Rehabilitation of victims of mass political repression. Rehabilitation of victims of political repression Resumption of rehabilitation of victims of repression 1987

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation(legal), from lat. rehabilitate, restoration of rights, restoration of a lost good name, cancellation of an unfounded accusation against an innocent person or group of persons due to the “lack of corpus delicti.” Rehabilitation differs from amnesty, pardon by the complete restoration of rights and reputation due to a false (incorrect) accusation.

Miscarriages of justice have existed among all peoples and at all times, and, accordingly, rehabilitation has been known since ancient times. Rehabilitation is also carried out for victims of unjustified political and other repressions, mass terror and genocide by the state, which were carried out both judicially and non-judicially (administratively).

Story

Historically, the term “rehabilitation” comes from the medieval French institution of pardoning a convicted person with the restoration of his former rights. This concept was first used by the French legalist Bleynianus.

Soviet criminal law defined the term “rehabilitation” as the restoration to a previous state of an innocent person who was brought to criminal liability unreasonably

The rehabilitation process nevertheless 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 30-40s and early 50s,” an instruction was given to the USSR Prosecutor’s Office and the USSR KGB 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, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, canceling extrajudicial 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 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, over 4 million citizens were rehabilitated, including 2,438,000 people who were convicted in court and not judicial procedure to criminal penalties. .

Rehabilitation in the Russian Federation

According to Russian legislation, an application for rehabilitation can be submitted by any person: the person being rehabilitated personally, a member of his family, a public organization or a third party (Article 6).

A feature of Russian legislation in the field of rehabilitation is the possibility of establishing the fact of the use of repressive measures on the basis of witness testimony, which the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation drew attention to in its ruling No. 31-B98-9 on March 30, 1999:

Those who are rehabilitated are given back what they need to live. real estate(or the value of this property), if it was not nationalized or (municipalized), destroyed during the Great Patriotic War and in the absence of other obstacles provided for in Article 16.1 of the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression”.

In the event of the death of a rehabilitated person, the return of property confiscated and lost due to the use of repression, reimbursement of its value or payment of monetary compensation is made to his heirs according to the law of the first priority in equal shares: his children, spouse and parents. According to part 4 Civil Code, the terms of intellectual and copyright protection in this case are counted not from the date of death, but from the date of rehabilitation.

As citizens, they have the right to rehabilitation Russian Federation, and citizens of states - former republics of the USSR, foreign citizens and stateless persons.

Particular attention to organs state power pay attention to the rehabilitation of the repressed Russian Cossacks, who were subjected to mass terror during which repressions were carried out in the form of decossackization. On July 16, 1992, the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation issues Resolution No. 3321-1 “On the rehabilitation of the Cossacks,” thereby supplementing the above legislative acts in the field of this repressed cultural and ethnic community. The legislative act abolished “as illegal all acts regarding the Cossacks adopted since 1918, insofar as they relate to the application of repressive measures against them” (Article 1 of the Resolution). Earlier, on June 15, 1992, the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On measures to implement the law of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples” in relation to the Cossacks” was issued, which decided to “condemn the ongoing party-state policy of repression, arbitrariness and lawlessness in relation to the Cossacks and their individual representatives in for the purpose of its rehabilitation as a historically established cultural and ethnic community of people.”

To facilitate and simplify the rehabilitation of persons repressed as children, who were in places of imprisonment, exile or expulsion and increase material base To implement rehabilitation, on April 23, 1996, Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 602 “On additional measures for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression” was issued.

The rehabilitation of clergy and victims of political repression who were subjected to it because of their convictions and faith was carried out by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 378 of March 14, 1996 “On measures for the rehabilitation of clergy and believers who have become victims of unjustified repression,” which condemned “the many years of terror unleashed by the Bolshevik by the party-Soviet regime in relation to clergy and believers of all faiths” (Article 1).

