Chapter 4. Lustration Missed Opportunity

MEMORY OF NATIONS
Democratic Transition Guide
[ The Russian Experience ]

CONTENTS AUTHORS
TRANSFORMATION OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM Nikolai Bobrinsky
(1988–1993) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ��3 Transitional Justice Researcher, Lawyer and Social Activist
focusing on election monitoring and defense of voting rights
DISMANTLING THE STATE SECURITY in election commissions and courts in Russia. Co-creator of
APPARATUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ��7 the “Churov list” (black list of election commissions’ mem-
bers allegedly involved in election fraud in the course of State
REGIME ARCHIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ��17 Duma elections of 2011).
LUSTRATION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY . . . . . . . . ��23 Natalia Kolyagina

Project Coordinator and Editor of urokiistorii.ru Website at
INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION International Memorial in Moscow (since 2009). Her main
OF THE CRIMES OF THE REGIME . . . . . . . . . . . ��26 research interests are modern monuments, historical politics
and elaboration of the difficult past of Russian and European
REHABILITATION OF VICTIMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ��31 societies.
EDUCATION AND PRESERVATION OF SITES Evgenia Lezina

OF CONSCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ��38 Senior Research Fellow at the Analytical Levada Centre
in Moscow. Visiting Fellow at the Federal Foundation for
TIMELINE OF THE MAJOR EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . ��45 the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in the former Ger-
man Democratic Republic (2012–2013), at the Imre Kertész
SOURCES USED AND FURTHER READING . . . . . ��47 Kolleg of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (2016) and at
the Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (2017).
Svetlana Shuranova
Project Coordinator at International Memorial in Moscow
coordinating projects on access to archived information
(since 2013).
This case study is a part of the publication “Memory of Nations: Democratic Transition Guide” (ISBN 978-80-86816-36-4).
This publication is available to download at www.cevro.cz/guide.
[ 2 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

TRANSFORMATION OF THE POLITICAL
SYSTEM (1988–1993)
Nikolai Bobrinsky
INTRODUCTION structure of the political secret police – the State Security Com-

mittee (KGB).
The process of dismantling the Soviet totalitarian communist The ideology of the Soviet Communist regime was Marxism-
regime and establishing the new Russian state is most often as- Leninism, which provided for the establishment of the future
sociated with the word “Perestroika”, which usually stands for classless communist society that did not recognize private prop-
the political and economic changes in the USSR that preceded its erty and market relations. Individual entrepreneurship was pro-
collapse in 1991. The fall of the Soviet Union is a separate event, hibited and prosecuted. Moreover, Marxism-Leninism imposed
closely related to the failure of the communist regime. In turn, the fight against religious beliefs and practices. All the parties,
these historic events are closely related to the Cold War and its except for the communist one, were prohibited. The activities of
termination. unauthorized public associations were not allowed.
This chapter discusses only those aspects of the above men- After the death, in 1982, of Leonid Brezhnev who had headed
tioned processes that are associated with Russia. In this respect, the CPSU for 18 years, and the short-term rule of Yuri Andropov
we should note that the Soviet Union included a considerable followed by Konstantin Chernenko, in March 1985 Mikhail Gor-
part of the lands which had been a part of the Russian Empire be- bachev became the Communist Party General Secretary and
fore its collapse in 1917. Having seized power in Russia, the Com- the actual leader of the Soviet Union.
munist Party divided its historical territory into several separate Unlike other republics in the Union, by the beginning of
republics, and in 1922 it united them into the Union. One of these Perestroika the RSFSR did not have its own communist party.
republics was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, According to the 1978 Constitution the highest state author-
or the RSFSR. Being an artificial political unit in the USSR over ity was the Supreme Soviet. It passed laws and was called for
the largest part of its history, the RSFSR gradually grew into an time-limited sessions. The regular body of the Supreme Soviet
independent political entity from 1989 onward – and after the fall was its Presidium. Similarly to other soviets of different levels,
of the Soviet Union it became an independent state. the deputies of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet were in fact appointed
by the Communist Party and then “elected” with no alternatives.
The RSFSR executive power was headed by the Council of Minis-
THE SOVIET POLITICAL SYSTEM AT ters. The RSFSR authorities enjoyed the powers assigned to them
THE DAWN OF PERESTROIKA AND THE ROLE by the Constitution of the Soviet Union.
OF RUSSIA IN THE SYSTEM
THE MILESTONES OF PERESTROIKA
By the mid-1980s the Soviet Union was a centralized single-party IN THE USSR BEFORE THE POLITICAL
dictatorship. De facto the supreme power in the state belonged
to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Com-
SEPARATION OF THE RSFSR
munist Party (CPSU) headed by its General Secretary. It was en-
forced via governmental bodies that were under the complete The political understanding of Perestroika in the Soviet Union
party control. Regional, republican and All-Union parliaments may be generally described as the search for new political means
(called Soviets) were formed out of the candidates approved by to reform the state management system, which brought in new
the party units at the respective level. The election of deputies public powers that were out of the regime’s control, and the CPSU
was by ballot, where one or more party-approved candidates par- first lost its monopoly on power, followed by the power itself. One
ticipated. The party assigned people to all the key positions in of the Soviet system institutions, which had been just a fiction for
the governmental and non-governmental organizations (the list years, but had gradually attained a larger political significance,
of these positions is usually referred to as the “nomenklatura”, or was the republics of the Soviet Union, including the Russian one.
the political establishment). The process of gaining independence from the Union centre be-
The Communist Party itself was also organized in a strictly gan only during the fifth year of Perestroika, in 1989. It had been
centralized manner, where inferior subdivisions followed and preceded by a number of important events.
performed the decisions of the superior ones. The number of In early 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev announced the policy
Soviet Communists in the second half of the 1980s reached of Glasnost, which initially meant revealing and publishing
19 million people. the drawbacks hampering Perestroika and the acceleration of
The power of the CPSU was based on its total penetration into the technological and socioeconomic development in the So-
the society – party units were organized in entities and institu- viet press. After the Chernobyl nuclear power station catastrophe
tions, party membership was an informal precondition for any on April 26, 1986, the prohibition of showing negative news on
career promotion – on the systematic ideological dictatorship the situation in the country was removed as well as on the pub-
and suppression of dissent as well as on the well-developed lic debate of the flaws and problems of the Soviet society. Over
MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 3 ]

two years, glasnost led to a drastic change in the attitudes in bloc won in many large cities. Boris Yeltsin managed to become
the Soviet society. The changes, however, seemed insufficient the chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet.
for Gorbachev’s team, who expected to rely on the public sup- Further political separation of Russia was influenced by
port and encourage the party bureaucracy to adopt the policy the personal ambitions of the new RSFSR leader and his team as
of socioeconomic reforms. Therefore, in the middle of 1988 it well as by the wide public support of the measures to dismantle
was decided to move forward from the freedom of speech to the communist system in politics and economics, which forced
the democratization of the political system. At the 19th CPSU Russian politicians to oppose the cautious and hesitating posi-
Conference the principle of “alternative” elections (i.e. involv- tion of the Union centrists. The first and brightest manifestation
ing competition) to the soviets at all levels was proclaimed as of the Russian republic as a new political subject was the Dec-
well as granting them real powers. It was also planned to expand laration of Sovereignty adopted on June 12, 1990 by the over-
the rights of the Union republics. whelming majority of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. The declara-
For the purpose of these principles in December 1988 tion announced the supremacy of the Constitution and laws of
the USSR Constitution was amended: the Supreme legislative the RSFSR across its territory. As a result there emerged the “war
body of the Union was the Congress of People’s Deputies, elected of laws” between the RSFSR and the Union centre. In October
for 5 years and convened once a year. The Supreme Soviet was 1990 the RSFSR Supreme Soviet introduced liability for the en-
turned into the Congress regular body, elected by it. The first forcement on its territory of the USSR regulations, which were not
election of the People’s deputies was scheduled for spring 1989. ratified by the Russian parliament. After that the entities which
Gorbachev’s line towards democratization led to the rap- were subordinate to the centre were transferred to the RSFSR
id growth of independent non-communist movements and jurisdiction. The 1991 budget law introduced a single channel tax
groups, which were first informal. Though at the 1989 election system, depriving the Union centre of its own revenues.
the CPSU did not have organized party opponents yet, in many Another manifestation of the growing significance of the RS-
districts its members were defeated by popular independent FSR was the establishment of the Russian Communist Party in
public figures. At the Congress they organized the first Soviet summer 1990. It united the representatives of the CPSU con-
legal political opposition – the Interregional Deputies’ Group. servative wing, who did not agree with Gorbachev’s weak and
One of its co-founders and the actual leader was Boris Yeltsin. inconsistent policies. At the same time Boris Yeltsin declared that
He came from the top level of the party and headed the CPSU he was leaving the CPSU and moving on to a clearly anticommu-
committee of Moscow during the first years of Perestroika. In nist position. He was followed by many democratic politicians,
1987 he publicly criticized conservative members of the political including the mayors of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg Gavriil
bureau and was dismissed from office. Nonetheless, despite So- Popov and Anatoly Sobchak.
viet traditions, Yeltsin’s political career did not terminate at that Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to stabilize a USSR that was
point: 18 months later he gained a clear victory at the election gradually falling apart by encouraging the republics to sign a new
of the People’s deputies in the Moscow district and was elected union treaty. One of the remedies in his fight for the Union was
to the Supreme Soviet. the referendum in March 1991. Three quarters of the Soviet voters
At the Congress of People’s deputies the opposition united opted for its preservation. In Russia the referendum was com-
demanding to terminate Article 6 of the USSR Constitution, pleted with a question on introducing the post of the president
which stipulated the “leading and guiding” role of the CPSU in of the republic, elected by universal suffrage (and not by the Su-
the Soviet state and society. This demand grew in popularity, and preme Soviet, as it was at the All-Union level). This proposition
early in 1990 unprecedented mass demonstrations were held in was supported, thus opening the way to electing Boris Yeltsin
Moscow to support it. In these conditions Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of Russia. At the election of June 12, 1991, he won in
mainly following his own tactical reasons, agreed to abolish the first round with 57.3 % of the votes. Now Yeltsin’s power was
the CPSU monopoly on power and to introduce a multi-party based on the will of the people, and not on the semi-communist
system along with establishing the post of the USSR president. Supreme Soviet. Along with the presidential election there was
Thus, Gorbachev, though allowing for limitations in the political a referendum in Leningrad. The majority of the northern Rus-
positions of the Communist Party, took the highest newly created sian capital’s citizens voted for a return of the city’s historic name
office in the state. The abolishment of Article 6 of the Constitution of Saint-Petersburg instead of the name given by the Bolsheviks
was a vital step in the emancipation of once strictly and centrally after the founder of their party.
controlled Soviet regional and industrial elites, whereas now they By summer 1991 there was a tense political and socioeconom-
were becoming increasingly independent. It also opened the way ic situation in the country. Prices were soaring. Even in Moscow
to establishing new political parties. it was hard to find foods and consumer goods. Negotiations on
signing the new union treaty were close to completion. According
to the draft, the USSR was to turn into a loose confederation, fully
DEMOCRATIZATION AND THE POLITICAL dependent on funding from the republics. After signing the new
SEPARATION OF RUSSIA union treaty, Mikhail Gorbachev expected to get rid of the con-
servative people in the union government who stood for the idea
In autumn 1989 the RSFSR performed the constitutional reforms, of preserving the “strong” USSR. In response, they proceeded to
following the previous year’s changes in the All-Union Consti- plot a coup d’etat, aiming to prevent the reforms and fully restore
tution: a two-chamber parliament was introduced, elections of the central power and the power of the Soviet Communist Party.
people’s deputies by the universal, equal, and direct suffrage and The coup attempt commenced on August 19, 1991 and lasted
secret ballot were declared. Parliamentary elections were held in three days. A state of emergency was announced across the coun-
March 1990. The candidates of the Democratic Russia opposition try as well as the transfer of the country leadership to the State
Committee for the State of Emergency (which was immediately

informally called a “junta”). The State Committee for the State 90 % of referendum voters were for independence. On Decem-
of Emergency was headed by the USSR vice-president Gennady ber 8, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed
Yanayev. He was joined by the chairman of the USSR Cabinet an agreement, where they called the republics represented by
of Ministers, the Minister of Defense, the Head of the KGB and them independent states and established the Commonwealth of
a number of other Soviet high officials and public persons. Independent States (CIS) in lieu of the USSR. On December 21,
Armed troops were sent to Moscow. in Almaty, the CIS was joined by eight more Soviet republics. In
However, the conspirers were indecisive. Boris Yeltsin was one of the Almaty decisions it was declared that the foundation
not arrested. The “White House”, the seat of the Supreme Soviet of the CIS meant the termination of the USSR as a state.
of Russia became the centre of resistance to the coup. Tens of
thousands of people gathered to protect it and built barricades.
Meetings protesting against the State Committee for the State of DISMANTLING SOVIET POLITICAL
Emergency were held in many cities of the USSR. INSTITUTIONS IN AN INDEPENDENT RUSSIA
Yeltsin entered into negotiations with the commanders
and officers of military units that had been sent to Moscow. By The RSFSR independence coincided with the removal of the ref-
the morning of the third day of resistance it became clear that erences to the Soviet regime and socialism from its name.
the troops would not fire. Representatives of the State Committee The new state was named the Russian Federation – Russia.
for the State of Emergency flew for negotiations to Gorbachev, The new name, however, did not free Russia from the vast
who had earlier been isolated by them in the Crimea, but the lat- Soviet political and legal heritage in the form of the Constitu-
ter refused to meet them. Upon returning they were arrested on tion, legislation, parliament, state borders (repeatedly changed
Yeltsin’s order. during the Soviet times under the transfer of Soviet territories
From August 22, Yeltsin and Russian democrats began reap- between the Union republics) and administrative division. Radi-
ing the rewards of their political victory. The Russian national cal economic reforms that began in 1992 were performed almost
white-blue-red flag was lifted at the “White House”. On August 23, exclusively with the support of President Yeltsin, who, for some
Yeltsin announced the suspension of the activity of the RSFSR time, even assumed the duties of the Head of the Government.
Communist Party in Russia, forced Gorbachev to appoint loyal Former leaders of the RSFSR Communist Party tried to appeal
people to the Russian Government such as the Defense Minister, in the Constitutional court (the new judicial body, established
Foreign Minister and the Head of the KGB, as well as dissolve in 1991) against the validity of President Yeltsin’s decrees on
the Union government. Union ministries were resubordinated terminating the activity of the CPSU and nationalization of its
to the Russian Council of Ministers. At the same time Gorbachev property. In response a group of the Supreme Soviet deputies
resigned as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of asked the court to recognize the CPSU and the RSFSR Commu-
the CPSU and offered the Central Committee to dissolve itself. nist Party as non-constitutional. After a large number of hearings
The buildings of the Central Committee and the Moscow city and having heard various witnesses the court passed a compro-
committee of the CPSU were vacated and sealed. On August 29, mise decision: it dismissed the claim for recognising the party as
an extraordinary session of the USSR Supreme Soviet suspended non-constitutional, referring to the actual termination of its ac-
the activity of the CPSU across the Soviet Union. In September tivities, but it substantially ruled for the validity of the decrees on
the Congress of the USSR People’s Deputies dismissed the su- its dissolution. Nonetheless, the court position enabled the res-
preme authorities of the USSR (except the president) and ter- toration of the party under the name of the Communist Party of
minated its activity. the Russian Federation (KPRF).
On November 6, Yeltsin ended the story of the Communist At the end of Perestroika the RSFSR-RF Constitution was sub-
Party that had ruled Russia for nearly 74 years. Pursuant to his De- ject to numerous and frequently controversial changes, therefore,
cree, the activities of the CPSU and the RSFSR Communist Party the president’s and the Supreme Soviet powers were often contra-
were terminated, and their organizational units were dismissed. dictory. The conflict between the parliament, Soviet in its origin,
The dissolution of the 19-million Soviet Communist Party did not tending to conserve old economic rules and even nationalistic
lead to any attempt at resistance or protest, in particular, due to revenge, and the president, who adhered to building the mar-
the fact that the president specifically prohibited any prosecution ket and privatization of state property, was inevitable. This con-
of citizens for membership of the party. One of the brightest sym- frontation lasted from spring 1992 till autumn 1993 and brought
bols of the democratic victory and the final failure of the com- about a range of acute political crises, including an attempt to
munist power was the demolition of the Moscow monument dismiss the president from his office. As a means of strengthening
to the founder of the VchK-KGB, Feliks Dzerzhinsky. However, his own legitimacy, in 1993 Yeltsin used a referendum again. This
the larger part of the public communist symbols are still there. time it was a vote of confidence in him as the head of state and
Despite the thumping victory, many recollect that in the first the need to hold new elections to the Supreme Soviet. The presi-
months after the coup Yeltsin and his supporters were rather dent managed to win the support of most voters, but the result
passive. In particular, he did not try and hold new elections to was insufficient to adopt a legally binding decision on the early
the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. As a result the following two years parliamentary elections.
the president sought to carry out radical reforms having the old The political crisis was accompanied by work on the draft Rus-
Soviet parliament, elected early in 1990 under the considerable sian Constitution. THowever, The prospects of its adoption were
influence of the CPSU. uncertain. In the end Yeltsin decided to untangle the deadlock.
Nevertheless, in spite of Gorbachev’s efforts, it became im- On September 21, 1993, referring to the impossibility of further
possible to preserve the Soviet Union after the August events cooperation with the legislative branch of power, which alleg-
in 1991. The final verdict on the USSR was the referendum on edly hampered economic reforms, and to the transformation of
the independence of the Ukraine, held on December 1, 1991. the Supreme Soviet into the “headquarters of the deconstructive

opposition”, he issued a decree on gradual constitutional reform, firmly stated that this transition has yet been completed, because
ordering the Congress of People’s deputies and the Supreme the sustainable democratic order in Russia was never formed,
Soviet to terminate their activities. The powers of the people’s and over the recent decade the power has been kept to a large
deputies became invalid. The decree scheduled the elections to extent by non-democratic means by the former CPSU officials,
the new legislative body – the Federal Assembly – on Decem- Komsomol (Young Communist league) and the KGB people.
ber 11–12, 1993. When naming the reasons for promoting this development,
The majority of the people’s deputies did not obey the decree. many usually mention the model of the state power originating
The parliament was also supported by the Constitutional court, from the struggle between Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet, stipu-
which announced the president’s actions non-compliant with lated in the 1993 Constitution, where the president was given
the Constitution. The Supreme Soviet declared Yeltsin’s dismissal the leading role and the balances to his power were obviously
from office and transferred his powers to the vice-president Alek- insufficient. The very political crisis of 1992–93 could have been
sandr Rutskoi. Nevertheless, the government, Moscow city and avoided if the Soviet constitutional form had been abandoned
regional administrations stayed loyal to Yeltsin. There emerged two years earlier, after the victory over the coup of the State Com-
an armed hot spot around the “White House” (still the seat of mittee for the State of Emergency and the fall of the communist
the Russian Supreme Soviet). Inside the building armed groups power. The possibilities which opened up to the country in au-
supporting the parliament were formed, the militia tried to tumn 1991 were soon irreversibly lost, the old political and eco-
block passages to it, municipal services cut off the power supply nomic elite, unlimited in terms of the political competition and
and other utilities. The attempts at demonstrations to support lustration, rapidly restored its positions. The power ratio during
the parliament were roughly prevented by the militia. The acute the post-Soviet period was also influenced by the dramatic lack
phase of the conflict lasted two weeks and reached its climax on of non-Soviet human resources in the new Russian state authori-
October 3–4, when the supporters of the Supreme Soviet started ties. Emigrants, who actively participated in the life of many other
attacking: they seized the building of the Moscow mayor’s office post-socialist countries, actually did not come back to Russia: due
and tried to take the television centre by storm. This attempt was to the length of the communist rule in the USSR and the gradual
stopped by the army and special police units. Dozens of people assimilation by the early 1990s the Russian political emigration
died. The following morning Yeltsin ordered the commencement mainly dissipated. However, they were not specifically invited to
of the counterattack on the “White House”, using tanks there. Russia, only some people originating from the Russian Empire
By the end of the day the resistance of the Supreme Soviet sup- and the USSR were granted their citizenship back.
porters was suppressed, its leaders surrendered and were taken On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the political
into custody. transformations were relatively peaceful. Unlike in the former
Nonetheless, there were no further repressions against Yugoslavia, in Russia, no full-scale civil war started at the initial
the losers. As had been announced, on December 12 Russia held stage. Unfortunately, in 1994 a war did begin – in Chechnya.
the elections to the State Duma and the referendum on the new This blood-drenched conflict took up significant resources and
Constitution, which resulted in its adoption. efforts as well as strengthened public disappointment in the new
power.
Thus, in a nutshell, we could mention the following political
LESSONS LEARNT transition lessons that post-Soviet Russia gave to the world: try to
gain democratic legitimacy promptly, even at the cost of breaking
The history of the political transition of Russia from the commu- the existing well-established rules. Invite people with experience
nist totalitarian regime was not completed in 1993. It cannot be of life and work abroad, mainly emigrants. And avoid wars.
SOURCES USED AND FURTHER READING

Satter, David, Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001
Шаблинский, И. Г., Эволюция политического режима в России. Конституционные основы и неформальные практики,
Москва: ТЕИС, 2014
Зубов, А. Б., ed., История России. ХХ век. 1953–2007, том III, Москва: Эксмо, 2017

DISMANTLING THE STATE SECURITY APPARATUS
TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE SOVIET STATE SECURITY
BODIES IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA
Evgenia Lezina
security bodies of the armed forces, fleet and internal troops,

THE STATE SECURITY APPARATUS transport; border security forces; government communications
DURING PERESTROIKA troops; educational and research institutions; as well as the so-
called “First Departments” of the Soviet establishments, organi-
Russian Intelligence Services originate from the Soviet Commit- zations and entities.
tee for State Security (the Soviet KGB), established on March 13, KGB key functions before the USSR collapsed were foreign
1954, and the successor of, founded in 1917, the repeatedly trans- intelligence (First Chief Directorate, PGU), Counterintelligence
formed and renamed security bodies of the All-Russian Special (Second Chief Directorate), military counterintelligence (Third
Commission for Combating Counter-revolution, Sabotage, and Chief Directorate), transport and communications counterin-
Speculation (Cheka) – the State Political Department (GPU) – telligence (Fourth Directorate), economic counterintelligence
the Unified State Political Department (OGPU) – the People’s (Sixth Directorate), field surveillance (Seventh Directorate), cryp-
Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) – the People’s Commis- tographic operations (Eighth Chief Directorate), wiretapping and
sariat for State Security (NKGB) – the Ministry for State Security room eavesdropping (Twelfth department), electronic intelli-
(MSS) – the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). gence (Sixteenth directorate), fighting organized crime (OC Di-
“The Committee for State Security at the USSR Council of rectorate), USSR state border guard (Chief Directorate of Border
Ministers and its local bodies are political bodies, performing security forces), security guards of the CPSU leaders (until 1990)
the guidelines of the Central Committee of the Party (CPSU) and the Soviet Government (Ninth Directorate, from February 29,
and Government on the protection of the Socialist state from 1990 – Security Guard Service), government communications
attacks of foreign and domestic enemies, as well as the defense management (Government Communications Directorate), In-
of the USSR state border. Their mission is to thoroughly monitor vestigation Department etc.
the secret activities of the Soviet state enemies, reveal their in- The most important activity of the secret police was the fight
tentions, prevent criminal activities of imperialistic intelligence against the “hostile activities of anti-Soviet and nationalistic ele-
services against the Soviet state”, as defined in the Soviet KGB ments inside the USSR”, in other words, the silencing of dissent.
Regulations dated January 9, 1959. The notorious Fifth Directorate was responsible for that. It was
The accurate data of the Committee for State Security work- founded in 1967 upon Yuri Andropov’s personal initiative. As
force were never disclosed. By the early 1990s western sources stated in his note to the CPSU Central Committee dated April 17,
estimated it at 490,000–700,000 people.1 According to Vadim 1968, “the newly established fifth divisions are designed to fight
Bakatin, the last Head of the Committee, in August 1991 the KGB ideological subversion, inspired by our foreign foes”.5
staff equaled 480,000 people, including 220,000–240,000 border By the mid-1980s the Fifth Directorate had established
security forces and 60,000 government communications troops2 15 departments: the First department was responsible for
(there is an opinion, however, that border security forces were
not included in the 480,000).3 90,000 employees, according to
1 Amy Knight, The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union, New York:
Bakatin, worked in the security bodies of the Soviet Republics.
Unwin Hyman, 1990, 122; John Barron, KGB Today: The Hidden Hand, New
In addition, numerous agents collaborated with the KGB (in- York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1983, 41; Yevgenia Albats, Catherine A. Fitzpat-
formers, secret agents (seksoty)), but their number has not been rick, The State within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia – Past, Pre-
revealed. sent, and Future, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994, 23. David Wise,
At the end of Perestroika the KGB headquarters included Closing Down the K.G.B., in New York Times, 24 November, 1991. <http://
www.nytimes.com/1991/11/24/magazine/closing-down-the-kgb.html>
about 30 units – chief directorates, divisions and departments.
2 В. В. Бакатин, Избавление от КГБ, Москва: Новости, 1992, 46;
It should be noted that the operational structure, functions and А. И. Колпакиди, ed., Энциклопедия секретных служб России, Москва:
principles of the late-Soviet State Security apparatus were es- АСТ, Астрель, Транзиткнига, 2003, 267.
tablished during the period when the KGB was headed by Yuri 3 J. Michael Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, Boulder: West-
Andropov (May 18, 1967 – May 26, 1982). In fact the KGB was view, 1994, 111.
4 The Committee of the Presidium of the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet
directly subordinate to the CPSU Central Committee and its Po-
a committee for transferring the CPSU and KGB archives to the state storage
litical Bureau, which caused the “fusion of the CPSU and state and their use (established by the decision of the RSFSR Presidium dated
security bodies” and turned the Committee into the “armed party October 14, 1991, No. 1746-I). Expert’s opinion to the hearing of the Rus-
forces that protected the CPSU power physically and politically, sian Federation Constitutional Court dated May 26, 1992. <http://memo.ru/
allowing the party to control the society effectively and closely”.4 history/exp-kpss/>
5 Yuri Andropov’s note to the CPSU Central Committee of April 17, 1968 “On
KGB local units included 14 committees in the Soviet Repub-
the objectives of the state security bodies in fighting against hostile ideo-
lics (except for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic logical subversion”. Cited by: А. И. Кокурин, Н. В. Петров, Лубянка: ВЧК-
(RSFSR)); state security bodies in autonomous republics, regions, ОГПУ-НКВД-НКГБ-МГБ-МВД-КГБ. 1917–1991. Справочник, Москва:
krais, cities and districts. Moreover, the Soviet KGB included Международный фонд “Демократия”, 2003, 724.

