Repressions in the USSR: socio-political meaning. Rehabilitation of victims of mass political repression

Between sympathy and indifference - rehabilitation of victims of Soviet repression

Article by Arseny Roginsky and Elena Zhemkova

Introduction

The repressive activities of the Soviet regime were politically motivated, multidirectional, massive and undulating.

Political repressions began already under Lenin and continued in the post-Stalin era; the last political prisoners were released in 1991 under Gorbachev.

A generic feature of the Soviet regime, which arose from the very beginning of Bolshevik rule and did not disappear with the death of Stalin, is state violence as a universal tool for solving any political and social problems. Idea state violence has always been an indispensable component of Soviet communist ideology. In the first decades of the Soviet era (until 1953), state violence was implemented in the form of permanent and mass political terror. Hundreds of thousands of people were subjected to repression every year. It was terror that was the system-forming factor of the era. It provided the possibility of centralizing control, and breaking horizontal ties (to prevent possible resistance), and high vertical mobility, and the rigidity of instilling ideology with the ease of its modification, and a large army subjects of slavery labor and much more. After Stalin's death, terror became selective, the number of people arrested for political reasons amounted to several thousand or even several hundred people a year. The arrests only stopped in 1987, when the Soviet Union had less than five years to live.

After Stalin until the mid-1960s, new political repressions accompanied the process of rehabilitation of victims of the terror of the 1930s and 1940s. Then the rehabilitation process actually stopped and resumed with new energy and within a new ideological framework only in 1988.

1. Fantastic scale of terror. Many millions of people became its victims (see below for more details)
2. Unprecedented duration of terror. Four or even five generations of Soviet (Russian) citizens became its direct and indirect victims, as well as witnesses to the terror.
3. Centralization of terror. The terror was carried out by the security forces ( VChK - OGPU -NKVD -MGB -KGB), but all the main terrorist campaigns (including ideological campaigns of the later times, when arrests were already replaced by bans on the profession) were initiated by the highest party body - the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - CPSU and passed under him constant control.
4. Categoricality of terror. Most of the victims of the era of mass terror (including those who were individually charged) were subjected to repression for belonging to one or another social, religious, or ethnic group. In milder forms this also occurred at later stages - state anti-Semitism, persecution of believers, dispersal of amateur song clubs, suspicions regarding any horizontal connections.
5. The blatant extra-legal (anti-legal) nature of mass terror:
   • false, fictitious accusations;
   • ill-treatment of detainees, including severe physical torture, used to extract confessions to alleged crimes;
   • sentencing of the vast majority of those arrested not by the courts, but by (anti-constitutional) extrajudicial bodies, often specially created to carry out individual terrorist campaigns (“troikas”, “Commission” NKVD and the Prosecutor of the USSR ", etc.),
   • absentee nature of sentencing by extrajudicial authorities
   • “simplified procedure” for consideration of cases by judicial authorities - without calling witnesses, without the participation of lawyers, in case of conviction - no right to file a petition for pardon, etc.
   • total violation of all rights of prisoners in camps and labor camps, even those that were recorded in Soviet legislation
6. Propaganda support state terror, its necessity and moral justification. For many decades, the idea of ​​enemies - external and internal, of the heroic struggle against these enemies waged by the party and security agencies, of duty has been persistently introduced into the consciousness of the population. every Soviet people to take part in this struggle, etc. All the failures of the authorities and, first of all, the low standard of living of the population were attributed to the activities of enemies. We still feel the consequences of terror and the propaganda that accompanied it today.

Over the 70 years of Soviet power, representatives of all socio-political strata and groups of the population became victims of political repression. Not only those who were in open political opposition to the authorities were subjected to repression, but also those whose danger was only potential - the so-called “class aliens” and “socially dangerous elements”, including children and other family members of “enemies of the people” " Among the victims of political repression are the flower of the nation, its most active, literate and talented representatives.

Immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, the persecution of representatives of all opposition political parties and organizations began, from monarchist to socialist. In subsequent years, all non-political independent public organizations were destroyed, simply closed or nationalized. This was an important step in ensuring the uncontrollability of Bolshevik power.

During the civil war (1917-1922/23), according to some estimates, based on incomplete information, more than 2 million people were subjected to various types of repression (including massacres of hostages), primarily representatives of the former ruling classes and the country's intellectual elite. A wave of mass repressions hit the Russian peasantry, who opposed the Bolshevik policies in the countryside. Regular troops were sent to suppress the resistance of the peasants. The Cossacks were subjected to terror. As a result of the “decossackization” policy, tens of thousands of people were physically destroyed, many emigrated.

Mass repressions accompanied the collectivization of agriculture in the mid-20s and early 30s. According to minimal estimates, about 1 million peasant farms were “dispossessed” and 6 million peasants and members of their families were repressed.

Since the mid-30s, the practice of conducting public/open political processes has become widespread - the “Union of Marxists-Leninists”, “Moscow counter-revolutionary organization - “worker opposition group”, “Leningrad counter-revolutionary Zinoviev group of Safonov, Zalutsky and others”, “Moscow Center ", "Parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center", "Anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc", "Anti-party counter-revolutionary group of right-wingers of Slepkov and others (Bukharin school)", "Leningrad affair". In total, punitive authorities counted more than 70 “blocs”, “centers”, “unions”, “schools” and “groups” throughout the country, the participants of which were sentenced to capital punishment or long terms of imprisonment.

The intelligentsia was subjected to persecution for political reasons during the years of Soviet power. Hundreds of thousands of cases were fabricated on charges against representatives of science, culture, engineering and technical workers, and employees of government agencies.

The army and navy were subjected to large-scale political repression. Severe repressions fell on the sailors and soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison in the spring of 1921. The “purges” of the Red Army began immediately after the end of the civil war. In the late 20s and early 30s, as part of the specially designed Operation Spring, a large number of so-called military experts were repressed. In the 1930s and subsequent years, tens of thousands of military personnel were groundlessly accused of espionage, sabotage, and sabotage. The repressions led to the weakening of the Soviet armed forces, put the USSR in an extremely difficult position in World War II and became an indirect cause of the country's large military losses. Political repression in the army continued both during the war and after its end.

Former Soviet military personnel who were captured and encircled in battles while defending their homeland were subjected to political repression (1.8 million people were repatriated to the USSR after the end of the war), and civilians who were forcibly deported for forced labor in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany (about 3.5 millions of them returned to the USSR after the end of the war). Many of these people, after being tested in “filtration” camps, were unjustifiably convicted of state, military and other crimes during the war and were sent to “penal battalions”, into exile, deportation, to a special settlement, and were subjected to other deprivations and restrictions of rights.

11 peoples of the former USSR (Germans, Poles, Kalmyks, Karachais, Balkars, Ingush, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Koreans, Greeks, Finns) became victims of total deportations; 48 peoples were partially evicted. During the Second World War and the first post-war years, these people were expelled from their places of traditional residence and, by decisions of the highest party and state leadership of the country, were deported to remote, sparsely populated and unsuitable areas for living. THE USSR . The total number of people repressed on ethnic grounds is approaching 3 million people.

Foreign citizens were also subjected to political repression. Many Comintern workers, political emigrants—Germans, Poles, Austrians, Mongols, Americans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and many others—were repressed.

During the years of Soviet power, not only adults, but also children became victims of political repression. Just because their parents turned out to be nobles, tsarist officers, “kulaks,” “Trotskyists,” “enemies of the people,” dissidents, the children were expelled or deported along with their parents; in the event of the parents’ arrest, they were placed in special orphanages, subjected to other deprivations and restrictions of rights.

Representatives of all religious denominations were subjected to political repression. A strong blow was dealt to the Russian Orthodox Church - more than 200 thousand Orthodox clergy became victims of repressive policies. Muslims were subjected to severe repression. Since the late 30s, repressions against Judaists have intensified - most rabbis and other ministers of synagogues in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia have suffered. The practice of repressive policy was the persecution of clergy for religious beliefs, but at the same time, convictions occurred in falsified cases for criminal offenses (bribes, abuse of official position, etc.).

In the 50s-80s, participants in the dissident movement and dissidents were subjected to criminal prosecution, exile, placement for compulsory treatment in special closed psychiatric hospitals, unjustified deprivation of civil rights, and deportation from the USSR. Repression of dissidents and dissidents continued until 1991.

In general, data on “political crime” in the USSR show a strict dependence of political repression on the political and ideological situation. Anti-Soviet motivation, as a rule, was established based on political considerations and “revolutionary expediency.” Only in isolated cases did the motivation imputed to the victim reflect the real motives of the person who committed this or that act, which was regarded as “counter-revolutionary” or “anti-Soviet.” Some of the repressed citizens did not commit any “counter-revolutionary” or “anti-Soviet” actions, but only showed some kind of disagreement with the authorities. The majority did not show a negative attitude towards the authorities at all and did not commit any punishable or suspicious acts; these people were subjected to planned preventive repression.

The long-standing debate about the scale of terror is more often based on intuitive ideas about political terror of the Soviet era than on primary sources. In this discussion, a variety of figures are cited - from 2-3 million to 40-50 million victims.

Memorial carried out special work to count the victims. The calculations are based on figures extracted from official reports of punitive departments. An analysis of the documents studied convinces us that, in general, the figures presented in these reports can be trusted.

Based on the types of repression and the types of sources on which we rely, the calculations are divided into two parts:

• m the scale of repression “on an individual basis”
• scale of administrative repression

Repressions “on an individual basis” were almost always accompanied by compliance (at least on paper) with investigative and (quasi-)judicial procedures. A separate investigative case was opened for each arrestee. Statistical records on such cases were carried out by state security agencies systematically and in a uniform (albeit changing from time to time) form.

Administrative repression is repression without bringing individual charges, applied, in most cases, on formal group grounds (social, national, religious, etc.). The usual punishment is deprivation of property and forced relocation “to remote areas” of the country, as a rule, to specially created “labor villages”. Statistical reporting is found in the materials of a variety of government departments; it was conducted in connection with individual campaigns and is significantly less complete and accurate than reporting on “individual repressions.” The personal files of deportees were not opened at the place of their permanent residence, and after the person arrived at the place of serving their sentence, no files were opened at all for those who died en route.

