Criminal Cases of Czechoslovaks – Victims of USSR Repressions

Abstract

The purpose of the article is, on the basis of documents that relate to Czechoslovaks arrested by the Soviet authorities, executed, or sent to the Gulag, to trace their fate and analyse the base for creating the “image of a criminals”, who was punished despite their origin or views. This work is an attempt to analyse the documents we have, obtained from Ukrainian archives. The research methodology is based on an analytical approach to specific cases, selected for certain periods or types of punishment. In particular, these are the files of Hryhir Krutyi, executed in 1937 in Kyiv, Mikuláš Végh and Chaskel Brückel, who crossed the border into the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II and were sent to the Gulag, Kurt Rosenzweig, one of the Czechoslovak Jews transported to Nisko (Poland), who were forced to cross the border into the USSR at the command of the Nazis, and Volodymyr Pasichnyk, who was arrested after the end of the Second World War in Czechoslovakia by SMERSH and forcibly transported to the USSR. The analysis is based mainly on the texts of archival documents with attention to the reliability of the facts stated in them. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the approach to research – focusing on the content of documents and the evidence part, which rarely attracts the attention of historians. In this context, the files of Czechoslovaks, victims of Soviet repression, have not been studied yet. Conclusions. Based on the analysis, it was possible to trace not only the individual fates, an important part of the common and unknown history, but also the way of making decisions by the Soviet authorities, which sent innocent people to their deaths.

Keywords: repressions in the USSR, Czechoslovaks in the Gulag, NKVD, correctional labour camps, death penalty, border crossing, criminal cases.