the operations in “artistic associations, research institutes, cul- It may be mentioned that Gorbachev saw the KGB not as
tural and health care establishments”; the Second planned and a threat to his transformations, but rather as a support for them.
performed jointly with PGU operations against foreign national There is a good reason why in his Perestroika programme report
centres; the Third supervised operations in higher educational at the 27th CPSU Congress in 1986 Gorbachev specifically em-
establishments, preventing any “hostile activities of students and phasized the remaining role and significance of the political se-
teaching staff”; the Fourth was responsible for religious organiza- cret police: “In the conditions of the growing subversive activities
tions; the Fifth assisted the local KGB bodies in preventing any of the imperialistic intelligence services against the Soviet Un-
mass anti-social activities; the Sixth was engaged in analytics; ion and other socialist states the responsibility level of the state
the Seventh was in charge of “detecting and verifying the per- security services is increasing dramatically. Being governed by
sons, intending to use explosive materials and devices for an- the party, strictly complying with the Soviet laws, they put lots of
ti-Soviet purposes”, for searching for the authors of anti-Soviet efforts into revealing hostile schemes, preventing any subversive
documents and counterterrorism (understood as any verbal actions, and securing the sacred borders of our Motherland”.10
and written threats to the state leaders); the Eighth department The rhetoric of the people from the secret police during
was responsible for “detecting and preventing ideological sub- the Perestroika period also stayed largely the same. In their re-
version activities of Zion centres” (and it mainly fought against ports the heads of the KGB gave assurances that their agency
Jews seeking repatriation to Israel); the Ninth was in charge of sought to ensure and encourage successful Perestroika develop-
the investigation of “those, suspected of organized anti-Soviet ment and “adapted their activities by improving their applied
activity (except for nationalists, clergy, sectarians); detecting and practices”. However, in these speeches there were increasingly
preventing hostile activities of the persons, who make and dis- strong condemnations, well-known from Andropov’s times:
tribute anti-Soviet materials; carrying out secret operations on the chekists more and more often blamed foreign intelligence
revealing anti-Soviet activities of foreign revisionist centres in services and their agents in the USSR for the growing internal
the USSR”; the Tenth jointly with the PGU worked on counter- crisis.11
intelligence “against the ideological subversion centres of im- For instance, speaking in September 1987 at the formal meet-
perialistic states and foreign anti-Soviet organizations (except ing devoted to the 110-year anniversary of the birth of the VChK
for the hostile organizations of Ukrainian and Baltic national- founder Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Viktor Chebrikov declared: “All
ists)”; the Eleventh department was initially engaged in ensuring the social strata of our country are under the focus of attention
the security of the Olympic Games, and after 1980 it switched of the imperialistic intelligence services… Our foes are trying to
over to the surveillance of sport, health care and scientific or- push individual representatives of art intelligentsia to the margin-
ganizations; the Twelfth group (with the rights of a department) al positions of criticism, demagogy and nihilism, demonization
was responsible for the communications with the security bodies of some historic periods in the development of our society…”.12
of socialist countries; the Thirteenth department fought against On October 1, 1988 Chebrikov, as the Head of the KGB, was
informal youth movements; the Fourteenth supervised the mass replaced by Vladimir Kryuchkov, while Chebrikov was appointed
media and the Association of Journalists, and, finally, the Fif- the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee supervising admin-
teenth focused on the Dynamo sports society.6 Though at the end istrative and law-enforcement bodies, including the KGB. Until
of Perestroika, in August 1989, the Fifth Directorate was renamed September 20, 1989 he was also the Head of the Commission of
the “Directorate for Constitutional Order Protection” (Directo- the CPSU Central Committee for legal policy. In this position
rate “Z”), its main goals remained unchanged. Chebrikov initiated a number of repressive decrees, signed by
Furthermore, the KGB supplied the CPSU Central Committee Gorbachev, in particular, the one dated April 8, 1989, toughening
(until March 14, 1990) and the Soviet supreme authorities with liability for “anti-state crimes”.13
information, related to the state security and defense, the social The Head of the KGB Vladimir Kryuchkov (October 1, 1988 –
and economic situation in the Soviet Union, the issues of for- August 22, 1991), elected in October 1989 a member of the Politi-
eign policy and the economy. In September 1989 the Operational cal Bureau, also stayed loyal to chekist principles and rhetoric. For
Analysis and Information Service was set up in the Committee, example, in August 1989 the hateful Fifth KGB Directorate was
and on October 30, 1990, it was transformed into the Analytical
Directorate. 6 Ibid, 166–167.
It is to be added that the KGB routine activities were supported 7 More on the CheKa Cult see in Julie Fedor, Russia and the Cult of State
with the deliberate establishment of the secret services positive Security: The Chekist Tradition, From Lenin to Putin, London: Routledge,
image, the cult of chekism.7 2013.
8 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today; Бакатин, Избавление от
During Perestroika the state security headquarters managed КГБ, 37–38.
to maintain their powers and their “weight”, not being subject 9 Н. В. Петров, Подразделения КГБ СССР по борьбе с инакомыслием
to any significant changes in structure or human resources.8 1967–1991 годов, in Я. Берендс, и др., eds. Повседневная жизнь при
In 1985 at the April plenum of the CPSU Central Committee социализме. Немецкие и российские подходы, Москва: Политическая
the Head of the KGB Viktor Chebrikov (December 17, 1982 энциклопедия, 2015, 158–184.
10 М. С. Горбачев, Политический доклад Центрального Комитета
– October, 1 1988), who earlier supported the nomination КПСС XXVII Съезду Коммунистической партии Советского Союза,
of Mikhail Gorbachev as the General Secretary, was elected in Материалы XXVII съезда Коммунистической партии Советского
a member of the Political Bureau of the CPSU Central Com- Союза, Москва: Политиздат, 1986, 62.
mittee. Being granted this high status, which had earlier been 11 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 227.
12 Ibid.
held only by the long-reigning KGB Head Andropov, “gave
13 Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet dated April 8, 1989
Chebrikov himself and his closest KGB entourage, a sense of “On amendments to the USSR Law ‘On Criminal Liability for Crimes
significance and a special political role in the renovated party against the State’ and some other legal regulations of the USSR”, in Gazette
leadership.”9 of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, 1989, (16), 397.

renamed the “Directorate for Constitutional Order Protection”, – following the German or Czech examples, that is to destroy it
which was supported with a propaganda campaign, manifest- completely and rebuild it anew. Not to dismiss but reform. That
ing the rift from the old goals and methods. However, justify- was, so to say, a humane direction I opted for”, wrote Bakatin in
ing the need of this renaming, Kryuchkov stated in the letter 1992 in his book “Liberation from KGB”.20
to CPSU Central Committee that the “intelligence services and The main principles of Bakatin’s reforms were disintegration,
subversive centres of the foe” were trying to “inspire the spots decentralization and de-ideologization. Disintegration implied
of social tension, anti-socialist actions and civil unrest, provoke “the division of the KGB into different independent departments
hostile elements to the actions, aiming at the violent overthrow and a deprivation of its monopoly on all the activities related to
of the Soviet power”.14 security: to tear the Committee apart into parts, which, directly
Being headed by Kryuchkov, the KGB took part in the forced subordinate to the Head of State, would balance one another,
suppression of mass protests in April 1989 in Georgia and in compete with one another”.21 Decentralization, according to
Lithuania in January 1991, which resulted in dozens of deaths.15 Bakatin’s idea, was to “provide full independence to the Repub-
Finally, on Kryuchkov’s initiative, the law on the state security lican security bodies mainly combined with coordination and
bodies in the USSR was adopted in May 1991. This law had been to some extent operative activities of inter-republican units”.22 At
developed jointly with the KGB key people. It ensured nearly the same time Bakatin realized that the achievement of the above
complete independence of the Committee from the Soviet politi- target was determined not by his will, but rather by the develop-
cal leaders, preserving its structure and powers, as well as pro- ing Union disintegration processes. The third of Bakatin’s reor-
viding it with full control of any documents related to the state ganization lines was in the KGB de-ideologization. “The tradi-
security.16 The law was supported by the Defense and State Secu- tions of chekism are to be eradicated, chekism as an ideology must
rity Committee of the Supreme Soviet, which was controlled by terminate its existence. We must comply with the law, but not
the KGB and consisted mainly of secret police officers. ideology”, declared the new Head of the Committee.23 However,
This way the secret political police successfully adapted to it is unclear how he thought to achieve that goal without any
the changing conditions while maintaining their major goals and radical reforms of the most repressive Soviet institution. In early
supporting the pace of their activities.17 The Committee sought to 1992, summarizing the results of his activities after retiring from
improve its image and therefore on April 22, 1990, the KGB Public the state security bodies, Bakatin acknowleged: “No success was
Relations Centre was set up (based on the former Press Office achieved. I do not believe that the security services have already
but considerably expanding its workforce and structure). One become safe for the citizens. There are no laws, no controls and
of the propaganda techniques was the focus on fighting against no professional internal security services”.24
crime and “economic sabotage”. In December 1990 the KGB es- Nevertheless, just after the August putsch, the KGB workforce
tablished a separate Directorate for Combating Organized Crime started shrinking and a number of departments were separated
(Organized Crime Directorate, or OP) to deal with these issues. and became independent. In August 1991 the Security Guard
According to the state security retired Major General Oleg Service was transformed into the Security Guard Directorate at
Kalugin, dismissed in 1990 for criticizing the secret services, the USSR Presidential Executive Office. On August 29, based
the Committee remained the most untouchable compared to on the Eighth Chief Directorate (cryptographic), Sixteenth
the other law-enforcement bodies: “And after five years of Pe-
restroika the KGB was a state in the state, a body, enjoying huge 14 Note of the Head of the USSR KGB V. A. Kryuchkov to the CPSU Central
powers, theoretically capable of crushing any government”.18 Committee dated August 4, 1989 “On establishing the Directorate for Con-
stitutional Order Protection in KGB”. Russian State Archive on Contem-
porary History (RGANI), Coll. 89, Op. 18, D. 127, 1–4. Cit. by: Кокурин,
Петров, Лубянка, 730–732.
USSR KGB REORGANIZATION AFTER 15 The events mentioned include a special operation to break up an opposi-
THE 1991 AUGUST COUP tion meeting near the Government building of the Georgian SSR in Tbilisi,
carried out at night on April 9, 1989 by the internal troops and the Soviet
army, with an ensuing death toll of 21 protesters. And also chekist military
The reason for reforming the existing state security services
operation at night on January 12–13, 1991, in Vilnius, during which Alpha
structure was an attempted putsch in August 1991 by the high special forces unit of the Seventh KGB Directorate, an Air-Borne unit and
officials, who set up the State Committee for the State of Emer- a special police unit seized the TV tower and a radio station, which led to
gency (GKChP). The KGB Head Kryuchkov was one of the main 13 deaths.
coup organizers, supported during the preparation by a number 16 The Law of the USSR No. 2159-1 “On the State Security Bodies in the USSR”,
dated May 16, 1991, in Gazette of the Congress of People’s Deputies and
of Committee people.19
Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 1991, (22), 630. See: Waller, Secret Empire:
After the loss of the putsch, the arrest of Kryuchkov and oth- The KGB in Russia Today, 168–178.
er former GKChP members (all of them were accused of “high 17 Andreas Hilger, Sowjetunion (1945–1991), in: Jens Gieseke, Łukasz
treason”, but then were granted amnesty in February 1994), on Kamiński, Krzysztof Persak, eds., Handbuch der kommunistischen Ge-
August 23, Vadim Bakatin was appointed the Head of the KGB. heimdienste in Osteuropa 1944–1991, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupre-
cht, 2009, 113.
He had been the First Secretary of the CPSU Kirov regional
18 О. Д. Калугин, “Дело” бывшего генерала КГБ. Месяц первый, Москва:
committee (1985–1987), CPSU Kemerovo regional committee ПИК, 1990, 41–42.
(1987–1988) as well as the Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs in 19 Findings of the investigation materials on the role and involvement of KGB of-
1988–1990. Bakatin was commissioned to launch a reorganiza- ficials in the events of August 19–21, 1991. <http://constitutions.ru/?p=7018>
tion of the State Security system. 20 Бакатин, Избавление от КГБ, 238.
21 Ibid, 77.
Though being aware of the threat his agency was to society,
22 Ibid.
the new KGB Head refused to implement both serious structural 23 Cit. by: Л. М. Млечин, КГБ. Председатели органов госбезопасности.
transformations and the Committee staff lustration. “I have not Рассекреченные судьбы. Москва: Центрполиграф, 2011.
considered it possible for us to reform the KGB fundamentally 24 Бакатин, Избавление от КГБ, 239.

Directorate (electronic intelligence) and the KGB Government First of all, on December 18, 1991 the USSR Central Intelli-
Communications Directorate the Government Communications gence Service was reorganized as the Foreign Intelligence Ser-
Committee at the USSR Presidential Office was set up.25 In Sep- vice (FIS).31 It inherited the structural units and staff of the KGB
tember dismantling reached the Directorate for the Constitutional First Chief Directorate, where, according to different estimates,
Order Protection “Z”, the former Fifth Directorate, responsible for during the late-Soviet period the workforce was from 12,000 to
the counterintelligence to combat a foe’s ideological subversion. 16,000.32 Yevgeny Primakov remained the Head of the FIS. On
On October 22 the USSR State Council issued a resolution September 30, 1991, he was appointed the Head of the First Chief
suggesting the dissolution of the Union KGB and establishing Directorate while previously he had been an agent of the KGB
in its place the USSR Central Intelligence Service (based on foreign intelligence for many years.33
the First Chief Directorate), the Inter-Republican Security Ser- On December 19, President Boris Yeltsin signed the Decree
vice (Vadim Bakatin stayed on as its head) and the Committee establishing the Ministry of Security and Internal Affairs of
for the USSR State Border Security Guard with the common the Russian Federation (MBVD), which was designed to be-
command of the border forces based on the Chief Directorate come the key Russian intelligence service, uniting the Soviet
of the State Border forces.26 De jure these units were set up after Inter-Republican Security Service, the Russian Federal Security
the USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the law on reor- Agency, as well as the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and
ganizing the state security bodies on December 3, 1991. It was the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR.34 The new ministry
the date when the USSR KGB formally terminated its operations, was headed by Yeltsin’s close associate, the former Soviet Interior
whereas the security bodies shifted to the “exclusive jurisdiction Minister Viktor Barannikov.
of the sovereign republics (states)”.27 The story of the national se- On December 24, based on the Government Communications
curity services began. Committee at the USSR Presidential Office and some other KGB
units, responsible for radio-electronic intelligence and cryptog-
raphy, the Federal Agency for Government Communications
RUSSIAN KGB REORGANIZATION and Information (FAPSI) was founded.35 It was headed by
a former chekist, the Head of the Government Communications
The RSFSR was the only republic of the Union that had not had
its own Committee for State Security before May 1991, when on 25 Decree of the President of the USSR No. UP-2484 dated August 29, 1991 “On
the initiative of the Head of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Boris Establishing the Government Communications Committee at the USSR
Presidential Office”, in Gazette of the Congress of People’s Deputies and
Yeltsin, it was decided to establish the republican KGB by divid-
Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 1991, (36), art. 1059.
ing the RSFSR State Committee for Security and Defense. At first 26 Resolution of the USSR State Council No. GS-8 dated October 22 1991 “On
the staff of the RSFSR KGB was around twenty people, but along reorganizing state security bodies”, in Gazette of the Congress of People’s
with the dissolution of the Union Committee its powers and Deputies and Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 1991, (44), art. 1239. The Presi-
workforce increased. After the August putsch the competence dent of the USSR also approved of the temporary Regulation of the Cen-
tral Intelligence Service (25. 11. 1991), Inter-Republican Security Service
of the Russian Committee included separate units of the Union
(28. 11. 1991 the), Committee for the USSR State Border Security Guard
KGB: on August 21 – the KGB Directorate in Moscow and Moscow (3. 12. 1991).
region, on September 5 – the bodies of state security of most sub- 27 Law of the USSR No. 124-N dated December 3, 1991 “On reorganizing State
jects of the RSFSR, earlier directly subordinate to the USSR KGB, Security Bodies”, Gazette of the USSR Supreme Soviet, 1991, (50), art. 1411.
and from November 1, 1991 – the Seventh Directorate (field sur- 28 Бакатин, Избавление от КГБ, 125; Albats, Fitzpatrick, The State within
a State: The KGB, 23.
veillance), Operations and Technology Directorate, the Twelfth
29 The Decree of the President of the RSFSR No. 233 dated November 26, 1991
Department (wiretapping and room eavesdropping) as well as “On reorganizing the RSFSR Committee for State Security as the RSFSR
the pretrial detention centre.28 Federal Security Agency”, in Gazette of the Congress of People’s Deputies
On November 26, 1991 the KGB of the RSFSR was transformed and Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, 1991, (48), art. 1683.
under Presidential Decree into the Federal Security Agency (FSA) 30 Gordon Bennett, The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation,
Watchfield: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the UK,
of the RSFSR.29 By that time the staff of the Russian security ser-
March 2000, 8.
vice headquarters had grown to 20,000 employees with another 31 The Decree of the President of the RSFSR No. 293 dated December 18,
22,000 working locally.30 1991 “On Establishing the RSFSR Foreign Intelligence Service”, in Gazette
After the termination of the Union KGB on December 3, of the Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, 1991,
the Russian Federation, which stayed with the bulk of material (52), art. 1890.
32 Andrew Christopher, Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign
and human resources of the Soviet state security apparatus, was
Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, New York: Harper Collins, 1990; Amy
able to take advantage and use the inherited structures by itself. Knight, Russian Security Services Under Yel’tsin, in Post-Soviet Affairs, 1993
(9), 1, 44; Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 113.
33 Steel and Shadows. Obituary: Yevgeny Primakov, in Economist, 18 July
POST-SOVIET TRANSFORMATIONS 2015. <http://www.economist.com/node/21657755>
34 The Decree of the President of the RSFSR No. 289 dated December 19, 1991
OF RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES “On Establishing the Ministry of Security and Internal Affairs of the Russian
Federation”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 284–285, December 25, 1991.
Yeltsin’s strategy was to preserve the secret police organization, 35 The Decree of the President of the RSFSR No. 313 dated December 24,
but minimize its ability to challenge his presidential power. As 1991 “On establishing the Federal Agency for Government Communica-
a result, five separate security services were set up based on tions at the RSFSR Presidential Office”, in Gazette of the Congress of People’s
Deputies and Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, 1992, (1), art. 39. The status and
the former KGB. However, no personnel purges were carried
mission of the FAPSI were specified in RF Law No. 4524-1 dated Febru-
out. On the contrary, the continuity with the Soviet Committee ary 19, 1993 “On Federal Bodies of Government Communications and
for State Security was observed both in human resources and Information”, in Gazette of the Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme
functions. Soviet of the RSFSR, 1993, 12, art. 423.

Committee at the USSR Presidential Office Aleksandr Starovoy- the underground, the railways, the marine fleet and the state-
tov, who from May 1986 until August 1991 was the deputy head of owned Aeroflot airlines security, combating organized crime,
the KGB Government Communications Directorate for Science drug control, the security of the majority of governmental fa-
and Technology. cilities, military construction, technological laboratories, mail
In addition, at the end of 1991 the Security Guard Directorate interception, archives, wiretapping, analysis, investigation and
at the USSR Presidential Executive Office was dissolved and used training. In addition, the Ministry of Security “was responsible for
as the basis for establishing the Chief Guard Directorate (GUO). monitoring the public, cooperative and private business in trans-
Earlier, in July 1991 the Presidential Security Service started its port, the industrial and communications sectors, the monitoring
operations. Both organizations originated from the Ninth Direc- of the mass media, the analysis of social and political issues and
torate of the Soviet KGB, responsible for the security of the top patent protection. The only important duties of the former KGB
party officials and statesmen whose workforce reached, as some that the MB did not perform were foreign intelligence, cryptog-
estimates say, approximately 15,000 employees.36 raphy, communications and presidential security”.39 The ministe-
Before June 1992 the GUO was headed by the former Ninth di- rial workforce reached 135,000, out of which 50,000 were engaged
rectorate officer Vladimir Redkoborody, followed by Mikhail Bar- in counterintelligence.40
sukov, who from 1964 had served in the Kremlin KGB regiment. Similarly to the KGB leaders of the late-Soviet period, the Min-
The Head of the President’s Security Service (September 3, ister of Security Barannikov focused on combating crime, which
1991 – June 20, 1996) and also the first deputy head of the GUO became a part of the image efforts to provide security bodies
was Aleksandr Korzhakov, who had also worked in the Ninth Di- with a clear meaning of their activities, and “a political tool, with
rectorate in 1970–1989, where at the end of this period he was one which to ruin opponents in and out of government”.41
of the three bodyguards of Boris Yeltsin, then the First Secretary At the same time it became common practice to delegate state
of the CPSU Moscow City Committee. security people from the active reserve to public and commercial
In late 1992 additional functions were delegated to the GUO – entities in order to informally control them.
they were related to the organization of secured communications In 1992–1993, at Barannikov’s suggestion of Yeltsin’s approv-
for the Russian leader. For this purpose the Federal Agency for al, an array of laws regulating the secret services activities were
Government Communications and Information was re-subor- adopted. Acting similarly to the KGB Head Kryuchkov in 1991,
dinated to it. the Minister of Security demanded from the Supreme Soviet
In June 1996 the GUO was renamed as the Federal Guard the urgent adoption of his bills. And, like in 1991, the initiative
Service (its chief was general lieutenant Yuri Krapivin, whose was endorsed by the State Committee for Security and Defense of
career from 1972 was also related to the KGB, including the Ninth the Supreme Soviet, run by the future Head of the State Security
Directorate), whereas the President’s Security Service merged bodies Sergey Stepashin.
with the Federal Guard Service.37 According to some sources, The array of Yeltsin-Barannikov laws included a law on opera-
by 1996 the staff of the GUO had grown from 8,000 to 20,000, tive investigation activity, on security, on federal state security
and the executives took the functions, not directly associated bodies, on foreign intelligence, on state secrets and on the Rus-
with the physical security of the leaders: according to the laws sian Federation state border. Their distinguishing features in-
adopted in the early 1990s, the GUO was entitled to perform op- cluded the width of powers, granted to the secret services, and
erational-investigation activities, including covert surveillance their guaranteed tough control by the president. On the contrary,
and wiretapping.38 the possibilities of public and parliamentary control weakened
The President’s decision to unite the secret services in the Min- dramatically.
istry of Security and Internal Affairs was violently criticized: this The Law on Operative Investigation Activity, adopted in April
idea reminded people of Stalin’s terrifying People’s Commis- 1992, entitled five governmental agencies to carry out operative
sariat for Defense (NKVD) headed by Lavrenty Beria. As a result investigation activities: bodies of the Internal Affairs, the Ministry
Yeltsin’s Decree dated December 19, 1991, was appealed against of Security, Border Security, the Foreign Intelligence Service and
in the Constitutional Court of Russia and on January 14, 1992, it operative units of the Chief Security Directorate (art. 11).42
was recognized as contradictory to the Constitution. The Consti-
tutional Court order served as the basis to establish two separate 36 “Знаю их всех”. Говорит Александр Коржаков, in Медиазона, Septem-
Ministries – the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federa- ber 5, 2016. <https://zona.media/article/2016/05/09/korzhakov>
tion led by Viktor Yerin and the Ministry of Security led by Viktor 37 Federal Law No. 57-FZ dated May 27, 1996 “On State Security”, in Rossi-
yskaya Gazeta, No. 106, June 6, 1996. The Decree of RF President No. 938
Barannikov (December 19, 1991 – July 27, 1993).
dated June 19, 1996 “On the Federal Security Service of the Russian Fed-
The Ministry of Security (MB), founded on January 24, 1992, eration”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 118, June 25, 1996. The Decree of RF
became the essential and largest successor of the KGB, inherit- President No. 1136 dated August 2, 1996 “On Approving the Provision of
ing the functions of the Second Chief Directorate (counterin- the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation”, in Russian Federa-
telligence), the Third Chief Directorate (military counterintel- tion Code, 1996, (32), art. 3901.
38 Amy Knight, The Security Services and the Decline of Democracy in Russia:
ligence), Directorate “Z” (internal political security), Organized
1996–1999, The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European,
Crime Directorate (combating organized crime), the Fourth Di- and Central Asian Studies, No. 23, October 1999, 14, The Henry M. Jackson
rectorate (transport counterintelligence), the Sixth Directorate School of International Studies, The University of Washington, Seattle. 14.
(economic counterintelligence), and the Seventh Directorate <https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/35343>
(field surveillance). 39 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today,116.
40 Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, Fourth ed., London: Routledge,
In total, according to Michael Waller’s estimates the MB com-
2008, 96.
prised of at least 17 large KGB units, including those responsible 41 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 117.
for political internal security, economic security, counterintel- 42 Law of the Russian Federation No. 2506-1 dated March 13 1992 “On opera-
ligence, military counterintelligence, nuclear weapons storage, tive investigation activities”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 99, April 29, 1992.