Political repression “on an individual basis”

The source for studying repression on an “individual basis” are the reports of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD - KGB. They have been preserved in the archives of the current FSB in a fairly complete volume since 1921. We had the opportunity to study the reports for 1921-1953. To obtain data on the repressions of 1918-1920. and 1954-1958 we use figures from the works of V.V. Luneeva, summary data for 1959-1986. obtained from a comparison of several sources.

Of course, these data are not completely complete - so, we are convinced that the number of victims in 1918-1920. was greater than indicated in the table. The same applies to the period 1937-1938, as well as 1941. However, we cannot really imagine more accurate documented figures.

In total, we see that in total the state security agencies arrested about 7 million people over the entire period of their activity.

However, statistical reporting data allows us to determine how many people were arrested each year on what charges. Studying the numbers of those arrested from this angle, we see that the security agencies arrested people not only on political charges, but also on charges of smuggling, profiteering, theft of socialist property, official crimes, murder, counterfeiting, etc. In order to really find out the presence or absence of a political motive in each individual case, it is necessary to study specific cases. This is practically impossible. We are forced to deal not with specific cases, but with numbers in reports.

Analysis of the reports allows us to conclude that “non-political” cases in the total number of those arrested are at least 23-25%. Thus, we should not talk about 7 million victims of Soviet political terror, but about 5.1-5.3 million.

However, this is also an inaccurate figure - after all, the reports do not reflect people with names, but “statistical units”. The same person could be arrested several times. Thus, in the first twenty years of Soviet power, members of pre-revolutionary political parties were arrested 4-5 times, representatives of the clergy were arrested several times; many peasants who were first arrested in 1930-1933 were arrested again in 1937, many released after 10 years of imprisonment in 1947 were soon arrested again, etc. Statistical reports do not give exact figures on this matter; we assume that there were at least 300-400 thousand such people. Thus, the total number of people subjected to political repression on individual charges appears to be 4.7-5 million.

Of these, according to our estimates, 1.0 - 1.1 million people were shot by verdicts of various extrajudicial and judicial bodies, the rest were sent to camps and colonies, a small part - into exile.

Looking ahead, let's look at this figure from the point of view of the rehabilitation process of the 1950s - 2000s. Of course, not all of these repressed for political reasons were subject to rehabilitation - there were also real criminals among them (for example, Nazi criminals or punishers from among Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Nazis), but there is no doubt that

a) the vast majority of these approximately 5 million people were innocent victims of the regime;

b) each of the cases against these people should have been studied by the prosecutor's office and the courts for rehabilitation, and for each a detailed, well-founded answer should have been given - whether this person was subject to rehabilitation or not.

Political repressions in “administrative order”

Administrative repressions were carried out according to decisions of a variety of bodies: party, Soviet, and state. The documents allow us to identify the main repressive campaigns (flows) with the approximate (more or less accurate) number of victims of each of them. Unlike individual repressions, we can consider all victims of these repressions (deportations) to be victims of political

motives - this motive is directly indicated in almost all government decisions regarding each specific campaign.

The most massive deportations were the expulsions of peasants during the era

“collectivization” (1930-1933), deportation of “socially dangerous” Poles and Polish citizens, as well as citizens of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova after the forced inclusion of Eastern Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia into the USSR (1940-1941), preventive deportations Soviet Germans and Finns (1941-1942) after the start of the Soviet-German war, total deportations (1943-1944) of the “punished peoples” of the North Caucasus and Crimea (Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars and others).

In determining the number of deportees, Memorial relies on modern research, some of which we took part in.

In the above list, due to the lack of accurate digital data, there is no indication of a number of victims of administrative repression: those dispossessed without deportation (i.e., deprived of homes and property and resettled within their regions) during collectivization, former Soviet prisoners of war forcibly sent after “filtration” into “worker battalions” after the war, to a number of other, numerically less significant flows (the deportation of Cossack kulaks from the Semirechensk, Syr-Darya, Fergana and Samarkand regions outside the Turkestan region, in particular to the European part of Russia in 1921 ., deportation of Germans, Ingrian Finns and other “socially dangerous” elements from the border areas of the Leningrad region in 1942, deportation of Crimean Tatars and Greeks from the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories in 1948 and much more).

In total, according to various estimates, the victims of deportations were at least 6 (most likely 6.3-6.7) million people.

In total, approximately 11-11.5 million people were repressed for political reasons throughout the USSR. In relation to such a number of people, the issue of rehabilitation should be resolved.

Legal rehabilitation of victims

The rehabilitation of victims of political repression began after Stalin's death in March 1953 and has not actually ended until today. We distinguish three stages of rehabilitation.

The first stage of rehabilitation.

This first stage is in turn divided into two: 1953-1961 and 1962-1983. We look at them together.

The word “rehabilitation” entered the public lexicon in the 1950s, when almost immediately after Stalin’s death (March 5, 1953), first selective and then increasingly widespread releases of victims of political repression from prisons, camps and exile began. Soon their legal rehabilitation began - i.e. the process of reviewing investigative cases, which ended with the issuance of a “rehabilitation certificate” - an official document certifying the innocence of a person who had previously been subjected to repression.

Rehabilitation was always determined by the political objectives of the party leadership and always took place under the unflagging control of the Politburo. Initially, rehabilitation covered only a narrow circle of relatives and close acquaintances of Politburo members. The first to be returned from exile was the wife of Stalin’s closest associate V. Molotova, Polina Zhemchuzhina (released immediately after Stalin’s death, legally rehabilitated in May 1953, even before formal legal rehabilitation, by decision of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on March 21, 1953, she was reinstated in the party). One of the first, on May 7, 1953, also by decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee, was the brother of another Stalinist associate L. Kaganovich, Mikhail Kaganovich, rehabilitated. In the same year, a number of party and government figures were rehabilitated.

Widespread rehabilitation began in 1954. In May 1954, special Commissions (central and regional) were created to consider cases of persons who were in custody at that time. These commissions were given the right to completely rehabilitate convicts, apply pardon, reclassify charges, etc. For almost two years of work, these commissions examined cases of more than 337 thousand people.

A powerful impetus for rehabilitation was given by Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, dedicated to Stalin’s “cult of personality.” In March 1956, new commissions were created - this time under the auspices of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Over the course of six months, they reviewed the cases of almost 177 thousand more people, incl. 81 thousand people who were in the camps. Rehabilitation was especially active in 1956-1960.

In parallel with the work of the commissions, the prosecutor's office and the courts were actively involved in the rehabilitation process. Prosecutors checked each case, requested certificates from parallel cases, certificates from archives (in particular, from the party archive, if it was about party members), in many cases called witnesses (including those who once testified against repressed, sometimes also former investigators) and drew up a conclusion, on the basis of which the heads of the prosecutorial authorities lodged a protest on the case to the judicial body, which overturned the verdict (as a rule, due to the absence of an event or corpus delicti) and made a decision on rehabilitation.

For former communists, “party rehabilitation” was of particular importance, i.e. restoration in the party - this rehabilitation was carried out by the bodies of the Party Control Committee under the CPSU Central Committee. It was carried out based on statements from former communists who had previously received a certificate of legal rehabilitation. For the period 1956-1961. About 31 thousand people received party rehabilitation.

By the end of 1961, the energy of the rehabilitation process had run out of steam. The political tasks of rehabilitation that Khrushchev set for himself were largely fulfilled: a new course of power was demonstrated to the country and the world, which decisively (in Khrushchev’s opinion) broke with Stalin’s repressive policies. The symbolic conclusion of this stage was the removal of Stalin’s body from the Mausoleum by decision of the XX11th Congress of the CPSU on October 30, 1961.

The main feature of the first stage of rehabilitation is its half-heartedness, selectivity and subordination to the political interests of the post-Stalin leadership. She couldn't be any other way.

The release of innocent prisoners from the camps and the return of their good name and reputation to them, as well as to the dead, according to Khrushchev’s plan, was supposed to strengthen the authority of the CPSU in the eyes of the population. Stalin was declared guilty of terror since the 30s, who instilled his own “personality cult,” destroyed internal party democracy (the so-called “Leninist norms of party life”) and single-handedly ruled the country, as well as security agencies “out of control of the party.” " The era of repression, according to Khrushchev, was a relatively short period - the second half of the 30s. and, to a lesser extent, several post-war years.

This design made it possible to remove the party as a whole from criticism. Moreover, it was the party that was declared the main victim of terror - although this is completely inconsistent with reality.

In addition, the fight against the “cult of personality” allowed Khrushchev to strengthen his position in the Politburo, using the fact of active participation in the terror of Molotov and Kaganovich to remove them from power. This was also an important justification for lowering the status of state security agencies (since 1954 - no longer independent

ministry, but a committee under the Council of Ministers) and strengthening party control over them. But this same design also predetermined the flawed nature of the rehabilitation process.

Rehabilitation (restoration of reputation, restoration of all rights) affected only those convicted on individual charges. But not all:

• Rehabilitation was limited chronologically to the period of the 30s (in fact, from the middle of the decade) - the beginning of the 50s, since the goal of rehabilitation was declared to be a “return to Leninist norms” and it was obviously assumed that before the strengthening of the “cult of personality” there were no political repressions .
• For the same reason, rehabilitation was limited categorically; significant categories of victims who were still considered “enemies” were excluded from it: not only members of “bourgeois” parties, but also socialists (Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries), most of the internal party oppositionists, to a large extent the clergy, peasants who resisted collectivization, and many others.
• Rehabilitation in this first period was carried out exclusively “by application”, i.e. according to statements of victims or their relatives. However, there were frequent cases when, at the request of one of the victims or one of the relatives, and if the case was not individual, but a group one, then all the victims of this group case were rehabilitated (“at the same time”).
• For deportees who served their sentences in special settlements (more than 2.5 million people in 1953), rehabilitation came down to their release - sometimes with the right to return to their previous places of residence, sometimes without this right. The decrees on their release never acknowledged the guilt of the state - for example, for the “repressed peoples,” repression was justified by “wartime conditions.” In fact, the “repressed peoples” were not rehabilitated, but pardoned. If those convicted on individual charges were at least partially compensated for the confiscated property, then for the deportees who lost their homes and all their property, the question of compensation was not raised at all.

