Methodology for creating integrated electronic resources on the repressed

Kirillov V. M.

The history of the USSR is deeply intertwined with the memory of the tragic fates of its citizens—people who were executed, forced to emigrate, dispossessed, sent to camps, deported en masse as entire ethnic groups. Millions vanished and perished on the fronts of World War II, lived under the shadow of death in occupied territories, were taken prisoner, or forced into labor in Germany. The list of hardships goes on.

We focus on those who fell victim to the machinery of political repression. According to estimates by experts from the Memorial Society, the number of repressed individuals across the USSR ranges from 13 to 15 million. Of these, only about 6 million have been officially rehabilitated. Today, the electronic database of victims of political repression maintained by Memorial contains approximately 3 million names, and over 1,500 memory books have been published.

The society still lacks comprehensive data on the number of repressed individuals, and the families of those affected by repression often cannot fully restore the memory of their relatives. Despite the adoption of rehabilitation laws in many former USSR states, governmental programs to memorialize the repressed have been implemented only in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, the Komi Republic of the Russian Federation, and partially in Kazakhstan. For this reason, the creation of a comprehensive intergovernmental scientific and public program for the study and dissemination of information on mass repressions in the USSR remains a pressing issue.

The foundation of such a program must be precise methodological tools: fundamental socio-historical theories and concepts, research methods appropriate to primary sources, and modern technologies in the humanities.

According to the Russian Federation’s Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions and the Law on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples (1991), as well as the Republic of Kazakhstan’s Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Mass Political Repressions (1993), political repressions are understood as any coercive measures taken by the state against its citizens for political reasons. These include deprivation of life, punitive psychiatry, forced emigration, deprivation of citizenship, exile, deportation, special settlement, forced labor, and deprivation or restriction of rights and freedoms.

Theoretical foundations for addressing the issue of "repression-rehabilitation" include the concepts of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, repressive-regime economies, the International Bill of Human Rights, theoretical provisions of legislative acts on rehabilitation from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, the Concept of State Policy for Memorializing Victims of Political Repressions in the Russian Federation (2015), constitutional acts on individual rights, and other documents.

The creation of integrated electronic resources primarily utilizes methods of historical informatics (such as the development of databases and data banks), prosopographic methods (collective social portrait analysis), source studies, and general scientific methods.

In the course of studying repressive policies directed against USSR citizens and, in particular, Russian Germans, an extensive source base has been identified and described in a number of publications. However, significant challenges remain in accessing the body of sources on the history and practice of repressions, as a substantial portion of these materials is unavailable to researchers for various reasons.

Examples of developing integrated resources:

Currently, there are several examples of both proposed and existing electronic resources related to the personal records of repressed individuals.

In 1998, the International Memorial Society set the task of creating an electronic data bank of personal records of victims of political repressions in the USSR. The organization has taken concrete steps in this direction and has already developed several versions of an integrated resource.

From 2000 to 2003, with the support of Memorial and other public and academic organizations, the international project “Recovered Names” was implemented. Its participants aimed to create a Unified Electronic Data Bank of the Repressed in the USSR. The project outlined distinctive features compared to other programs commemorating the victims of repression:

A comprehensive approach to studying the history of repressions in the USSR. Identification of all categories of the repressed and all types of sources describing them, as well as the systematization of information by typology and chronology.

Development of unified standards for describing each category of the repressed (data lists, standard questionnaires for archival work, and a unified program for electronic data processing).

Development of a unified database program that integrates information from various sources.

Consolidation of information from different regions into the “Recovered Names” electronic data bank, enabling the tracing of the fates of the repressed as reflected in local databases.

The project participants considered two possible approaches: to create database programs oriented toward diverse and numerous sources or to develop a unified program where the central category is the individual victim of repression. It was noted that the first approach is generally preferred, resulting in the development of source-oriented databases. For instance, the Historical Informatics Laboratory at NTSPI has two such databases: “Repressed Residents of Nizhny Tagil” and “Labor Army Members of the ITLs of the Urals.”

In the “Recovered Names” project, a different goal was set: to create a unified data bank that would incorporate databases for numerous categories of the repressed and various types of sources. Thus, a person-oriented approach, rather than a source-oriented approach, was chosen.

The second characteristic of the data bank being developed is that it is relational, meaning that all information about a repressed individual is represented as a set of interconnected tables with a complex system of relationships. This solution was dictated by the nature of the subject of study. Many individuals experienced repression multiple times, at different periods, and possibly in different locations. Thus, while the person remains the same, there are multiple instances of repression and corresponding sources documenting them. Only a relational structure, where all tables are linked by a specific system of relationships, can effectively represent this complexity.

The third characteristic of the data bank being developed is its unified nature, rather than being distributed. The fundamental design principles of the unified bank include a standardized set of fields for each category of the repressed and the presence of directories for all searchable fields to standardize record formats for each of them.

As part of the “Recovered Names” project, the following were created: a Standard Local Application (SLA) and an input program, a project website, and two versions of the unified bank (pilot and basic).

The SLA and input program are components of the project’s software suite and are designed for entering archival information about the repressed into local databases. The purpose of this development was to provide project participants with a unified working tool and to standardize the data being entered for subsequent integration into the data bank.

The chosen implementation environment was the widely used, advanced, and compact DBMS Access-97, with the possibility of upgrading to newer versions of the program.