The activities of the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation in the matter of rehabilitation of victims of political repression are regulated by Order of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation dated February 5, 2008 No. 21 “On organizing the activities of the Prosecutor's Office for the implementation and supervision of the implementation of the law of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression,” which, in particular , emphasizes the regular need to verify the legality of the activities of commissions to restore the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression, supervision over compliance with legislation in the field of rehabilitation by all participants in the rehabilitation process, supervision over compliance with the rights of rehabilitated persons, supervision over compliance with legislation regulating the issues of social support for those rehabilitated and victims of political repression, providing them with established guarantees and compensation, targeted use of funds allocated by federal, regional, republican and municipal authorities.

The most striking and lengthy process was the rehabilitation of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and the royal family, which ended with the final decision on rehabilitation, which was made on October 1, 2008 by the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, satisfying supervisory complaint Houses of the Romanovs:

In June 2009, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation rehabilitated six more members of the Romanov family, repressed on class and social grounds.

Rehabilitation statistics in Russia

Prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation from 1992 to 2004. 978,891 applications were considered, of which 797,532 were resolved and 388,412 were satisfied, 636,335 cases against 901,127 people were verified and 634,165 people were rehabilitated, more than 326 thousand people were recognized as victims of political repression.

Total estimated General Prosecutor's Office RF and the Rehabilitation Commission, in the USSR and the RSFSR, “about 32 million people became victims of political repression, including 13 million during the Civil War,” as stated by the Chairman of the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression under the President of the Russian Federation, Alexander Yakovlev.

Rehabilitation in the regions of the Russian Federation

Lists of those rehabilitated in modern Russia

The Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, in cooperation with the regional executive authorities, the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and local governments, is preparing printed publications and electronic reference books under the general name “Book of Memory of Victims of Political Repression,” the publication of which was initiated by the Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia. These directories are an information source on the rehabilitation of persons repressed in the RSFSR and the USSR. Directories are published in pursuance of legislative acts in the field of rehabilitation, with the task of restoring historical and social justice, restoring a person’s good name and canceling illegal punishment, unjustified and repressive acts of state power against a person.

At the moment, in every region of Russia there is a replenishable book of memory. Most statistics are available in electronic form, there is a common statistical database edited by the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

• Returned names - lists of those rehabilitated in 12 regions of Russia, electronic books in memory of a number of regions of Russia
• Book of Memory of Rehabilitated Victims of Political Repression in the Vladimir Region
• Lists of those rehabilitated in the Magadan region
• Lists of those rehabilitated in the Vologda region

Rehabilitated in other countries

• Joan of Arc, (-), canonized as a saint in the city.
• Galileo, Galileo, (-), rehabilitated in
• Alfred Dreyfus (-), rehabilitated in
• Kallai Gyula -, rehabilitated in

Literature

Bobrenev V. A. For lack of corpus delicti. M. 1998. 480 p.

Links

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Three incomplete years without Stalin preceded Khrushchev’s report “On the cult of personality and its consequences” at a closed meeting of the 20th Party Congress. But these years were extremely eventful, containing a fierce struggle for power between the leader’s heirs, and carried out in the traditions of the mid-1930s. the reprisal against Beria, Abakumov, and other executioners, and the bashful silence of the names of the organizers, the reasons, the scale of previous repressions, and the difficult reassessment of values ​​that began, and the activities of the first rehabilitation commissions of the CPSU Central Committee under the leadership of Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Pospelov.

Paradoxically, the first acts of rehabilitation were initiated by a man whose name was strongly associated by public opinion with the punitive authorities and the arbitrariness that was happening in the country. In the spring of 1953, Beria showed increased activity, literally bombarding the Presidium of the Central Committee with his notes and proposals. They, however, affected only some of his closest employees, relatives of senior party dignitaries, as well as those sentenced to up to 5 years, i.e. on mild charges. It was proposed to reconsider the cases of the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. (the so-called cases of Kremlin doctors, the Mingrelian nationalist group, the heads of the artillery department and the aviation industry, the murder of the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee Mikhoels and others). But there was no talk of mass repressions of the 30s. or the deportations of peoples during the Great Patriotic War, to which Stalin’s henchman had a direct connection. And it’s clear why: the main goal of Beria’s initiatives was the desire to strengthen his own position in power structures, to raise his personal authority by any means, excluding himself from the number of persons responsible for the crimes of the Stalinist regime.