A striking example of the flawed and half-hearted nature of the rehabilitation process is the following fact.

Beginning in 1939, after the end of two years of mass executions, relatives of those executed by extrajudicial (sometimes judicial) authorities were informed that their relatives were sentenced to 10 years in the camps without the right of correspondence. Ten years later, at the end of the 40s, after the relatives did not return from the camps, new requests followed - and then it was decided to answer that those executed died of illness in the camps. At the same time, relatives were informed (orally) of a false date of death. Almost 10 years later, in the mid-50s, a new wave of requests followed at the beginning of the rehabilitation process. In 1955, in response to it, the KGB issued a special instruction (of course, agreed upon by the Central Committee of the CPSU) that relatives could be issued an official certificate of death of a prisoner in the camp with a false date and false cause of death - the same one that had previously relatives were informed only orally.

From 1955 to 1962 253,598 such false certificates were issued. And only since 1963 was it allowed to issue certificates with genuine dates, but without indicating in the column

“cause of death” of the word “execution” - instead a dash was added. Certificates indicating the true date and true cause of death began to be issued only in 1989. The reason for the 1955 decision was the KGB’s opinion that the message about the execution “could be used to harm the Soviet state.”

This is very symbolic for the entire process of Khrushchev’s rehabilitation - having decided to tell the truth, at the same time constantly dose this truth, while simultaneously telling lies, and completely turn a blind eye to many aspects of repression.

The fear of putting the foundations of power at risk, the fear that as a result of rehabilitation the population would have doubts about the infallibility of the party and the Soviet state, determined the entire nature and direction of rehabilitation. Hence the intentional narrowing of rehabilitation—chronological and categorical. Hence the refusal to reconsider the most famous public trials, in which hatred of the enemies of the Soviet Union was fostered for decades - from the “Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries” of 1922 and

“Shakhty Case” of 1928 to the “Great Moscow Trials” of 1936-1938. over Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and others. These exemplary cases of the “enemies” have already entered not only the consciousness, but also the subconscious of the population; revising them seemed too risky. The question of revising collectivization or the Red Terror was not raised at all. In general, Stalin’s historical concept of the development of Soviet society, enshrined in his “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” (1938) remained unrevised. The arguments for “not taking risks” during the rehabilitation process were not only domestic political.

Khrushchev’s reaction after the 22nd Congress to the proposal to publish the collected materials on the murder of Kirov is typical: “If we publish everything, we will undermine confidence in ourselves, in the party in the world communist movement. And so after the 20th Congress there were great fluctuations. And therefore we will not publish for now, but in 15 years we will return to this” (from the memoirs of O. Shatunovskaya, a communist who was repressed under Stalin, released under Khrushchev and collaborated in one of the rehabilitation commissions).

The main result of the rehabilitation of the Khrushchev era was the release of prisoners and the awakening of public consciousness, which had many consequences. It can hardly be considered that the rehabilitation provided new legitimacy to the regime, as Khrushchev had hoped; its half-heartedness was too obvious.

In 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power. In the next 20 years, rehabilitation no longer had the pathos and scale that was inherent in it under Khrushchev. It did not stop at all, it continued “in a declarative manner,” but its political significance was completely lost. Stalin's assessments are gradually and cautiously changing. The ambiguity of Stalin’s assessment was also inherent in Khrushchev (on the one hand, Stalin is a revolutionary, the head of the state, although he made mistakes, on the other, Stalin is the creator of repressions), under Brezhnev they gradually stopped talking about Stalin’s “mistakes” (repressions), and People are increasingly talking about Stalin, the commander-in-chief during the war, about Stalin, the “creator of the Great Victory.”

The topic of repression recedes into the background and is excluded from the official context, remaining the topic of intense public debate (partly legal, partly uncensored) between “Stalinists” and “anti-Stalinists.” This topic becomes one of the main themes of Samizdat, it becomes the most important (fundamental) motive for the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR.

Regarding the digital results of rehabilitation during this period, we have several figures that are not very consistent.

On June 3, 1988, KGB Chairman V. Chebrikov, in a Note to the CPSU Central Committee, reports that “before 1962, 1,197,847 people were rehabilitated from among the repressed citizens. In 1962-1983, 157,055 people." The Note to the CPSU Central Committee by A. Yakovlev and others dated December 25, 1988, apparently based on data obtained from the same KGB of the USSR, states that to date “1,354,902 people have been rehabilitated, including in cases non-judicial bodies 1,182,825 people.” It turns out that in the second half of 1988 more than 150 thousand people were rehabilitated. However, according to other sources, no more than 20 thousand people were rehabilitated during this period. But our main questions are raised not by the figures of 1988, but by earlier ones. According to many sources, the number of people rehabilitated during the Khrushchev era does not exceed 800 thousand people. Unfortunately, we do not have any other accurate data on this matter, and although we consider Chebrikov-Yakovlev’s data to be overestimated, we are forced to use them. But even if about 800 thousand people were rehabilitated during the Khrushchev era, these results are still extremely significant.

Second stage of rehabilitation. 1988-1991

The era of glasnost immediately revived mass discussions in the public space around the topic of Stalinism and repression. Newspapers 1987-89 filled with journalistic and memoir articles about terror. In 1987, an informal group of young activists emerged, taking the name “Memorial” and collecting signatures for a letter to Gorbachev about the creation of a memorial complex in memory of the victims of repression. Soon similar groups were created in many regions, an all-Union movement emerged, and at the end of 1988-beginning of 1989. – public organization “Memorial”. Both former political prisoners of the Stalin era and human rights activists of the Brezhnev era, some of whom also went through camps, take part in its creation. A little later, various associations, associations and unions of former victims begin to emerge.

Calls to resume the rehabilitation process, restore justice to the living, and perpetuate the memory of the dead have been heard by the authorities, and they begin to act energetically, always trying to keep the initiative in their hands.

On September 28, 1987, the Politburo creates a special Commission “for additional study of materials related to the repressions that took place during the 30-40s and early 50s.” The commission confirms the general and party rehabilitation in a number of cases, prepares a Politburo Resolution “On the construction of a monument to victims of repression”, prepares a draft Politburo Resolution “On additional measures to complete the work related to the rehabilitation of persons unreasonably repressed in the 30-40s and in early 50s." The resolution was adopted on July 11, 1988. The resolution prescribes rehabilitation regardless of the presence of statements and complaints from citizens - and this is, of course, its strength and novelty. On the other hand, it is clear that from the point of view of chronology, the Politburo still remains within the Khrushchev framework - from the mid-1930s until the death of Stalin. In this regard, society continuously criticizes the authorities. “Memorial” recalls that repressions existed even before the assassination of Kirov (December 1934), and did not end with the death of Stalin. In the fall of 1988, the Commission was headed by Gorbachev’s closest associate A.N. Yakovlev, her work becomes even more intense. The commission considers many high-profile cases and publishes the results of its work.

On January 16, 1989, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, prepared by the Commission and approved by the Politburo, was issued. The decree ordered the cancellation of all decisions made by extrajudicial bodies (troikas, special meetings, etc.) and the recognition of all citizens convicted by these bodies as rehabilitated. However, exceptions were immediately established: traitors to the motherland, punitive forces from the Great Patriotic War, “members of nationalist gangs and their accomplices,” falsifiers of investigative cases, etc. were not subject to rehabilitation. The decree also drew attention to social support for victims of repression, and - for the first time! - on the problem of perpetuating the memory of the victims, instructing local councils, together with public organizations, to provide assistance in creating monuments to the victims and also in maintaining their burial places in proper order.”

The decree became a powerful impetus in the rehabilitation process. In less than a year, by the beginning of 1990, 838,630 people had been rehabilitated; 21,333 people were denied rehabilitation. The leading role in rehabilitation belonged to prosecutors, who themselves, having examined cases, made (mainly with the participation of KGB or Ministry of Internal Affairs officers - custodians of archival cases) decisions on rehabilitation. Judicial authorities, following the protests of prosecutors, rehabilitated less than 30 thousand people out of the total number.

After the Decree, local authorities could no longer brush aside the efforts and proposals of the public to perpetuate the memory of the victims. In 1989-1990 with the help of the KGB or public efforts, many places of mass graves of those executed were discovered (information about them was carefully hidden during all the years of Soviet power), memorial signs (mortgage stones or crosses) were placed in many cities (or at burial sites in nearby suburbs), perceived then as temporary, but remained permanent.

The decree, which gave rise to many hopes and largely justified them, along with public support, also caused a lot of criticism. Former victims were dissatisfied with the fact that the Decree was not being implemented (or poorly implemented) in terms of their (victims’) social support - they expected the authorities to increase pensions, return housing lost due to repression, etc. The Russian public focused criticism on the chronological narrowness of rehabilitation under this Decree. In Ukraine and the Baltic states, many were dissatisfied with the exclusion from the rehabilitation process of national resistance figures, who, in full accordance with Soviet tradition, were called “members of nationalist gangs” in the Decree. Meanwhile, today, when many internal party documents have become known to us, you understand that it is unlikely that Gorbachev could have done more under the real conditions of that time than he did.

