Repression Remembrance

Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions

Today is Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions in Russia (День памяти жертв политических репрессий.) It was officially remembered in the Soviet Union from October 30, 1991 to December 25, 1991 and in Russia since December 26, 1991.

The repressed were called the “Enemies of the People” (Враги народа) by the Soviets. Punishments by the State included summary executions, sending innocent people to Gulags, forced resettlement, and stripping of Citizen's Rights. If one member of the family was found to be an “Enemy of the People” then the whole family was considered one and punished.

Repression was conducted by the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB and other State Organs. While Political Repression was an everyday occurrence in the Soviet Union - as in all Communist countries - there were special campaigns throughout the USSR’s existence (1917-1991.)

The Red Terror (1917 to 1922): 3,284,000 people murdered.

The New Economic Period (1923-1928): 2,200,000 people murdered.

  Collectivization (1928-1935): 14,400,000  people murdered.

Forced Psychiatry Treatments Part 1 (1921-1955): 1,802 people murdered.

The Great Purge (1936-1938): 4,345,000 people murdered.

Holodomor Man-Made Famine (1932-1933): 3,500,000 people murdered.

Katyn Massacre (1940): 22,000 Poles murdered.

Forced Population Transfers (1930-1952): 389,521 Kulaks murdered, 400,000 Chechens murdered, 90,000 Poles murdered, 40,000 Soviet Koreans murdered, 5,400 Estonians murdered, 17,400 Latvians murdered, 28,000 Lithuanians murdered, 18,800 Finns murdered, 20,000 Hungarians murdered, 19,000 Karachais murdered, 228,800 Soviet Germans murdered, 360,000 non-Soviet Germans murdered, 16,000 Kalmyks murdered, 23,000 Ingush murdered, 11,000 Balkars murdered, 195,471 Crimean Tatars murdered, 50,000 Meskhetian Turks murdered.

 Gulags (1919-1953): 1.7 Million died as a direct result of their detention (doesn’t include those who died from starvation, the extreme cold, forced labor, etc.)

Forced Psychiatry Treatments Part 2 (1964-1989): Out of the 10,347 officially punished people 96% of them were murdered through extreme usage of dangerous chemicals and medicines.

After Joseph Stalin died in 1953 and until Nikita Khrushchev was overthrown in 1964, the Soviet Government had a process called Legal Rehabilitation (Юридическая реабилитация) in which innocent men, women and children that were tortured, imprisoned and/or killed or their relatives could apply to have them officially made full legal Soviet Citizens again (with all the pensions and other benefits restored.

-  32 million men, women and children were officially Rehabilitated by the Soviet Government from 1953-1964. 13 million of those were from the Russian Civil War Period (1917-1923) alone. The vast majority of the Rehabilitated had died during their official imprisonment.

From 1988-1991 different Soviet Republics (like the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republics in April 1991) of the Soviet Union created different Political Rehabilitation Laws. In 1993, the Russian Federation created their first Rehabilitation Law. 

-  From 1993 to 2004, the Russian Prosecutor's Office reviewed 978,891 applications for Legal Rehabilitation of which 797,532 were allowed and 388,412 were satisfied, 636,335 cases against 901,127 people were reviewed and 634,165 were recognized as victims of Political Repression and Legally Rehabilitated. In 2004 the Russian Government stopped announcing official Legal Rehabilitation numbers. That is when President Putin moved away from blaming Stalin and the USSR to praising, promoting  and rehabilitating Stalin and the USSR.

Note: These are only the men, women and children that the Russian Government has declassified that the Soviet Communists officially admit to murdering from 1917-1991. The actual number is much higher. It also doesn’t include the millions upon millions of men, women and children that the Soviet Communists repressed and imprisoned and that survived.