about a relative, or communicate with those who have successfully found relatives, look at the rules for drawing up applications and working with archival data.

How to find a repressed relative?

To search for repressed relatives, you can use the services of a geneologist - he will research the history of your ancestors. A geneologist can tell you which city archive to make a request about a repressed person, and how to correctly compose this request. In addition, he himself can work in the archive and obtain the necessary information.

Archives remain a common method of searching for information. Let us present the main points when drawing up a standard request to the Russian archive by means of a paper application.

The top section contains basic information:

• name of the archive, full name of the director;
• Full name and address of the person making the request;
• applicant's telephone number

In the center is written the word “Application” and then the detailed text of the requested information: what needs to be found; time when information is needed; reason for the request; the address where you need to send the data, date and signature.

How to find a repressed relative by last name?

You can significantly increase the chances of finding a repressed relative; you just need to correctly compose the appropriate requests, namely, indicate as much information about the person as possible.

Ideally, you will need the following information:

• FULL NAME;
• year of birth;
• place of birth (at the time of repression, at least region).

If this data is not available, then the search will become much more difficult, since it is possible to find the full namesake. But information regarding birth, death and marriage can be obtained from the registry office.

However, this is only in extreme cases, because not all settlements store it in electronic form; it is unlikely that civil registry office employees will be very willing to search for data in multi-volume collections.

Let's consider the algorithm for searching information about a repressed relative using the above-mentioned “Open List” database.

On the main page of the portal, select the “Find a person” section. A page will open where you can start filling out the fields about the repressed person, of which there are quite a lot. But if a person knows very little about a relative, do not despair and end the search; even minimal data is accepted there.

You can only enter your last name. By the way, this is mentioned in the rules for filling out the fields; they explain in detail how and what to enter. In addition, there are various tips to help you fill it out correctly.

In addition, there are a number of sites where you can order information searches. At one of these, the historical and research center “Archival Affairs,” professionals search for ancestors by last name in archives throughout the country and abroad.

There they are working with once classified materials about people who were sent to camps and about those who were executed according to the archives of the NKVD.

How to find a repressed relative by last name in Russia?

On one of Memorial’s websites there is a list of victims of political repression in the USSR by name. To search for the right person, just select the desired beginning of the surname at the top of the page, after which a list of those repressed will be presented.

After selecting the desired name, the following information is displayed: year and place of birth, what the repressed person did, when he was arrested and what the sentence was. The source of information is also indicated (Book of Memory of the corresponding subject) (website: http://lists.memo.ru/index2.htm).

Let us also mention the website of the All-Russian public charitable organization of disabled people - victims of political repression “Russian organization of victims of illegal political repression” (http://rosagr.natm.ru/memorybook.php).

Scientists, public organizations, various archives, prosecutors and others worked on the project. The site's memory book contains data on victims of repression in more than 60 regions of Russia.

At the moment, the memory book includes 1,436,094 names. To search for the right person, you are asked to enter the full name of the repressed person, his date of birth, and his date of arrest. If nothing other than the last name is known, then just the last name will do, but the result may be too numerous.

Here are a few more resources where you can find information about those repressed:

• Stalin's lists of those executed: http://stalin.memo.ru/names/index.htm;
• “Returned names”: http://visz.nlr.ru/.
• The website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs contains lists of repressed and then rehabilitated people (one for each region).

Information can be searched not only in public databases, but also viewed on various forums. For example, there are those who gather according to the principle of places of exile and separate camps.

The archives of the Federal Penitentiary Service and the FSB also store information about those repressed.

The necessary information may be located in the state archive of the Russian Federation and its regional divisions.

If investigative details of the investigation of a repressed person are of interest, then a request is made to the FSB archive. And if there is a need to obtain information about a relative’s stay in the camp, they contact the Ministry of Internal Affairs. There they can find information about letters that the prisoner sent, about complaints, about where he is buried.

Information about those rehabilitated may be in the archives of the prosecutor's office.

The time of repression is a period of family tragedies. To this day, people are trying to find their missing and unjustly convicted relatives. Now the search process has been greatly simplified, and the chances of finding ancestors have increased.

Databases are being created that are constantly updated with the names of those repressed. The advantage of such projects is that they contain not just lists of victims of repression, but also specialists who work as assistants in the search, providing competent advice on choosing an archive, writing queries, and giving advice on what to do if archival organizations refuse to provide the data of interest. about a repressed relative.

The standard search method remains the archive. You can send queries to multiple archives for more efficient work. In addition, organizations have been created from which you can order a service for working with archival documents from various archives of the country.

The main thing is not to give up, use all options, involve professionals and relatives. And remember, the more information about a person is indicated, the higher the likelihood of finding him, because there were so many victims that when searching for the right person, they often stumble upon their namesake.

» Documents about the repressed

I asked my good friend Vitaly Sosnitsky to write this section, who was looking for information on his repressed relatives, and now helps other people a lot in finding information on the VOP and SVRT forums.

The year 1937 will forever remain in the memory of people, especially the older generation. For some it brought grief over the loss of family and friends, for others it was remembered for the atmosphere of fear and oppressive foreboding of trouble. Of course, repressions did not arise under Stalin - they began immediately after the October revolution, 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 those repressed exceeds two million.

Repression is considered to be any loss of rights and benefits, legal restrictions associated with illegal prosecution, imprisonment, unjustified conviction, sending children to orphanages after the arrest of parents, illegal use of compulsory medical measures.