Beria's removal, it seemed, was supposed to facilitate the process of political rehabilitation. But this did not happen.

Malenkov, who still remained the formal leader of the country, at the July (1953) Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee introduced the words about the “cult of personality of Stalin.” But for Malenkov, this cult meant, first of all, the defenselessness of the party and state nomenklatura from the arbitrariness of the leader. Being involved in organizing mass repressions, he, of course, could not take a large-scale approach to this problem.

Months were spent on yet another redistribution of power within the Presidium of the Central Committee, reprisals against supporters and relatives of Beria and other heads of punitive services, and reshuffling of personnel in security agencies, Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office, review of the results of the amnesty announced on Beria's initiative. The military was thanked for their active role in the arrest of Beria: the rehabilitation of 54 convicted generals and admirals took place Soviet army, including those close to Zhukov - Telegin, Kryukov and Varennikov. But numerous letters received from prisoners, exiles and special settlers remained unanswered. The decisions taken during this period were distinguished only by a more definite indication of the supposedly main culprits of the repressions - former senior officials of the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were hastily tried.

Only at the beginning of 1954, when Khrushchev’s leading position in the party and state elite was clearly identified, rehabilitation received a new impetus, although, having set a course to expand the rehabilitation process, to establish the causes and consequences of repression, Khrushchev, like the overthrown Beria, was far from guided by selfless motives. This is evidenced, on the one hand, by the secrecy of statistical data on those arrested by the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB for 1921-1953. (they were counted, probably on behalf of the first secretary of the Central Committee, already in December 1953), and on the other hand, the rapid rehabilitation of the participants in the “Leningrad case.” Khrushchev became well versed in Stalin's methods of using compromising materials to weaken rivals in the struggle for power. The restoration of justice in relation to the Leningraders compromised Malenkov, one of the culprits in the death of Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and their comrades. Conducted with wide publicity among the party apparatus, this rehabilitation strengthened Khrushchev’s authority, paving the way for him to gain sole power.

But no matter what the motives of the rulers, the aspirations and hopes of political prisoners and exiles began to gradually come true. Along with the establishment of a judicial procedure for reviewing cases (according to the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 1, 1953, the Supreme Court of the USSR received the right to review, upon the protest of the Prosecutor General of the USSR, the decisions of the OGPU board, the Special Meeting and twos and threes), in May 1954 the Central a commission to review the cases of those convicted of “counter-revolutionary crimes” held in camps, colonies, prisons and in exile in settlements; similar commissions were created locally. The Central Commission received the right to review the cases of persons convicted by the Special Meeting of the NKVD-MGB or the OGPU Collegium; local commissions were given the functions of reviewing the cases of those convicted with twos and threes. To study the situation of special settlers, a commission was formed under the chairmanship of Voroshilov, the result of which was the well-known resolution “On the lifting of some restrictions on the legal status of special settlers” dated July 5, 1954. Those previously sentenced to up to 5 years for “anti-Soviet activities” were released from exile. Restrictions on special settlements were lifted for dispossessed people and citizens of German nationality who lived in areas from which evictions were not carried out.

The mechanism for making decisions about rehabilitation was not simple. Only in 1954 did the prosecutor's office gain the right to request archival investigative files from the KGB, which made it possible to increase the number of considered personal files of victims of repression convicted in court. Prosecutors, investigators, and military lawyers were supposed to conduct a so-called review of the case, during which various information about the repressed person was collected, witnesses were called, and archival information was requested. Special role At the same time, certificates from the Central Party Archive were played, which noted that the repressed person belonged to one or another opposition or the absence of such data.

The employee who conducted the inspection drew up a conclusion. On the basis of this document, the Prosecutor General of the USSR, his deputies, and the Chief Military Prosecutor submitted (or may not have done so) a protest on the case to the plenum, the Criminal Collegium or the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. The court made a ruling. It was not necessarily rehabilitative. The court, for example, could reclassify the presented articles (political into criminal and vice versa), could leave the previous sentence in force, and finally could limit itself to only reducing the penalty.