His next step on the path of rehabilitation marked a certain and significant evolution in understanding the past. Gorbachev's decree (formally the Decree of the President of the USSR) of August 13, 1990 “On the restoration of the rights of all victims of political repression of the 20s-50s” is more declarative than practical. The report condemns “mass repressions, arbitrariness and lawlessness that were committed by the Stalinist leadership in the name of the revolution, the party, the people”; the limit of repression is attributed to the mid-1920s, i.e. shifted 10 years ago in comparison with all earlier acts, it speaks of the inconsistency of the rehabilitation process, which stopped in the mid-1960s. For the first time in government acts of this level we see an appeal not only to justice, but also to law. The repressions are called “incompatible with the norms of civilization” and the Constitution. Gorbachev speaks of the deprivation of the Soviet people of freedoms, “which in a democratic society are considered natural and inalienable,” and that not only in extrajudicial bodies, but also in the courts, elementary norms of legal proceedings were violated.” The objects of rehabilitation, according to the Decree, were to be peasants deported during collectivization, as well as the clergy and “citizens persecuted for religious reasons.” The decree recognizes the repressions of the 20-50s. “for political, social, national, religious and other reasons” “illegal, contrary to basic civil and socio-economic human rights” and proposes to fully restore the rights of the victims of these repressions.” In general, the Decree was, of course, a new word in understanding repression at the highest state level. Unfortunately, the practical side of the Decree (the order of execution) was not worked out and, in fact, it was not implemented.

In general, apparently, real rehabilitation already in 1990 was proceeding at a clearly slower pace than in the previous year, 1989. Apparently, the general breakdown of the state mechanism had an effect. Accurate data on the number of those rehabilitated in 1990-1991. We don't have it. The Politburo Commission on Rehabilitation ceased to exist in the summer of 1990, declaring that its tasks had been completed. According to A.N. Yakovlev, there were 752 thousand unrevised cases in the archives of the KGB at the beginning of 1990. As the future showed, this figure was clearly underestimated.

In general, the Gorbachev era was a major breakthrough in understanding the past, including in the matter of rehabilitation. On the one hand, rehabilitation was still narrowed - both chronologically and categorically. But the boundaries in both directions were constantly expanding. The rehabilitation process was quite effective in 1988-1991. About 1.5 million people were rehabilitated. In addition to the most important acts mentioned by us, many others were issued at the all-Union level, assessing repressions (in particular, repressions against

"punished peoples") The topic of repression returned to the center of public attention. For better or worse, the authorities interacted with society in the matter of rehabilitation and perpetuation of the memory of victims. For our topic, it is important that on the basis of Gorbachev’s rehabilitation acts and practices, to some extent, in polemics with them, the basic principles of the Russian Law on Rehabilitation were developed, on the basis of which rehabilitation was carried out in Russia in all subsequent years.

The third stage of rehabilitation. 1992 - present. Law of the Russian Federation on rehabilitation.

The Russian Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression began to be prepared in the spring of 1990, immediately after the first free elections to the Supreme Council

RSFSR. The law was prepared by the Human Rights Committee, chaired by Sergei Kovalev, a human rights activist and political prisoner in the 1970s. The main author (leader of the working group) was deputy Anatoly Kononov, later a judge of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The working group, in addition to deputies and professional lawyers, included representatives of Memorial Arseny Roginsky and Oleg Orlov.

Already in the early stages of preparation, the Law encountered many difficulties. There were three main difficulties.

Firstly, resistance from many deputies was met by the political preamble of the Law, which stated that all victims were subject to rehabilitation, starting from the first day of Soviet power (November 7, 1917) until the Law came into force. Let us recall that in 1990 the USSR still existed and such a mention of the date of the founding of the country was perceived as an attack on the legitimacy of Soviet power. It is characteristic that the draft of the all-Union Law on Rehabilitation, written (by whom?) at the same time, assumed a chronological framework from 1920 to 1959.

Another claim was of a quasi-legal nature - the KGB of the USSR sent a negative review of the draft law, stating that the republican (Russian) parliament does not have the right to rehabilitate those convicted by the all-Union bodies - and there were a significant number of those among those repressed. In addition, the KGB cynically stated that the chronological scope of rehabilitation should be narrowed, because, in its opinion, in the 1960-1980s. There were no more violations and falsifications during arrests and investigations.

Another complaint - the Law provided for individual rehabilitation, and among the deputies there were many representatives of “punished peoples”, and they demanded the inclusion in the Law of relevant clauses relating to the territorial, cultural, political rehabilitation of entire peoples. But it was quite obvious that the rehabilitation of peoples had to be the subject of a special law. The inclusion of clauses on “punished peoples” in this law would turn the law into a declaration and would decisively change the general concept.

As a result of these and other claims, the Law, when it was submitted for discussion to the Supreme Council on October 30, 1990, was withdrawn from discussion and sent “for revision.” With minor changes, the Law was adopted only a year later, on October 18, 1991, in an atmosphere of post-coup fear of the communist part of the deputies and anticipation of the inevitable collapse of the USSR.

The law retained the preamble with the original chronological framework, as well as the condemnation of terror as incompatible with the idea of ​​law and justice. The purpose of the law was declared not only to restore the civil rights of those repressed, but also to “compensate for moral and material damage feasible at that time.”

For the first time in Russian legislation, the Law defines political repression and introduces the concept of a “political motive” of the state. The circle of rehabilitated persons is clearly described. And here for the first time the victims of administrative repression are listed: persons subjected to administrative exile, deportation, sent to a special settlement, etc. These include deported peasants, “punished peoples” and many others. Those rehabilitated included those placed for political reasons in special or general psychiatric hospitals. The law provides for automatic, i.e. without considering the case, the rehabilitation of people convicted for exercising the right to freedom of conscience and opinion.

The law also contains exceptions. At first glance, it was possible to do without exceptions, which would greatly slow down the rehabilitation process. Moreover, most people were convicted in absentia by extrajudicial authorities for political reasons. It would seem that the easiest and most correct way is to mechanically cancel all, without exception, decisions of these illegal bodies. But this is impossible to do. After all, these same bodies also condemned absolute criminals - war criminals and punishers, for example. Repeal the Law of all extrajudicial sentences, and these punishers will be automatically rehabilitated. Of course, these people make up a very small percentage of the total mass of those rehabilitated, but still they will be rehabilitated, and this situation cannot be accepted by the mass Russian consciousness.

As a result, a list of exceptions was compiled, approximately the same as in all-Union regulations, but much shorter and more specific. The list of exceptions was based on the sign that a person had committed violent acts, that is, crimes punishable in any country.

The law describes in detail the procedure for rehabilitation. Not only the victim or her relative, but also any interested person or public organization can apply for rehabilitation. Cases of convicted persons on an individual basis (stored mainly in the archives of state security agencies) are considered by prosecutors, who themselves make decisions on rehabilitation or denial of it. All cases are reviewed, regardless of the statements.

Cases of administrative repression, mainly stored in the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are considered by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Here the Law does not provide for a complete review of cases; rehabilitation is carried out based on applications. This, of course, is a significant shortcoming of the Law.

The law describes in detail the consequences of rehabilitation - compensation, benefits for the rehabilitated, issues of return of property.

Immediately after the adoption of the Law, the struggle to improve it began. Initially, it was centered on the problem of expanding the circle of persons rehabilitated by the Law. It was the victims' associations and the Memorial Society that insisted most on this expansion.

As a result of many years of efforts, it was possible to ensure that children who were with their parents in camps, exile, labor settlements (previously they were recognized only as victims), and then children who, as a result of repressions, were left as minors without the care of one or two parents were recognized as victims of repression. . The result of the adoption of these amendments (both were introduced into the Law thanks to decisions of the Constitutional Court adopted in 1995 and 2000) was the strange, at first glance, fact that the number of rehabilitated victims of repression living in Russia in the late 1990s – early 2000s. has increased sharply.

Unfortunately, no other significant changes were made to the Law.

Social status of the victims

Already in Soviet times, some measures were taken not only for the political, but also for the social rehabilitation of the victims. However, a feature of social rehabilitation compared to legal one was its extreme limitations.

Those who were rehabilitated were entitled to monetary compensation in the amount of two months' salary, calculated from the salary at the time of arrest, they could be placed out of line for housing, and those who were unable to work had the right to receive a pension with credit for the period of imprisonment in their work experience.

However, many ordinary people—without connections or acquaintances—often did not even know about these opportunities. Former “enemies of the people,” as well as members of their families, continued to be bullied even when this was not officially encouraged. In particular, not all those rehabilitated received permission to return to their places of former residence; upon return, no restitution was expected. People did not receive back either the taken away housing or the confiscated property. The only thing that some of the returnees received was the opportunity to register at a preferential rate for housing and receive, in an accelerated manner, significantly worse and smaller housing.

In the case of administrative deportees, social rehabilitation was fundamentally different for different categories of deportees. Some were allowed to return to their places of former residence and this is the maximum that they could count on; others (dispossessed or Crimean Tatars, for example) were unofficially prevented from even returning.

In fact, in Soviet times, in a social sense, rehabilitated victims were divided into three groups:

1. those deported administratively, who were not actually rehabilitated, but were pardoned;
2. the bulk of those convicted in a judicial or quasi-judicial manner and subsequently rehabilitated, receiving meager monetary compensation and extremely limited opportunities for social adaptation in a new life
3. a relatively small group of former party and government officials and their relatives who received not only legal, but also party rehabilitation, which meant, in particular, the return of not only better housing, dachas and other privileges than others, but also the opportunity to return to their previous work.

In general, the transition of former victims into a new life was very difficult and painful. With a camp background, it was difficult to count on decent work and housing. The atmosphere around these people often remained wary and hostile. The stigma of being an “enemy of the people” continued to haunt both the former prisoners and their families. Their lives remained unsettled and dysfunctional; for the most part, they did not make a career or restore lost family and kinship ties. Many, having spent the best years of their lives in prison, did not start a family at all, did not have children or support, and experienced extreme need.

Only the Law on Rehabilitation of October 18, 1991 established a system of compensation payments and benefits for these people, namely:

1. One-time monetary compensation for the period of imprisonment or stay in compulsory psychiatric treatment.
2. Compensation for damage caused by illegal seizure of property.
3. Payment of an increased pension.
4. Benefits in kind (payment for housing and utilities in the amount of 50%, priority installation of a telephone and compensation for the costs of its installation, free travel in urban and suburban automobile, electric, railway and water public transport, as well as compensation once a year for the cost of travel across the territory of the Russian Federation on intercity transport, production and repair of dentures, preferential sanatorium and resort treatment).

However, the proposed set of measures, which at first glance provides an opportunity to socially support the victims, in reality gave them humiliatingly little.