It is notable that the Law on Federal State Security Bodies the president.47 According to the appointed Secretary of the Pres-
which became effective in July 1992 appeared nearly identical idential Security Council Oleg Lobov, Yeltsin’s right-hand man
to the law, adopted in 1991 on the KGB initiative: in several places from the times of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) regional com-
the wording was absolutely the same. The sections of the law, mittee, “the counterintelligence service is designed to protect
describing the rights and responsibilities of the federal state se- the new presidential rule”, it must “support the president”.48
curity bodies, provided the Russian intelligence services with The personnel policy of the renamed body also confirmed
functions that were similar to those of the Soviet secret police. In the continuity with the Soviet past. Colonel General Nikolay Go-
particular, the law reserved their right to delegate their employ- lushko was appointed the Head of the Service (December 21,
ees to any institutions, organizations and enterprises “to solve 1993 – February 28, 1994) – a former Ukrainian SSR KGB Chair-
security issues” (art. 11).43 It meant that the intelligence services man (1987–1991), who distinguished himself by especially cruel
could still freely infiltrate the mass media, civil groups and po- repressions of dissidents and dissenters. In addition, from 1974
litical alliances. In addition, the secret services could “provide to 1978 Golushko ran the department “combating nationalism”
the security” for “federal, interstate and international public- in the KGB Fifth Directorate.
political and religious events” held in Russia, which allowed for The announced then FSK re-attestation of the service leaders
broader interpretations (art. 12 (l)). To ensure state security un- did not lead to changes of key people in the counterintelligence
der natural disasters and riots, and under the prevention of some headquarters and its regional directorates. Out of 277 top officials
crimes the state security bodies were empowered to “freely enter subject to re-attestation, only 13 failed, moreover, partly due to
housing and other premises owned by citizens, land plots owned the retirement age. Sergey Stepashin, who replaced Golushko
by them, the areas and premises of companies, institutions and as the FSK Director (March 3, 1994 – June 30, 1995), summariz-
organizations regardless of their forms of property”. The only con- ing the results of the re-attestation in March 1994, was pleased
dition for these entrances was the need to notify the prosecutor to note that “we did not follow the Eastern European example
of them within 24 hours (art. 12 (e)). Taking into consideration and did not fully destroy Russian Intelligence Services”.49 Being
the unaccountability of the secret services and the specifics of one of the main organizers of the First Chechen War that started
the Russian law-enforcement practices, this form of the law could in 1994, Stepashin consistently advocated the expansion of se-
also become subject to abuse. cret services powers, at the same time insisting on the priority of
The law on security established that the Russian president the state interests over civil rights. In an interview given in June
“controlled and coordinated the activities of the state security 1994 he made a claim that would be incompatible with a demo-
bodies”, and also “made day-to-day decisions on security provi- cratic state of law: “We will infringe upon the human rights of
sion” (art. 11).44 a person if this person is a criminal”.50
The law on state secrets, adopted in July 1993, introduced The FSK included nearly all units of the dissolved Ministry
an extremely wide definition of the term state secret, which sig- of Security, except for the Border Security Forces, which were
nificantly reduced the rights of the citizens to get information on singled out as an independent Federal Border Service – Chief
the activities of the governmental authorities – both in the past Command of the Russian Federation Border Security Forces
(using archive data), and in the present.45 (FPS – glavkomat). Pursuant to the FSK Regulation, the tasks of
During the escalation of the presidential and parliamentary the counterintelligence service bodies were: detecting, prevent-
antagonism in 1992–1993 and the deepening economic crisis, ing and suppressing intelligence, surveillance and reconnais-
Boris Yeltsin was seeking support in the law-enforcement bodies, sance of foreign secret services and organizations against the RF;
whose significance in domestic Russian politics was continu- seeking intelligence information on security threats; providing
ously growing. At the same time the President feared that an ex- the President with information on RF security threats; the war
aggerated strengthening of the secret services could potentially on terror, arms and drug trafficking, illegal armed groups, as
be a threat to his power. well as illegally established or prohibited non-governmental
After a two-year confrontation between Yeltsin and the Su-
preme Soviet, which ended up in dissolving the parliament on
43 Law of the Russian Federation No. 3246/1-1 dated July 8, 1992 “On federal
September 21 and the seizure of the House of Soviet (Russian state security bodies”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 180, August 12, 1992.
White House) on October 4, 1993, the Ministry of Security was 44 Law of the Russian Federation No. 2446-1 dated March 5, 1992 “On Secu-
reorganized into the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) rity”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 103, May 6, 1992.
in December that year. A Presidential Decree on the MB dissolu- 45 Law of the Russian Federation No. 5485-I dated July 21, 1993 “On State
Secrets”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 182, September 21, 1993.
tion stated that “it appeared to be impossible to reform the sys-
46 Decree of RF President No. 2233 dated December 21, 1993 “On the Dis-
tem of VChK-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB-KGB-MB bodies” and solution of the Russian Federation Ministry of Security and the Establish-
that “the recently taken measures to attempt to reorganize them ment of the Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service”, in Collected
were mainly formal and decorative”.46 These tough words, how- President’s Decrees and Russian federation Government Resolutions, 1993,
ever, did not at all mean rethinking the role of the security bodies. (52), art. 5062.
47 Decree of RF President No. 19 dated January 5, 1994 “On Approving Provi-
They just showed Yeltsin’s dissatisfaction with the willful secret
sions of Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service”, in Collected Presi-
services, which took the side of the Supreme Soviet and did not dent’s Decrees and Russian federation Government Resolutions, 1994, (2),
provide the President with sufficient support in his opposition 1994, art. 76.
to the parliament. 48 Interview with O. Lobov, in Nezavisimaya gazeta, February 2, 1994, 1.
Despite the loud statements, instead of qualitative reforms, 49 Максим Вырывдин, Контрразведка переаттестована, in Kommersant,
No. 54, March 26, 1994. <http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/74594>
Yeltsin again used intelligence services to strengthen his per-
50 TV interview with S. Stepashin dated June 23, 1994. Cit. by: Amy Knight,
sonal power and to prevent any attempts by parliament to chal- Spies without Cloaks. KGB’s Successors, Princeton: Princeton University
lenge him in the future. Hence the FSK was fully controlled by Press, 1996, 25, 29. See also interview with S. Stepashin, in Nezavisimaya
him: under the Service Regulation, it was subordinate directly to gazeta, May 26, 1994, 1–5.

organizations, encroaching on the RF constitutional order; en- From the mid-1990s observers continuously mentioned a de-
suring state secrets protection within their competence; coun- terioration of the human rights situation in Russia.58 In the back-
terintelligence operative cover of the RF state border.51 ground of concerns about the potential return of the political
FSK leaders initially claimed an expected staff downsizing from investigation system on July 6, 1998, President Yeltsin issued
135,000 to 75,000 due to the delegation of some functions to other a decree setting up a Constitutional Security Directorate in
institutions. However, it is impossible to establish the fact of staff the FSB, being, in fact, the reincarnation of the Constitutional
cuts because the information has been classified. At least, in early Order Protection Directorate, the former KGB Fifth Directorate.
July the officials themselves mentioned a workforce of 100,000 The Head of the new unit Gennady Zotov in his interview
people.52 Most likely, Yeltsin’s strategy was to weaken the central to “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” in November that year described
national security body politically, distributing chekists in differ- the objectives of his directorate as follows: “The state sought
ent governmental authorities. Nonetheless, according to Michael to establish an FSB separate unit, ‘specialized in’ combating
Waller, it was similar to the effect of fungi growth: spores were not security threats to the Russian Federation in the social and
restrained any more, but “distributed through the entire society”.53 political area. <…> Owing to a number of objectives, related
The Chechen War made Yeltsin increasingly rely on law- to the fundamental specifics of Russia, reasons special atten-
enforcement bodies. There were new transformations, further tion has always been paid to the protection of the state against
strengthening the role of the state security bodies. In early 1995 ‘internal revolt’, i.e., in other words, against the security threats
the Law on the Federal Security Service Bodies in the Russian in the social and political areas, since the ‘internal revolt’ for
Federation was signed and became effective on April 12.54 From Russia has always been more terrifying than any military
this day the FSK was renamed the Federal Security Service invasion”.59
(FSB), and its powers were significantly expanded.55 According Thus, President Yeltsin did not opt for the path of dissolving
to the law, FSB core activities included counterintelligence and the Soviet secret services, but, divided the KGB into several indi-
intelligence, the war on terror and high-threat crimes, border vidual organizations, preserving most of their functions and per-
security activity, information security, and the control of cor- sonnel. According to the secret services researchers Andrei Sol-
ruption (art. 8). datov and Irina Borogan, Yeltsin’s idea was “to encourage rivalry
In July 1995 Sergey Stepashin was dismissed and his post was in the splintered intelligence community, providing a precarious
taken over by the former Head of the Chief Guard Directorate system of checks and balances”: “Under Yeltsin, the foreign in-
Mikhail Barsukov (July 24, 1995 – June 20, 1996). One of his first telligence agency remained in direct competition with military
steps in the new office was setting up an FSB counterterrorism intelligence; the FSB struggled with the communications agency,
centre (FSB ATC) to coordinate different counterterrorist ser- which kept a close on political and social situation in Russia.
vices. The centre was the successor of the former Soviet KGB After obtaining a report from the FSB Director, Yeltsin could com-
Counterterrorism Directorate (UBT). It included two famous pare it with the report from the communications director”.60 In
special forces units – Alpha group, before 1995 it had been a part any case, according to Soldatov and Borogan, in 1998 there ap-
of the Chief Guard Directorate (Department “A”), and Vympel peared changes in the secret services competitive system created
group, a part of which had been subordinate to the Ministry of by Yeltsin: “First, the founding fathers of agencies lost their posts,
Internal Affairs since 1993, while the other made up the Spe- independent people who had become accustomed to fiercely
cial Operations Directorate (Department “V”). In October 1998 defending the interests of their structures. <…> Then there began
special forces were united in the newly established FSB Special to appear stubborn rumors about a draft decree being walked
Forces Centre (FSB CSN).
On December 20 1995, the anniversary of the VChK founda- 51 Decree of RF President No. 19 dated January 5, 1994 “On Approving Regu-
tion, a public holiday was established – the Day of Security Bod- lation of Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service”, in Collected Presi-
ies.56 Before that, December 20 had been celebrated for decades dent’s Decrees and Russian federation Government Resolutions, 1994, (2),
informally by the state security staff as the Day of the Chekist. art. 76.
And two years later on December 20 President Yeltsin delivered 52 Amy Knight, Russia’s New Security Services: An Assessment, Washington, D.C.:
Library of Congres, 1994, 24; <https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=457727>
a speech, which was considered by many as the final “rehabili- 53 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 121–122.
tation” of the secret services. According to Yeltsin, “we nearly 54 Federal Law No. 40-FZ dated April 3, 1995 “On Federal Security Service
pushed too far in revealing the crimes of the state security bodies. Bodies in Russian Federation”, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 72, April 12, 1995.
Their history included not only black periods, but also glorious 55 Bennett, The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, 16; Bettina
ones, which are something to be proud of”. The President also Renz, Russia’s ‘Force Structures’ and the Study of Civil-Military Relations,
in Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2005, (18), 4, 570–572.
noted that “today our security services people are genuine pa- 56 Decree of RF President No. 1280 dated December 20, 1995 “On establishing
triots. They work not for the glory and awards, but – I dare say the Day of the Russian Federation Security Bodies”, in RF Code, 1995, (52),
– for an idea. For the state security. For the peace and quiet of art. 5135.
our citizens. And we must respect the work done by the security 57 Boris Yeltsin, “The secret services will never be ‘watchdogs’ any more”,
service officers. Their hard and often heroic work”.57 in Radio Addres, Kommersant, No. 220, December 20, 1997, 2.
58 Michael J. Waller, “Russia’s Security Services: A Checklist for Reforms”,
After the first round of the presidential election, held on in Perspective, 10 September 1997; Knight, The Security Services and the De-
June 16, 1996, Yeltsin dismissed the head of FSB Barsukov, re- cline of Democracy in Russia, 21–25.
placing him with Nikolay Kovalev (July 9, 1996 – July 25, 1998), 59 “Защита личности, общества, государства”. Так определяет
who had served in the KGB from 1974 – first as a field officer of приоритеты своего подразделения начальник Управления
конституционной безопасности ФСБ России Геннадий Зотов,
the district department of the KGB Directorate in Moscow and
in Независимое военное обозрение, No. 044 (118), November 20, 1998, 1.
Moscow region, and then an officer and later the head of the Fifth 60 Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan, “The New Nobility: The Restoration of
service of the KGB Moscow Directorate (combating ideological Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB”, in New York:
subversion). PublicAffairs, 2011, 14.

through the Kremlin corridors which would combine all the frag- then the Russian state security, partially changing their meth-
ments of the KGB into one agency.”61 ods and increasing their propaganda efforts, were never actually
On July 25, 1998, Vladimir Putin was appointed the FSB Direc- challenged and pressed by the public. It is true that the monu-
tor (July 25, 1998 – August 9, 1999), the former KGB officer, who ment to the founder of VChK Feliks Dzerzhinsky was spontane-
served from 1975 to 1991 first in the Leningrad KGB Directorate ously dismantled during the strife between GKChP members and
working in counterintelligence, and then, from 1985 to 1990, the RSFSR President Boris Yeltsin. However, neither during nor
in the local intelligence centre in Dresden under the cover of after the putsch was it demanded to take similar action to the very
the position of Dresden USSR–GDR Friendship Centre Director. state security structures and to ban their members from taking
Later Putin was appointed the head of the Government, leaving positions in the new democratic authorities and institutions.
his colleague from the Leningrad KGB Directorate Nikolay Patru- In spite of a long-lasting repressive policy towards the citizens
shev as the FSB leader (August 9, 1999 – May 5, 2008). (forced regulation of their life, long isolation, civil rights restric-
On December 20, 1999, at a formal meeting devoted to the Day tions, pressure against dissent etc.), the Soviet Committee for
of the Security Services, Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin addressed State Security, unlike its analogues in most countries in Central
the security services officers in the following way: “A group of FSB and Eastern Europe, was not so discredited as to disrupt its func-
people, sent by you on a mission to work under cover in the govern- tional, personnel and symbolic continuity with the past. The Rus-
ment, is performing well at the initial stage”. Soon after that he was sian secret services openly admit and emphasize their role as
elected by Boris Yeltsin as the successor for the presidential post. followers of the Soviet secret state security services traditions.
Putin’s rise to power in 2000 meant the appointment of former A poll, conducted during the last year of the USSR existence,
state security people to the key political offices. Since the 2000s showed that the KGB had higher public trust (62 %), than other
nearly all the top positions in the presidential office, government institutions (police, courts, the mass media etc.).72 And 10 years
and economic area have been controlled by the people from later, when the Levada-Centre asked people if it bothered re-
the law-enforcement bodies. Though this process commenced spondents that President Vladimir Putin who took office in 2000
when Yeltsin was still in office, and the number of high officials had long been in the KGB and FSB, 78 % confessed that this fact
with a law-enforcement background (top leadership, government, was not of any concern to them and only 5 % stated that it was
regional elite, parliament) grew from 11.2 % to 17.4 %, during a high concern to them.73 Sociologist Lev Gudkov noted in 2003
the first years of Putin’s reign by 2004 this figure reached 24.7 %.62 that “Putin’s relation to the state security and armed forces looks
According to some estimates, by 2007 the share of direct or indirect for many Russians a merit rather than a flaw for his reputation”.74
intelligence presence in authorities could have been above 75 %.63
The consolidation and reinforcement of the secret services
under Putin’s rule became truly large-scale. On March 11, 2003 61 Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan, The Mutation of the Russian Secret Ser-
the president dissolved the Federal Agency for Government vices, in Agentura.ru, August 25 2016. <www.agentura.ru/english/dosie/
Communications and Information (FAPSI) and the Federal Bor- mutation/>
62 О. В. Крыштановская, Анатомия российской элиты, Москва:
der Service (as well as the Federal Tax Police Service) as separate
Захаров, 2005, 269–270.
organizations. Consequently, the border security service was 63 Russia under Putin The making of a Neo-KGB State. Political Power in Rus-
fully integrated into the FSB, while parts of the dissolved FAPSI sia Now Lies with the FSB, the KGB’s Successor, in Economist, 23 August
were divided between the FSB and the Federal Guard Service. 2007. <http://www.economist.com/node/9682621>
Furthermore, informally the Ministry of Internal Affairs became 64 Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan, The Mutation of the Russian Secret Ser-
vices, in Agentura.ru, 2007 <http://agentura.ru/english/dosie/mutation/>
fully FSB-controlled. All the key people appointed in the Ministry
65 Bennett, The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, 22; Eberhard
– from the Minister to the Head of the Internal Security Directo- Schneider, The Russian Federal Security Service under President Putin, in:
rate – were from the secret services.64 Stephen White, Politics and the Ruling Group in Putin’s Russia, Basingstoke
The workforce of the Russian intelligence service during Pu- – New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 43; Knight, Spies without Cloaks, 14;
tin’s reign has also been growing steadily. As mentioned above, Knight, The Security Services and the Decline of Democracy in Russia, 14.
66 Spionage gegen Deutschland – Aktuelle Entwicklungen, Bundesamt für
formal data on the workforce of the state security bodies were
Verfassungsschutz, November 2008, 6. <http://www.verfassungsschutz.
not disclosed. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1990s, accord- brandenburg.de/cms/detail.php/bb1.c.162958.de>
ing to available data, the FSB employed from 80,000–90,000 to 67 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 7; Knight, The Security Ser-
120,000–130,000 people, including two elite special operations vices and the Decline of Democracy in Russia, 14.
units.65 After the merge of the FPS and a part of the FAPSI with 68 Schneider, The Russian Federal Security Service under President Putin, 43;
Bettina Renz, “The Siloviki in Russian Politics: Political Strategy or a Prod-
the FSB, the staff of the latter could have grown and reached
uct of the System?”, in Russian Analytical Digest, No. 17, 20 March 2007, 6.
350,000 people.66 At the same time experts say that the Federal 69 Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 1994, 7; Knight, The Security
Border Service included some 180,000 people in the 1990s.67 Services and the Decline of Democracy in Russia, 14.
However, from the early 2000s it appears that the figure rose to 70 Michael J. Waller, “The KGB and Its ‘Successors’”, in Perspective, 1994, (4),
200,000–210,000.68 The workforce of the Federal Guard Service 4, 7; Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 99.
71 Spionage gegen Deutschland – Aktuelle Entwicklungen, Bundesamt für
was within the 13,000–20,000 range according to different esti-
Verfassungsschutz, November 2008, 6. <http://www.verfassungsschutz.
mates by the late period of Yeltsin’s rule and it might well have brandenburg.de/cms/detail.php/bb1.c.162958.de>
considerably grown after Putin’s arrival.69 According to other esti- 72 Olga Kryshtanovkaya, Stephen White, “Public Attitudes to the KGB: A Re-
mates, in the mid-2000s the Federal Guard Service staff included search Note”, in Europe-Asia Studies, 1993, (45), 1, 170.
approximately 20,000–30,000 people, inter alia, 3,000–5,000 of 73 Press releases of Levada Centre dated September 15 2000 <http://www.le-
vada.ru/2000/09/14/15-sentyabrya-2000-goda/> and July 3 2001. <http://
the presidential guard.70 And, finally, according to 2008 data,
www.levada.ru/2001/07/02/3-iyulya-2001-goda/>
the Foreign Intelligence Service employed about 13,000 people.71 74 Л. Д. Гудков, “Массовая идентичность и институциональное
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The Law of the USSR No. 2159-1 On the State Security Bodies in the USSR dated May 16, 1991 // Gazette of the Congress of People’s
Deputies and Supreme Soviet of the USSR, No. 22, 1991. p. 630.
Law of the USSR No. 124-N dated December 3, 1991 On reorganizing State Security Bodies // Gazette of the USSR Supreme Soviet,
No. 50, 1991. art. 1411.
Findings of the investigation materials on the role and involvement of KGB officials in the events of August 19–21, 1991.
<http://constitutions.ru/?p=7018>
Decree of RF President No. 2233 dated December 21, 1993 On the Dissolution of the Russian Federation Ministry of Security and
the Establishment of the Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service // Collected President’s Decrees and Russian federation
Government Resolutions, No. 52, 1993. art. 5062
The Decree of RF President No. 938 dated June 19, 1996 On the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation // Rossiyskaya
Gazeta, No. 118, June 25, 1996.
The Decree of RF President No. 1136 dated August 2, 1996 On Approving the Provision of the Federal Security Service of the Russian
Federation // Russian Federation Code, No. 32, 1996. art. 3901.
Decree of RF President No. 19 dated January 5, 1994 On Approving Provisions of Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service //
Collected President’s Decrees and Russian federation Government Resolutions, No. 2, 1994. art. 76.
Decree of RF President No. 1280 dated December 20, 1995 On establishing the Day of the Russian Federation Security Bodies //
RF Code, No. 52, 1995. art. 5135
Law of the Russian Federation No. 2506-1 dated March 13 1992 On operative investigation activities // Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 99,
April 29, 1992.
Law of the Russian Federation No. 2446-1 dated March 5, 1992 On Security // Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 103, May 6, 1992
Law of the Russian Federation No. 3246/1-1 dated July 8, 1992 On federal state security bodies // Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 180,
August 12, 1992
Law of the Russian Federation No. 5485-I dated July 21, 1993 On State Secrets // Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No. 182, September 21, 1993.
Resolution of the USSR State Council No. GS-8 dated October 22 1991 On reorganizing state security bodies // Gazette
of the Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet of the USSR, No. 44, 1991. art. 1239.
See also interview with S. Stepashin // Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 26, 1994. P. 1–5
Press releases of Levada Centre dated September 15 2000 <http://www.levada.ru/2000/09/14/15-sentyabrya-2000-goda/> and July 3
2001. <http://www.levada.ru/2001/07/02/3-iyulya-2001-goda/>

REGIME ARCHIVES
Svetlana Shuranova
INTRODUCTION There are state (national) archives, departmental archives,

municipal archives and non-governmental archives. State ar-
The breakthroughs in historical, source and archaeographic stud- chives include federal archives and the archives of the Russian
ies, made using the Russian archives in the 1990s are a gener- Federation subjects – regional archives. Federal archives are
ally recognized phenomenon. Before that Soviet archives had subordinate to Rosarchive – the Federal Archive Agency, – while
long been appendices to the administrative system, which ac- regional archives are subordinate to the regional administration
cumulated classified documents. A necessary element of Pere- and Rosarchive. Departmental archives are divisions within dif-
stroika after August 1991 was a leap to the information culture, ferent departments (ministries), and are subordinate to them.
including the removal of unjustified limitations on the access to They may keep documents of the RF Archive funds only tempo-
archive documents. Changes in the political situation triggered rarily, according to article 18 of the Federal Law on archives in
the advent of resolutions, temporary provisions and laws, which the Russian Federation (dated October 22, 2004). For example,
bridged the existing gap in the issues related to declassifying and the FSB is a successor of the documents on mass repressions and
using archive documents. Nevertheless, the historical scientific declassified documents of VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB, and
model has not been implemented yet, it is this model that is ori- the archives of FSB Directorates store the overwhelming majority
ented on involving shady documents about the past into the pub- of these cases. It is formally clarified whether these documents
lic sociocultural interaction. belong to Rosarchive now, but the period of temporary storage of
In today’s Russia it is possible to observe the return of a depart- these documents is specified in article 22 of the law on archives
mental monopoly on archive documents, the selective approach and is 15 years. In the 1990s the transfer of archive investigation
to users using unforeseeable and subjective criteria. Compared cases of the rehabilitated persons from the FSB to the public ar-
to the openness of the archives in the early 1990s, currently Rus- chives started, but so far it has been implemented only partially.
sia is experiencing a real regress. Therefore, many key aspects of Many departmental archives still enjoy the right of unlimited-
the Soviet past and, first of all, the history of public terror, actually period document storage.
stay unstudied, citizens are not always able to learn informa- Archive operations are mainly regulated by the above men-
tion about the fate of their own relatives out of those who suf- tioned federal law on archives in the Russian Federation. Ac-
fered from political repressions. The clusters of classified data, cording to part 1 article 24 of this law the user is entitled to freely
the availability of unprocessed documents, partial accessibility of seek and receive archive documents for studying. In addition,
the scientific-reference sources, restrictions arbitrarily imposed legal bases of the archivists and archive activities are regulated by
by archivists under protectionist ideas, – all this is today’s real- a great number of other regulations. Pursuant to part 4 article 29
ity. The archive user has to experience the barriers of state order of the RF Constitution, every person is entitled to freely seek and
limitations, subjective decisions and technical possibilities. receive information in any legal way. The provision of services on
releasing archive documents is regulated by numerous federal
laws, decrees of the RF President, resolutions of the RF Govern-
REGULATION AND FUNCTIONING ment and orders of the Russian FSB.
OF ARCHIVES IN RUSSIA The issues, arising out of the information being a state secret,
its classification or disclosure is regulated by the Law on State
Archives are valuable storage facilities, which are designed to Secrets dated July 21, 1993. According to the law the maximum
provide access to historical knowledge, as well as to keep a da- document classification period is 30 years. It means that in
tabase. According to the law an archive is an institution, which 30 years the documents must be disclosed or the classification
stores, systematizes and releases the documents, being within its is to be renewed. As an exception, this period may be extended
archive fund. The tasks of open usage of documents, in particular, on the opinion of the Interdepartmental Commission for the Pro-
to dispel historical myths are always opposed by the “protective” tection of State Secrets. In March 2014 the commission’s opinion
function of the archive service. An archive document operates in extended the classification period for a huge volume of infor-
the system, oriented on different values and legal criteria for mak- mation of the state security bodies by another 30 years. Until
ing decisions. For instance, one and the same document must 2044 the classification will be marked on any documents con-
be accessible for scientific use, but following the administrative taining information regarding intelligence, counterintelligence,
logic, it must be protected from attacks against “personal data”, operative investigation activities, on the persons collaborating
“personal secrets”, and “state secrets”. This is where controversy confidentially with the state security bodies, on state security
emerges – on the crossroads of the academic, educational and staff taking part in special operations, – the list of information
administrative systems. The conflict of state, corporate, personal categories consisting of 23 points enables it to extend the clas-
and public interests is inevitable: opening and concealing pow- sification period of any document, executed by the state security
erful archive resources is an instrument for public conscience bodies between 1917 and 1991.
manipulation. The infrastructure of storing, searching for archive The term personal data should be specifically indicated. It
information and legal regulations are also essential aspects of was introduced by the Federal Law on Personal Data, adopt-
archive operations as an institution. ed by the State Duma. This federal law does not touch upon

the procedure of accessing archive information. Moreover, ac- State University contacted the Central Committee of the All-
cording to article 1 of this law, it is not applied to Union Communist Party requesting classification of professors,
■■ processing personal data by individuals for personal and fam- post-graduate students and undergraduates due to the difficul-
ily needs only; ties in accessing old archive holdings of the 19th–20th centuries
■■ the issues of storing, completing, recording and using archive and the total secrecy of documents. In response to the letter,
documents containing personal data. archivists prepared a report, approved by the USSR Ministry of
In turn, the connection between the “personal data” and ac- Internal Affairs, substantiating the access denial by the fact that
cess to archive investigation cases of the repressed persons is most documents were written by “counterrevolutionary elements
regulated by order of the Russian Ministry of Culture, the Min- with the spirit of hatred and hostility to the Bolshevik party and
istry of Internal Affairs, the Russian Federal Security Service the Soviet state”. The report also refused to classify the university
(hereinafter “order of three ministries”) dated July 25, 2006 on faculty and students.1
approving the procedure of access to the materials stored in Historians Arseniy Roginsky and Nikita Okhotin remark that
the state archive and the archives of the governmental bodies over the whole period of its history the Soviet power actually
of the Russian Federation, terminated criminal and civil cases destroyed archive documents with a limited storage time when
against the persons subject to political repressions, as well as there was no operative need for them any longer, but, as a rule,
filtration and control cases. According to this order, personal data it was routine destruction according to the archive management
include the information on personal and family secrets, facts, instructions published in the state security bodies. The excep-
events and circumstances of the private lives of the repressed tion was the mass destruction of documents under L. P. Beria’s
persons. Personal data can be found in nearly all the documents order of 1940 to clean the archives of “unrecorded” materials, and
related to repressed people. Personal secrets include: the secret also the destruction of archive documents during WWII under
of intimate relations, the secret of property and financial standing the threat of being seized by the enemy. A part of the documents
(including bribery), medical secrets (e.g. alcohol addiction), and did not survive the evacuation. It is known that in 1954–55 ar-
children adoption secrets. The access to the documents contain- chives were cleaned of the documents “discrediting honest Soviet
ing personal data is provided to the relatives of the people men- citizens” along with the starting liberation of the Gulag prisoners.
tioned in the document, provided the relationship is confirmed. According to the total estimates, out of approximately 20 million
When at least 75 years have passed from the time of executing of the Soviet KGB archive cases only some 5 million cases had
the document, access to the materials for the researchers, not survived by 1991.2
being relatives, is possible only provided the written consent of During Perestroika there appeared a number of large-scale
the repressed persons, and after their death – their successor. In programs on reevaluating the past. In the conditions of the dra-
particular, the research into the materials of the cases against matically democratized conscience in the early 1990s the issues
millions of people who were subject to repressions during the So- of accessing the documents and discovering Soviet secrets were
viet period is given according to the procedure, established in in the focus of public attention. In 1992 the decree of the Rus-
the RF law dated October 18, 1991 on the rehabilitation of victims sian President on protecting state secrets and the resolution of
of political repressions. The rehabilitation process is a powerful the Russian Government on the issues of organizing the pro-
foundation for searching for and discovering archive documents tection of state secrets of the Russian Federation were issued.
on the activities of the repressive bodies, repression campaigns The work on declassifying archive documents, related to the state
and individual lives. archive policy, commenced following the decree of the Russian
The provision of access to archives is generally vital for stud- President of June 23, 1992, on declassifying legal and other regu-
ying the twentieth century history. Today the situation with lations, serving the basis for mass repressions and attacks on hu-
the publication of the archive documents, related to the evolu- man rights. The Rosarchive order of June 15, 1992, introduced
tion and operations of the Soviet totalitarian system, which de- the temporary procedure of accessing archive documents and
prived a person of their basic rights and freedoms, is of the great- the rules of their use, where it declared the principle of general
est interest. Archive documents of the operative holdings of accessibility of Russian archive documents. This document for
the Soviet KGB, the holdings of archive criminal investigation the first time established a 30-year document access restriction
cases, classified document management holdings, and the hold- period, provided they contain state secrets, and a 75-year per-
ings of dossiers of the KGB-NKVD staff members have not been sonal document access restriction period. Its essential provi-
revealed and made public yet. This deprives us of the possibil- sions were confirmed by the resolution of the Supreme Soviet
ity to reevaluate the past, and estimate the scale of ongoing and of the Russian Federation on the temporary procedure of ac-
expected changes. This, in particular, damages the development cessing archive documents and their use. At that time the Su-
of history as a science. preme Soviet set up a commission for preparing the guidelines
on accessing terminated criminal and filtration control cases,
which began being submitted from the Soviet KGB archives to
BETWEEN STATE CONTROL the national storage. In 1992–1993 whole sets of archive cases
AND PUBLIC PROPERTY were declassified. These were related to the CPSU ideological
The legal restriction on using archive information in the twen-

tieth century started in 1924–26 and gradually the problem of 1 М. А. Леушин, “Проблемы доступности архивов в начале 50-х годов”,
archive and archive document accessibility faded away from in Вестник архивиста, 1996, (4), 41–45.
2 А. Рогинский, Н. Охотин, Архивы КГБ: год после путча, in Cовременная
the legal public conscience. An interesting case, which took place Россия: взгляд изнутри. Политика. Право. Культура. Сборник статей
in 1951, was described by a Candidate of Sciences (PhD) in His- российских исследователей к 10-летию Института Восточной
tory and archivist M. A. Leushin: the administration of Moscow Европы при Бременском университете, 1992.