Due to the complicated procedure for rehabilitation, by the beginning of 1956 the volume of unrevised cases remained enormous. In order to somehow speed up the process of release from the camps, the country's leadership decided to create special traveling commissions, which were allowed to make decisions on the release of prisoners on the spot, without waiting for a determination on rehabilitation.

One more important circumstance should be taken into account. In accordance with the established procedure in the country, all fundamental issues of the rehabilitation of especially famous people in the country were first submitted to the Presidium of the Central Committee. It was this all-powerful body that was the highest “prosecutorial” and “judicial” authority, determining the fates of not only the living, but also the dead. Without his consent, the prosecutor's office did not have the right to submit proposals for reviewing cases to the courts, and the courts did not have the right to make decisions on rehabilitation.

However, one should not think that the decisions of the Presidium of the Central Committee were always immediately implemented. For example, when special camps were transformed into ordinary forced labor camps, they retained the old internal rules that regulated the behavior of “especially dangerous state criminals.” Instead of their last name, they still called their number, which they wore on their clothes. Another example is the fate of those convicted in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. After the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee, their rehabilitation lasted for several years. Moreover, in the second half of the 1980s. I had to return to this problem again.

The Presidium of the Central Committee received generalized and varied information about the progress of rehabilitation. With each note, with each revised case, an increasingly sinister picture of crimes emerged, which was further difficult to hide from the people. The scale of the atrocities defied description. The more documents were revealed, the more pressing difficult and unpleasant questions arose, and first of all - about the causes and culprits of the tragedy, about the attitude towards Stalin and his policies, about making the bloody facts public.

The situation inside the Presidium of the Central Committee gradually became tense. Members of the party Areopagus did not argue during the rehabilitation of Chubar, Rudzutak, Kosior, Postyshev, Kaminsky, Gamarnik, Eikhe, and other famous Bolsheviks, Bulgarian or Polish communists. Voting on these resolutions, as the records show, was always unanimous. They did not argue even when the ministers of power and the Prosecutor General of the USSR proposed issuing false certificates about the circumstances and date of death to the relatives of those executed and killed in the camps, in order to thereby obscure the true scale and course of the repressions. They also agreed that it was impossible to question the results of the internal party struggle and to rehabilitate the Trotskyists, opportunists, as well as the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and representatives of other socialist parties; that it is necessary, if possible, to refrain from returning to former special settlers and exiles the property confiscated from them during the repressions; that Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists should continue to remain in places of exile under administrative control.

Disputes arose around another, close and sick person - personal responsibility for crimes. Of course, the question was not raised in such a direct formulation at meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee and, for obvious reasons, could not be raised. However, the question of responsibility was invisibly present at meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee, as soon as the discussion came up about the attitude towards Stalin’s legacy and the publication of information about repressions.

On November 5, 1955, a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee was held, at which events in connection with the celebration of the next anniversary were considered October Revolution. The question was raised about Stalin's upcoming birthday in December. In previous years, this day was always celebrated with a ceremonial meeting. And for the first time, a decision was made not to hold the celebrations. Khrushchev, Bulganin, Mikoyan spoke for this. Kaganovich and Voroshilov objected, emphasizing that such a decision “would not be well received by the people.”

A new heated debate unfolded on December 31, 1955, when discussing the circumstances of Kirov’s murder. It was suggested that security officers had a hand in the murder. It was decided to review the investigative files of former NKVD leaders Yagoda, Yezhov and Medved. At the same time, to clarify the fate of the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, elected at the 17th Party Congress, a commission was created headed by the Secretary of the Central Committee Pospelov. Its members included Secretary of the Central Committee Aristov, Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Shvernik, Deputy Chairman of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee Komarov. The commission received the right to request all materials necessary for work.

The issue of repression was also raised at the meetings on February 1 and 9, 1956. During a heated discussion of materials about the so-called military conspiracy in the Red Army and the actual guilt of Tukhachevsky, Yakir and other military leaders, members of the Presidium considered it necessary to personally interrogate one of the investigators in this case - Rhodes. After his revelations, after the members of the Presidium and the secretaries of the Central Committee became acquainted with the horrific facts presented in the report of Pospelov’s commission about the barbaric methods of investigation and mass extermination in the 1930s. members of the party, Khrushchev ensured that the issue of Stalin’s personality cult and repressions was included on the agenda of the upcoming 20th Congress of the CPSU. The objections of Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich could no longer be taken into account either politically or morally.