I. The first mass category is people arrested by state security agencies (VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB) on political charges and sentenced by judicial or quasi-judicial (OSO, “troika”, “dvoika”, etc.) authorities to death or to various terms of imprisonment in camps and prisons or to exile. According to preliminary estimates, between 5 and 5.5 million people fall into this category for the period from 1921 to 1985. Most often, books of memory included information about people who suffered in the period 1930-1953. This is explained not only by the fact that the most massive repressive operations were carried out during this period, but also by the fact that the rehabilitation process, which began in the Khrushchev era and resumed during perestroika, primarily affected the victims of Stalin’s terror. Victims of repressions from earlier (before 1929) and later (after 1954) periods are less frequently found in the databases: their cases have been revised to a much lesser extent.

The earliest repressions of the Soviet government (1917-1920), dating back to the era of the revolution and the Civil War, are documented so fragmentarily and contradictorily that even their scale has not yet been established (and can hardly be established correctly, since during this period there were often mass extrajudicial reprisals against “class enemies”, which, naturally, was not recorded in any way in the documents). Available estimates of the victims of the “Red Terror” range from several tens of thousands (50-70) to more than a million people.

II. Another mass category of those repressed for political reasons are peasants who were administratively expelled from their place of residence during the campaign of “destruction of the kulaks as a class.” In total, in 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 death or imprisonment in a camp. 1.8 million became “special settlers” in uninhabited areas 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 Stalin's agrarian policy was a massive famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which claimed the lives of 6 or 7 million people (average estimate), but neither those who fled collectivization nor those who died of hunger are formally considered victims of repression and are not included in memory books. The number of dispossessed “special settlers” in memory books is growing, although they are sometimes registered both in the regions from which they were expelled and in those to which they were deported.

III. The third mass category of victims of political repression are peoples who were entirely deported from their places of traditional settlement to Siberia, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. These administrative deportations were most extensive during the war, in 1941-1945. Some were evicted preventively, as potential collaborators of the enemy (Koreans, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians), others were accused of collaborating with the Germans during the occupation (Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, peoples of the Caucasus). The total number of those expelled and mobilized into the “labor army” reached 2.5 million people. Today there are almost no books of memory dedicated to deported national groups (a rare exception is the Kalmyk book of memory, which was compiled not only from documents, but also from oral surveys).

All these repressions were reflected in certain documents, archival and investigative files, which are still stored in departmental archives of law enforcement agencies and intelligence services. Only a small part of them was transferred for storage to state archives.

In order to preserve the memory of the victims of repression and help people restore the history of their families, the Memorial Society began work in 1998 to create a unified database, bringing together information from Books of Memory, already printed or just prepared for publication in different regions of the former THE USSR.

The result of this work was 1 album, “Victims of Political Terror in the USSR,” released at the beginning of 2004, which presented more than 1,300,000 names of victims of repression from 62 regions of Russia, from all regions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and two regions of Ukraine - Odessa and Kharkov.

Despite the enormous changes that have occurred 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 - be it the rehabilitation of those illegally convicted, or the publication of documents related to repressions, their scale and causes, or the identification of burial places of those executed, or the creation of museums and installation of monuments. The issue of publishing lists of terror victims has not yet been resolved. 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 one of the books in memory of victims of political repression, it is very difficult to find out about this: such books are published, as a rule, in small editions and almost never go on sale - even in the main libraries of Russia there is no complete set of published martyrologists.

There are several on-line databases on the Internet. As practice shows, these databases contain information that is missing in the Memorial 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 those sentenced to probation or released.

3) Website of the Krasnodar “Memorial” http://www.kubanmemo.ru

5) The names of those executed on the Stele of the Central Cemetery of Khabarovsk http://vsosnickij.narod.ru/news.html, http://vsosnickij.narod.ru/DSC01230.JPG.

6) Website of the Lviv Memorial- http://www.poshuk-lviv.org.ua

7) Books of 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 20th century, http://193.233.223.18/bin/code....html?/ans

9) St. Petersburg Martyrology of the Clergy and Laity, http://petergen.com/bovkalo/mart.html

10) The “Open Archive” project, which the newspaper “Moskovskaya Pravda” has been implementing with the Directorate of the FSB of the Russian Federation for Moscow and the Moscow Region, has been running for nine years

11) Project “Repressed Russia” - 1,422,570 personalities, http://rosagr.natm.ru

12) Thematic database on 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 names of those 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 (general case, from my own experience and using 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).

The request must indicate: last name, first name, patronymic of the repressed person, year and place of birth, date of arrest, place of residence at the time of arrest. The request must contain a request to indicate the location where the investigative file is kept.

After receiving a response, you should write to the institution where this investigative file is kept. In this request, you will need to indicate what you want - to receive a specific certificate, an extract, or the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the investigative 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 Department 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 person 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 entire 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.

Cases are not sent from abroad (although there are exceptions), but a certificate or extract is issued. Alternatively, you can ask the holders of the file to send it for review to the regional city closest to your place of residence.

If the answer from the FSB Directorate is negative (that is, they do not have such a person listed), 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, write to the State Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

Remember that according to the law, you have the right “to receive 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 left 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 archival investigative files of those repressed:

- Date and place of birth (questionnaire of the arrested person, interrogation records);

- Patronymic (there was a case when even the daughter of a repressed person believed that her father’s patronymic was Andreevich, but from his profile it turned out to be Andronovich);

- Family composition, place of residence and composition of property before 1917 (questionnaire of the arrested person, interrogation reports, certificates, metrics and other personal documents filed with the case);

- Family composition, place of residence and property up to and including repression;

- Information about the arrested person (height, eye color, 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(s) and nature of work in custody, fingerprints, date and cause of death (prisoner’s personal file);

- Photos, letters from relatives, birth certificates, birth (death) certificates, autobiographies, information about training, deployment to the active army, removal from special settlements and other documents.

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