fight against dissidence in the USSR etc. In 1993 the commission the freedom of access to them. The researcher may avoid touch-
on accepting KGB and CPSU documents into the national storage ing upon a topic, knowing that basically no access may be re-
was dissolved, while the law on the state secrets was adopted, ceived to the materials.
and the functions of declassification were delegated to the In- The chances to access information are unequal, and the very
terdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets. historical knowledge can still be a manipulation tool, always de-
In 1994 Boris Yeltsin signed the resolution, according to which pending on the will of authorities and bureaucrats.
the ministries had to delegate the powers to declassify their
documents to the heads of the state national archives, but it was
never implemented. By 1997 the implementation of the presi- CURRENT STATUS
dential decree on declassifying had slowed down notably, and
the archives lost their right to declassify documents themselves. At present the practices of providing and rejecting access in
In many governmental bodies at the levels of all subdivisions, de- Russia differ depending on the region, type of archives, type of
classification expert commissions were established. Groundless documents and other circumstances. To justify rejections dif-
secrecy period extensions for most documents became normal ferent archives may use different regulations as well as arbitrary
again, while declassifying became exceptional. The unlimited administration decisions. This is also related to the possibility of
authority of ministries and other governmental bodies enabled the free interpretation of regulations in various regional archive
them to create the full image of the criminal policy of the USSR institutions, with the departmental specifics of the archives, and
and led to the inaccessibility of the most valuable information with the role the requested topic plays in the public political
sources for researchers. discourse. The violation of the rights of researchers and citizens
Today it is possible to state that there is an expressed institu- trying to gain access to the collections of archive documents is
tional conflict between archive users and archivists. The archive systematic, and it is deeply rooted in the following practices:
is more often considered by users either under the secular logic ■■ Refusal to provide a scientific reference base (the full list of
(as a service provider), or under the “messianist” logic as a social the holdings, lists, reference cards and other materials, ena-
institution, designed to store (but not protect) the public knowl- bling the researcher to get oriented in the volume of archive
edge of the society of itself. In turn, archive staff, vice versa, tend materials and identify what is generally stored in the archive).
to “de-routinize” their professional activities, and do it based on Most often it is the case of departmental archives, which are
evidence. The minutes of formal meetings document the codes absolutely non-transparent to researchers. Article 24, para-
of ethical rules for the archivists and enable them to say that graph 1, subparagraph 1.1 of the law on archive activities in
the primary mission of the archives is to protect the integrity and the Russian Federation says that the access to archive docu-
safety of the documents to be stored.3 The protective trends in ments is provided by giving the archive documents user refer-
the archive operations intensify along with a toughening up of ence search tools and information on these tools, including
archive law. However, the top-bottom legal regulation of the ar- as an electronic document. This provision is also available in
chive practices brings a number of unexpected effects. the rules of storing, collecting, recording, and using archive
The protective trends in the archive institution activities were documents, approved by the Order of the RF Ministry of Cul-
determined due to the adoption in 2004 of the law on archives, ture and Mass Communications in 2007. In practice, archives
inclusion of the norms of criminal and administrative liability do not always provide full lists of their available holdings and
for stealing documents in the Criminal Code, and the adoption the lists of the written-off cases. National archives frequently
of the federal law on information, information technologies and do not mention the holdings containing the cases of the re-
information protection. It is also worth mentioning the order of pressed persons, at all. It is to be noted that the law on the ar-
three ministries dated July 25, 2006. It is owing to this order that chive activities in the Russian Federation does not include
the access of researchers to the archive investigation cases be- the term “closed storage”, and the law on the state secrets in
came highly complicated. the RF does not include this term either. FSB archive subdivi-
In practice today users face limitations, which are not includ- sions also do not provide any reference information materials
ed in the regulations restricting access to regulations. This can be on the documents stored by them. The lists of declassified and
explained by an ambiguity of wording in the regulations, which partially declassified FSB documents of the secret document
leave space for interpretation. From the standpoint of practical management in 1936–1937 are unavailable, because they are
relations between archive users and archivists the situation looks documents “for restricted use” upon the decision of the FSB
as follows: the discrepancies between mutual expectations and Central expert commission dated January 9, 2014. Regarding
rigid regulation of the archive agenda on the one hand, led to departmental archives, the procedure works based on the fol-
“shallowing” the bureaucratic form of the archive on the one lowing principle: in your request indicate the name, or full
hand, on the other – to too much paperwork. name and year of birth of the person you are interested in,
It is known that there have been cases, where the access to and we will see if we have the respective documents. In 2016
information was organized to avoid the formal access proce- within the research carried out by the International Memorial,
dure – the user with “contacts”, a network in the archive staff, I interviewed a historian, who mentioned the case when he
has an opportunity, for example, to get information without was not given an archive dossier, since it did not have the list
being involved in the bureaucratic procedures accompanying of the documents included therein. That means that in the al-
the access to information ensuing from a formal request. One phabetical index this archive of the specific person was there,
of the effects of this situation is the dependence of the research
field on the possibility to access relevant materials. When choos- 3 А. А. Пронин, М. Н. Швидко, О международном этическом кодексе
ing the topic to study, the researcher, experienced in working архивистов, Документ. Архив. История. Современность, Екатеринбург:
with archives, looks into the availability of the materials and Изд-во Урал. ун-та, 2015.

but it had not been analyzed, therefore, the access to it was not ‘order of three ministries’. And, since we started working on
provided. “Actually I know that there is the material, which is the Memory Book in 2003, before this order, we managed to work
of potential interest to me, I know the person in whose archive a little with archive investigation cases. Despite the fact that I am
this material is stored, but I cannot be given access as long as the head of a working group on creating the Memory Book, that is
there is an archivist who will analyze and record the elements I was appointed by the regional administration, and I have a kind
of the archive”, the researcher told me. of FSB representative, who is a member of the working group, as
■■ Refusal to provide requested materials for imaginary rea- a subordinate, I am not entitled to work with archive investigation
sons or without any reasons. Most frequently the reason to cases under this order”. – Anonymous researcher
refuse access is the reference to the personal secret information “Considering regional archives, you can be well prepared le-
contained in the case. This secret is not strictly identified legally, know all your rights, understand what you are allowed to
gally and the decision on whether there are indeed these data receive and what not, but the paragraph ‘at a director’s discretion’
in the case or not is arbitrarily made by the archivist. Other kills all the rules.” – Anonymous researcher
reasons include references to “decay”, “a missing case”, “fungi “When my request for cases was rejected, it was not even at
on the case materials” etc. In addition, the rejection may also the level of the archive administration, these were just some em-
be based on various intradepartmental or archive guidelines ployees who worked in the former special fund. They themselves
and instructions contained therein. looked at the cases and at their discretion told me that they would
■■ Restriction of access due to the order of “three ministries” not give them to me, since there may be some personal data. Natu-
dated July 25, 2006. The point is about a 75-year limitation rally, it is still an open question what their grounds were not to
period for accessing the documents, under which it is pos- provide me with those cases.” – Anonymous researcher
sible to gain access only by providing the archive with a nota- Among the most significant for the user and archivist commu-
rized permission of the person whose name in mentioned in nication practices, the interviewed respondents also singled
the document, or, in the case of his/her death, the permission out insufficient archive funding, overloading archivists with
of his/her descendants. work, inefficient work management, unsatisfactory condition
■■ Refusal to provide cases referring to the confidential char- of archive materials, premises, and the problem of digitalizing
acter of the data therein. In archives the process of declas- archive sources.
sification has been nearly terminated. Scheduled declassifi-
cation of materials, whose classification period has expired,
is not in place at all. Researchers’ access is limited even to LESSONS LEARNT
those archive documents whose maximum classification pe-
riod has already expired. The requirements of the RF law on Legal claims against archives in the case of their refusal to pro-
the state secrets are not fulfilled in terms of the need to justify vide access are a rare phenomenon. In a number of specific
the present damage to the security of the Russian Federation cases justice is very hard to achieve. It is also extremely hard to
by distributing the data, which were referred by the authori- create the legal field and support infrastructure for the claims
ties to the state secrets. Pursuant to article 6 of the RF law on from those, whose rights to access information were infringed.
the state secrets, the reference of the data to the state secrets is The remedies for accessing archives are still legally sought by
made in compliance with the principles of legality, relevancy the researchers who cooperate with the Memorial. As regards
and timeliness. The data may be regarded as a state secret the success of this work, in terms of the Russian court orders
following the expert’s findings, which identify the reason for positive for claimants, it is impossible to expect quick success,
classifying specific data, probable economic and other effects but it is the fight against abuses of specific archives that may es-
of this action considering the balance of the vital interests of tablish pre-conditions for gradual changes to the situation for
the state, society and citizens. Furthermore, article 8 states the better. Here the legal cases on the access to archive informa-
that the classification level degree of the data being a state se- tion will be considered.
cret must correspond to the severity of the damage which may Archive users regularly face the problem of copying docu-
be caused to the RF security due to the distribution of these ments they need. Archives under different pretexts prohibit
data. Currently the legal practice allows for referring the data the use of photocopying and offer their often expensive services.
to the state secret provided no justification is given regarding In January 2016 Andrey Galinichev submitted a claim where he
the security damage due to the distribution of these data. demanded to recognize paragraph 3.1.12 as partially invalid in
As was mentioned above, one of the main problems is the ab- the 2013 Procedure of using archive documents in the national
sence of a dynamic balance of priorities and interaction in the ar- and municipal archives of the Russian Federation, which pro-
chive-related administrative and research aspects. In 2014–2016 hibits copying using any technical devices. Part 4 Article 29 of
the International Memorial interviewed archive researchers to the Russian Constitution says: “Each person is entitled to freely
analyze well-established routine norms and phenomena, which search, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by
comprise routine practices of accessing archive documents and any legal means”. Andrey Galinishev and Dmitry Poslavsky ap-
materials in Russia. On the level of applying certain provisions, pealed to this article and also to the laws on the archive activities
regulating archive activities, researchers singled out common and on information when they decided to stand their ground and
problems related to the influence of specific archive institutions seek free document copying via the Supreme Court. In March
staff to the possibility for citizens to get materials. Several exam- 2016 Galinichev and Poslavsky won the case: the Court recog-
ples are given below: nized limitations on copying archive documents with a user’s
“Since 2006 the access to archive investigation cases has been technical devices as invalid. The fact of the court decision has
closed completely. For relatives only. The point is about the so-called already been included into the order issued by the Ministry of

Culture. Now an archive user is entitled to use his or her own the repressed persons without clarifying the issue of actual per-
technical devices to photocopy documents. Thus, owing to sonal data availability in the requested materials. This is shown
a private civil initiative, users have been legally provided with by the numerous refusals to provide access to documents re-
the right to the free photographing of an unlimited number of ceived by the Memorial from different archives. The absence of
documents at their own discretion. clear criteria of “personal and family secrets” creates the risk of
In practice archives continue refusing researchers access to holding people criminally liable groundlessly. A vivid example
a huge volume of archive documents of the Soviet period, whose is the criminal prosecution of the historian Mikhail Suprun for
maximum classification period has already expired, without re- the preparation of Memory Books of the repressed Germans in
ferring to the availability of the respective opinion of the Inter- the USSR. Suprun was accused under Article 137 of the RF Crimi-
departmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets. nal Code of the illegal collection of data on citizens’ private lives,
In 2010 the FSB Central archive refused to fulfill a request from which were their personal and family secrets, since the collected
the historian Nikita Petrov on declassification and providing information contained different biographical data of repressed
him for studying a few archive orders of the USSR MGB dated persons.
1940–1950 referring to the fact that the documents include data Another problematic provision is paragraph 5 of the “order
that are a state secret. In 2014 it refused the researcher Niki- of three ministries”: “This Provision does not regulate the is-
ta Astashin access to the documents, related to mass riots in sues of access to the materials of criminal and administrative
the Union Republics in 1961–1982, stored in the departmental cases against the persons who were not granted rehabilitation,
archive. In both cases governmental bodies made decisions on or the cases which have not been reconsidered according to
restricting access to information without any legal powers to the procedure established by Russian law. To the applications
do so. from citizens regarding the access to the materials of criminal
The experience of court trials shows that in the law appli- and administrative cases with negative decisions on rehabilita-
cation practice there may be free interpretation of recogniz- tion of the persons mentioned therein, archives issue certificates
ing data as a state secret provided no proof of any damage to on the reconsideration findings”. This is the basis for refusing to
the state security. The same may be said about the restriction provide researchers with the materials, if the citizens involved
on a researcher’s access to archive documents whose maximum were not rehabilitated. Archives reject even relatives’ requests
classification period has expired. In March 2014 the Interdepart- to provide the materials on non-rehabilitated persons. A recent
mental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets decided to example of restricting access on these grounds: Sergey Prudovsky
extend the classification period of a vast scope of documents of tried to get personal records on three convicted NKVD mem-
the state security bodies by 30 years. The requirement of the law bers, who themselves once took part in organizing repressions.
on the exclusive and exceptional nature of classifying has ob- The FSB Directorate in Moscow and Moscow region rejected
viously been violated. The petition requesting the cancellation the request referring to Article 11 of the RF law on the rehabili-
of the commission’s opinion was signed by over sixty thousand tation of the victims of political repressions, according to which
people. In response to the petition the commission responded the case can be studied wither by the rehabilitated person him-
that the decision on extending the classification period does not self/herself or by his/her relatives (at the same time the NKVD
apply to the materials related to mass repressions. They must employees in question were not rehabilitated and this law does
be accessible according to the presidential decree of 1992 on not apply to them).
declassifying legal and other regulations serving the grounds In 2015 an important effort was made to support the inter-
for mass repressions. However, in practice archives continue ests of the civil society in Ukraine: the Verkhovna Rada adopted
refusing access to archive documents of the Soviet period. Re- the law on the access to archives of the repressive bodies of
searcher Sergey Prudovsky sought the declassification of a let- the Communist totalitarian regime of 1917–1991. All the docu-
ter of the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs of the USSR, ments, related to repressions, violation of human rights and
Nikolai Yezhov, one of the main organizers of mass repressions. freedoms, are submitted to the national archive at the institute
The FSB refused to declassify the document referring to that very of the national memory of Ukraine. It opened the opportunity to
opinion of the Commission for the Protection of State Secrets as study these materials for all those who wish, including Russian
the one containing “information sensitive for Russia”. Moscow historians. However, this has not been the grounds for declas-
city court took the side of the FSB, and later the decision was also sifying similar documents in Russia. Moreover, Moscow courts
supported by the Supreme Court. refuse to recognize extending the document classification period
Equally topical are still the problems of restricting researchers’ as illegal, despite the fact that such documents were made public
access to documents under the pretext of a personal or family in Kiev and published on the Internet. The Supreme Court does
secret. According to the existing legislation, the right to access not recognize the documents, which obviously show repressive
information (including archive documents) may be restricted campaigns, as those referring to repressions.
only under the federal law. However, currently archive legisla- Today few academic community historians and researchers
tion includes regulations establishing restrictions on accessing risk speaking in the courts and in the mass media against well-
archive information which are not specified in the federal laws. established access restriction practices. To develop the archive
These regulations include the order on approving the procedure users activity to protect their rights in 2014 Memorial launched
of accessing documents dated July 25, 2006, mentioned above. the project and an online resource http://dostup.memo.ru/ de-
The provisions of this regulation were appealed against by signed to inform the public of the status quo and existing access
the Memorial organization in the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, to the archive information. It is also a platform for providing legal
the court did not see any controversies. In practice archives often advice to citizens and researchers seeking to get information in
refuse researchers access to any materials of the cases related to the state national archives.

RECOMMENDATIONS is necessary to take actions in the legal field, the expert’s domain
and to appeal to the public (and, which is equally important) by
At present the trend indicates an intensification of the mecha- actively working with specific cases of violating citizens’ rights
nisms, deepening the political and cultural problems of work- to access information.
ing with archive evidence and supporting formal conservative To solve the issue of the access to archive information it is
memory policy. Therefore, the focus is to be on the public do- required to comply with the idea of freedom of information, as
main, where the issues of access to archive documents are ar- one of the vital human and civil rights. It means the opportu-
ticulated and viewpoints of an active social group of researchers nity to gain free access to the archives for any individual or any
are expressed. legal entity avoiding the use of a selective approach, compli-
The fight for the researcher’s entitlement to be freely granted ance with the conditions of departmental storage of archive
access and distribute information from archives is among the top documents, disclosing the documents that are to be declassi-
priority issues related to solving the tasks of ensuring subordina- fied, an opportunity to get access to the quality scientific refer-
tion and transparency of the state management. To seek higher ence base, the possibility of any forms and kinds of using archive
openness of the data related to the crimes of the Soviet regime it information.

Козлов, В. П., Бог сохранял архивы России, Челябинск: Книга, 2009
Кривова, Н. А., О деятельности специальной комиссии по архивам при Президенте Российской Федерации, in Вестник
Архивиста, 1994, 1–2, (19–20), 60–65
Павлова, Т. Ф., Рассекречивание документов в государственных архивах России: некоторые итоги, законодательная база,
проблемы, in Вестник Архивиста, 1994, 1–2 (19–20), 50–59
Пронин, А. А., Швидко, М. Н., О международном этическом кодексе архивистов, in Документ. Архив. История.
Современность, Екатеринбург: Изд-во Урал. ун-та, 2015, 348–354
Леушин, М. А., Проблемы доступности архивов в начале 50-х годов, in Вестник архивиста, 1996, (34) 4, 41–45
Проблемы публичности архивов и рассекречивания архивных документов: Информационное сообщение. [“12–14 января
1994 г. в Москве состоялся международный семинар по проблемам публичности архивов и рассекречивания архивных
документов…”], in Вестник Архивиста, 1994, No. 1–2 (19–20), C. 42
Рамазашвили, Г., Войны за просвещение – доступ к истории в наших руках, in Индекс: Досье на цензуру, 2007, 26, 247–270
Резунков, В., ФСБ против ученых. Чем и кому не угодил историк Михаил Супрун? in Радио свобода, 2011;
http://www.svoboda.org/a/24373137.html
Рогинский, А., Охотин, Н., Архивы КГБ: год после путча, in Cовременная Россия: взгляд изнутри. Политика. Право.
Культура. Сборник статей российских исследователей к 10-летию Института Восточной Европы при Бременском
университете, 1992
Чубарьян, А. О., Источниковедческие аспекты в изучении истории XX века, in Вестник архивиста, 1997, 6 (42), 11–26

LUSTRATION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Nikolai Bobrinsky
INTRODUCTION CPSU CASE AND LUSTRATION BILL

The concept of lustration embraces a wide range of measures The next opportunity to carry out lustration was related to
designed as remedial action for the repressive policy of former the consideration of the so-called CPSU case in the Russian
authoritarian regimes, including the detection of their Intel- Constitutional Court, where the issue of the constitutionality of
ligence agents, publication of their names and various restric- the very CPSU was raised. The recognition of the Communist
tions to taking public offices (normally, those of civil servants). Party as unconstitutional could entail the prohibition of its resto-
In the post-Soviet Russia none of these measures has ever been ration in Russia, and, as the chief justice Valery Zorkin confessed
introduced. Therefore, the chapter discussing lustration in Russia subsequently, to lustration – the ineligibility of its members for
will be limited to the cases of unsuccessful attempts to launch it official positions. Nevertheless, CPSU constitutionality was not
and the description of the effects of refusing it. considered, which gave the chief justice of the Constitutional
Court the grounds to credit himself with saving the country from
civil war, which, according to him, lustration could have provo-
ATTEMPTS TO PUBLISH KGB AGENTS’ NAMES ken.7 The communist party was successfully revived as the Com-
munist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and it started
The start of lustration public discussions dates back to the coup playing a significant part in Russian political life.
d’état loss of the State Committee of the State of Emergency Later attempts to implement lustration in Russia were relat-
(GKChP) in August 1991. The winner of the political crisis, Rus- ed to the name of Galina Starovoytova, who was the deputy of
sian President Boris Yeltsin, tried to remove the two main pillars the Soviet and then Russian parliament for many years. It was she
of the Soviet Communist regime – the party and the secret ser- who was the first to put forward the bill on lustration at the end of
vices. Though it turned out rather easy to deal with the former, 1992.8 She understood lustration as a measure to fight antidemo-
the latter appeared highly resistant. For this purpose, a person cratic revenge and a return to totalitarianism.
new to the state security bodies, Vadim Bakatin, was assigned In one of the further versions of the bill, Starovoytova offered
the Head of the KGB. A number of parliamentary and ministerial to introduce temporary (5–10 years) professional restrictions for
committees were set up to investigate and verify the constitution- the following categories of people:
ality of various Committee activities.1 It was decided to withdraw ■■ all former dismissed secretaries of party, industrial and re-
the archives from the KGB.2 In October 1991 a Committee for gional organizations of the CPSU;
the Party and KGB archives transferring was set up. It included ■■ former first, second and third secretaries of district, city, re-
members of the democratic movement and representatives of gional and krai committees of the CPSU;
the Memorial society.3 ■■ employees of the central republican and all-union commit-
At that moment the idea of revealing the names of KGB secret tees of the communist parties, acting prior to the decree of
informers became popular. Despite accepting the role of the state President Yeltsin on the CPSU prohibition (including the sec-
security bodies liquidator, V. Bakatin rejected the above proposal retaries of the respective central committees, but excluding
by stating just a week after the loss of the GKChP putsch that “it service personnel).
was not people to be blamed but the system that made them”
and that the appeals to open the archives might divide the soci-
1 See A. Кичихин А., Привело ли расследование августовского путча
ety even deeper.4 Some members of the inspection committees к трансформациям в работе КГБ?, in КГБ: вчера, сегодня, завтра.
working in the KGB decided to take the initiative and in early Сборник докладов, Москва: Общественный фонд “Гласность”, 1993.
1992 they published excerpts of the reports of KGB department 5 2 Decree of the President of the RSFSR dated August 24, 1991 No. 82 On Ar-
(ideological counterintelligence) with informers’ agent names.5 chives of the USSR State Security Committee.
3 Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR dated Octo-
Alongside these chaotic revelations, the Committee for the ar-
ber 14, 1991, No. 1746-I On establishing a committee for transferring the ar-
chives of the CPSU and the KGB prepared a proposal to transfer chives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the KGB to
the personal records of the former members of the state security the state storage and use.
bodies (stored for at least 30 years), dossiers and agents’ personal 4 В. В. Бакатин, Избавление от КГБ, Москва: Новости, 1992.
records to the state archives. However, these courageous projects 5 Н. В. Петров, Десятилетие архивных реформ в России, in Индекс,
2001, (14); http://index.org.ru/journal/14/petrov1401.html; Как
did not enjoy the required public and political support. Those
они работали с нами. Блог Андрея Мальгина, 20. 6. 2007; http://
who objected to lustration took advantage of the situation and avmalgin.livejournal.com/566420.html; Штрихи к портрету. Блог Андрея
as early as in March 1992 they ensured the passing of the Law of Мальгина, 26. 11. 2006; http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/695124.html
the Russian Federation On criminal investigation activities in 6 Law of the Russian Federation On criminal investigation activities
the Russian Federation.6 It stipulated the provision of classifying in the Russian Federation dated 13. 3. 1992 No. 2506-1.
7 Имеем Право. Интервью с Валерием Зорькиным, in Российская
the data of the organization and the tactics of criminal investiga-
газета, No. 4210, 31. 10. 2006; https://rg.ru/2006/10/31/zorkin-ks.html
tion activities (part six, article 6). Thus, the issue of disclosing 8 Galina Starovoytova’s bill on lustration. Website of Nizhny Novgorod re-
the names of the KGB employees and informers was taken off gional department of RPR-PARNAS, 15. 8. 2014; http://parnasnn.ru/
the political agenda just seven months after the putsch loss. proekt-zakona-o-lyustracii-galiny-starovojtovoj/2014/08/