What motives determined the position of the majority of the Presidium of the Central Committee, which supported Khrushchev? Mikoyan later wrote that it would have been better to tell the party leaders themselves about the repressions and not wait for anyone else to take charge of it. Such information, Mikoyan believed, could show the congress delegates that his former comrades had recently learned the whole truth about Stalin’s crimes, as a result of a special study undertaken by Pospelov’s commission. Thus, members of the Presidium of the Central Committee tried to absolve themselves of blame for the bloody terror.

This kind of confessions are also contained in the memoirs of Khrushchev, who not only expected to evade personal responsibility, but also understood that the publication of facts about Stalin’s crimes would primarily discredit the oldest and still authoritative members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, who had long worked side by side with Stalin. For some reason, Khrushchev was convinced that they would not talk about his involvement in the repressions.

When assessing the reasons that prompted us to choose a course towards criticizing Stalinism, in addition to subjective aspects, one more circumstance should be taken into account. By this time, the majority of the Presidium of the Central Committee had come to the understanding that using previous methods it was unlikely to be able to keep the country in obedience and maintain the regime in conditions of the difficult financial situation of the population, low standard of living, and acute food and housing crises. The recent uprisings of prisoners in the Mountain camp in Norilsk, in the River camp in Vorkuta, in Steplag, Unzhlag, Vyatlag, Karlag and other “islands of the Gulag archipelago” forced us to remember this. In unfavorable conditions, uprisings could become the detonator of great social upheavals. Therefore, in reality, the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee had a limited choice of options.

The famous report on the cult of personality and its consequences, delivered on February 25, 1956 in deathly silence at a closed session of the 20th Congress, made a stunning impression on the delegates. This bold, revealing document for its time, despite the initial plans to keep it secret, was brought to the attention of the entire party, workers of the Soviet apparatus, and activists of Komsomol organizations. The heads of delegations of foreign communist and workers' parties present at the congress were familiarized with it. Then, in an adjusted and somewhat shortened form, the report was sent for review to the chairmen and first secretaries of all friendly communist parties in the world.

From that moment on, criticism of Stalinism and the crimes inextricably linked with it became public. A new stage has opened in the rehabilitation of victims of repression.

A.N.Artizov

Documents and scientific reference materials for them are published in the publication: Rehabilitation: how it happened . Documents of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and other materials. In 3 volumes. T. 1. March 1953 – February 1956. Comp. ARTIZOV A.N., SIGACHEV Y.V., KHLOPOV V.G., SHEVCHUK I.N. M.: International Foundation "Democracy", 2000.

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-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 were attributed to the activities of enemies and, first of all, low level life of the population. 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.

In the years civil war(1917-1922/23), according to some estimates based on incomplete information various types More than 2 million people were subjected to 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 collectivization agriculture in the mid 20s - 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 right-wing group of Slepkov and others (Bukharin school)", "Leningrad case". 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 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 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. 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 their 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, criminal prosecution, exile, placement for compulsory treatment in special psychiatric hospitals closed type, unjustified deprivation of civil rights, expulsion from the USSR, participants of the dissident movement and dissidents were subjected to. 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 scale of repression “individually”
• 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.

Repression in administrative procedure- this 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 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. Exact numbers on this matter statistical reports do not give, 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 calculations, 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 - among them there were real criminals (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 Leningrad region in 1942, the 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 211th Congress of the CPSU of 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 early 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 “personality cult” 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 it was 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 - deciding to tell the truth, at the same time constantly dosing this truth, while simultaneously telling lies, and completely turning 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 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 alliances 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 during 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 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 According to the protests of prosecutors, less than 30 thousand people were rehabilitated from 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 which 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 by 10 years 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 Rehabilitation Commission 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 still was 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 on early stages The preparation of 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 “compensation feasible at that time for moral and material damage.”