For example, at the time of the adoption of the Law, one-time compensation amounted to “three quarters of the minimum wage established by law for each month of imprisonment,” and in 2000 it was generally fixed at 75 rubles (less than 2 euros). This means that a former prisoner for 10 years in the Kolyma camps receives a one-time compensation of 220 euros!

Compensation for the loss of home, be it a confiscated apartment in Moscow or a house in the village, cannot exceed 10,000 rubles (250 euros!).

In the early 2000s, when, thanks to rising oil prices, the Russian state was becoming richer and it seemed possible to provide victims with adequate support, the government decided to monetize benefits. Having forgotten that in 1991, when the Rehabilitation Act was passed, it actually provided victims not with benefits, but with prolonged compensation in the form of regular benefits.

The monetization of benefits carried out in 2005 completely changed the basis for social security for victims - instead of benefits, rehabilitated victims receive monthly cash payments (MCP); funding for payments is provided not by the federal budget, but by the regional budgets of the constituent entities of the federation.

In a legal sense, the situation has become absurd for at least two reasons:

The fact is that disabled people, depending on the disability group, receive 1,620-2,830 rubles (40.5-70.5 euros) monthly from the federal budget. On a general level, this is good and most importantly stable monthly support.

From a legal point of view, disabled victims of political repression should receive social support for two reasons, especially since there is a precedent for this in Russia - the liquidators of the Chernobyl accident receive support in this way.

However, Russian social services do not recognize the right of rehabilitated persons to receive double support and, in fact, require that in order to obtain the status of a disabled person, one must renounce the status of a rehabilitated person.

As one of the Memorial activists, Margarita Anisimova, said, “they demand that I admit that I am disabled and renounce my status as a victim of political repression. I will never do this, even if disabled people are paid ten times more. Refusing the status of a victim means refusing to rehabilitate my murdered parents.”

Necessary changes to the Rehabilitation Law

Meanwhile, the following serious changes are needed to the Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression:

First. It is necessary to expand the circle of persons subject to rehabilitation.

In 1990-1991, when the Law was being prepared, some of the types of repression were not directly spelled out in the Law. This gave rise to doubts among the prosecutors who carried out the rehabilitation about certain categories of victims. Doubts were most often resolved by them in favor of refusing rehabilitation. This happened, for example, with the “disenfranchised” - people deprived of voting rights in 1918-1936. The number of this category was high - at least 4 million people. It included pre-revolutionary officials, merchants, former clergy, small artisans and many others. Deprivation of voting rights in the first decades after the revolution in real life entailed many consequences - non-admission to higher educational institutions, to many places of service, etc.

The Law includes not only those arrested or direct victims of administrative repression as those subject to rehabilitation, but also persons subject to “other restrictions on rights and freedoms.”

Almost none of the “disenfranchised” are no longer alive, but for many descendants the fact of the rehabilitation of their relatives seems important. For us, the rehabilitation of these people is important not only as a fact of restoring historical justice, but also as a statement of one of the unshakable principles of Law.

There are several other categories (not so numerous) of victims that should be explicitly listed in the Law.

Second. It is necessary to introduce a norm into the Law that will allow for rehabilitation in a situation where a criminal (investigative) file is lost or destroyed.

The existing procedure presupposes the existence of a case for its review. In some cases, this issue is fundamentally important. For example, it is precisely the lack of a case that prosecutors refer to when refusing to rehabilitate the victims of the mass execution of Polish citizens in 1940 (“Katyn” and other places).

But such files on executed Poles do not exist in nature - the files were deliberately (in order to hide traces of the crime) destroyed in the late 1950s.

At the same time, there are many other documents (besides the investigative files) that allow us to name the names of the victims and prove that the “Katyn crime” was committed at the direction of the highest Soviet leadership. These documents should be considered for the rehabilitation of victims.

Third. The article of the Law, which lists exceptions (i.e. persons, although convicted, are not subject to rehabilitation), names those who have committed “crimes against justice.” The preamble to this article states that the basis for refusal of rehabilitation should be evidence contained “in the files” of such persons.

In practice, this category is represented only by employees of the OGPU-N-KVD-MGB. Many of them were indeed repressed. During the Soviet era, many were rehabilitated, but the most notorious figures were denied rehabilitation. Mostly, rehabilitation was denied to regional chiefs - chairmen of extrajudicial bodies (“troikas”) of 1937-1938, heads of departments of the central apparatus of the OGPU-NKVD, investigators in high-profile cases that became famous in the Khrushchev era.

The Rehabilitation Act of 1991 gave birth to new practices. Very often in the investigative cases of such people there was no indication that they had committed crimes against justice. They were convicted on fictitious charges of espionage or conspiracy against Soviet power. Based on the letter of the law, prosecutors in the 1990s and 2000s began to rehabilitate them. Including those who were earlier - in the 1960-1980s. rehabilitation was denied.

Thus, D. Dmitriev, under whose leadership many thousands of citizens were shot in the Sverdlovsk region, V. Agas, the investigator in the case of Marshal Tukhachevsky, known for the constant use of torture, D. Apresyan, the leader of the “Great Terror” of 1937-1938, were rehabilitated. in Uzbekistan, Y. Agranov is one of the main leaders of terror against the intelligentsia in the 20s-30s. and many others.

It is necessary to correct the article of the Law and indicate that when it comes to employees of state security, internal affairs, and the judicial and prosecutorial system, it is required

carefully check not only investigative files, but also conduct special checks of their activities using additional archival materials.

When rehabilitating major party workers about whom there is information about their participation in terrorism, it is also necessary to raise additional archival materials.

Fourth. It is necessary to change the norm of the Law concerning the rehabilitation of victims of administrative repression (this is done by the Ministry of Internal Affairs). Instead of rehabilitation based on individual statements, a complete review of cases should be carried out. Otherwise, millions of victims will remain unrehabilitated.

Fifth. The Law practically does not solve the problems of perpetuating the memory of victims. It is said only about compiling “lists of rehabilitated persons.” However, it is not specified who should compile them and how, and who should publish them. “Lists” have long been transformed into “Books of Memory”, which are prepared and published in most regions on the initiative of a variety of organizations - public and state. This is done without any uniform principles. But in a number of regions this work is not being done at all. The law does not include the task of creating museum and memorial complexes dedicated to the victims, searching and memorializing places of mass graves of victims, installing monuments and memorial signs. We believe that a special chapter dedicated to perpetuating the memory of victims should be introduced into the Law.

Sixth. The Russian law on rehabilitation is not fully compatible with the same laws of countries neighboring Russia - former republics within the USSR. It turns out to be impossible to rehabilitate not only individual people, but also entire categories of victims due to contradictions and lacunae in the laws. To solve these problems, it is necessary to introduce minor adjustments to Russian law. In addition, special agreements must be concluded between countries interested in the rehabilitation process.

We can give many examples of necessary additions and clarifications to the Law. Over the 20 years of operation of the Rehabilitation Law, its strengths and weaknesses have already fully emerged. Unfortunately, deputies of the Russian parliament every time push aside almost any amendments to the Law - the topic of repression clearly does not resonate with them.

Results of rehabilitation under the Law of October 18, 1991

In 1992, immediately after the adoption of the Law, special groups were formed throughout the country in the Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They worked actively during the 1990s, then the flow of rehabilitated people weakened in the mid-2000s. (in some regions - earlier) these groups were disbanded.

In 1992-2010 was rehabilitated:

• 800-805 thousand people - prosecutorial authorities (including military prosecutorial authorities);
• about 280 thousand children are victims of repression - due to changes in the Rehabilitation Law in the 2000s. the prosecutor's office recognized the children as victims of political repression;
• more than 2 million 940 thousand people were rehabilitated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs due to administrative repression.

Today, rehabilitation in cases involving state security agencies (“on individual charges”) is considered almost complete in Russia. Many people disagree with this statement. In particular, according to Memorial, many cases in which rehabilitation was refused should be reconsidered - especially during the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars.

The rehabilitation of those repressed administratively must continue - it is still very far from completion.

Finally, in order for society to be able to realistically assess the results of rehabilitation, general figures, which are periodically, for various random reasons, called by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, and the Prosecutor's Office are not enough for society. These departments must transfer the personal information at their disposal about rehabilitated victims of repression to a unified national database. In order for them to do this, they must first get the federal government to declare its task to create such a base.

Russia has successful experience in creating a national database on victims of the Great Patriotic War. It has not yet been possible to achieve a government decision to create a database that will include the names of all victims of political repression. Although society (including Memorial) has been demanding this for many years.

Ideally, such a database should include data not only from Russian archives, but also from the archives of former Soviet republics. In these countries (unfortunately, not all) the process of rehabilitation of victims has also been going on for many years. But the results are unknown to us. Therefore, it is not yet possible to answer the question of what part of the total number of victims of Soviet repressions have been rehabilitated to date.

According to the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation, at the beginning of 2013, there are currently 776,667 people who have the status of victims in accordance with the Law on Rehabilitation. Over the past two years, according to the same official data, their number has decreased by 230 thousand and continues to decline rapidly.

Alas, so far the Rehabilitation Law is the only law dedicated to the past. It talks about restoring the rights of a huge number of people who have suffered from the state, who today are mostly old, lonely and seriously ill.

But this first and important step towards assessing the Soviet regime remained the only one. Since the government treats history instrumentally, depending on its interests, it sometimes remembers the victims, but mostly prefers not to talk about them. And therefore, victims of political repression continue to remain between sympathy and indifference on the part of the state and society.