The restrictions were to be applied to these people not uncondi- Yeltsin’s political appointee KGB lieutenant-colonel Vladimir
tionally, but only in one of the cases below: Putin defeated the former head of the KGB first central board
■■ if the total work experience in these positions was at least Eugeny Primakov. Vladimir Putin’s 17-year reign has been under
10 years; the full-scale influence of the former Soviet security services on
■■ if as of the date of the GKChP putsch they were in one of the political and economic life of the country.
the above positions and did not voluntarily declare their de- During Putin’s first two presidential terms lustration and de-
parture from the CPSU, or communization became marginal ideas on the whole. The gradu-
■■ if they were employees of the bodies of the People’s Comissar- al return to them occurred at the end of the first decade of the 21st
iat for Internal Affairs, (NKVD) – the Ministry of State Security century. In 2011 the council for civic society and human rights
(MGB) – the KGB, including those in the reserve, or if they had development, during the tenure of Putin’s successor Medvedev,
agreed to collaborate with them, or had been working in these offered to prohibit for civil servants the rejection or justification
bodies during the last ten years prior to adopting the new Rus- of totalitarian regime crimes11 and reschedule the Federal Secu-
sian constitution (1993). rity Service professional day, as it was celebrated on the date of
Professional restrictions, according to Starovoytova’s bill, had to the establishing of the CheKa (All-Russian Special Commission
apply to the civil services (starting with the heads of district and for Combating Counter-revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation),
city administrations and finishing with federal ministers), educa- which laid the basis of Soviet punitive agencies. However, these
tion and the mass media. At the same time for the “active carri- projects were not supported politically.
ers of totalitarian regime policy” (as those subject to lustration
were jointly called) it was allowed to take directly and publicly
elected offices. NEW RISE OF THE LUSTRATION ISSUE IN RUSSIA
The project separately specified measures to ensure loyalty to
the new Russian constitution from the armed forces and intel- Along with the advent of the political opposition to Putin’s re-
ligence services – as examinations on the knowledge of consti- gime in Russia the issue of lustration gained new significance.
tutional provisions and an oath of fealty to it. Now Putin’s opponents see there a means to overcome power
abuse and systematic impunity, which became established
in the governmental machine. There are attempts to carry out
FINAL FAILURE OF LUSTRATION, “public lustration” or at least prepare the materials for it in
ITS CAUSES AND EFFECTS the future. In 2012 the Yabloko party and an informal associa-
tion “The League of Voters” collected data on over 1000 persons,
Starovoytova’s attempts to push the bill through parliament, involved, according to the observers, in falsification at the elec-
the last of which was made in 1997, completely failed. A year tions.12 One of the leading opposition leaders of Russia, Aleksey
later the very supporter of the lustration ideas was shot dead near Navalny, who announced his intent to race for the presidential
her house in Saint-Petersburg. post in 2018, launched a special website “The Black Notebook”,
The failure of her efforts was caused, inter alia, by the skeptical which includes judges and officers of law-enforcement bodies,
attitude to lustration of many respected democrats. For instance, participating in violations of human rights.13
a founder of the Memorial Society and the first human-rights
ombudsman in Russia Sergey Kovalev was always against it.9
The veteran of the Russian democratic movement Yuliy Ryba- LESSONS LEARNT
kov, who was first a deputy of the Leningrad council, and then of
the State Duma, later regretted this decision of his fellow-thinkers The lack of any lustration in post-Soviet Russia is an independent
to lustration: “Both Sergey Kovalev and I, as well as dozens of and important symbol of the country’s failure to transit to de-
democrats who had undergone repressions, knowing their peo- mocracy. The Communist Party power was, actually, replaced by
ple, were afraid of a wave of score-settling, which could get out of the power of its major intelligence service, which for nearly eight
control and, as it seemed to us, would terminate the movement decades eradicated domestic foes of the party and, finally, took its
for freedom altogether. Today it is clear to me that the failure to place. Perhaps, it was the rejection of lustration and the dismissal
support Starovoytova, to force the President to make this neces- of the Soviet punitive agencies that was one of the main causes
sary step was our fatal mistake”.10 of the democracy loss in Russia.
Since there were no lustration measures, Russian successors
of the KGB (the Ministry for State Security – the Federal Coun- 9 Вечно сомневающийся Ковалев. Интервью с правозащитником
terintelligence Service – Federal Security Service and a number Сергеем Адамовичем Ковалевым, in Gazeta.ru, 1. 9. 1999; http://
of other bodies) started restoring their influence on sociopoliti- gazeta.lenta.ru/interview/01-09-1999_kovalev.htm; Свобода в обществе
cal life. As early as in 1993 it was reported that the security re- Мемориал. Декоммунизация и люстрация, in Радио Свобода, 22. 4.
serve officers institute would be revived in the ministries and 2012; http://www.svoboda.org/a/24557575.html
10 Рыбаков Ю. Законопроект Галины Старовойтовой о люстрации.
departments and their representatives would be sent off to Блог Андрея Илларионова, 18. 5. 1985; http://echo.msk.ru/blog/
commercial entities. For example, in 1992 the former head of aillar/1767702-echo/
the 5th department of the KGB Filipp Bobkov became the head of 11 Предложения об учреждении общенациональной государственно-
the analytical department of JSC Group Most owned by oligarch общественной программы “Об увековечении памяти жертв
тоталитарного режима и о национальном примирении”, in Российская
Vladimir Gusinsky, who held, inter alia, the leading national TV
газета, 7. 4. 2001; https://rg.ru/2011/04/07/totalitarizm-site.html
channel NTV. 12 Учителя пошли по спискам, in Радио свобода, 3. 4. 2012; http://
The climax of the state security staff return to the state leader- www.svoboda.org/a/24535300.html
ship was the race for power in the second half of 1999, when Boris 13 http://blackbook.wiki/

Amsterdam, Robert, Lustration and the Politics of Memory in Russia. URL: https://robertamsterdam.com/
lustration_and_the_politics_of_memory_in_russia/
Вечно сомневающийся Ковалев. Интервью с правозащитником Сергеем Адамовичем Ковалевым, in Gazeta.ru, 1. 9. 1999;
http://gazeta.lenta.ru/interview/01-09-1999_kovalev.htm
Decree of the President of the RSFSR dated August 24, 1991 No. 82 On Archives of the USSR State Security Committee
Имеем Право. Интервью с Валерием Зорькиным, in Российская газета, No. 4210, 31. 10. 2006; https://rg.ru/2006/10/31/
zorkin-ks.html
Как они работали с нами. Блог Андрея Мальгина, 20. 6. 2007; http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/566420.html
Кичихин, А., Привело ли расследование августовского путча к трансформациям в работе КГБ?, in КГБ: вчера, сегодня,
завтра. Сборник докладов, Москва: Общественный фонд “Гласность”, 1993
Kora, Andrieu, “An Unfinished Business: Transitional Justice and Democratization in Post-Soviet Russia”, in International Journal
of Transitional Justice, (2011) 5 (2): 198–220
Law of the Russian Federation On criminal investigation activities in the Russian Federation dated 13. 3. 1992 No. 2506-1
Nuzov, Ilya, “The Role of Political Elite in Transitional Justice in Russia: From False ‘Nurembergs’ to Failed Desovietization”,
in U. C. Davis Journal of International Law & Policy, 2014, 20 (2), 273–321
Петров, Н.В., Десятилетие архивных реформ в России, in Индекс, 2001, (14); http://index.org.ru/journal/14/petrov1401.html
Предложения об учреждении общенациональной государственно-общественной программы “Об увековечении памяти
жертв тоталитарного режима и о национальном примирении”, in Российская газета, 7. 4. 2001; https://rg.ru/2011/04/07/
totalitarizm-site.html
Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR dated October 14, 1991, No. 1746-I On establishing a committee
for transferring the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the KGB to the state storage and use
Рыбаков, Ю., Законопроект Галины Старовойтовой о люстрации. Блог Андрея Илларионова, 18. 5. 1985;
http://echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/1767702-echo/
Свобода в обществе Мемориал. Декоммунизация и люстрация in Радио Свобода, 22. 4. 2012. URL:
Stan, Lavinia, Transitional Justice is Eastern Europe and The Former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist past, London:
Routledge, 2009
Stan, Lavinia, Nedelsky, Nadya, eds., Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from Twenty-Five Years of Experience, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015
Штрихи к портрету. Блог Андрея Мальгина, 26. 11. 2006; http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/695124.html
Учителя пошли по спискам, in Радио свобода, 3. 4. 2012; http://www.svoboda.org/a/24535300.html
Website of Nizhny Novgorod regional department of RPR-PARNAS, 15. 8. 2014; http://parnasnn.ru/
proekt-zakona-o-lyustracii-galiny-starovojtovoj/2014/08/

INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION
OF THE CRIMES OF THE REGIME
Nikolai Bobrinsky
INTRODUCTION the content of the repressive measures. According to the criterion

of compliance with the Soviet law, political repressions may be
In the field of criminal justice the results of the Russian transition roughly divided into those legalized, implemented under admin-
are negligible: no person involved in organizing and implement- istrative regulations non-compliant with the law, and those fully
ing repressive communist regime policy in the USSR was convict- deprived of any legal grounds, i.e. illegal ones. The issue of factual
ed by Russian courts. Criminal investigation materials, initiated justification of repressive measures was not considered here.
following political repressions, are not available to the public, An example of the first category is a criminal sentence on anti-
and in some cases – classified. The main reasons for this outcome Soviet agitation and propaganda, the second category – repres-
are the lack of political will of the new Russian government, weak sions applied by illegal extrajudicial bodies, the third – murders
social demand for holding Soviet officials liable as well as differ- committed by the officers of the KGB without any legal records.
ent legal constraints. In the latter case it is evident that the Soviet law was violated.
Since these political repressions were applied by public offic-
ers, their actions should be characterized as excess of power2
STATE VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION (in the example above – combined with willful murder3). Nev-
IN THE USSR FROM THE STANDPOINT ertheless, it should be noted here that the Soviet criminal law,
unlike the contemporary Russian law, did not stipulate criminal
OF CRIMINAL LAW liability for carrying out an illegal order.4 This way, the perform-
ers of even quite arbitrary acts of political violence, in case they
It is not a stretch to state that the repressive policy against its own were held criminally liable could refer to the unavailability of
people was always inherent in the Soviet regime, except, perhaps, legal opportunity to avoid carrying out the order with no risk of
for the last few years of its existence. Its content, scale and victims being criminally prosecuted themselves.
underwent significant changes over time. In the second case the law might be violated due to the contra-
The law “On rehabilitation of victims of political repressions” diction of administrative regulations, which served the grounds
adopted in October 1991 (hereinafter the Rehabilitation Law) for non-judicial bodies, to the provisions of the Soviet Constitu-
provides the general definition of political repressions. They are tion and legislation. However, in this case repression performers
understood as various coercive measures, applied by the state could also refer to the fact that the correspondent administrative
under political motives, and represented by the deprivation of life regulations were not considered illegal at the time of their appli-
or freedom, placement for coercive treatment in mental health cation. They were unconditionally binding, otherwise the above
institutions, forced emigration and deprivation of citizenship, de- performers could face criminal liability for negligence or for sab-
portation of population groups from their places of permanent otage. These reasons, nonetheless, do not relieve of responsibility
residence, exile, forced relocation to special settlements, forced the persons who adopted the respective illegal regulations, who
labor under the restriction of freedom, as well as other ways of could be recognized accomplices of excess of power regardless
depriving or restricting the rights and freedoms of the persons of the actual perpetrators’ liability.
who were recognized as socially dangerous to the state or political
order in terms of the strata, social, national, religious and other 1 Nikita V. Petrov, Crimes of the Soviet regime: Legal assessment and pun-
features, implemented under resolutions of judicial and extrajudi- ishment of the guilty ones, in Crimes of the Communist Regimes. An assess-
cial bodies, or administratively by local executive bodies and non- ment by historians and legal experts. Proceedings of international conference.,
governmental organizations exercising administrative powers. Prague: Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, 2011, 87–92: https://
www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/publikace/sborniky/crime/sbornik.pdf
Obviously, according to the law authors this definition was to
2 In particular, art. 110 (“abuse of authority or office”), art. 193.17 (“abuse of
cover most cases of political violence and discrimination from power, excess of authority, omission of power, and negligence to the office
the Soviet authorities. A sample of the description (incomplete) of the high officials of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, Workers’ and
of the key Soviet repressive practices may be found in the report Peasants’ Militia and the Directorate of the NKBD State security service”)
by Nikita Petrov “Crimes of the Soviet regime: Legal assessment of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1926, art. 171 (“abuse of power or office”),
art. 179 (“compulsion of evidence”) of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1926.
and punishment of the guilty ones”.1
3 Art. 102 (“aggravated willful murder”) and 103 (“murder”) of the RSFSR
Following the fundamental legal principle of nullum crimen sine Criminal Code of and similar articles (136 and 137) of the RSFSR Criminal
lege, criminal liability for political repressions may be based either Code of 1926.
on Soviet laws or on international law. The very fact that the politi- 4 According to article 193.2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1926 (as revised
cal repressions were ordered by the Soviet state leaders would seem in 20. 10. 1934) non-fulfilment of any “order in the course of service” was
punished, and in articles 238 “Defiance” and 239 “Non-fulfilment of Order”
to exclude the possibility of their contradiction to the Soviet laws
of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1960 there was no criterion of connection
and, moreover, criminal liability for their committing. However, between the order and service. In particular, officers of the state security
in fact, their relation to the positive law of the USSR varied during bodies could have been held accountable under these articles of the Crimi-
different historic periods of the Soviet regime and depending on nal Code.

Political repressions stipulated in the Soviet laws cannot be repressions. “Officers of the VChK, GPU-OGPU, UNKVD-NKVD,
deemed wrongful and therefore are not criminal. In the above MGB bodies, Prosecutor’s Office, judges, members of com-
example the well-founded application of the criminal law on re- mittees, ‘special meetings’, ‘dvoikas’, ‘troikas’ (two- and three-
sponsibility for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (article 70 person extrajudicial commissions, respectively), members of
of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1960) by the investigator and other bodies exercising judicial power, judges involved in in-
judge may not be considered a crime under Soviet legislation. vestigating and considering cases on political repressions, are
In addition to the abuse of power, Soviet legislation estab- liable for prosecution under the existing criminal law” (part
lished liability for governmental officials to be prosecuted for two, article 18). It was expected that the lists of the persons,
applying the repressive regulations in case of their obvious un- duly recognized as guilty in framing-up cases, applying illegal
foundedness – abuse of authority, criminally prosecuting a per- investigation methods and in obstructing justice, would be pub-
son who is known to be innocent, wrongful sentence, arbitrary lished regularly.
arrest or detention, compulsion of evidence. This provision of the Rehabilitation Law, however, was not
Pursuant to international law, many episodes of Soviet political to be implemented. Even before adopting the law, starting from
repressions may be characterized as war crimes or crimes against 19897 investigation bodies commenced criminal proceedings
humanity. Those actions, being crimes against humanity (various related to the political repressions of Stalin’s times, mainly in
acts of violence and discrimination under large-scale or system- response to finding the graves of their victims. By the time of
atic attacks against civilians), are recognized as such, regardless of initiating criminal proceedings at least 45 years had passed after
whether they contradicted national law or not. However, the prac- the time of the mass executions. Most of the main organizers
tical possibility of criminal prosecution under international law of Stalin’s repressions had already died (those who lived long-
depends on the implementation of international crimes in the na- est among the Stalin period members of the Political Bureau
tional law. In the USSR little was done in this respect: only some of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Vyacheslav
war crimes were subject to prosecution (in particular, looting, Molotov and Georgy Malenkov died in 1986 and 1988, respec-
violence against civilians, ill-treatment of the prisoners of war).5 tively, and Lazar Kaganovich died in 1991). Nonetheless, some
of the rank and file members of Stalin’s security bodies were still
alive and were questioned as witnesses.8 However, no informa-
CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF POLITICAL tion on indictments or trials related to Soviet political repres-
REPRESSION PARTICIPANTS IN THE USSR sions has been published. Normally, investigative bodies used
to terminate criminal proceedings due to the death of the guilty
BEFORE PERESTROIKA party. For instance, the investigation of the workers’ demonstra-
tion shooting in Novocherkassk was terminated in 1994, while
Some of the organizers of political repressions were prosecuted a well-known criminal case of the Katyn massacre of Polish pris-
as early as during Stalin’s years. In March 1938 the former direc- oners of war was terminated in 2004. Afterwards, the practice of
tor of NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), one of initiating criminal proceedings following the detection of buried
the Gulag (Central Administration of Corrective Labor Camps) victims of political repressions died out, too.9
organizers Genrikh Yagoda was convicted at the third “Moscow To terminate a criminal case due to the death of the persons
Trial” and several days later executed for his involvement in who had committed crimes, the investigator had to indicate
the plot of the “right-Trotskyist bloc”. Two years later his successor those people in the resolution and describe their unlawful acts.
Nikolay Yezhov, who headed the NKVD during the “Great Purge”, This way, even after the death of those involved in political re-
was executed too. Some other leading officers of Stalin’s secret pressions the state could formally establish the circumstances
police were purged during his rule. The race for power after Sta- of their offences. However, publishing resolutions on terminat-
lin’s death resulted in prosecution of the ex-minister of Internal ing criminal proceedings of political repressions was not stipu-
Affairs Lavrenty Beria and his subordinates in the state security lated by law. As a result, the facts found during the investigation
bodies. In total, the policy of “denouncing Stalin’s personality stayed unknown to the public and are still often controversial.
cult” in the years of Nikita Khrushchev’s rule (1953–1964) led to In some cases, such as the Katyn massacre, the resolutions on
62 former chekists being repressed.6
It is hard to consider these criminal proceedings as just retri-
bution for the Stalin epoch crimes. Except for Yagoda, the cases of 5 Г. И. Богуш, Г. А. Есаков, В. Н. Русинова, Международные преступления:
purged chekists were considered in closed court hearings. They модель имплементации в российское уголовное законодательство,
Москва: Проспект, 2017, 6–7.
were convicted not for murders or the abuse of power, but for 6 Petrov, 91.
various counterrevolutionary crimes. 7 В.Филичкин, Репрессии на Южном Урале: правда или вымысел? Полит
74, 20. 1. 2014; https://www.polit74.ru/comments/detail.php?ID=39787;
Мемориальное кладбище “Пивовариха”. Виртуальный музей ГУЛАГа;
http://www.gulagmuseum.org/showObject.do?object=126753&language=1;
ATTEMPTS TO INVESTIGATE The place of execution and burials in the town of Kursk (Solyanka area). Ne-
POLITICAL REPRESSIONS DURING cropolis of Terror and Gulag. The Card index of burials and memorial places
(Место расстрелов и захоронений в городе Курск (урочище Солянка).
PERESTROIKA AND THE FIRST YEARS Некрополь террора и ГУЛАГа. Картотека захоронений и памятных
AFTER THE USSR COLLAPSE мест); http://www.mapofmemory.org/46-01;
8 А. Черкасов, Крот истории, in Polit.ru, 3. 9. 2004; http://polit.ru/
article/2004/09/03/khaibakh/
The Rehabilitation Law, which was passed two months prior 9 И. Смирнова, Расстрел Великих князей: дело положено под сукно,
to the collapse of the Soviet Union, contained the provision in СвободнаяПресса, 16. 2. 2010; http://svpressa.ru/society/article/
on liability for the prosecution of those involved in political 21258/; http://tayga.info/120423.

case termination were even classified due to the availability of those who wanted it to become the Russian Nuremberg. In its
the documents being state secrets in the materials of these cases. ruling, the Constitutional Court, though on the whole recogniz-
The judicial assessment of Soviet political repressions in ing the President’s decrees on the dissolution of the Communist
post-Soviet Russia was limited merely to the recharacterization Party compliant with the Constitution, rejected settling the issue
of the actions committed by those OGPU-NKVD-MGB officers, of the CPSU constitutionality, which was the essential hope for
who had been repressed in Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s times. recognizing the crimes committed by the Party leaders. The de-
As stated above, they were convicted of various counterrevo- scription given by the Russian Constitutional Court to the power
lutionary crimes. The adoption of the Rehabilitation Law gave of the Communist Party in Russia fitted three sentences: “For
an opportunity to their relatives to apply for the quashing of a long period of time the country was reigned by the regime
the sentences in those cases. Rehabilitation was denied to such of unlimited, violence-based power of a clique of Communist
OGPU-NKVD-MGB leaders as Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolay Yezhov, functionaries, united in the Political Bureau of the CPSU Central
Viktor Abakumov, Lavrenty Beria and a number of other sen- Committee headed by the General Secretary of the CPSU Central
ior officials of these bodies.10 For these cases the law provided Committee. <…> The materials of the case, including evidence
for judicial review of the reasons for the denial. Russian courts provided by witnesses, confirm that the CPSU leading units were
recognized rehabilitation denials as valid. However, pursuant to initiators, whereas local units were frequently vehicles of the re-
some published court rulings in cases of rehabilitation denial, pressive policy towards millions of Soviet people, in particular,
the subsumption of wrongful acts was changed from counter- towards deported peoples. It lasted for decades”. Later the presi-
revolutionary crimes to the abuse of power (or excess of author- dent of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin substantiated this
ity), entailing severe consequences, heavily aggravated, accord- cautious decision by the need to find a social compromise.13
ing to article 193-17-b of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1926. In
particular, Abakumov was postmortem recognized by the RF
Supreme Court as guilty that he and MGB officials subordinate LEGAL BARRIERS FOR CRIMINAL PROSECUTION
to him “for a prolonged period of time systematically abused
power, which was expressed in framing up criminal cases and When explaining the rejection of criminal prosecution for po-
applying illegal ways of physical coercion during the investiga- litical repressions, Russian officials referred to the lack of legal
tion”, and entailed heavily aggravated effects – “prosecution of grounds for it. For example, in response to the application sub-
many innocent citizens”.11 mitted by the relatives of Polish prisoners of war killed in 1940
The practice of changing Soviet court sentences postmortem, to the European Court of Human Rights regarding inefficient
was, in fact, a compromise between the need for rehabilitation investigation of the circumstances of their deaths, the Russian
of purged officials of the Soviet secret police (due to ground- government declared that the investigation of the Katyn crimi-
less accusations of counterrevolutionary crimes against them) nal case had been carried out “in breach of the criminal proce-
and the impossibility of denying their responsibility for abuse of dure requirements, for political reasons, as a goodwill gesture to
power during repressions. the Polish authorities”, since the limitation period under 193-17-
b of the RSFSR Criminal Code for the aggravated power abuse
was 10 years and, in addition, the Soviet NKVD officers involved
REASONS FOR REJECTING CRIMINAL in the execution had died before the investigation began.14
PROSECUTION OF COMMUNIST REGIME CRIMES Indeed, under the Russian law criminal proceedings are al-
lowed only against a living person. If a suspect of a crime dies,
It appears that the key reason for rejecting the prosecution of the criminal case may not be initiated, and a criminal case initi-
the living perpetrators of political repressions in post-Soviet Rus- ated earlier is subject to termination. The exception is provided
sia was the lack of political will in the new state leadership and for considering the issue of rehabilitating the deceased who were
weak social demand for restoring justice by means of criminal criminally prosecuted.
justice. The latter may be explained, inter alia, by the mistrust in Even if the suspect of a crime is alive, he or she may be kept
the impartiality of the former Soviet judges who kept their posi- safe from justice by the limitation period for criminal prosecu-
tions after the fall of the Soviet power.12 President Yeltsin’s Gov- tion. Its expiry is the basis for refusal to initiate a criminal case.
ernment decided to be limited to the trial of the persons involved The maximum limitation period under the RSFSR Criminal Code
in the defeated coup attempt of the GKChP in August 1991. These of 1960 was 10 years. Thus, the government lost an opportunity to
people included high Soviet officials, who tried to prevent dis-
mantling the CPSU power and the USSR disintegration. However, 10 There were also exceptions. For example, Pavel Sudoplatov, a senior official
even this trial, which began in 1993, was not completed due to of the state security and the organizer of extra-judiciary killings, convicted
amnesty passed by the State Duma at the beginning of the next in 1958 of high treason as an “accomplice of traitor Beria and his closest
year. In addition, a kind of ersatz criminal justice for the Com- cohorts”, was rehabilitated in 1992 by the RF Chief Military Prosecutor’s
Office.
munist crimes in the USSR was the so called “CPSU process”
11 Quotation according to the text of the RF Supreme Court Presidium Reso-
– a trial in the Constitutional Court regarding the Constitution lution dated December 17, 1997, placed in the GARANT legal system.
compliance of President Yeltsin’s decrees, by which the Com- 12 See: Ilya Nuzov, “The Role of Political Elite in Transitional Justice in Russia:
munist Party was actually dismissed. Under this trial the court From False ‘Nurembergs’ to Failed Desovietization”, in U. C. Davis Journal
was offered to verify the compliance with the Constitution of of International Law & Policy, 2014, 20 (2), 304.
13 Имеем Право. Интервью с Валерием Зорькиным, in Российская
the very CPSU. During the long court hearings dozens of witness-
газета No. 4210, 31. 10. 2006; https://rg.ru/2006/10/31/zorkin-ks.html
es were interrogated and various secret documents were studied 14 European Court of Human Rights. Judgment (GC) of 21. 10. 2013. Janowiec
regarding the activities of the Communist Party highest bodies. and Others v. Russia. Appl. nos. 55508/07 and 29520/09. §§ 109, 111; http://
Nevertheless, this trial did not come up to the expectations of hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-127684.