In the Law for the first time in Russian legislation a definition of political repression is given, the concept of a “political motive” of the state is introduced. 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 the 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. Cases of those convicted individually (stored mainly in the archives of the authorities state security) are considered by prosecutors who themselves make decisions on rehabilitation or refusal 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, exiles, labor settlements were recognized as victims of repression (previously they were recognized only as victims), and then children who remained as a result of repression in underage without the care of one or two parents. 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, the peculiarity 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 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 get back either their seized housing or their 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 kulak people 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 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 the system 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 on urban and suburban automobile, electric, railway and water transport public use, 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 adoption of the Law, lump sum compensation amounted to “three quarters of the statutory minimum size wages for each month of imprisonment,” and in 2000 it was generally fixed at the level of 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 Russian state becomes richer and it would seem that the opportunity has arisen to provide victims with adequate support, the authorities have 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 individual categories 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. Disenfranchisement 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 high-profile cases which became famous during 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. Not only individuals, but entire categories of victims turn out to be impossible to rehabilitate 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, society does not have enough general figures, which are periodically, for various random reasons, called by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, and the Prosecutor's Office. 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 federal authorities, so that it proclaims its task to create such a base.

Russia has successful experience in creating a national database on victims of the Great Patriotic War. Achieve government decision It has not yet been possible 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 are still left 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. Deprived of rights There were 1,040,894 people voting 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 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