Elena Zhemkova, Arseny Roginsky

1. An accurate assessment is impossible due to fragmentary statistical data, in particular the lack of information about the victims of extrajudicial executions of the Red and White Terror. Approximate estimates of losses are given by Vadim V. Erlikhman. Population losses in the 20th century: Directory // M.: Russian Panorama Publishing House, 2004. The documented figures on which we rely are significantly lower (see below)
2. Voenspets is short for “military specialist.” The concept was used in the first years of Soviet power and meant “a military specialist of the old Russian army, serving in the Red Army.”
3. Assessment by the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, 2000.
4. On October 6, 1991, the Decree of the President of Russia B.N. was adopted. Yeltsin on the dissolution of the CPSU and the prohibition of the activities of its army and production organizations, which legally secured the dismantling of the CPSU, which had ruled the country for more than seventy years.
5. Victor V. Luneev. Political crime // M., State and Law, 1994. No. 7. P. 107-127
6. The presented table includes data from the reports of military counterintelligence agencies “SMERSH” (“Death to Spies”) for 1943-1946.
7. See: Pavel M. Polyan. Not of my own free will//M., 2001; Stalin's deportations: 1928-1953//Compiled by Nikolay Pobol., Pavel Polyan// M., 2005.
8. Grigory Pomerantz. The investigation is being conducted by a convict // M., Pik. 2004, p.151.
9. Rehabilitation: how it happened. Documents of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, transcripts of a meeting of the Commission of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee for additional study of materials related to the repressions that took place during the 30-40s and early 50s, and other materials // M., MFD, 2004, T .3, p. 77.
10. Rehabilitation: how it was...Vol. 3, p. 142.
11. Rehabilitation: how it was.. T.3, p. 197-198.
12. Rehabilitation: how it was...Vol. 3, p. 345.
13. Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1655 of 09/08/1955 “On the length of service, employment and pension provision of citizens who were unjustifiably prosecuted and subsequently rehabilitated” // Coll. legislative and regulatory acts on repression and rehabilitation of victims of political repression. M., publishing house "Respublika", 1993.
14. From the Report of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, 2011.
15. accurate information about parents
16. Lishenets is an unofficial name for a citizen of the USSR or union republics, in 1918-1936. deprived of voting rights according to the Constitutions of the RSFSR of 1918 and 1925. According to the results of the All-Union Census of 1926, the population in the USSR was 147,027,915 people. There were 1,040,894 people deprived of the right to vote in the country (1.63% of the total number of voters). 43.3% of them were traders and intermediaries. Then came clergy and monks - 15.2%; living on unearned income - 13.8%; former tsarist officers and other ranks - 9%. Adult (over 18 years old) family members of deprived persons also did not have the right to vote. There were 6.4% of them. In 1927, 3,038,739 people (4.27% of voters) did not have the right to vote. By this time, the number of merchants (to 24.8%) and clergy (to 8.3%) among those disenfranchised had decreased, but the number of family members affected by their rights had increased - to 38.5%. All-Union Population Census of 1926. M.: Publication of the Central Statistical Office of the USSR, 1928-29. For more information about the fate of the disenfranchised, see S.A. Krasilnikov. On the fractures of the social structure: Margins in post-revolutionary Russian society (1917 - late 1930s). – Novosibirsk, NSU, 1998.
17. Y. Kantor “The Living and the Dead.” Russian newspaper, Federal issue No. 6088 (112), 05.28.2013

28 years ago - August 13, 1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev signed a decree “On restoring the rights of all victims of political repression of the 1920s–1950s.”

This decree became the final admission of guilt of the state towards citizens repressed during the period of Stalinism. The decree for the first time called unjustified repressions “political crimes based on abuse of power.”

In accordance with the decree, the repressions carried out against peasants during the period of collectivization, as well as against all other citizens for political, social, national, religious and other reasons in 1920-1950, were declared illegal and contrary to fundamental civil and socio-economic human rights. - years, whose rights must be fully restored.

“Stalin and his circle usurped virtually unlimited power, depriving the Soviet people of freedoms that are considered natural and inalienable in a democratic society... The restoration of justice, begun by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was carried out inconsistently and, in essence, ceased in the second half of the 60s.” , - said the text of the presidential decree.

At the same time, Gorbachev was definitely not ready to rehabilitate traitors like General Vlasov and others like them: rehabilitation did not extend to traitors to the Motherland and punitive forces during the Great Patriotic War, Nazi criminals, members of gangs and their accomplices, workers involved in falsifying criminal cases, as well as persons who have committed intentional murders and other criminal offenses.

“The stain of injustice has not yet been removed from the Soviet people, who innocently suffered during forced collectivization, were subjected to imprisonment, evicted with their families to remote areas without a means of subsistence, without the right to vote, even without the announcement of a term of imprisonment. Representatives of the clergy and citizens persecuted for religious reasons must be rehabilitated,” the text of the decree stated.

The process was launched, and mass rehabilitation of USSR citizens began. And not only party leaders, but also ordinary citizens of the Soviet Union.
According to preliminary data from Memorial, from 1921 to 1953, approximately 11–12 million people were repressed for political reasons in the USSR. Moreover, 4.5–5 million of them were convicted for political reasons, another 6.5 million people were punished administratively - we are talking about deported peoples, dispossessed peasants and other categories of the population.

On October 30, 1990, on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, opposite the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Solovetsky Stone was erected - a monument to the victims of political repression, made from a boulder that had lain for many years on Solovki in the area of ​​the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), which from 1937 to 1939 was called the Solovetsky Prison. special purpose (STON). A year later, “Iron Felix” was dismantled, and October 30 became the Day of Political Prisoners of the USSR.

====================

PRESIDENT OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

ON RESTORING THE RIGHTS OF ALL VICTIMS

POLITICAL REPRESSIONS OF THE 20'S - 50'S

The heavy legacy of the past was the mass repressions, arbitrariness and lawlessness that were committed by the Stalinist leadership in the name of the revolution, the party, and the people. The outrage against the honor and very lives of compatriots, which began in the mid-20s, continued with the most brutal consistency for several decades. Thousands of people were subjected to moral and physical torture, many of them exterminated. The life of their families and loved ones was turned into a hopeless period of humiliation and suffering.

Stalin and his circle usurped virtually unlimited power, depriving the Soviet people of freedoms that are considered natural and inalienable in a democratic society.

Mass repressions were carried out mostly through extrajudicial executions through the so-called special meetings, collegiums, “troikas” and “dvoikas”. However, even in the courts, elementary norms of legal proceedings were violated.

The restoration of justice, begun by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was carried out inconsistently and essentially ceased in the second half of the 60s.

The Special Commission for Additional Study of Materials Related to Repressions rehabilitated thousands of innocent prisoners; illegal acts against peoples who were displaced from their homes were cancelled; decisions of extrajudicial bodies of the OGPU - NKVD - MGB in the 30s - 50s on political matters were recognized as illegal; Other acts have been adopted to restore the rights of victims of arbitrariness.

But even today thousands of court cases are still pending. The stain of injustice has not yet been removed from the Soviet people, who innocently suffered during forced collectivization, were subjected to imprisonment, evicted with their families to remote areas without a means of subsistence, without the right to vote, even without the announcement of a term of imprisonment. Representatives of the clergy and citizens persecuted for religious reasons must be rehabilitated.

The speedy overcoming of the consequences of lawlessness and political crimes based on abuse of power is necessary for all of us, for the entire society, which has embarked on the path of moral revival, democracy and the rule of law.

Expressing my fundamental condemnation of mass repressions, considering them incompatible with the norms of civilization and on the basis of Articles 127.7 and 114 of the USSR Constitution, I decree:

1. Recognize as illegal, contrary to basic civil and socio-economic human rights, the repressions carried out against peasants during the period of collectivization, as well as against all other citizens for political, social, national, religious and other reasons in the 20s - 50s, and fully restore the rights of these citizens.

The Council of Ministers of the USSR and the governments of the union republics, in accordance with this Decree, submit to the legislative bodies, before October 1, 1990, proposals on the procedure for restoring the rights of citizens who have suffered from repression.

2. This Decree does not apply to persons reasonably convicted of committing crimes against the Motherland and Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War, in the pre- and post-war years.

The Council of Ministers of the USSR shall submit to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR a draft legislative act defining a list of these crimes and the procedure for recognizing in court persons convicted of committing them as not subject to rehabilitation on the grounds provided for by this Decree.

3. Considering the political and social significance of the complete solution of all issues related to the restoration of the rights of citizens unreasonably repressed in the 20s - 50s, entrust monitoring of this process to the Presidential Council of the USSR.

President of the Union of Soviets

Socialist Republics

M. GORBACHEV

Moscow Kremlin

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I invite everyone to the groups “PERESTROYKA - an era of change”

In the USSR, the term “rehabilitation” became especially widespread under N. S. Khrushchev in connection with the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of people repressed under I. V. Stalin, most of them posthumously. Listed below are only a small part of the rehabilitated people - known both in Russia and abroad.

The process of rehabilitation of repressed persons in the USSR began in 1953 - 1954. , illegal acts against peoples subjected to resettlement and deportation were canceled, decisions of extrajudicial bodies of the OGPU-NKVD-MGB made in political cases were recognized as illegal. However, already in the early 60s. the number of those rehabilitated is gradually decreasing, the reason for which is the relapse of the totalitarian policies of the state, including attempts to return to Stalinist ideological principles. Then the rehabilitation process, however, was continued in the late 80s. By the resolution of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee of July 11, 1988, “On additional measures to complete the work related to the rehabilitation of those unreasonably repressed in the 30s, 40s and early 50s,” an instruction was given to the Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR and the KGB of the USSR in conjunction with local authorities authorities will continue to work on reviewing cases against persons repressed in the 30-40s. , without the need for applications for rehabilitation and complaints from repressed citizens. On January 16, 1989, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, canceling out-of-court decisions made in the period of the 30s - early 50s. extrajudicial “troikas” of the NKVD-UNKVD, collegiums of the OGPU and “special meetings” of the NKVD-MGB-MVD of the USSR. All citizens who were subjected to repression by these bodies were rehabilitated, excluding traitors to the Motherland, punishers, Nazi criminals, workers involved in falsifying criminal cases, as well as persons who committed murders.

According to information provided by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, over the entire period of rehabilitation as of January 1, 2002, over 4 million citizens were rehabilitated, including 2,438,000 people who were convicted judicially and extrajudicially to criminal penalties.