criminally prosecute most of the crimes, accompanying political not take into account that in the late 1940s international law im-
repressions, as early as in the Soviet times and the early 1990s. plied a compulsory link between crimes against humanity and
The only exception to the limitation period for criminal pros- an armed conflict (in the case of Estonia, this link was available,
ecution is for the crimes which may be punished by the death since deportation in 1949 was a direct consequence of the USSR
penalty or life imprisonment. According to part 4 article 78 of aggression against Estonia in 1940). The prohibition of crimes
the RF Criminal Code the issue of applying a limitation period for against humanity in peace time first appeared only in the late
such crimes is to be settled by the court. It means that the time 60s in the international law.20 This reason is of high importance
that has passed since the offence is not an obstacle to initiating for the issue of assessment of Soviet political repressions as
a criminal case and carrying out investigation. Out of political crimes against humanity since they were normally unrelated to
repressions related crimes only aggravated murders can be re- armed conflicts. By accepting Cassese’s viewpoint, international
ferred to this category.15 law provides legal grounds for criminal prosecution of the re-
The scope of political repressions, to which the above murder- pressions committed only in the 1970–80s. It seems that out of
related limitation exception applies, depends on the criminal the repressive practices of the period only punitive psychiatry can
and legal assessment of the “state coercion by means of putting meet the criteria of the crimes against humanity – it was a widely
to death”, if the terms of the law on rehabilitation is used. Ac- spread way of fighting against the dissidents of the time.
cording to the rules of subsumption of crimes used by the Soviet The above mentioned opportunities of criminal prosecution
courts, the abuse of power, related to killing, must be assessed under international law, have not been of practical significance
cumulatively.16 For example, this kind of assessment was given to in Russia, since crimes against humanity have not been imple-
the extra-judicial killing of the residents of the settlement of Khai- mented in the Russian criminal law.
bakh by Soviet troops during the Chechen deportation in 1944. At
the initiation of the criminal case upon this fact17 the prosecutor
of the Urus-Martan district, Chechen-Ingush Autonomous SSR, LESSONS LEARNT AND RECOMMENDATIONS
having inspected the scene of the crime and having questioned
its witness, found sufficient elements of the crimes, specified Assessing the opportunities of criminal prosecution, which
in part 2 article 136 and article 193-17-b of the RSFSR Crimi- the Russian Government had in the early 1990s, it is to be ad-
nal Code of 1926 – that is heavily aggravated murder and power mitted that they were in any case limited by the period that had
abuse (or excess of authority) by a Red Army (or equivalent bod- passed from the time of completion of the most large-scale po-
ies) commander. litical repressions. In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, where from
It is to be noted that capital punishment, provided for the ag- the first years of independence, attempts were made to inves-
gravated abuse of power and excess of authority under arti- tigate and prosecute Stalin’s repressions, investigation bodies
cle 193-17-b of the 1926 Criminal Code was later (in the 1960 managed to bring to court criminal cases only regarding lower
Criminal Code) replaced by a period of imprisonment from 3 to rank perpetrators of the repressive policy, whereas its organ-
10 years (article 260-b). Therefore, this crime is indeed subject to izers and higher rank perpetrators (with few exceptions) were
the 10-year limitation period. In other words, even the most cruel relieved from liability due to their death. Apparently, the Russian
and massive Stalin period repressions, not related to willful mur- society was not ready to put the blame for the regime crimes
der, stayed out of reach of the Russian law enforcement system. upon common people, who “just carried out orders” and were
Statutory limitations could be overridden if international law already quite elderly. On the other hand, after Stalin’s death,
were applied as the grounds for criminal prosecution. As men- political repressions were of a much lower scale and mainly
tioned before, many episodes of the Soviet political repressions referred to a very limited stratum of dissident intelligentsia.
correspond to the elements of the crimes against humanity. The scarce victims of the repressions of that time, even gain-
Limitation periods do not apply to crimes against humanity by ing certain power and influence on the rise of democratization,
virtue of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory
Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, ratified
15 Aggravated murder under article 102 of the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1960
by the Soviet Union in 1969. (i.e., in particular, killing two and more people or the one collusively com-
For instance, in Estonia the officers of the Ministry of Internal mitted by a group of people) and the murder, committed by a military,
Affairs and the Ministry of State Security, involved in deporta- heavily aggravated, under part 2 article 137 of the RSFSR Criminal Code
tion from Estonian SSR in 1949 and fighting against anti-Soviet of 1926.
16 Resolution of the Plenum of the USSR Supreme Court dated March 30,
resistance (“forest brothers”) in 1953–54, were convicted of
1990 N 4 “On judicial practices in the cases of the abuse of power or office,
crimes against humanity. In Latvia the Minister of State Secu- authority or misconduct, negligence and forgery in public office”.
rity of the Latvian SSR Alfons Noviks was found guilty of crimes 17 Черкасов, Крот истории.
against humanity. He was accused of organizing deportation and 18 Latvia Gives K.G.B. Aide A Life Term. New York Times, 14. 12. 1995. URL:
prisoners’ torture.18 Similar crimes were committed at that time http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/14/world/latvia-gives-kgb-aide-a-
life-term.html; On criminal prosecution for Communist regime crimes
in other parts of the Soviet Union as well.
in the Baltic states see: Eva-Clarita Pettai, Vello Pettai, Transitional and
The European Court of Human Rights found in two deci- Retrospective Justice in the Baltic States, Cambridge: Cambridge University
sions19 that criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity, Press, 2015
committed by Soviet officials in Estonia in the late 40s – early 19 European court of human rights: Decision of 17. 1. 2006. Kolk and Lislyiy
50s, does not contradict the principle of nullum crimen, nulla v. Estonia, appl. nos. 23052/04 and 24018/04; Decision of 24. 1. 2006. Penart
v. Estonia. Appl. no. 14685/04.
poena sine lege established in article 7 of the European Con-
20 Antonio Cassese, Balancing the Prosecution of Crimes against Humanity
vention on Human Rights. Nevertheless, according to Antonio and Non-Retroactivity of Criminal Law: The Kolk and Kislyiy v. Estonia
Cassese’s opinion, the arguments of the European Convention Case before the ECHR. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2006, 4
on Human Rights in these orders were erroneous: the court did (2), 410–418.

could not or did not wish to demand punishment for their of- published lists of NKVD members in 1935–1939 and the investi-
fenders. In particular, the rejection of prosecution against those gation by Denis Karogodin from Tomsk into the fate and killers of
involved in repressions was the official position of the Memorial his great-grandfather, who died during the “Great Terror”.
society founded in 1989.21
However, the unsatisfied need of retribution for the unprec-
21 Paragraph 5 of the Resolution of the Foundation Conference of the All-
edented Communist regime crimes against its people is still Union Voluntary Historical and Educational Society “Memorial”, Janu-
present in the Russian society. In 2016, for example, this need ary 29, 1989. Vyacheslav Igrunov’s website; http://www.igrunov.ru/cat/
was suddenly manifested in the heated debate on the Memorial vchk-cat-org/memor/hist/docum/vchk-cat-org-memor-docr-resol.html

Богуш, Г. И., Есаков, Г. А., Русинова, В. Н., Международные преступления: модель имплементации в российское уголовное
законодательство, Москва: Проспект, 2017
Cassese, Antonio, “Balancing the Prosecution of Crimes against Humanity and Non-Retroactivity of Criminal Law: The Kolk
and Kislyiy v. Estonia Case before the ECHR”, in Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2006, 4 (2), 410–418
Cohen, Stephen F., The Victim Returns: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin, London: I. B. Tauris, 2012
Черкасов, А., Крот истории, in Polit.ru, 3. 9. 2004; http://polit.ru/article/2004/09/03/khaibakh/
Филичкин, В., Репрессии на Южном Урале: правда или вымысел?, in Полит74, 20. 1. 2014; https://www.polit74.ru/
comments/detail.php?ID=39787
Henderson, Jane, “Making a Drama out of a Crisis: The Russian Constitutional Court and the Case of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union”, in King’s Law Journal, 2008, 19 (3), 489–506
Имеем Право. Интервью с Валерием Зорькиным, in Российская газета, No. 4210), 31. 10. 2006; https://rg.ru/2006/10/31/
zorkin-ks.html
Pettai, Eva-Clarita, Pettai, Vello, Transitional and Retrospective Justice in the Baltic States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2015
Petrov, Nikita V., Crimes of the Soviet regime: Legal assessment and punishment of the guilty ones, in Crimes of the Communist
Regimes. An assessment by historians and legal experts. Proceedings of international conference, Prague: Institute for the Study
of Totalitarian Regimes, 2011, 87–92; https://www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/publikace/sborniky/crime/sbornik.pdf
Смирнова, И., Расстрел Великих князей: дело положено под сукно, in Свободная Пресса, 16. 2. 2010; http://svpressa.ru/
society/article/21258/; http://tayga.info/120423
Toymentsev, Sergey, “Legal but Criminal: The Failure of the ‘Russian Nuremberg’ and the Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Memory”,
in Comparative Literature Studies, 2011, 48 (3), 296–319
WEBSITES
hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-127684
www.gulagmuseum.org/showObject.do?object=126753&language=1
www.igrunov.ru/cat/vchk-cat-org/memor/hist/docum/vchk-cat-org-memor-docr-resol.html
www.mapofmemory.org/46-01
www.nytimes.com/1995/12/14/world/latvia-gives-kgb-aide-a-life-term.html

REHABILITATION OF VICTIMS
Nikolai Bobrinsky
INTRODUCTION gradually extended beyond Stalin’s period. The most significant

decisions of that time include the decree of the Presidium of
The rehabilitation of the victims of repressions is an essential the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated January 16, 1989, which can-
part of the Russian policy to overcome the effects of the crimes celled (though, with a number of exceptions) all the decisions on
of the Soviet totalitarian communist regime. Russia has man- applying repressions, made by extra-judiciary bodies in the 1930s
aged to do a lot in this respect. However, the rehabilitation re- – early 1950s. These years also featured the revision of the verdicts
flects, brighter than other aspects of the policy on the Soviet past, of the Moscow show trials in 1936–1938, which became the public
the ambiguous and compromising nature of the post-Soviet tran- symbol of Stalin’s terror towards the contemporaries. The official
sitional justice in Russia. statistical data of the rehabilitated in the USSR were not published;
but according to different estimates, their approximate number
was from 1.5 to 1.9 million people.3
THE RUSSIAN REHABILITATION CONCEPT
IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
REHABILITATION AND OTHER FORMS
At the beginning of this chapter a short remark should be made OF INDEMNIFICATION, CAUSED BY
on what rehabilitation means in the Russian and international
contexts. In various UN documents on the transitional justice,
POLITICAL REPRESSIONS, IN RUSSIA
rehabilitation is understood as a form of reparation for victims
of gross violations of human rights, including the provision of Russian Law on the rehabilitation of the victims of political
“medical and psychological aid, as well as legal and social ser- repressions was adopted in October 1991, before the collapse
vices”.1 At the same time in the Soviet and Russian legislation of the USSR. The failure of the putsch in August 1991 created
and legal practices, rehabilitation has a completely different favourable conditions for passing a rather radical version of
meaning – “firstly, the restoration of the honour and reputation the law, which was in many respects ahead of its time.4 Mem-
of an unfairly accused or purged person, secondly, the restora- bers of the Memorial society, founded by those repressed and
tion of the previously existing rights by canceling the decision on their relatives to remember the victims’ sufferings, participated
finding this person guilty and on applying specific legal sanctions in preparing the text of the bill.5 The main aim of the law was to
against him/her”.2 As to the terminology used in the above-men-
tioned international documents, rehabilitation in this meaning 1 The UN commission on Human Rights. Sub-commission on the Prevention
refers, first of all, to satisfaction, and, then, to restitution – two of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Study concerning the right
other forms of reparations. to restitution, compensation and rehabilitation of the victims of gross vio-
Since in Russia the ways of indemnification to the victims of lations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The final report, sub-
mitted by Mr. Theo van Boven, UN document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1993/8 dated
political repression are not limited to rehabilitation, below you
July 02, 1993, Para. 137; UN commission on Human Rights. Sub-commission
will find the review of all these measures based on their classifi- on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Question
cation suggested in the UN General Assembly Resolution 60/147 of the impunity of perpetrators of human rights violations (civil and politi-
dated December 16, 2005 “Basic principles and guidelines on cal). The final report prepared by Mr. Joinet pursuant to Sub-Commission
the right to a remedy and reparation for victims of gross viola- decision 1996/119. UN document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/20/Rev.1 dated Oc-
tober 02, 1997. Para. 41; UN Commission on Human Rights. Updated Set
tions of international human rights law and serious violations of
of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through
international humanitarian law”. action to combat impunity. UN document E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1 dated
February 08, 2005. P. 34; Resolution of the UN General Assembly 60/147
dated December 16, 2005. “Basic principles and guidelines on the right
to a remedy and reparation for victims of gross violations of international
REHABILITATION IN THE USSR human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law”.
Para. 21
The first stage in the rehabilitation of the victims of political repres- 2 А. Л. Кононов, К истории принятия Закона “О реабилитации жертв
sions in the USSR dates back to the mid-1950s – early 1960s, and политических репрессий”, in Реабилитация и память. Отношение
it is related to overcoming the consequences of Stalin’s person- к жертвам советских политических репрессий в странах бывшего
ality cult. During that period rehabilitation enabled many pris- СССР, Москва: “Мемориал” – “Звенья”, 2016.
3 The first indicator was found as a sum of the data, given in a thesis by
oners of the Gulag to be released early, freed from limitations on
Ye.G.Putilova, the other – in the work by V. N. Zemskov. See: Е. Г. Путилова,
the choice of residence and profession. However, despite the revi- История государственной реабилитационной политики
sion of repressive measures, the circumstances of their application и общественного движения за увековечение памяти жертв
and the places of burials were concealed from their relatives and политических репрессий (1953 – начало 2000-х гг.) – Автореф. дисс.на
соиск. уч. ст. к.и.н.), Екатеринбург: 2011, 20–22; В. Н. Земсков, Сталин
society as a whole. From the mid-1960s the intensity of rehabilita-
и народ. Почему не было восстания, Москва: Алгоритм, 2014, 62.
tion dropped dramatically. The process was renewed only during 4 Кононов, 12–18.
Perestroika. That was the first time when the term the “victims of 5 Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions. Memorial Society; https://
political repressions” was used, and the very image of repressions www.memo.ru/ru-ru/history-of-repressions-and-protest/rehabilitation/

eradicate the consequences of political repressions. To achieve the above events and the need to rehabilitate the affected. Since
it, the following measures were stipulated: the law on the rehabilitation does not indicate all the applicable
■■ Rehabilitation itself; coercive measures during collectivization (in particular, expro-
■■ Recognition of those who suffered as victims and condemna- priation of property, cattle, tools), the practice of its application
tion of political repressions; to de-farming (de-kulakization) remains unstable.6
■■ Restoration of citizenship; The achievement of the 1991 law compared to the preced-
■■ Paying damages; ing official regulations on rehabilitating victims of political re-
■■ Paying pecuniary damages for depriving of freedom, forced pressions was in recognition of the fact that repressions began
treatment in mental health institutions; at the time of establishing the Soviet power and lasted until its
■■ Provision of housing; demise, and not during one specific limited period in its history.
■■ Social support; The criterion of the political motive for repressing leaves
■■ Return of the property lost due to repressions, or refunding or significant freedom to the prosecution and internal affairs bod-
paying pecuniary damages for the property. ies in the way of how and whom to recognize as the victims of
These reparations were not fully implemented. The 25 years that political repressions, and whom to refuse this status. In prac-
have passed since the time of adopting the law allow us to review tice the first priority of rehabilitation belonged to those whose
its application practices and provide some interim results. cases were subject to revision by virtue of law, with no verifica-
tion of the actual circumstances (e.g., accusations of anti-Soviet
PERSONAL SCOPE OF APPLICATION campaigning).7
OF LAW ON REHABILITATION In addition, the law provided for the crimes, whose commit-
ment (if proven with evidence) excludes rehabilitation (Article 4).
The law on rehabilitation applies to two categories of people: Therewith, the body that passed the verdict is of no importance
■■ Victims of political repressions – those, to whom coercion was – whether it was a court or an extra-judiciary body, and what
applied directly, and also children, who were left as minors the initial accusations against the repressed person were. From
without parental care (of one or both parents), of the people the political point of view, exceptions to the right to rehabilita-
repressed for political reasons, and those who stayed with tion mean that the contemporary Russian state recognizes such
them (or the persons, who replaced them) in penitentiaries, repressions as grounded, regardless of the way prosecution was
exile, expulsion, or a special settlement. carried out against the repressed person.
■■ Those affected by political repressions – children, spouses, One of the rehabilitation law developers Anatoly Kononov
parents of people who were executed or died in penitentiaries explained the reason for exceptions as being for political issues:
and then were rehabilitated postmortem, that is the people “From the viewpoint of pure law, any and all extra-judiciary deci-
who were not personally subject to coercion, but were de- sions should have been cancelled immediately – those passed by
prived of their close relative as a result of repressions. non-constitutional ‘troikas’, ‘special councils’, ‘executive boards’
The victims of political repressions enjoy more rights than those etc., and the person who underwent criminal repressions be-
who were affected by them. cause of them, should be considered rehabilitated, since their
Under the Russian law on rehabilitation the rights are granted guilt was not found in court. However, these bodies also pun-
only to those victims of political repressions who were subject ished former military criminals, bandits and raiders. To carry out
to them on the territory of the RSFSR. Repressed RF permanent investigation and legal proceedings anew for their cases many
residents may, under certain conditions, also use the law in case decades after the events was impossible for many reasons. But
the repressions were applied outside the RSFSR. In addition, if they had been rehabilitated, they would have been granted
the law applies to foreigners, repressed by Soviet Union court the status of the victims of political repressions automatically
sentences (including the Supreme Court of the USSR, military tri- as well as given benefits equal to those provided to the veterans
bunals and other national special courts), as well as by the orders of the Great Patriotic War. The social conscience could not put
of extra-judiciary bodies outside the Soviet Union, provided they up with it, and the authors of the bill had to introduce excep-
were accused of actions against Soviet citizens and the interests tions. They referred to such forms of socially dangerous actions,
of the USSR. which, though being political, were subject to punishment in
any civilized country”.8
POLITICAL REPRESSIONS AS A CONCEPT Among the exceptions specified in the law on rehabilitation
there is the organization of armed gangs, committing murders,
The main criterion of recognizing repressions as political is robberies and other violent actions, as well as personal involve-
the respective motive of their application. Some kinds of repres- ment in committing these actions within armed gangs. Any
sions are specifically indicated in the law on rehabilitation (Arti- organized armed resistance would meet this definition. If we
cle 3). Moreover, five sets of corpus delicti, specified in the Soviet consider the Soviet state as a civilized country, this attitude to
Criminal Codes, are recognized as political repressions per se armed combating against it would be quite grounded. Out of
regardless of whether there is any actual evidence for accusa- the political reasons the developers and supporters of the law
tion (Article 5). Regarding specific situations of mass repressions
– the suppression of the peasants’ uprising in 1918–1922 and
the Kronstadt Rebellion in 1921, deportation of peoples during 6 See: А. Г. Петров О некоторых проблемах органов прокуратуры по
исполнению Закона Российской Федерации “О реабилитации жертв
the Second World War, repressions against the clergy and believ-
политических репрессий”, in История государства и права, 2007, (3),
ers, shooting protesters at the demonstration in Novocherkassk 10–15.
in 1962 – specific regulations were adopted. They indicated 7 Victims of Political Terror in the USSR; http://lists.memo.ru/
the illegal nature of the repressions against the participants of 8 Кононов, 21.

in 1991 did not have an opportunity to recognize any armed re- Secondly, the rehabilitated were given the right to return and
sistance to the Soviet power as legal. In this respect it is neces- reside in the areas and settlements where they used to live be-
sary to mention a paradoxical provision of the decree of the RF fore repressions were applied to them. However, after cancelling
President dated June 18, 1996 No. 931 On the peasants’ upris- most of the existing restrictions on the freedom of movement and
ing in 1918–1922, according to which peasants participating in residence in the USSR this measure lost its practical significance.
the rebellions in 1918–1922 could not be considered members of Thirdly, according to the law, all the residents of the Russian
armed gangs in the meaning given in the law on rehabilitation. Federation who were deprived of citizenship without their free
To establish legal grounds for rehabilitating peasant rebels, it was determination, were granted the Russian Federation citizenship
required to introduce an exception to the exception especially for again.10 In practice this provision could only be used by those
them. The overall decision on rehabilitating all the participants people who resided in the RSFSR “immediately before emigrat-
of the resistance to the Communist regime in Russia was never ing from the former USSR for permanent residence”.11 When
adopted. The only retrospectively allowed form of resistance, rec- applying for a Russian national passport they had to provide
ognized in the law on rehabilitation, was escape from prisons a “document, confirming their permanent residence in Rus-
(paragraph “e” Article 5). sia immediately before going away from the former USSR and
The definition of political repressions in the law on rehabilita- a certified copy of the certificate of birth in Russia”. Restoration
tion is open and includes “another form of depriving or restrict- of Russian citizenship on these conditions evidently did not take
ing the rights and freedoms of persons, recognized as socially into account the persons who lost it as a result of emigration
dangerous for the state or political order by class, social, national, from Russia during or after the Civil war of 1917–1922, Soviet
religious or other criteria”. However, according to the conse- displaced persons, refusing to repatriate due to political reasons,
quences of rehabilitation and legal practices prescribed by law, as well as the children and other descendants of these people.
any politically motivated economic and administrative coercion In particular, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive
and discrimination unrelated to imprisonment or deportation Committee and the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars dat-
– in particular, nationalization of property rights, punitive tax ed December 15, 1921 on terminating the citizenship of certain
system, coercive collectivization and labour in collective farms, categories of persons being abroad, was not cancelled. Some of
professional and job limitations according to social, ethnic and their representatives were granted citizenship by the decrees of
religious criteria – were not recognized political repressions. the RF President.12
Fourthly, rehabilitated persons are given back their property,
REHABILITATION seized and otherwise alienated from them due to the repressions.
In the case of the death of the rehabilitated person, the return,
Rehabilitation means recognizing that enforced coercion against refund or payment of pecuniary damages is to be made to their
a person was politically motivated and either illegal or ground- children, spouse or parents. Besides a relatively narrow pool of
less. The decision on rehabilitation is made by the bodies of candidates for the above return, this measure is limited to some
the Prosecutor’s Office or internal affairs. Despite certain doubts cases of expropriation only, which partly diminishes its value.
about delegating the issue of rehabilitation to the competence of Pursuant to the law on rehabilitation, the following items are
legal successors of those Soviet agencies, which were actually in- not subject to return:
volved in political repressions, and the non-transparency of their ■■ Property, nationalized (municipalized) or subject to nation-
activities, the problem of establishing a special body responsible alization (municipalization) by law, existing as of the time
for revising political cases of the Soviet epoch was never raised of its confiscation from the rehabilitated person. Therefore,
at the national level. real estate property in towns was not subject to return, except
To confirm the restoration of honour, the victim of political for some cases. The return of residential houses was allowed
repressions was given a certificate on rehabilitation. In addition, but carried out only on condition of meeting a number of
it was expected that the lists of rehabilitated persons would be requirements and in practice depended on the discretion of
published in official periodicals indicating the main biographic law-enforcement bodies;
data and accusations under which the people were rehabilitated. ■■ property, destroyed during the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars,
However, the state did not publish these lists, instead, non-gov- and as a result of natural disasters;
ernmental organizations and individuals have been engaged in
this process.
9 The concept of public policy on remembering the victims of political
In total, since the effective date of the law on rehabilita-
repressions; http://government.ru/media/files/AR59E5d7yB9LddoPH2
tion, over 3.5 million people and over 250 thousand children RSlhQpSCQDERdP.pdf
of the repressed people were recognized as affected by political 10 Some persons, deprived of the Soviet citizenship for political reasons in
repressions.9 the 1960s–1980s, were granted the citizenship again even before adopting
the law on rehabilitation, under the decree of the President of the USSR
– The decree of the President of the USSR on cancelling decrees of the Pre-
RESTITUTION
sidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet on depriving certain persons, residing
outside the USSR of the Soviet citizenship No. 568 dated August 15, 1990.
The law on rehabilitation outlines different measures of restitu- 11 See: The provision on the procedure of considering the issues of the Rus-
tion, aimed at restoring the status of the repressed, which existed sian Federation citizenship, approved by the decree of the RF President
prior to the coercion against them. dated April 10, 1992 No. 386. P. 10–11.
12 Putin restored the Russian citizenship of Denikin’s daughter. Lenta.ru,
Firstly, their sociopolitical and civil rights (rights to vote, free-
April 26, 2005; https://lenta.ru/news/2005/04/26/denikin/; President
dom of movement and residence and so on), lost due to repres- Vladimir Putin handed the Russian national passport to Andrey Shmeman.
sions, were restored, as well as military ranks and special titles. Official website of the President of Russia, June 06, 2004; http://kremlin.ru/
Their state awards are returned. events/president/news/31103

■■ land, horticultural areas, non-harvested crops; ■■ free prosthetic dentistry including work and repairs, special
■■ property, seized from the civilian circulation (e.g., museum rates for other prosthetic and orthopedic products;
collections). ■■ special offers for food and non-food products.
In our opinion, the nationalization of property, bank accounts, Since 2005 the provision of the rehabilitated persons with hous-
seizure of cultural values also belong to political repressions, in ing and social support has been within the competence of the RF
the meaning given to them in the law on rehabilitation. Nev- regions. They identify the scope and procedures of support
ertheless, the results of these coercive measures are not in fact themselves.
confirmed in the law on rehabilitation. Afterwards, the Parlia- The report prepared by the Presidential Commission on re-
ment and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation habilitating the victims of political repressions in 2013–201415
refused to revise them.13 gave an overview of social support elements provided to the re-
In fact it is possible to seek restitution of movable property, habilitated people in different regions of Russia. For example,
not included in museum collections or otherwise limited in cir- such a social support element as free or a 50 % price reduction
culation, and buildings in rural areas (e.g., those seized during on the supply of prescribed medicines was in place in 28 subjects
de-kulakization or lost due to deportation14). of the Russian Federation. In addition to the benefits earlier pro-
Provided it is impossible to return the property, its cost is vided in the law on rehabilitation, in some regions rehabilitated
refunded or (provided evaluation is impossible) compensated. persons were given monthly allowances. Their size varied consid-
The size of the paid damages and compensations are limited to erably: from some hundreds of roubles (Orenburg, Saratov, and
4,000 roubles for all property, except houses, and 10,000 roubles Tomsk regions – 300–370 roubles, the Yamal-Nenets autonomous
for all the property, including houses. district – 177.5 roubles) to several thousands (4,092 roubles in
the Chukotka autonomous district; over 1,000 roubles in the cit-
COMPENSATIONS AND BENEFITS ies of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, and, taking into account
the benefits in paying for housing utilities, public transport,
The law on rehabilitation provides for a lump sum monetary holiday resort packages and specially priced medicines – over
compensation for the deprivation of liberty, as well as social 3,300 roubles). The size of the monthly allowance to the persons
support. affected by political repressions is, normally, lower than that to
The size of compensation is calculated depending on the pe- the rehabilitated people: from hundreds of roubles (Republic of
riod the person was deprived of liberty. In the original version of Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Vladimir, Voronezh regions etc.) to one
the law it was 180 roubles per month, but not more than 25 thou- thousand roubles (Saint-Petersburg etc.).
sand roubles. Later on the compensation was calculated based An objective of the law on rehabilitation, indicated in its pre-
on the minimum wages – three quarters of the minimum wages amble when adopted, was “to ensure currently possible payment
per month and not more than 100 minimum wages in total. To- of damages” caused by political repressions. In the conditions
day the law again indicates fixed rates, though they are rather of the economic collapse in 1991 this clause was clear and jus-
miserable – 75 roubles per month of imprisonment or stay in tified. However, it stayed unchanged even during the years of
mental health institutions, but not more than 10,000 roubles. rapid economic growth in the early 2000s, when the state could
Initially the law on rehabilitation established a list of non- easily afford to pay damages in the scope, significantly higher
monetary benefits to be provided to the rehabilitated persons. than that stipulated by law. On the contrary, it was in 2004 under
This was, first of all, the right to high priority housing allocation the monetization of benefits that the payment of damages were
in case it was lost owing to the repressions. Furthermore, benefits limited, and the objective of paying also non-pecuniary damages
for the disabled and the retired who were subject to the depriva- was excluded from the preamble of the law on rehabilitation. It is
tion of liberty, exile or expulsion for political reasons: no coincidence that after the European Court of Human Rights
■■ high priority package tour grants for health resort treatment order under the claim submitted by Klaus and Yuri Kiladze versus
and recreation; Georgia in 2010, thousands of repressed persons and members
■■ top priority medical aid and a 50 % price reduction for pre-
scribed medicines; 13 In a number of its rulings, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Fed-
■■ free provision of a Zaporozhets automobile upon providing eration specified that the revision of the completed nationalization (mu-
respective medical indications; nicipalization) of the property in compliance with the decree of the All-
Russian Central Executive Committee dated August 20, 1918 on cancelling
■■ free pass to all means of city public transport (except for taxis), the private property right to real estate in towns referred to the compe-
and public motor transport (except for taxis) in rural areas tence of the legislature (see, e.g. Ruling dated June 18, 2004 No. 261-O).
within the local administrative area where the person lives; The legislature recorded its refusal to perform such revision in paragraph
■■ free travel (a return trip) once a year by railway transport, and 3 Article 25 of the RF Land Code.
in the areas where railway transportation is missing, – water, 14 The Decision of the Novolakskoye district court, Republic of Dagestan,
dated December 20, 2010. Rospravosudie; https://rospravosudie.com/
air or intercity motor transportation at 50 % fare reduction;
court-novolakskij-rajonnyj-sud-respublika-dagestan-s/act-105197490/
■■ 50 % reduced payment rates for accommodation and utilities 15 The Commission is an advisory body in the RF Presidential Execu-
within the limits, established by the law; tive Office, which includes representatives of governmental agen-
■■ high priority fixed telephone installation; cies and non-governmental organizations, engaged in remembering
■■ high priority joining of horticultural societies and housing the victims of political repressions (http://www.kremlin.ru/structure/
commissions#institution-25). Unfortunately, the data of its activities are
construction cooperatives;
very limited. In particular, its reports on the implementation of the law
■■ high priority admission to care homes for the elderly and on rehabilitation are not published. The text of the most recent report is
the disabled, stay and full board fully funded by the state with available on the website of the Russian Association of Illegal Political Re-
at least 25 % of the payable pension; pressions Victims – rosagr.natm.ru/dynamic/docs/konsol.doc.