Rehabilitation was slow, inconsistent and painful. It's not finished. Its implementation took place and is taking place in a fierce struggle between democratic and pro-communist forces. It began shortly after Stalin's death. On September 1, 1953, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Special Meeting was abolished. Complaints and statements of those convicted by the OGPU board, “troikas” (“twos”) and the Special Meeting began to be considered by the USSR Prosecutor’s Office, but with a preliminary conclusion from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Supreme Court of the USSR was given the right to review decisions of special boards, “troikas” and the Special Meeting. Until 1954, 827,692 people convicted in 1917-1953 were rehabilitated. Rehabilitation almost did not concern serious charges. Of all those rehabilitated to death penalty only 1,128 people, or 0.14%, were sentenced (hereinafter, statistical data taken from the official materials of the Central Archives of the KGB-MB-FSK-FSB of Russia are used).
Punitive authorities in every possible way prevented objective rehabilitation and kept it under their control. For these purposes, the Prosecutor General of the USSR, the Minister of Justice of the USSR, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR on May 19, 1954 issued a joint top secret order No. 96 ss/0016/00397/002252, which actually changed the procedure for reviewing criminal cases established by decree in in relation to convicts still serving their sentences, i.e. those who were mostly repressed while in power officials. The review of cases was supposed to be carried out on its own, departmental. For this purpose, a Central Commission was created, which included the Prosecutor General, the Chairman of the KGB, the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Minister of Justice, the head of SMERSH, and the head of the Main Directorate of Military Tribunals. She was ordered to review cases of persons convicted by central authorities. The cases of those repressed locally were supposed to be reviewed by republican, regional and regional commissions consisting of the heads of the same punitive bodies. According to the authors of the order, the decision of the named commissions should be final. However, this did not work out.
By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 19, 1955, which was not published, the Supreme Court of the USSR (which, perhaps, was a little less in the blood of innocent persons than the KGB) was allowed to review the decisions of the Central Commission, and on March 24, 1956. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR formed its own commissions to verify on site the validity of the detention of convicted persons accused of committing “political crimes.” These commissions were also given the right to make final decisions. From the content of the analyzed regulations on the procedure for rehabilitation, it is clear that all the authorities involved in the repression did not want to let go of control over rehabilitation.
On February 25, 1956, on the last day of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, at a closed meeting, a report by N.S. was held outside the agenda. Khrushchev "On the cult of personality and its consequences." This was the first official recognition Stalin's repressions. August 7, 1957 by closed Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Supreme Courts Union republics and military tribunals of districts (fleets), upon protests from the relevant prosecutors, were also given the right to review all cases, including decisions of the Central and local commissions under the punitive authorities, and a few days later - decisions of the commissions of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. During 1954-1961 another 737,182 people were rehabilitated (this number includes those convicted after 1953), including 353,231 people (47.9%) sentenced to death.
In the early 60s. the rehabilitation process began to be deliberately slowed down, and the staff of the prosecutor's office departments involved in preparing materials for filing protests was reduced. And with the removal of Khrushchev in October 1964, mass rehabilitation practically stopped. Over 25 years (1962-1987), only 157,055 people were rehabilitated. This process was resumed only in 1988. Until 1993, another 1,264,750 people were acquitted (since 1992, the number of those rehabilitated includes only persons convicted in Russia). In total, 2,986,679 repressed persons were personally rehabilitated. However, this is far from a complete account of lawlessness. It was almost impossible to open them during an individual review of existing criminal cases after repeated efforts by the KGB. Therefore, a group rehabilitation path began to be developed.
On January 16, 1989, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On additional measures to restore justice for victims of repressions that took place during the 30-40s and early 50s”, all decisions made by the “troikas”, special boards and special meetings were canceled out-of-court decisions. This, however, was not enough. On November 14, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the declaration “On recognizing illegal and criminal repressive acts against peoples subjected to forced relocation and ensuring their rights.” But this did not solve all the issues. By decree of the President of the USSR of August 13, 1990, repressions against peasants during the period of forced collectivization and other citizens repressed for political, social, national, religious and other reasons in the 20-50s were declared illegal.
The decree did not apply to persons reasonably convicted of committing crimes against the Motherland and the people. But how to identify them? Only by checking each case. Consequently, group rehabilitation still did not work out. Moreover, whether the convicted person was justifiably or unjustifiably repressed was decided not by the court, but privately by officials in the prosecutor's office. This is how the secret rehabilitation of secret convictions turned out. Other difficulties also emerged2. They were overcome in the RSFSR Law of April 26, 1991 “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples” and the Russian Federation Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression.” Convicts were rehabilitated for decriminalized acts. However, not all compositions considered in the 20-50s. state crimes were decriminalized and not all those repressed were convicted illegally. Thus, for these acts, rehabilitation required an individual approach. In 1993, the Law of the Russian Federation “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression” was amended to give persons denied rehabilitation the right to go to court.
One of the last acts of rehabilitation was the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of January 24, 1995 “On the restoration of legal rights Russian citizens- former Soviet prisoners of war and civilians repatriated during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period.” It recognizes the actions of the party and state leadership of the former USSR and coercive measures by government agencies adopted in relation to Russian citizens - former Soviet military personnel who were captured and encircled in battles in defense of the Fatherland, and civilians repatriated during the war and in the post-war period. These individuals, of whom there are only a few survivors, are issued war certificates and are entitled to social benefits provided for citizens subjected to Nazi persecution. Naturally, all this does not apply to those persons who served in combat and special formations of the Nazi troops and in the police.
And one last thing. The RSFSR Law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples” talks about territorial, political, material, social and cultural rehabilitation. The most difficult were material and especially territorial rehabilitation for the Germans, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars and some peoples of the North Caucasus. Until recently, for example, there has been a search for ways to resolve the interethnic conflict between the Ingush and Ossetians in connection with the territorial rehabilitation of the Ingush.
Not only in Russia, but also in other states formed on the territory of the former USSR, many regulations were adopted defining the procedure for the rehabilitation of illegally repressed citizens, the restoration of their rights and legitimate interests, the provision of benefits and the payment of monetary compensation.

More on the topic § 3. REHABILITATION OF VICTIMS OF POLITICAL REPRESSION:

1. § 2. IDEOLOGICAL AND LEGAL BASIS OF POLITICAL REPRESSION
2. § 2. Political and legal trends of political repression in the USSR
3. § 1. The concept of rehabilitation and the basis for the emergence of the right to rehabilitation
4. § 1. The concept of rehabilitation. Grounds for the emergence of the right to rehabilitation
5. 3.1. Concept and content of the definition of a crime victim 3.1.1. Crime victim concept
6. ABOUT PUNISHMENT MEASURES FOR REPRESSED THOSE AND THE NUMBER OF THOSE SUBJECT TO REPRESSION

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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. In the Russian Federation, a law was adopted on October 18, 1991. “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression.”