The legality of commissions for the rehabilitation of political prisoners, however, seems highly questionable. Thus, the first commission created by Khrushchev, along with his personal appointee Shvernik, included persons convicted of anti-Soviet activities: O. Shatunovskaya, who provided deliberately false figures for the number of prisoners and executed. Subsequently, the Commission was headed by the ardent anti-Salinist A. N. Yakovlev, who also presented false data on both the number of those imprisoned and the number of those rehabilitated. Extremely often for propaganda purposes, like Western ones. Likewise, in Russian anti-Stalin literature, the number of prisoners in general is identified with the number of “political” prisoners. Even if the number of political prisoners includes only those convicted under Article 58 (their number never exceeded 25% of the total number of prisoners), it is not taken into account that the overwhelming part of this article was included in all later versions of the Criminal Code of the USSR and the modern Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, because it is de- in fact, included entire sections of the modern Criminal Code.

Decisions on rehabilitation were made by extrajudicial bodies on the basis of voluntary ideas about the legality of the leaders and members of the Commission, who did not have not only judicial powers, but even legal education. Yes, comrade. Shvernik did not have a higher education at all, and A.N Yakovlev had a historical education.

More on topic 30. Rehabilitation of victims of political repression:

1. Social and psychological rehabilitation of disabled people. Rehabilitation of children and adolescents with developmental disabilities. activities of MSEC services and rehabilitation of disabled people.

Estimates of the number of victims of Stalin's repressions vary dramatically. Some cite numbers in the tens of millions of people, others limit themselves to hundreds of thousands. Which of them is closer to the truth?

Who is to blame?

Today our society is almost equally divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists. The former draw attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, the latter call not to forget about the huge number of victims of the repressions of the Stalinist regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repression, but note its limited nature and even justify it as political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repressions with the name of Stalin.
Historian Nikolai Kopesov writes that in most investigative cases against those repressed in 1937-1938 there were no resolutions of Stalin - everywhere there were verdicts of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. According to the Stalinists, this is proof that the heads of the punitive bodies were engaged in arbitrariness and in support of this they cite Yezhov’s quote: “Whoever we want, we execute, whoever we want, we have mercy.”
For that part of the Russian public that sees Stalin as the ideologist of repression, these are just details that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other arbiters of human destinies themselves turned out to be victims of terror. Who else but Stalin was behind all this? - they ask a rhetorical question.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the State Archive of the Russian Federation Oleg Khlevnyuk notes that despite the fact that Stalin’s signature was not on many execution lists, it was he who sanctioned almost all mass political repressions.

Who was hurt?

The issue of victims acquired even greater significance in the debate surrounding Stalin's repressions. Who suffered and in what capacity during the period of Stalinism? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is quite vague. Historiography has not yet developed clear definitions on this matter.
Of course, those convicted, imprisoned in prisons and camps, shot, deported, deprived of property should be counted among those affected by the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to “biased interrogation” and then released? Should criminal and political prisoners be separated? In what category should we classify the “nonsense”, convicted of minor isolated thefts and equated to state criminals?
Deportees deserve special attention. What category should they be classified into – repressed or administratively expelled? It is even more difficult to determine those who fled without waiting for dispossession or deportation. They were sometimes caught, but some were lucky enough to start a new life.

Such different numbers

Uncertainties in the issue of who is responsible for the repression, in identifying the categories of victims and the period for which the victims of repression should be counted lead to completely different figures. The most impressive figures were cited by the economist Ivan Kurganov (Solzhenitsyn referred to these data in his novel The Gulag Archipelago), who calculated that from 1917 to 1959, 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against its people.
In this number, Kurganov includes victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, as well as “the neglectful and sloppy conduct of the Second World War.”
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalin's repressions? The economist, in fact, answers this question himself, using the expression “victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime.” It is worth noting that Kurganov counted only the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could have appeared if the economist had taken into account all those affected by the Soviet regime during the specified period.
The figures given by the head of the human rights society “Memorial” Arseny Roginsky are more realistic. He writes: “Across the entire Soviet Union, 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression,” but adds that in a broad sense, up to 30 million people can be considered repressed.
Leaders of the Yabloko movement Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov counted all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, those dispossessed, victims of hunger, those who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and those who received excessively harsh punishment for minor offenses in the force of the repressive nature of legislation. The final figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes in this regard that if the count of victims of repression has been carried out since 1921, this means that it is not Stalin who is responsible for a significant part of the crimes, but the “Leninist Guard”, which immediately after the October Revolution launched terror against the White Guards , clergy and kulaks.

How to count?

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the method of counting. If we take into account those convicted only on political charges, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, given in 1988, the Soviet bodies (VChK, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB) arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot.
Employees of the Memorial Society, when counting the victims of political trials, are close to these figures, although their data is still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were executed. If we consider everyone who went through the Gulag system as victims of the Stalinist regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will range from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often, Stalin’s repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of the “Great Terror,” which peaked in 1937-1938. According to the commission led by academician Pyotr Pospelov to establish the causes of mass repressions, the following figures were announced: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activity, of which 681,692 thousand were sentenced to capital punishment.
One of the most authoritative experts on the demographic aspects of political repression in the USSR, historian Viktor Zemskov, names a smaller number of those convicted during the years of the “Great Terror” - 1,344,923 people, although his data coincides with the number of those executed.
If dispossessed people are included in the number of those subjected to repression during Stalin’s time, the figure will increase by at least 4 million people. The same Zemskov cites this number of dispossessed people. The Yabloko party agrees with this, noting that about 600 thousand of them died in exile.
Representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forced deportation also became victims of Stalin's repressions - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars. Many historians agree that the total number of deportees is about 6 million people, while about 1.2 million people did not live to see the end of the journey.

To trust or not?

The above figures are mostly based on reports from the OGPU, NKVD, and MGB. However, not all documents of the punitive departments have been preserved; many of them were purposefully destroyed, and many are still in restricted access.
It should be recognized that historians are very dependent on statistics collected by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only those officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to verify it from primary sources only in the rarest cases.
An acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to name radically different figures in favor of their position. “If the “right” exaggerated the scale of the repressions, then the “left”, partly out of dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, hastened to make them public and did not always ask themselves the question of whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives, – notes historian Nikolai Koposov.
It can be stated that estimates of the scale of Stalin’s repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in federal archives would be a good help for modern researchers, but many of them were re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.

Appendix 6

Law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression

LAW OF THE RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERAL SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression

During the years of Soviet power, millions of people became victims of the tyranny of the totalitarian state and were subjected to repression for their political and religious beliefs, on social, national and other grounds.

Condemning many years of terror and mass persecution of its people as incompatible with the idea of ​​law and justice, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR expresses deep sympathy to the victims of unjustified repression, their relatives and friends, and declares its unwavering desire to achieve real guarantees of the rule of law and human rights.

The purpose of this Law is the rehabilitation of all victims of political repressions subjected to such on the territory of the RSFSR since October 25 (November 7), 1917, restoration of their civil rights, elimination of other consequences of arbitrariness and provision of currently feasible compensation for material and moral damage.

I. GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article 1. Political repressions are recognized as various coercive measures applied by the state for political reasons, in the form of deprivation of life or liberty, placement for compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals, expulsion from the country and deprivation of citizenship, eviction of population groups from places of residence, exile, deportation and to a special settlement, involvement in forced labor under conditions of restriction of freedom, as well as other deprivation or restriction of the rights and freedoms of persons recognized as socially dangerous to the state or political system on the basis of class, social, national, religious or other grounds, carried out by decisions of the courts and other bodies vested with judicial functions, or administratively by executive authorities and officials.

Article 2. This Law applies to all Soviet citizens - citizens of the RSFSR and other republics, foreign citizens, as well as stateless persons who have been subjected to political repression on the territory of the RSFSR since October 25 (November 7), 1917.

Along with persons to whom coercive measures were directly applied, victims of political repression include children who were with their parents in prison, in exile, expulsion, in a special settlement, as well as those who were subjected to other restrictions on their rights and freedoms in connection with their repression. parents. Restoration of rights and provision of social benefits to these persons is carried out in cases specifically established by the legislation of the USSR and the RSFSR.

Article 3. Persons who, for political reasons, were subject to rehabilitation:

a) convicted of state and other crimes;

b) subjected to criminal repression by decisions of the bodies of the Cheka, GPU - OGPU, UNKVD - NKVD, MGB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor's office and their boards, commissions, “special meetings”, “twos”, “troikas” and other bodies that exercised judicial functions;

c) subjected to administrative exile, deportation, sent to a special settlement, forced labor under conditions of restriction of freedom, including in “work columns of the NKVD,” as well as other restrictions on rights and freedoms;

d) placed by decisions of courts and non-judicial bodies in psychiatric institutions for compulsory treatment.

Article 4. Persons listed in Article 3 of this Law who were reasonably convicted by the courts, as well as those subjected to punishment by decision of non-judicial bodies, in whose cases there is sufficient evidence on charges of committing the following crimes, are not subject to rehabilitation:

a) treason to the Motherland in the form of espionage, betrayal of military or state secrets, or the defection of a serviceman to the side of the enemy;

espionage, terrorist act, sabotage;

b) committing violent acts against the civilian population and prisoners of war, as well as aiding traitors to the Motherland and fascist occupiers in committing such acts during the Great Patriotic War;

c) organizing gangs and participating in their commission of murders, robberies and other violent acts;

d) war crimes and crimes against justice.

Article 5. The following acts are recognized as not containing a public danger and persons convicted of: are rehabilitated regardless of the factual validity of the accusation:

a) anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda;

b) dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state or social system;

c) violation of laws on the separation of church and state and school and church;

d) encroachment on the personality and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rituals, that is, under Articles 70 (as amended before the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of September 11, 1990), 190-1 142 and 227 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and similar norms earlier current legislation.

II. REHABILITATION PROCEDURE

Article 6. Applications for rehabilitation can be submitted by the repressed themselves, as well as by any persons or public organizations. Applications are submitted at the location of the body or official who made the decision to apply repression, in relation to the persons specified in paragraph “c” of Article 3 of this Law - to the internal affairs bodies, in relation to other repressed persons - to the prosecutor's office.