of their families filed cases, being mistaken in believing that this presidency there were two attempts to strengthen the meas-
order would bind Russia to indemnify for non-pecuniary dam- ures for overcoming the consequences of political repressions.
ages caused by political repressions.16 First in 2009 the Presidential Commission on the rehabilitation
of the victims of political repressions suggested revising many
MORAL CONSIDERATION (SATISFACTION) provisions of the law on rehabilitation – to recognize the depri-
vation of property rights during collectivization and punitive tax
As stated above, rehabilitation, according to its content is, inter system as political repressions, apply social support designed
alia, an individual measure of moral consideration (satisfaction) for the repressed to their close relatives who survived, increase
of the persons affected by political repressions. This objective compensations. In addition, the Commission recommended
is achieved via formal recognition of the fact that repressions preparing a state programme of remembering the victims of
were applied groundlessly and that the person who suffered from political repressions, under which it was expected to establish
them was innocent. This recognition is documented as a certifi- the National Political Repressions Rememberance Book and
cate on rehabilitation. The state practice is actually limited to this the Russian National Memorial Museum to the victims of politi-
action in this issue: formally the lists of the rehabilitated people cal repressions.18
have not been published, and their memory is honoured mainly The work on the new policy of overcoming the Soviet past was
by non-governmental organization and individuals. continued by another body at the RF Presidential Executive Of-
The collective satisfaction to the victims of political repressions fice – the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. It offered
is provided as a formal recognition of political repressions in So- even more decisive steps.19
viet Russia and their condemnation in the preamble of the law on ■■ to erect monuments to the victims of political repressions
rehabilitation: “Over the years of Soviet power millions of people in the capital and all large cities across the country and
became victims of the tyranny of the totalitarian state, were subject open Memorial Museums to the victims in Moscow and
to repressions for their political and religious beliefs, as well as Saint-Petersburg;
due to social, national and other reasons. Condemning the long- ■■ engage the Federal Security Service (the KGB successor) and
lasting terror and mass prosecution of people as incompatible with the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the search for the burials of
the idea of law and justice, the Federal Assembly of the Russian the repressed persons;
Federation expresses profound sympathy to the victims of unjusti- ■■ open the access to all archive documents, related to political
fied repressions and their relatives, declares its steady striving for repressions;
real guarantees of the protecting legality and human rights”. ■■ establish a unified database of the “victims of the totalitarian
Besides the overall recognition and discussion of the law on regime in the USSR”;
rehabilitation, the Russian authorities published official docu- ■■ cancel Soviet regulations related to the repression policy;
ments discussing individual cases or kinds of political repres- ■■ officially reveal the persons responsible for mass repressions
sions. A part of these documents is mentioned above. They can and ban the use of their names for towns and streets;
include the statement of the State Duma dated April 2, 2008 “to ■■ ban officials from denying or justifying the crimes of the to-
honour the victims of famine in the 1930s in the USSR”, where it talitarian regime;
mentions the reasons of the tragedy, recognizes causative rela- ■■ change the dates of professional holidays of law-enforcement
tions between the famine and coercive collectivization and con- bodies to those not related to their Soviet predecessors (in Rus-
demns “the regime, which neglected people’s lives for the sake sia the day of the security services is still the day of the found-
of achieving economic and political objectives”. The statement of ing of the VChK – the first Soviet punitive body, the forerunner
the State Duma dated November 26, 2010 “on the Katyn tragedy of the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB).
and its victims” is also to be mentioned. There the execution of These radical, by Russian standards, ideas were not to come
Polish prisoners of war is called a crime, committed “upon the di- true. Instead of the large-scale public and state programme for
rect instructions of Stalin and other Soviet leaders”. remembering the victims of the totalitarian regime and the na-
In some respects, the CPSU case trial at the Constitutional tional reconciliation, it was decided to stay limited to rather mod-
Court of the Russian Federation was an act of collective satisfac- est measures – to open a monument to the victims of political
tion to the victims of the crimes, committed by the totalitarian repressions in Moscow, to provide access to non-governmental
Communist regime of the USSR. The documents and materials
of the CPSU crimes provided by the RF President during this pro-
16 The European court rejects the claims of the relatives of politically re-
cess may be considered as their formal recognition by the Head pressed persons in Russia. The website of the legal protection center
of State. However, they are not even mentioned in the text of Memorial, March 22, 2013; http://memohrc.org/news/evropeyskiy-sud-
the RF Constitutional Court order, while the materials of this case otklonyaet-zhaloby-rodstvennikov-politicheskih-repressirovannyh-
were officially published only once in the mid-1990s.17 iz-rossii
17 The materials of the case on verifying the constitutionality of the decrees
of the RF President, related to the activities of the CPSU and RSFSR Com-
munist Party, and on verifying the constitutionality of the CPSU and RSFSR
ATTEMPTS TO EXTEND THE POLICY CP. – M.: Publishing House Spark, 1996–1998. In 6 volumes.
OF OVERCOMING THE CONSEQUENCES 18 Formally these suggestions were not published. Their text was placed
on different online resources, including websites and blogs, e.g.: http://
OF POLITICAL REPRESSIONS arudnitsky.livejournal.com/50732.html.
19 Suggestions on founding the national public programme on remem-
bering the victims of the totalitarian regime and on the national recon-
Over the validity period of the law on rehabilitation its gaps ciliation Rossiyskaya Gazeta, April 07, 2001; https://rg.ru/2011/04/07/
and drawbacks became obvious. During Dmitry Medvedev’s totalitarizm-site.html

organizations engaged in searching for and arranging burials of the Communist regime in Russia the victims of repressions and
the repressed persons and archive research into repressions to their societies gradually lost their initial positions in the political
the public funding of non-profit organizations and protect newly process, which they had managed to find on the rise of Pere-
detected burials.20 stroika during the last years of the existence of the USSR. Later
Other political initiatives include, in particular, a bill, sub- there was no one to protect their interests at the national level.
mitted by the LDPR, on rehabilitating participants of the White Institutional reasons should be mentioned too. The rehabilita-
movement, rejected by the State Duma in 2006.21 tion of the victims of repressions and related measures including
the payment of damages are within the competence of ordinary
governmental agencies – the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry
REHABILITATION AND CONTEMPORARY of Internal Affairs, Social Security bodies etc. They have always
RUSSIAN SOCIETY had some issues of higher priority to deal with. No special body,
which would be designed to focus on this task only and therefore
The attitude to the victims in Russian society is still highly related to the interests of the repressed persons, has ever been
controversial. They are on the one hand recognized, while on set up to rehabilitate and remember the victims.
the other hand they are rejected, remembered or deliberately Nonetheless, the work carried out over the past twenty-
left in oblivion and even demonized. The examples of positive five years by the state and non-governmental organizations
trends in the public perception of the rehabilitated persons in- deserves deep respect. Millions of innocent affected people
clude an annual event called “Returning Names”, being a public have been revealed and saved from oblivion. However, there is
reading of the names of the killed people, and the “Last Address” still a long way to go to their full public recognition and a con-
movement, engaged in installing memorial tablets on the houses demnation of the repressive Communist regime. And the op-
where the repressed people lived before their arrests. Negative portunities for full indemnification have been irreversibly lost
examples are more numerous – the recognition of the Memo- in most cases.22
rial Society as a foreign agent, closing the Gulag Remembrance
Museum “Perm-36”, the increasing justification and glorification
20 Federal Law dated March 9, 2016 No. 67-FZ on amendments to some regu-
of Stalin, which cannot but offend the living repressed persons
lations of the Russian Federation for remembering the victims of political
and their families. repressions
21 The State Duma rejected the bill on rehabilitating the victims of
the White movement. Newsru.com, 14. 6. 2006; http://www.newsru.com/
LESSONS LEARNT russia/14jun2006/whiteguard.html
22 According to the data of the Presidential Commission on the rehabilita-
tion of the victims of political repressions, as of January 1, 2015, there were
It appears that rather unsatisfactory results of the state’s efforts 671,738 living rehabilitated victims of political repressions and 8,769 per-
to overcome the consequences of repressions have, primar- sons affected by political repressions (excluding the data from the Republic
ily, political reasons. Even during the first years after the fall of of Crimea, Sevastopol and Kirov region).

Adler, Nanci, The Gulag survivor: Beyond the Soviet system, London: Transaction Publishers, 2004
Routledge, 2009
Кононов, А.Л., К истории принятия Закона “О реабилитации жертв политических репрессий”, in Реабилитация
и память. Отношение к жертвам советских политических репрессий в странах бывшего СССР, Москва: “Мемориал”
– “Звенья”, 2016
Andrieu, Kora “An Unfinished Business: Transitional Justice and Democratization in Post-Soviet Russia”, in International Journal
of Transitional Justice, 2011, 5 (2), 198–220
Петров, А.Г., “О некоторых проблемах органов прокуратуры по исполнению Закона Российской Федерации
‘О реабилитации жертв политических репрессий’”, in История государства и права, 2007, (3), 10–15
Путилова, Е. Г., История государственной реабилитационной политики и общественного движения за увековечение
памяти жертв политических репрессий (1953 – начало 2000-х гг.), Автореф. дисс.на соиск. уч. ст. к.и.н.,
Yekaterinburg, 2011
Земсков, В. Н., Сталин и народ. Почему не было восстания, Москва: Алгоритм, 2014

WEBSITES
arudnitsky.livejournal.com/50732.html
government.ru/media/files/AR59E5d7yB9LddoPH2RSlhQpSCQDERdP.pdf
kremlin.ru/events/president/news/31103
lists.memo.ru/
memohrc.org/news/evropeyskiy-sud-otklonyaet-zhaloby-rodstvennikov-politicheskih-repressirovannyh-iz-rossii
rg.ru/2011/04/07/totalitarizm-site.html
rosagr.natm.ru/dynamic/docs/konsol.doc
rospravosudie.com/court-novolakskij-rajonnyj-sud-respublika-dagestan-s/act-105197490/
www.kremlin.ru/structure/commissions#institution-25
www.memo.ru/ru-ru/history-of-repressions-and-protest/rehabilitation/
www.newsru.com/russia/14jun2006/whiteguard.html

EDUCATION AND PRESERVATION
OF SITES OF CONSCIENCE
THE MEMORY OF REPRESSIONS. THE ROLE OF EVIDENCE,
MEMORABLE PLACES, INSTITUTIONS AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY
Natalia Kolyagina
SOVIET TIMES Irina Scherbakova, researcher of the memories of the GU-

LAG, highlights that “it is namely memoirs and other personal
In the Soviet times, before the era of Glasnost and Perestroika, documents (letters and diaries) that were the main source of in-
the memory of repressions was rather private in nature. formation about the system of repressions then, while archives
Under Stalin’s rule the transfer of the information about containing documents concerning repressions were completely
repressions was hindered by the environment of fear, suspi- secret and historians did not even have a general idea of what
ciousness and silence. Those few proceedings mentioned in could be kept archived”.1 Yet in the times of Khrushchev and later,
the official press were represented as a necessary step to liber- camp memoirs and belles-lettres on the topic of camps were still
ate the society from the internal enemies of the people. A doubt not published, just circulated in script and later were published
regarding the justifiability of repressions alone could be the rea- underground or abroad.2
son for detention. Speaking of arrests and the GULAG was often These manuscripts could see the light of day only under
an off-limits subject even inside the family. They were afraid to Perestroika. The topic ceased to be taboo, the media started
be informed on by family members or that children could let it publishing articles about camp experiences and interviews
slip unintentionally at school, for instance. with former prisoners, famous people who had made it through
When Stalin died in 1953, the era of mass arrests ended. In the GULAG.
his report at the 20th Communist Party Congress (1956) Nikita The dissident movement played a particular role in the com-
Khrushchev officially explained the past events in the country by memoration of repressions in the Soviet time. The core of the dis-
the side effects of the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin. The era sident activity was the fight for the rights of the individual in
of the Thaw started. In 1961 after the 22nd congress the body of the USSR. Organizations and non-official print media founded
Stalin was removed from the Mausoleum (the body of Lenin still by dissidents documented the arbitrary rule in Russia and in
reposes in the Mausoleum by the Kremlin wall). other Soviet countries. Dissidents used the underground press
It shall be mentioned that the official recognition of repres- to give coverage to the movement of repressed people for their
sions alone significantly changed the public views. The Soviet rights, to tell the readers about the events in modern camps, to
government, however, did not intend to radically change the re- publish uncensored works of literature, which information was
lationship between the government and the public. Just in a few “parallel” to the official data, testimonies concerning the GU-
months after the confidential report, the uprising in Budapest LAG, in particular. In this respect the publications prepared for
was put down involving Soviet tanks. The rule of Khrushchev did Samizdat (underground publications) and Tamizdat (publica-
not end the era of repressions, but created a space for talking tions abroad) by the participants of the dissident movement
about it – in private conversations, in self-published press, in were a dramatic proof of the repressive system that existed in
public literature, especially poetry, readings (where this topic the USSR in the post-Stalinist times. In 1958–1968 Alexander
was often addressed allegorically). Living eyewitnesses began to Solzhenitsyn wrote his novel The Gulag Archipelago (first pub-
return from the camps. Most of them first had no right to live in lished in Paris in 1973, in USSR – since 1989). For this work Solz-
large cities, and in case of rehabilitation they signed a pledge of henitsyn collected a kind of anthology of eyewitness memories.
secrecy promising not to disclose what had happened to them. He used his own experience, but even more leaned on the writ-
However, many people started telling what had happened to ten and oral testimonies of his contemporaries who had made
their friends and relatives, and the information about camps it through the GULAG.
slowly spread. People were slowly becoming aware of the events Summing up, the very reading, storing and distribution of
of the mass terror time. The story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn testimonies concerning Soviet repressions in the times before
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was published. Perestroika can be considered a sort of memory of repressions
Whereas, lots of literary works about repressions never made it in the USSR.
to the official press. However, the fact that Solzhenitsyn’s story
was published alone gave large hope of the restoration of justice
and initiated the writing of many personal memoirs. Eyewit- 1 Irina Shcherbakova, GULAG Memory Map: Problems and Gaps, in Labora-
torium, 2015, (1), 117.
nesses were striving to extend the issues brought up by Solz-
2 Irina Shcherbakova gives a detailed timeline of the transformation of GU-
henitsyn sharing their experience. All works created in the 1960s LAG memories in her article The GULAG in Memory. An Experience of
contained quite fresh memories including a lot of important Researching Memoirs and Oral Testimonies of Former Prisoners; http://
details of what happened. urokiistorii.ru/memory/oral/2009/05/pamyat-gulaga

THE PERIOD FROM 1986 defends human rights and engages in the rehabilitation of re-
TO THE BEGINNING OF THE 2000s pressed persons, renders legal assistance to the victims who ap-
plied for recognition and compensation. Sometimes they help
A number of researchers3 point out that the term “transition pe- with confirmation of the status of participant of the war / victim
riod” cannot be applied to Russia. This term implies “transition” of Nazi crimes (deportation to Germany for compulsory labor),
from totalitarianism to democracy and this scenario has been as very often this was connected with the following repression
never implemented in Russia. However, we may speak of an at- experience. This work was especially active in the 1990s after
tempt at such a “transition” after the year 1986. Many actions the adoption of the Rehabilitation Law. Moreover, until recently
initiated then had a large importance for the social and political Memorial had been collecting contributions to support old peo-
climate, influenced the formation of the collective memory of ple who had lived through camps (now the generation of these
the totalitarian past over time. A variety of significant projects and people has almost completely passed away). Even today it is
initiatives started in the 1990s still continue or retain influence essential to consult the relatives of the repressed persons who
in the today’s society. wish to know the fate of their relatives who had “disappeared”
The period of Perestroika and Glasnost is associated with after arrest.
the boom of recollections of the GULAG and post-Stalinist re- Dealing with the issues of the violation of human rights in
pressions. At that time, memoirs were published, the public in- the USSR, Memorial could not escape being involved in the mass
terest to the testimonies grew, first monuments to the victims abuse of the individual rights in contemporary Russia. There-
of repressions were installed. On the one hand, the era of Gor- fore, activists of the organization monitored the Chechen wars in
bachev’s “glasnost” rather meant some censor liberalization. It the 1990s discovering, disclosing and analyzing the information
was allowed to speak aloud of the Stalinist times, but prohibited about crimes against civilians, defending the interests of the ag-
to doubt the “Socialist choice” of the country. But even this was grieved parties in the ECHR. The members of Memorial Society
enough to radically change the world perception of the people were involved in peace-making of ethnic conflicts (e.g. Sergey
of that time. Kovalev and Oleg Orlov, board members of Memorial, took part
in the hostages release negotiation in Budyonnovsk).
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS Memorial stood at the origins of the first public campaigns in
memory of the repressed. On October 30, 1989, the proclaimed
On the wave of the public interest in the tragedy that had been Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions, a chain
disguised for decades the Memorial Society (www.memo.ru) of people holding candles in their hands surrounded the build-
was founded in 1989. ing of the KGB at Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow. In 1990 a stone
Memorial emerged as an association of sympathetic indi- brought from the islands in the White Sea, where one of the first
viduals interested in searching for and filing the scattered data Soviet camps for political prisoners was situated, was installed
concerning repressions in the USSR and in the commemoration on the same Lubyanskaya Square. It became the first memorial
of the victims. The very name of Memorial reflects a social at- to the Soviet regime’s victims.
tempt to create the first public memorial to the victims of Soviet Already in 1988–1989 newspapers started publishing the lists
repressions. Initially under the conditions of classified archives of victims of Soviet repressions, often according to the infor-
members of this society were able to collect these data question- mation received from the regional divisions of the KGB. Later
ing eyewitnesses, analyzing written and oral memories. Gradu- the researchers from different regions started searching archives,
ally the archive of the Society started filling up with originals and and thus Memorial Books appeared containing lists of names
copies of personal files, which relatives of the victims and former with biographical profiles of the victims. Today the consolidated
prisoners have been able to request and receive from the state database of the repressed persons numbers 2.6 million names:
archives since the end of the 1980s. Memorial represented a net- http://lists.memo.ru/
work of regional associations connected by the common charter. Since the beginning of the 1990s Associations of Victims of
This network regional type of organization was also imposed by Political Repressions have been emerging all over the country.
the history. The desire to know the truth about the repressions in These appeared naturally: such associations gave the opportunity
the USSR joined thousands of people all over the country, some to the people with a similar fate to get acquainted, to support
of them started to study history professionally. Now Memorial each other and to fight for their rights.
is one of the largest and oldest non-profit organizations in Rus- In 1990 the first steps were made to found the Sakharov Cent-
sia where professional historians majoring in the GULAG and er. In the middle of the 1990s the Archive of the famous Acad-
secret services of the USSR are engaged. It also includes activ- emy Member Andrey Sakharov, a museum and social center were
ists who search for the burial places of the prisoners, identify opened. Alongside the museum and archive activity dedicated
the remains, arrange reburial, conduct expeditions to the former to the history of freedom and captivity in the USSR, the center
places of detention, transfer and work of camp prisoners, install has become an essential discussion platform, where cultural and
memorial signs at the places of terror, collect, publish and study social problems of the past and present are discussed. These dis-
testimonies, collect and investigate documents and items re- cussions are conducted in the form of public lectures, seminars,
lated to the GULAG and the history of the dissident movement narrated film shows, theatrical performances, exhibitions (in-
in the USSR. The members of Memorial Society were involved cluding such famous ones as Forbidden Art or Caution! Religion).
in the elaboration of the State Rehabilitation Law (adopted in
1991), developed recommendations for government agencies 3 Arseny Roginsky, Lev Ivanov. Watch, for example, the record of the confer-
regarding the actions necessary to change the public conscious- ence The Long Echo of the Dictatorship held in September 2014 in Memorial
ness toward repressions in the USSR. The team of the Society Society, Moscow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfqn1lrl7WI&t=25s

MUSEUMS of commercial facilities and residential houses. The disinterment
and identification of the deceased are usually performed by local
There are only a few topical museums in Russia related to the is- historians and public activists who sometimes fail to find out
sue of repressions in the USSR. In the 1990s all these museums the story of the burial. Some large burials have obtained the sta-
emerged owing to the endeavors of local historians who collected tus of Memorial Burials of the Victims of Political Repressions by
the testimonies of their countrymen, examined the burial places the efforts of non-governmental organizations (e.g. Makarikha
of the victims, evidence from the places of detention, searched (Arkhangelsk Oblast), Sandarmokh (Karelia), Levashovo (Len-
for documents in local archives, etc. As a rule, these are small ingrad Oblast), Butovo Firing Range (Moscow) etc.). Memorial
museums or small exhibitions in local history museums. signs/monuments (personal – by family members or collective)
The only museum in the country that was created on the place are installed at the places of discovered burials and memorial
of a former camp is Perm-36 Memorial Museum. It was found- events are arranged.
ed in 1994 in the village of Kuchino, Perm Krai, on the place of
the correctional labor colony Perm-36, where political criminals MONUMENTS TO THE VICTIMS
had been “reformed” since the beginning of the 1970s. The muse- OF POLITICAL REPRESSIONS
um was founded by a group of local historians. The barracks were
renovated (display items were placed there), a part of the camp It is impossible to establish the number of such dedicated monu-
facilities were rebuilt (flag towers, fences, precautionary facili- ments, memorial plates and signs installed since 1991. The dif-
ties, etc.), deep research work was performed. However, under ficulty is caused by the lack of a uniform register of monuments
the latest political conditions the museum was literally seized in Russia, the disunity of organizations (and individuals) initiat-
from the group who had founded it and transferred to the state ing the installation of monuments in different regions of Rus-
(later in detail). sia and also by the complexity of definition of a monument.
The NKVD House of Detention Museum in Tomsk is lo- Nevertheless, as of today the Sakharov Center recorded on
cated in the basement of the building where the secret prison a designated web portal 714 monuments in the country (http://
of the Tomsk city department of OGPU/NKVD was situated in www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/pam/?t=list&c=Russia&id_c=1
1923–1944 (200 sq. m display area). – this list is constantly updated). In 2007 the St. Petersburg Me-
Other topical museums created in the 1990s occupy tiny morial Society recorded 587 monuments and memorial signs.6
spaces provided by local authorities. As independent muse- Most of these monuments were installed by individuals or
ums they just slightly differ from the exhibitions of the GULAG non-governmental organizations of victims and their relatives
in local history museums. A perfect example of such museums and not by the government. For this purpose, they need to get
is the Memory of Kolyma Museum, in Yagodnoye settlement, consent from the authorities regarding the place of installation
Magadan Oblast, opened by the efforts of the local enthusiast and the appearance of the monument. Local authorities will usu-
Ivan Panikarov. Until 2005 the museum was located in a two- ally give their consent to the installation of such monuments on
room apartment bought by Panikarov for this purpose. Pani- the outskirts or at the places of the discovered burial, rather than
karov had been personally gathering the museum collection on central streets of a city or town. The authorities resist greatly
since 1989. The full list of museums can be found on the website the installation of memorial plates on the existing buildings and
Virtual Museum of the GULAG developed by the team of the St. facilities related to the history of terror (e.g. places where deci-
Petersburg division of Memorial Society.4 sions had been made) or to the deportation of prisoners (railway
It is remarkable that the former Soviet prisons for political stations), places where prisoners had worked (secret R&D labo-
prisoners, which still exist, usually also have their own museums. ratories, factories) or items constructed by prisoners.
These possess the spirit of succession – contemporary sentence This difficulty inspired the creation of the memorial project
execution services carry on the “glorious traditions” of the Soviet The Topography of Terror, where places associated with the his-
prisoner oversight bodies. They point out the merit and profes- tory of political repressions in Moscow and the Moscow region
sionalism of prison employees, portraits and service records are plotted on an online map. The reference map contains de-
of the “veterans of the movement” are displayed at the place scriptions of over 740 locations organized topically.7 The project
of honor, the word “repression” is usually not mentioned and exists online and in the form of signposts installed in the city.
the very phenomenon of political prisoners in the USSR is also
concealed. A good example of this is the Museum of the Butyrka TEXTBOOKS
Prison in Moscow.
In the first years of the Russian Federation schools did not receive
NECROPOLEIS new Russian history textbooks. Teachers who worked at the very
beginning of the 1990s clearly perceived the mismatch between
As for today approx. 700 places of execution and/or burial of the Soviet textbooks and the reality that was freely discussed in
USSR terror victims have been revealed.5 The number of such
places of burial of arrested, detained, resettled persons is ob- 4 http://www.gulagmuseum.org/search.do?objectTypeName=museum
viously bigger, most of them are still not found due to the re- &page=1&language=1
moteness of the places of detention from the modern populated 5 See the topic section of the website Virtual Museum of the GULAG: http://
settlements, due to the unavailability of the archives of the Fed- www.gulagmuseum.org/search.do?objectTypeName=necropolis&page=1
&language=1
eral Security Service and of the Ministry of the Interior to the re-
6 http://www.gulagmuseum.org/search.do?objectTypeName=monume
searchers, as well as due to the lack of consistent and centralized nts&language=1&objectTypeName=monuments&language=1&page=1
actions in this field. Most of the mentioned burial places were &objectTypeName=monuments&language=1
found by chance, during excavation works for the construction 7 http://topos.memo.ru/

