the Service refused to issue academic documents of prisoners of the NKVD.
Explorer of archives Sergey Prudovsky demands from Russia’s FSB to provide criminal cases of the NKVD, convicted for participation in Stalinist repression. The Ministry refused, explaining that their former colleagues are not rehabilitated. Lawyers remind that earlier Russia’s Supreme court already ruled on the illegality of denial of criminal cases nerabilities citizens.
Sergei Prudovsky, the author of a book about Stalin’s repressions “Spasskaya beauty”, more than ten years studying national operations of the NKVD, in which repression suffered more than 365 thousand. For this work he wanted to get access to the archival criminal cases of the six officers of the NKVD — Lev Belsky, Mikhail Frinovsky, Samuel Kremnev-Sundukova, Alexander Minaeva-Zemanovicova, Nicholas Nikolaeva-Jurida and Vladimir Tsesarskaya. “They participated in the Commission of NKVD and Prosecutor of the USSR, prepared documents, reviewed landscape help, set resolution — whom to shoot, whom to send to the camp, — told “Kommersant” Mr. Brodowski.— Once a national operation began to decline, the authorities realized that he had gone too far, began to clean up the tail and arrest the perpetrators of the repression. The investigation against the six was led by the same NKVD. They were convicted of abuse of power, that is involved in the repression. Officially they were accused of plotting against the NKVD”. Later they were denied rehabilitation.
the information was needed for the book on the national operations of the NKVD. The request for familiarization with the Affairs Sergey Prudovsky sent to the Central archive of the FSB of Russia in December 2019, and two months later received a waiver.
the Agency relied on clause 5 of the regulation on access to materials stored in the state archives and the archives of state bodies of the Russian Federation, the stopped criminal and administrative cases against persons subjected to political repression and filtration testing cases. This document researchers at the archives called the the triple order, as adopted by the joint order of the Ministry of culture of Russia, MVD of Russia and FSB of Russia of 25 July 2006 № 375/584/352. The second sentence of section 5 requires the archive to issue the applicant the certificate of the results of the review.
“for some reason, this item is treated as the issuance of certificates instead of access to their files, although the words “instead of” there” — has explained to “Kommersant” the head of the human rights group “Team 29” Ivan Pavlov. However, in July 2019, the Supreme court granted the petition of St. Petersburg Georgy Shehata trying to archive the interior Ministry criminal case on your arabinofuranose grandfather, ruling that the Agency ��Takano referred to section 5 of the regulations. Moreover, the representative of the Ministry of interior, speaking in court, said that his colleagues “referred to the order that is not subject to application”.
“the Case against FSB Putovskogo similarly to the case Sahata, only here the researcher is not relative to persons, on request, — told “Kommersant” representative of Mr. Putovskogo in court, lawyer of the international society “memorial” Marina Agaltsova.— If the Supreme court found that the interior Ministry made a mistake by applying section 5 of the regulations, the same shall apply to decisions of the FSB of Russia, as the order of one to three departments.” But so far at the FSB, don’t think so. “The decision of the Supreme court of the Russian Federation, references to which are in your way any regulations providing for review of archival criminal cases stored in bodies of Federal security service, nerabilities of citizens do not contain”, — said in response to the researcher from the chief of the Central archive of FSB of Russia Andrey Shishkin.
consideration of the claim of Mr. Putovskogo to the FSB of Russia will begin in the Khoroshevsky court of Moscow on July 23. “By the way, on the same day in the same court will consider another one of my claim to the FSB of Russia concerning the ban on self-copying documents in the archives, — said Mr. Brodowski.— I was preparing a book about the Harbin operation of the NKVD and asked last year in the Central archive of the FSB of Russia copies of documents but I was refused as in the self-copy, and their copies. I had to rewrite by hand. But it’s a large amount, and the rewrite simply not possible.”
the Number of the repressed in the USSR, but later not rehabilitated persons is at least several hundred thousand people, said Deputy Chairman of the Board scientific information and educational center “memorial”, one of the leading experts on the history of the Cheka—OGPU—NKVD Nikita Petrov. According to the researchers “Memorial”, the number of repressed in the USSR may reach 12 million people, including well-known names slightly more than a quarter.
In 2006, the Prosecutor General’s office said that since January 1992 in the framework of the RF law “On rehabilitation of political repression victims” was revised criminal cases against over 1.24 million people. More than 775 thousand people rehabilitated. According to the statistics of the judicial Department under the Supreme court of the Russian Federation, over the last ten years reviewed 673 cases, from them the solution of rehabilitation issued for 520 cases in respect of 696 people. Most of the failures in rehabilitation (more than twenty per year) in 2012, 2013 and 2017.
Anastasia Kurilova