The period for consideration of applications for rehabilitation cannot exceed three months.

Article 7. Internal affairs bodies, upon applications from interested persons or public organizations, establish the fact of exile, deportation, referral to a special settlement, forced labor under conditions of restriction of freedom and other restrictions on rights and freedoms established administratively, and issue a certificate of rehabilitation.

In the absence of documentary information, the fact of repression can be established on the basis of witness testimony in court.

The decision of the internal affairs bodies to refuse to issue a certificate of rehabilitation can be appealed to the court in the manner prescribed for appealing unlawful actions of government bodies and officials that infringe on the rights of citizens.

Article 8. Prosecutor's offices, with the involvement of state security and internal affairs bodies on their instructions, establish and verify all cases with decisions of courts and non-judicial bodies that have not been canceled before the entry into force of this Law regarding persons subject to rehabilitation in accordance with IP. “a”, “b”, “d” of Article 3 and Article 5 of this Law. The procedure for this work and the distribution of responsibilities are determined by the Prosecutor General of the RSFSR.

Based on the inspection materials, the prosecutor's office draws up conclusions and issues certificates of rehabilitation to applicants, and in the absence of such, they periodically provide information about those rehabilitated for publication in the local press.

In the absence of grounds for rehabilitation, the prosecutor's office, in the event of receiving applications from interested persons or public organizations, sends the case with a conclusion to the court in accordance with Article 9 of this Law.

Article 9. Decisions on cases provided for in part three of Article 8 of this Law are made:

a) for convicted persons - by the courts that made the last court decisions. Cases in which sentences, rulings, decisions were made by abolished or disbanded courts, as well as military tribunals in relation to civilians, are transferred to those courts whose jurisdiction these cases are assigned under the current legislation. The territorial jurisdiction of the case is determined by the place where the last court decision was made;

b) subjected to extrajudicial repression: in relation to civilians - by the Supreme Courts of autonomous republics, regional, regional courts, courts of autonomous regions, autonomous districts, and in relation to military personnel - by military tribunals of districts and fleets, on the territory of which the corresponding non-judicial bodies operated.

In the event of a dispute about jurisdiction, cases may be transferred from one court to another by order of the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR.

Article 10. Cases received by the court with a negative conclusion from the prosecutor are considered in court hearings according to the rules for reviewing court decisions in the manner of supervision established by the current criminal procedure legislation of the RSFSR with the exceptions provided for by this Law.

As a result of consideration of the case, the court recognizes the person as not subject to rehabilitation or recognizes that the person was repressed unreasonably, cancels the decision and terminates the case against him. The court may also amend an earlier decision.

In relation to a person recognized by the court as not subject to rehabilitation, the applicants are given a copy of the court's ruling (resolution), and if he is recognized as unreasonably repressed, a certificate of rehabilitation. The ruling (ruling) of the court can be protested by the prosecutor and appealed by interested persons and public organizations to a higher court.

Article 11. Rehabilitated persons, and with their consent or in the event of their death, relatives, have the right to familiarize themselves with the materials of terminated criminal and administrative cases and receive copies of documents of a non-procedural nature. Familiarization of other persons with the specified materials is carried out in the manner established for familiarization with materials of state archives. The use of information obtained to the detriment of the rights and legitimate interests of persons involved in the case and their relatives is not permitted and is prosecuted in accordance with the procedure established by law.

Rehabilitated persons and their heirs have the right to receive manuscripts, photographs and other personal documents preserved in the files.

At the request of the applicants, the authorities carrying out archival storage of cases related to repressions are obliged to inform them of the time, causes of death and place of burial of the rehabilitated person.

III. CONSEQUENCES OF REHABILITATION

Article 12. Persons rehabilitated in the manner established by this Law are restored to the socio-political and civil rights, military and special ranks they lost due to repression, and orders and medals are returned to them.

If a person is found to have been unreasonably repressed, only in relation to the accusation brought against them, those rights that were violated in connection with unfounded political accusations are restored.

Article 13. The right of those rehabilitated to live in those localities and settlements where they lived before repression was applied to them is recognized. This right also applies to members of their families and other relatives who lived with the repressed. In the absence of documentary data, the fact of forced relocation associated with repression of relatives can be established by the court.

Article 14. All residents of the RSFSR who were deprived of citizenship without their free expression of will are restored to citizenship of the RSFSR. Restoration of citizenship is carried out in the manner prescribed by the legislation of the USSR and the RSFSR.

Article 15. Persons who have been subjected to repression in the form of imprisonment and rehabilitated in accordance with this Law are paid monetary compensation at the rate of 180 rubles for each month of imprisonment, but not more than 25 thousand, by social security authorities at their place of residence on the basis of a certificate of rehabilitation. rubles, from the republican budget of the RSFSR.

Payments of compensation are made both at a time and in another manner established by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, provided that during the first three months from the moment the rehabilitated person applies to the social security authorities, at least one third of the total amount is paid, and the remaining amount is paid within three years.

Payment of compensation to heirs is not made, except in cases where compensation was accrued but not received by the rehabilitated person.

Persons who are subject to the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 18, 1981 “On compensation for damage caused to a citizen by illegal actions of state and public organizations, as well as officials in the performance of their official duties,” compensation is made minus the amounts paid on the basis this Decree.

Article 16. Persons who have been subjected to repression in the form of imprisonment, exile and expulsion, rehabilitated in accordance with this Law, members of their families, as well as persons who were unreasonably placed in psychiatric institutions for political reasons, have the right to priority housing in cases if they have lost the right to occupied residential premises due to repression and currently need to improve their living conditions, as well as in the cases specified in Article 13 of this Law. The same categories of persons living in rural areas are given the right to receive an interest-free loan and priority provision of building materials for housing construction.

Persons who have been subjected to repression in the form of imprisonment, exile or expulsion, rehabilitated in accordance with this Law, as well as persons who were unreasonably placed in psychiatric institutions for political reasons, have disabilities or are pensioners, have the right to:

priority receipt of vouchers for sanatorium treatment and recreation;

priority provision of medical care and reduction in the cost of prescription drugs by 50 percent;

free provision of a ZAZ-9688M class car if there are appropriate medical indications;

free travel by all types of urban passenger transport (except taxis), as well as public motor transport (except taxis) in rural areas within the administrative district of residence;

free travel (round trip) once a year by rail, and in areas without railway connections - by water, air or intercity road transport with a 50 percent discount on the fare;

reduction in payment for living space and utilities by 50 percent within the limits provided for by current legislation;

priority installation of the telephone;

priority entry into gardening societies and housing construction cooperatives;

priority admission to boarding homes for the elderly and disabled, living in them on full state support with retention of at least 25 percent of the assigned pension;

free production and repair of dentures (with the exception of dentures made of precious metals), preferential provision of other prosthetic and orthopedic products;

preferential provision of food and industrial goods.

Persons rehabilitated in accordance with this Law have the right to free consultation with lawyers on issues related to rehabilitation.

Rehabilitated persons entitled to the benefits provided for by this Law are issued a uniform certificate, which is approved by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR.

Article 17. Articles 12–16 of this Law apply to victims of political repression who were rehabilitated before the adoption of this Law.

Article 18. Lists of persons rehabilitated on the basis of this Law, indicating basic biographical data, charges for which they were recognized as rehabilitated, are periodically published by the press of local Councils of People's Deputies, Supreme Councils of republics within the RSFSR and the Supreme Council of the RSFSR.

Employees of the Cheka, GPU - OGPU, UNKVD - NKVD, MGB, prosecutors, judges, members of commissions, “special meetings”, “twos”, “troikas”, employees of other bodies exercising judicial powers, judges who participated in the investigation and consideration of cases about political repressions, bear criminal liability on the basis of the current criminal legislation. Information about persons duly found guilty of falsifying cases, using illegal investigative methods, and crimes against justice is periodically published by the press.

IV. FINAL PROVISIONS

Article 19. To monitor the implementation of this Law, a Commission of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR for Rehabilitation is created, which is provided with full access to the archives of courts, military tribunals, the prosecutor's office of state security agencies, internal affairs and other archives located on the territory of the RSFSR.

The Rehabilitation Commission is given the right to extend the effect of Articles 12–16 of this Law to persons rehabilitated in the general manner, when there are grounds to consider the fact of their prosecution and conviction as political repression.

President of the RSFSR

B. YELTSIN

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

THE FEDERAL LAW

On introducing amendments and additions to the Law of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression”

Article 1. Introduce into the Law of the Russian Federation of October 18, 1991 No. 1761-1 “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression” (Vedomosti of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR and the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, 1991, No. 44, Art. 1428; Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 1993, 15 October, No. 193; Collection of Legislation of the Russian Federation, 1995, No. 45, Article 4242) the following changes and additions:

Article 1–1 shall be stated as follows:

“Article 1-1. The following are recognized as having been subjected to political repression and subject to rehabilitation: children who were together with their parents or persons replacing them who were repressed for political reasons, in places of imprisonment, in exile, deportation, or in a special settlement;

children left as minors without the care of parents or one of them, unreasonably repressed for political reasons”; Article 2–1 shall be stated as follows: “Article 2–1. Children, spouses, and parents of persons who were shot or died in prison and were rehabilitated posthumously are recognized as victims of political repression. Restoration of lost rights and provision of benefits to these persons are carried out in cases specifically established by this Law, other regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation, and regulatory legal acts of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Benefits are provided to the spouse if she (he) has not entered into another marriage”;

in Article 8–1:

part one, after the words “According to applications from interested persons or public organizations for recognition”, add the words “subjected to political repression and subject to rehabilitation of persons specified in Article 1-1 of this Law, or”, and after the words “about recognition of persons”, add the words “subjected political repression and subject to rehabilitation either”;

Part two, after the words “on recognition of persons,” should be supplemented with the words “subjected to political repression and subject to rehabilitation or.”

President of Russian Federation

V. Putin

Part 12. Mstislav residents - victims of political repression The Mstislav residents were not spared by the wave of political repressions that swept through the 30s of the twentieth century. Below is information about only some of the repressed whose names have been established. About the part