newspapers and books and often looked for the sources of in- the parallel existence of two tendencies may be mentioned –
formation personally, brought newspaper clippings and avail- the continued movement toward democratization (especially
able publications to the lessons. By the mid-1990s book houses in the first term of V. Putin and the term of D. Medvedev) and
prepared different teaching aids at the discretion of the school conservative trends. Obviously the democratic course would be
administration. impossible in Russia, but for the changes made in the 1990s.
Before 2000 there was no uniform state educational stand- Currently the main civil rights and liberties are obviously
ard in history, there were only state requirements in respect of restricted. Foreign and Russian foundations engaged in the ex-
the minimum attainment level of the school graduates. There pansion of liberal education are being gradually forced out of
were textbooks “recommended” and “permitted” for teaching the country.
at school (the label was given by the Ministry of Education). In 2012 the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted
Thus, in the first 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union amendments to the Non-commercial Organization Law, where
it was mainly teachers who took responsibility for the contents NCOs engaged in “political activity on the territory of Russia”
of the historical education. Textbooks “permitted” for teaching or receiving “monetary funds and other property from foreign
at school included quite brave and pioneering projects. For ex- states, international and foreign organizations” were acknowl-
ample, the Soviet history textbook for secondary schools by Igor edged as being “foreign agents”. The law predetermined legal
Dolutsky, a historian from Moscow, was aimed at “education of prosecution of organizations put on the list of “foreign agents” by
a responsible citizen” or as the author explained in an interview force, complicated the procedure of tax inspections and was basi-
at “teaching a student to resist the government”. On the other cally aimed at the reputational damage of a number of NCOs.8
hand, teachers of history could choose textbooks with strong In 2015 the Sakharov Center was included in the list of foreign
nationalist connotations. An extreme example of this kind was agents, in 2016 – International Memorial. Both organizations are
the textbook for high school students of history by A. Barsenkov currently in litigation concerning this status.
and A. Vdovin, professors of the Moscow State University (2004). In 2015 the US embassy in Russia was compelled to close cul-
Alongside conspiracy theories, anti-Semitic insults and distaste- tural exchange programs, all American foundations stopped their
ful opinion regarding the Caucasus people, it found excuses for programs on the territory of the Russian Federation.
the crimes of Stalin. The latter were represented as necessary side In 2012 Perm-36 Memorial Museum was basically dissolved
effects on the way to a radiant future. After a public outcry in 2010 and liquidated. Alongside its main role, commemoration of
the book lost its label of “recommended textbook”. the terror in the USSR, the Museum was gradually becoming
At the same time there were attempts to accumulate the best a free discussion platform for the problems of the contemporary
teacher’s experience in the discipline. In 2001 the Sakharov society. The authorities of the Perm Krai found a formal rea-
Center launched a national contest for the teachers of history, son to dismiss the management of the Museum and to appoint
social science and literature, Lesson Topic – History of Political their “own people” to the vacant jobs. As a result, the Museum
Repressions and Resistance to the lack of freedom in the USSR. was not closed, but ceased to be the commemoration place of
The best guidance papers sent to the contest were published in repressions. For example, the guides now are former guards,
books and sent out to regions, contest winners were invited to the exhibition is dedicated to the efficiency of the penal sys-
the annual conference in Moscow. This contest has existed for tem, only general information from the history of the GULAG
10 years. Since the beginning of the 2000s the St. Petersburg divi- is represented.
sion of Memorial Society systematically posted study manuals by The current historical period also meant the end of the free
lessons on the topic of repressions on their website. press in Russia. Today there are no free TV channels in Russia
In 1999 International Memorial in Moscow launched a con- (except just a few available under paid subscription and work-
test for school students – A Man in History. Russia 20th century ing under the risk of being closed at any time). Popular online
(still exists). The contest induced school students from all Russia media experience strong pressure as these may be blocked by
to collect evidence from the period of repressions. The contest internet providers anytime upon the decision of the dedicated
receives from 1,200 to 3,000 works annually. The participants state committee (Rospotrebnadzor). In the sense of the policy
interview eyewitnesses, work with photographs and documents of memory, all this news means an actual lack of memorial ini-
from family archives and address regional archives. During tiatives regarding terror history in the media agenda, the press,
the years of its existence unique previously unclaimed materi- especially TV, lacks critical discussion of the Soviet period of
als associated with the regional history of repressions have been history in general, the period of Perestroika and the 1990s is
collected. being defamed. And on the contrary we can talk about the nos-
Several years were used to elaborate the method of talking talgia of the Soviet times fostered in the media. The leading TV
about the period of totalitarianism. Many projects were launched channels manipulate the ideas of the imperial glory of the USSR,
when the hope for the possible democratic development of Rus- praise the technical and foreign policy achievements of the So-
sia was alive. However, starting from the end of the 2000s the free viet Union, first of all, the victory in the Great Patriotic War or
space for historical studies at school has been gradually getting confrontation with the USA in the Cold War. Moreover, some
narrower (later in detail). TV channels make an information attack on NGOs engaged in
historical education.
Since the end of the 2000s, initiated by the government,
2000s–2017 / CURRENT STATUS the project of introduction of a single history textbook for schools
has been actively discussed. In 2009 the so called “Textbook by
As already mentioned above it is impossible to define clearly
the time of the “transition period” end in Russia. Basically, 8 Discussion of the situation in detail – see e.g.: http://www.bbc.com/russian/
speaking of the public climate in the country after the year 2000 russia/2016/04/160420_gosduma_ngo_law

Filippov”9 was introduced as a pilot project. This teaching aid LESSONS LEARNT
was an attempt to literally rehabilitate the name of Stalin. Re-
pressions and terror were justified in this book by a historical In a very primitive way, we can speak of two antagonistic para-
need and declared a rational and pragmatic method of manag- digms of memory present in the community. One of these fo-
ing politics and the economy, the number of persons repressed cuses the historical attention on the individual, his/her inherent
by Stalin was decreased approx. 10-fold. The textbook lacked rights, and the other on the interests of the state, which some-
chapters concerning the famines, the deportation of nations times can be more important than the rights and liberties of indi-
inside the USSR, the Katyn massacre. The publication was se- viduals. Critical comprehension of history, respect for civil values
verely criticized by the academic community, and the Ministry in the past and present are common to the people who dream
of Education was forced to reject it as a single mandatory text- to see their country on the way of social transformation. Such
book for schools. a trajectory finally implies transparency and responsibility of gov-
However, in 2015 the talks about creating a uniform state ernment institutions in front of the individuals, real functioning
standard for teaching history, sociology and literature at school of the election system, free press and civil society institutions.
recommenced. The elaborated standard was trying to account This system of values is alien to the contemporary political elite
for the whole diversity of social attitudes in the most controver- of Russia. The political agenda itself, the values communicated by
sial issues. Thus, the standard incorporated such painful top- the media controlled by the government, the methods of commem-
ics as repressions, the Holocaust and collaborationism during oration suggested by the government, all of these evidence that it
the Great Patriotic War. However, the list of essential topics made is rather the idea of the individual development path of Russia,
the standard so cumbersome that as a matter of fact it is impos- the Eurasian program, the imperial philosophy that are popular.12
sible to use it in practical education. In practice it means a parallel existence of different com-
A peculiarity of contemporary schools is their growing politi- memoration methods in respect of the totalitarian past in society.
cal engagement. Since the middle of the 2000s “lessons of cour- The civil society today successfully advances important initia-
age” and “lessons of patriotic education” have been introduced tives in the memorialization of the GULAG experience. There
at schools, where the idea of the necessity to defend the state is a whole range of interesting online projects popular among
from external enemies is promoted and military-oriented values the internet audience. Thus, the project Bessmertny Barak (rus.
are asserted. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, The Immortal Barrack) created by the efforts of volunteers and
veterans of the Great Patriotic War, of the Afghan and Chechen financed by donations of the readers gained much interest:
Wars are invited to such lessons. Today’s programs and out-of- http://bessmertnybarak.ru/ Since May 2015 the biography of
school activities pay special attention to the cult of the Great Pa- one repressed person is posted daily on this web page, includ-
triotic War, and first of all, the victory of 1945, which is perceived ing photos and abstracts from available documents. The number
as the main achievement in Soviet and Russian history. Celebra- of the website readers registered at Facebook amounts now to
tory assemblies, parades and meetings with veterans have be- almost 55,000 persons.
come compulsory on Victory Day, May 9th. Teachers often have Posledny Adres [rus. The Last Address] (www.poslednyadres.ru)
explanatory political conversations with school children during is the most important offline project of recent years. It involves
humanitarian lessons – history, sociology and economics.10 the installation of small memorial plates on the houses where
Since the end of the 1990s one more serious actor appeared on the arrested people were taken from. The installations are initiat-
the Russian stage of the memorial policy – the Russian Orthodox ed by private individuals who have to pay a definite contribution
Church. On the one hand, the ROC is often perceived by the pub- covering the costs of the manufacturing of the plate. The team
lic as an institution joined with government agencies. The gov- of the project working in Memorial Society checks the story of
ernment takes a lot of measures aimed at the growth of the mate- the repressed person, agrees on the installation of the plate
rial wealth of the church, engages in a declarative advocacy of with the inhabitants or the owner of the house. The first plates
Christian values in the mass media, education, in the speeches of Posledny Adres were installed in Moscow on December 10,
of leading politicians… On behalf of the believers, new legislative 2014. “Until now over 460 plates have been installed in 30 cities,
initiatives related to the restriction of civil rights and freedoms towns and villages of Russia in the framework of the Posledny
have been introduced (Law on the Protection of Feelings of Re- Adres project,” the website of the project informs us. As of today,
ligious Persons, victimization of homosexuals, introduction of the Posledny Adres Foundation has already received and reg-
Orthodox subjects at school, show trial against Pussy Riot 2012). istered over 1,500 applications for the installation of memorial
On the other hand, the Church now is a powerful ally of public plates in different localities of Russia.13
institutions in the issues of the commemoration of terror vic-
tims and a critical attitude toward the Soviet legacy. In particu- 9 A. V. Filippov, Contemporary History of Russia. 1946–2006. Teacher’s Book,
lar, through the mediation of the Church a lot of monuments Moscow: Prosveshcheniye, 2007; A. Filippov, A. Danilov, eds., The History
were installed to the victims of repressions all over the country, of Russia. 1900–1945, Moscow: Prosveshcheniye, 2009.
10 See the article in the Novaya Gazeta: Your Son Took Part in a Meet-
cemeteries were defined and consecrated. The point is that
ing. Behavior Unsatisfactory. // https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/
the concept of New Martyrs is important for the modern ROC, 2017/04/10/72095-dnevnik-oppozitsii-vash-syn-byl-na-mitinge-za-
honoring of the churchmen executed or arrested in the times of povedenie-neud
terror. The representatives of the Church install memorial signs 11 See Church of Russian New Martyrs and Confessors in Butovo: http://
on the churches (meanwhile only in Moscow and the vicinity www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/243827.html
12 On the topic of the two paradigms of the historical consciousness in
of Moscow) in commemoration of those who suffered for their
Russia see the analytical report of the Free Historical Society What Past
faith. For the first time in Russia the Orthodox church in honor Does the Russian Future Need (January 2017): https://komitetgi.ru/
of the New Martyrs was opened at the Butovo Firing Range (in analytics/3076/
the south of Moscow).11 13 https://www.poslednyadres.ru/about/

The issue of political repressions in the USSR is not popu- the Museum of GULAG received from the government a new
lar in the pro-government historical discourse. The memorial modern four-story building and the possibility to increase
policy of the government is aimed rather at the glorification of the area of exhibitions 4-fold, including a library, a conference
the achievements of the USSR (victory in the war of 1941–1945, hall and a teaching center. Basically the new exhibition complies
space exploration) or the revelation of cultural heroes of the past. with the standards of a modern Western museum, it is supported
They create the history of the state, which one should be first of by scientific facts, includes oral testimonies, historical exhibits
all proud of. The fact of repressions cannot be concealed, but it and features a spectacular design. The museum organizes sets of
is still preferable not to recall them. The unworked issue of “how lectures, traveling exhibitions, theatrical performances and read-
one should treat the totalitarian past” induces much stress in ings. In other words, it is designed to catch the fancy of a young
the community. sophisticated audience. However, the opened museum faces
This acute social split in respect of the attitude toward the So- criticism on the part of the academic community, as well as of
viet legacy results for instance in an ideological confrontation public institutions. The criticism is aimed at the general histori-
concerning the issue of the installation of Stalin monuments. cal concept communicated by the museum. For example, one
Since 2010 approx. 100 Stalin monuments emerged in the coun- of the authors writes, “Having walked through all the halls, at
try (far from all in public spaces of the cities, approximately one the end the visitor sees a video featuring Vladimir Putin, Sergey
third of the total amount is concentrated in the North Cauca- Sobyanin [the mayor of Moscow] and Patriarch Kirill, where they
sus). But even more frequent than the actual installation of Stalin bless the policy of memory now embodied by the museum. This
busts, heated discussion of another application for such a monu- policy of memory strives to put a symbolic period to the history
ment in different populated localities of Russia is taking place. of repressions. According thereto repressions are something that
According to the polls conducted by sociologists, the rank- had happened in the past, and although this past still distresses
ing of Stalin reached its historical highest point in post-Soviet us, it is only residual pains and all we need is to heal these pains,
Russia in February 2017. According to the latest data14 46 % of as the original source of them does not exist anymore. But we
respondents treat the Secretary General of the Central Commit- know that of all people the current President, the members of
tee of the All-Union Communist Party Stalin with admiration, the United Russia [political party] and the Patriarch have no
respect and affection. At the same time the number of those who moral right to say that political repressions have become a thing
treat Stalin absolutely negatively grew compared to the previous of the past, because we see exactly the opposite.”17
years. “Whereas at the beginning of 2016 he was treated with The idea to install the main Monument to the Victims of
dislike, fear, disgust and hatred by 17 %, in 2017 it was already Repressions expressed by Putin personally in 2015 also faced
21 %”, sociologists of the Levada-Center mention. This evidences a severe rebuff, in the first place, from the public that seemingly
the growing polarization of the public moods in the country. should advocate the installation of such a monument. The com-
It needs to be said that the government is probably aware of munity was confused by the extremely brief terms of the best
the problem of the society split and makes attempts to balance design tender, the ill choice of the place for the future monument
it. Thus, in 2015 Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved and worried that the government would try to close the discus-
The Concept of the State Policy on Memorializing the Victims of sion of the topic of repressions by the installation of the monu-
Political Repressions.15 The concept was initiated by the Human ment. But the main question is the same as for the Museum of
Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, GULAG – can the government that continues to exercise political
Memorial Society and some public persons who approached repressions install a monument to the victims of repressions?18
President Medvedev with the respective proposal in February Meanwhile, the tender has been completed, the design cho-
2011 announcing the so called Destalinization Program.16 The dis- sen, the foundation established that is collecting the public part
cussion of the Program by its authors and the President ended in of the money for the monument.19 “The memory of the victims
the same year 2011, however a number of important proposals of political repressions unites and reconciles the Russian society,
from this document formed the basis of the Concept of the State reinforces the sense of responsibility for oneself and for the state”,
Policy adopted already under Putin’s third term as a president. is included in the motto of the new foundation. The new monu-
Regretfully this concept is obviously more of a declarative instrument is expected in October 2017.
ment. For example, almost all provisions in the section Lines of The Russian society has not lived through the experience of
Activity to Memorialize the Victims of Repressions are still not parting with the Soviet past. The state feels like the successor of
implemented. The program of archaeological search for burial
places and memorialization of the places of repressions failed to
14 Poll by the Independent Public Opinion Center Levada-Center: http://
be implemented, we lack free access to archives, developed re- www.levada.ru/2017/02/15/lyubov-rossiyan-k-stalinu-dostigla-
search and educational programs to teach the respective topics at maksimuma/
schools and high schools, and so on according to the document 15 Full text of the concept is available at the RF’s Government website:
text. Nevertheless, a few steps have been made to implement http://government.ru/media/files/AR59E5d7yB9LddoPH2RSlhQp
SCQDERdP.pdf
this program. In particular, the Museum of GULAG underwent
16 The text of the Proposals on the Creation of the National Governmental and
significant revamping and they started to work on the creation of Public Program “Memorialization of the Victims of the Totalitarian Regime
a monument to the victims of totalitarianism in Moscow. and National Reconciliation” is available under: http://urokiistorii.ru/1766
The State Museum of GULAG was opened in 2004. Its ex- 17 A. Vlasik, M. Esipchuk, G. Nepreyenko. This Museum, Perfectly Function-
hibitions were formed according to the principle of emotional ing, Attractive. What is wrong with the new Museum of the GULAG History
// http://www.colta.ru/articles/art/12980
immersion of the visitor in the horror of repressions, the small
18 See detailed analysis of the discussion around the new monument in
number of authentic exhibits was compensated for by instal- the material by G. Revzin – Memorable History // http://kommersant.ru/
lations and interactive effects. This place did not enjoy special doc/2678868
fame or popularity among city dwellers and tourists. In 2015 19 Memory Fund: http://memoryfund.ru/

the USSR, the government includes people who have previously of a thorough understanding of what happened to the Rus-
worked in the KGB. sian/Soviet community in the 20th century, they suggest ac-
In Russia it is young people and a scarce number of civilians cepting what happened, leaving the history in the past and
who are engaged in the elaboration of the topic of the totalitarian to move on.
legacy of the Soviet Union and governmental violence. The dis- At the same time recent years are distinguished by a tougher
course of the elaboration of the totalitarian past is related to political regime, enhanced attacks on civil institutions, includ-
the experience of the critical comprehension of the nature of ing organizations engaged in memorial activity. The Concept of
power, discussion of the main human rights and liberties. This is the State Policy on Memorializing the Victims of Political Re-
exactly why the handling of the past often becomes the basis for pressions is implemented under such conditions that Stalin is
critical discussion of the contemporary social problems related glorified and Memorial Society is called a “foreign agent” and
to fundamental rights. their work is complicated in every possible way. This makes one
The current government suggests two strategies: to keep think that the modern government is attempting to monopolize
a silence in respect of repressions or to reconcile with the past. the right to talk about repressions and fight against the attempts
Both ignore the public trauma of the modern society. Instead to speak of the past in an alternative way.

Дубин, Б., Жить в России на рубеже столетий. Социологические очерки и разработки, Москва: Прогресс – Традиция, 2007
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Stanford University Press, 2013
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Filippov, A., Danilov, A., eds., The History of Russia. 1900–1945, Moscow: Prosveshcheniye, 2009
Shcherbakova, Irina, GULAG Memory Map: Problems and Gaps, in Laboratorium, 2015, (1), 114–121
Shcherbakova, Irina, An Experience of Researching Memoirs and Oral Testimonies of Former Prisoners; http://urokiistorii.ru/memory/
oral/2009/05/pamyat-gulaga
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WEBSITES
kommersant.ru/doc/2678868
komitetgi.ru/analytics/3076/
memoryfund.ru/
topos.memo.ru/
urokiistorii.ru/1766
www.bbc.com/russian/russia/2016/04/160420_gosduma_ngo_law
www.colta.ru/articles/art/12980
www.gulagmuseum.org/search.do?objectTypeName=monuments&language=1&objectTypeName=monuments&language=1&page
=1&objectTypeName=monuments&language=1
www.levada.ru/2017/02/15/lyubov-rossiyan-k-stalinu-dostigla-maksimuma/
www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2017/04/10/72095-dnevnik-oppozitsii-vash-syn-byl-na-mitinge-za-povedenie-neud
www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/243827.html
www.poslednyadres.ru/about/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfqn1lrl7WI&t=25s

TIMELINE OF THE MAJOR EVENTS
March 11, 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev took the office of the CC CPSS General Secretary
February 1986 M. Gorbachev declares a policy of glasnost at the 17th Communist Party Congress, which marked
the beginning of the restoration of freedom of speech and the mass media as well as the reduction
of censorship
June 1988 The 19th CPSS Conference decided on the democratization of the political system and holding
competitive elections to the new parliaments of the Soviet Union and the Russian Republic (RS-
FSR) – the Congress of People’s Deputies
January 16, 1989 The Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on additional measures to restore
justice for the victims of the Stalin period repressions. The verdicts of Stalin-era quasi-judiciary
repressive bodies were annulled
January 1989 The Memorial society was founded
March–May 1989 Elections of the USSR People’s Deputies
October 27, 1989 The Constitutional reform in the RSFSR. The Congress of the RSFSR People’s Deputies became
the supreme state body elected by the universal, equal, and direct suffrage and secret ballot
February 1990 Foundation of the Democratic Russia Election Bloc
March 14, 1990 Article 6 of the USSR Constitution on the “leading and guiding power” of the Soviet Communist
Party in the state and society was changed. A multi-party system was proclaimed
March 1990 The competitive elections of the RSFSR People’s Deputies, Moscow and Leningrad city council
deputies were held
May 29, 1990 Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
June 12, 1990 The RSFSR Supreme Soviet passed the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR
October 9, 1990 The USSR law on public associations legalizing a multi-party system was adopted
March 17, 1991 The Referendum on the preservation of the USSR and holding the election of the RSFSR president
April 26, 1991 The RSFSR law on the rehabilitation of repressed peoples was adopted
June 12, 1991 The first election of the RSFSR president was held. Boris Yeltsin won it. At the same time regional
elections were held too, as well as a referendum on restoring the original name of Leningrad
July 20, 1991 President Yeltsin’s decree on the legal prohibition of the activities and influence of the party in
governmental bodies, institutions and organizations
August 19–22, 1991 The coup d’etat in the USSR and its failure
August 22, 1991 The replacement of the RSFSR red flag with the Russian historical flag (white-blue-red)
August 23, 1991 Yeltsin suspended the activity of the RSFSR Communist Party
August 24, 1991 President Yeltsin’s decrees on transferring the CPSS and KGB archives to the public archive storage
September 1991 The restoration of the historical names of Leningrad and Sverdlovsk cities
November 6, 1991 The CPSS was prohibited in the territory of Russia
August–December 1991 Dissolution and winding up of KGB
October 18, 1991 The RSFSR law on the rehabilitation of the victims of political repressions was adopted
October 24, 1991 The concept of the RSFSR judicial reform was passed
December 1991 The complete collapse of the USSR and the establishment of Russia as the successor of the USSR
in international relations
December 25, 1991 Renaming the RSFSR as the Russian Federation
May–November 1992 The CPSS case in the Russian Constitutional court
March 29, 1993 The failure to impeach President Yeltsin

April 25, 1993 The referendum on confidence in President Yeltsin and the need of early presidential and parlia-
mentary elections
June–July 1993 Constitutional meeting
September 21, 1993 President Yeltsin’s decree on the gradual constitutional reform which terminated the activity of
the Congress of People’s Deputies and the new parliamentary elections to the State Duma were
scheduled
September 22, 1993 The Supreme Soviet dismissed President Yeltsin from office
October 3–4, 1993 The armed confrontation between President Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. The actual
dissolution of the Supreme Soviet and arrests of its leaders
October 10, 1993 Opening of the first memorial sign on the former NKVD training area in Butovo, Moscow region
December 12, 1993 The referendum on adopting the draft RF Constitution, elections of the State Duma deputies and
members of the Federation Council
February 23, 1994 Newly elected State Duma announced political and economic amnesty applied, in particular, to
the participants of the 1991 Coup and the supporters of the Supreme Soviet
December 1994 A war in Chechnya broke out
November 7, 1996 Declaring the day of the October Revolution the Day of Accord and Reconciliation
July 17, 1998 The reburial of the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family
July–September 2000 Opening of the memorial complexes in the burial places of killed Polish prisoners of war in Katyń
and Mednoye
2001 Opening of the GULAG Museum in Moscow
2004 The transfer of the funding powers for the reparations to the victims of political repressions under
the benefits monetization policy
October 29, 2007 The first event of Restoring names in Lubyanskaya square in Moscow
April 2011 The preparation and publication of the program to commemorate the victims of political repres-
sions and reach national reconciliation
2014 The launch of the Final address program
2015 Shutting down the Perm-36 Museum under the pressure of the authorities

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www.cevro.cz/guide

Chapter 4. Lustration Missed Opportunity

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What was the process of dismantling the Soviet totalitarian communist regime and establishing the new Russian state?

What was the process of dismantling the Soviet totalitarian communist regime and establishing the new Russian state?

What were the major events in the transformation of the political system in Russia from 1988-1993?

What were the major events in the transformation of the political system in Russia from 1988-1993?

MEMORY OF NATIONS

Democratic Transition Guide

[ The Russian Experience ]

LUSTRATION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY . . . . . . . . ������23 Natalia Kolyagina

EDUCATION AND PRESERVATION OF SITES Evgenia Lezina

[ 2 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

INTRODUCTION structure of the political secret police – the State Security Com-

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 3 ]

[ 4 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 5 ]

SOURCES USED AND FURTHER READING

[ 6 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

security bodies of the armed forces, fleet and internal troops,

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 7 ]

[ 8 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 9 ]

[ 10 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

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MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 13 ]

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[ 16 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

INTRODUCTION There are state (national) archives, departmental archives,

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 17 ]

The legal restriction on using archive information in the twen-

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MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 21 ]

SOURCES USED AND FURTHER READING

[ 22 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

INTRODUCTION CPSU CASE AND LUSTRATION BILL

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[ 24 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 25 ]

INTRODUCTION the content of the repressive measures. According to the criterion

[ 26 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 27 ]

[ 28 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 29 ]

SOURCES USED AND FURTHER READING

[ 30 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

INTRODUCTION gradually extended beyond Stalin’s period. The most significant

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 31 ]

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SOURCES USED AND FURTHER READING

[ 36 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 37 ]

SOVIET TIMES Irina Scherbakova, researcher of the memories of the GU-

[ 38 ] MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience

MEMORY OF NATIONS: DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION GUIDE – The Russian Experience [ 39 ]

LUSTRATION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY . . . . . . . . ��23 Natalia Kolyagina