  kapitanov-va-vestnik-2025-4.pdf |
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- On the origin of «10 years without the right of correspondence»
- Kapitanov V.A. On the origin of “10 years without the right of correspondence”. Vestnik of Kostroma State University, 2025, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 55–62. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2025-31-4-55-62
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2025-31-4-55-62
- УДК: 94(470)”1937/1938”
- EDN: WNJBUM
- Publish date: 2025-09-03
- Annotation: The article examines the practice of misinforming relatives of individuals executed by sentencing of the NKVD «troikas» and the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court during the Great Purge through oral notifications of the sentence of 10 years of imprisonment without the right of correspondence. It is demonstrated that the documents regulating this practice ignore the existence of the NKVD Commission and the Prosecutor of the USSR; the application of such a practice was bound to create irresolvable conflicts, since some of the death sentences issued by the Military Collegium were openly published. The testimonies from relatives of the executed indicate varying imprisonment terms, which would be impossible in the case of a uniformly organised disinformation campaign. The study shows that information about such misinformation emerged during Vinnytsia exhumation of 1943, when the Nazis attempted to present the bodies of Jews who had been killed by them in 1941-42, as the victims of the NKVD executions in 1937-38. Having no evidence of the NKVD’s involvement in the deaths of the exhumed, the occupying authorities had to state that the relatives of those executed by the NKVD had been verbally informed of ”10 years without the right to correspondence” sentence. The procedure of “identification” of the corpses was built on the basis of those oral statements. The article concludes that in reality, no organised campaign of misleading relatives of those executed through oral notifications took place in the USSR. All documents related to this practice require thorough verification.
- Keywords: «10 years without right to correspondence»; Great Purge; Vinnytsia exhumation; Military Collegium of Supreme Court; Commission of NKVD and Prosecutor General of Soviet Union; NKVD «troika».
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