What is rehabilitation? For the answer to this question, we turned to the Small Academic Dictionary. “Rehabilitation is the restoration of the honor and reputation of an incorrectly accused or defamed person.”

How did the process of rehabilitation of the dispossessed go? The rehabilitation process in the 1930s. was complicated by the need to collect a whole package of documents, as well as by the fact that the peasants’ applications were considered by various authorities. From 70 to 90% of decisions made on complaints were negative. In fact, the “stigma of a kulak” remained, despite the restoration of voting rights, partial refund property, the process of restoring the rights of the dispossessed, which stopped after 1937, was resumed in 1985. - Perestroika and the policy of glasnost began. Attempts to move away from “stagnation” in society could not but lead to a rethinking of the historical past. As it turned out after a detailed study, they first started talking about the closed pages of history only in 1985. Since 1987 The rehabilitation process, which affected political figures, began in 1990. repressions against peasants during the period of collectivization were declared illegal.

According to the law “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression” (Article 3), the following are subject to rehabilitation:

· convicted of state and other crimes;

· repressed by decision of the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, UNKVD, NKVD, MGB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, prosecutor's office, commissions, “special meetings”, “twos”, “troikas” and other bodies;

· unjustifiably placed in psychiatric institutions for compulsory treatment;

· unjustifiably brought to criminal liability with the case terminated for non-rehabilitating reasons;

· recognized as socially dangerous for political reasons and subjected to imprisonment, exile, deportation without being charged with committing a specific crime.

Rehabilitated, previously dispossessed persons also receive back the real estate necessary for living (or its value), if it was not nationalized or (municipalized), destroyed during the Great Patriotic War and in the absence of other obstacles provided for in Article 16.1 of the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Political Victims” repression."

In the generally accepted sense of the word, rehabilitation means any restoration of a citizen to his rights. In accordance with established legal concepts The rehabilitation of a person who was brought in as an accused is considered to be an acquittal during a review of the case, a decision to terminate a criminal case due to the absence of a crime, for the absence of corpus delicti or lack of proof of participation in the commission of a crime, as well as a decision to terminate a case of an administrative offense.

The Law of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression of October 18, 1991, supplemented by a number of laws and by-laws, may have served as the basis for the rehabilitation of dispossessed and deported peasants. The implementation of rehabilitation revealed practical problems associated with confirming the facts of dispossession.

Undoubtedly, the rehabilitation of the dispossessed played a significant role in terms of restoring historical justice in relation to a large social group. There is no doubt that the consequences of dispossession and the losses suffered by the peasantry will affect the life of society and the state for a long time.

In 1993, my grandmother Lidiya Nikolaevna sent a request for the rehabilitation of her relatives to the Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Tambov Region. In 1994, she received a letter informing her that case No. 7219 about the stay under the supervision of Ivan Ignatievich Nikitin and his family was in the archives of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Chelyabinsk Region. Lidiya Nikolaevna sent the following request to the Information Center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Chelyabinsk Region. In April 1994, she received a certificate of rehabilitation of Nikitin Ivan Ignatievich, who was repressed in 1931. The certificate was issued by the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Tambov Region. In June of the same year, a response came from the information center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Chelyabinsk Region, in addition to a certificate of being under supervision with restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Ivan Ignatievich Nikitin, a certificate of rehabilitation of Anna Ivanovna Polyanskaya (Nikitina), a questionnaire for the evicted kulak household, and a questionnaire were sent. Based on these documents, Anna Ivanovna received a certificate stating that she is a victim of political repression and has the right to benefits established by Article 16 of the Federal Law “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression.” In 1996, Lidiya Nikolaevna Parshukova (Polyanskaya) received the same certificate and certificate. Volodar Nikolaevich Polyansky was recognized as a victim of political repression. The information center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Sverdlovsk Region stores archival materials on the case of repression against Arseny Andreevich Polyansky and his family.

Polyanskaya (Nikitina) Anna Ivanovna died in 2005 at the age of 93.