At the first stage, it was decided to develop a program for four categories of the repressed:

• Individuals under investigation; source – Archival Investigative Case (AIC).
• Those who underwent screening and filtration procedures; source – Archival Filtration Case (AFC).
• Prisoners; source – Prisoner Record Card (PRC).
• Labor-mobilized individuals; source – Labor Army Member Record Card (LAMRC).

After completing work on these programs, the focus could shift to programs for special settlers and individuals deprived of voting rights.

The input program emerged as a compromise solution, largely due to the lack of directories for administrative-territorial divisions of the Russian Empire and the USSR, nationalities, professions, repressive and rehabilitation legislation, repressive and rehabilitative institutions, places of detention, special settlements, labor mobilization, and so on. Developing such directories represents a large and complex research task requiring substantial resources, including intellectual, documentary, and financial support.

The “Recovered Names” project was successfully funded through charitable foundations for three years. It was later envisioned that the project would receive state financing.

In 2011, the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for Civil Society and Human Rights, along with the Working Group on Historical Memory, developed proposals to establish a national state-public program titled “On Memorializing Victims of the Totalitarian Regime and National Reconciliation” and submitted them to President Dmitry Medvedev. However, such a program was never adopted in practice and was transformed into the significantly reduced “Concept of State Policy for Memorializing Victims of Political Repressions” (2015), which lacked an effective funding mechanism. Today, the concept’s timeline has been extended to 2024. One of its implementation areas includes "the creation of a nationwide information system for the museum and memorial network, a unified multimedia memory book, and databases in the field of memorializing victims of political repressions."

In the current complex geopolitical climate, it has proven impossible to revisit the idea of creating a comprehensive intergovernmental scientific and public program for studying and disseminating information about mass repressions in the USSR.

The practical development of informational electronic resources dedicated to political repressions and the individuals repressed is carried out through the disparate efforts of public organizations and individual research groups.

For example, on the Memorial organization’s website “Personal File of Everyone” (http://dostup.memo.ru), users can find regulatory acts of the Russian Federation on access to archival information, with commentary from historians and lawyers. The site also features accounts of both successful and unsuccessful archival searches, and, most importantly, detailed recommendations for those seeking information about their relatives and planning to visit an archive or are already working there. These recommendations help individuals assert their right to information and navigate the complexities of various archival documents. The goal of this project is to build a community of researchers dealing with various practices for accessing archival materials.

The largest thematic electronic resource is the list of victims of political repressions created by Memorial’s working group (http://lists.memo.ru/). It is based on memory books, and to date, it contains approximately 3,285,000 biographical records. This research resource is fully open to users. Since it was partially created through scanning memory books published in different regions, there are many duplicate records of the same individual who experienced repression multiple times or lived in various geographic locations within the USSR. Efforts to eliminate these duplicates are ongoing.

The database “Open List” (https://ru.openlist.wiki) publishes information about individuals repressed by the state for political reasons between 1917 and 1991. The biographical data in the Open List sources are derived from investigative cases and archival references. These data, transformed into electronic databases, are considered relatively reliable despite potential errors in recognition, typos, or inaccuracies in the original sources. The resource is open to users, allowing searches by surname, first name, patronymic, dates of birth and death, place of residence, and other biographical details.

This resource operates on a Wikipedia-like principle: researchers and relatives can contribute known information about the repressed, including memories and archival documents (subject to pre-moderation by the resource authors). In cases where discrepancies arise with primary source information, the formula “record edited by the user; data not confirmed by documents and require verification” is applied.

In 2015, the “Immortal Barrack” project website (https://bessmertnybarak.ru) was launched online. One of its stated goals is to create a unified, fully accessible database of victims of repression in the USSR. Currently, the database contains over 2 million names of repressed individuals from the Russian Federation, Ukraine, the Republic of Crimea, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Poland, the Finnish and Latvian Republics, and the Republic of Moldova. The database is compiled from memory books and martyrologies of repressed individuals in the USSR from 1917 to 1991. It is a fully open resource for both researchers and users, allowing its materials to be accessed without requiring the surname of the repressed individual.

A substantial database for Northwest Russia is hosted on the “Recovered Names” website of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg (http://visz.nlr.ru/pages/repressii-ssylki). This resource includes not only lists of the repressed but also a comprehensive catalog of informational resources on the topic of repressions within the Russian Federation and abroad.

A significant contribution to the creation of memory books for all categories of the repressed has been made by the Komi Republican Charitable Public Fund for Victims of Political Repressions “Reconciliation” (https://pokayanie-komi.ru/martirolog).

The websites of various Memorial Society organizations must also be utilized, including those in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Ryazan, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, and Yaroslavl, as well as the Irkutsk Association of Victims of Repressions and others.

Additional electronic resources are listed and described in A. Kurilova’s article (https://news.mail.ru/society/35216993/) and in a publication on the “Personal File of Everyone” website (http://dostup.memo.ru/ru/sobrat-i-pokazat-kak-sovremennye-internet-proekty-v-rossii-rabotayut-s-arhivnymi-materialami).

For Russian Germans, the subsite on the RusDeutsch portal of the International Union of German Culture, “Gedenkbuch: Electronic Memory Book of Russian Germans,” is of primary importance. This site contains data on individual labor army members. To use the search system on this site, you need to know the surname of the person you are researching.

At the Historical Informatics Laboratory of the Nizhny Tagil State Social and Pedagogical Institute (a branch of the Russian State Vocational Pedagogical University), there is a center dedicated to publishing the series “Gedenkbuch: Memory Book of Repressed Russian Germans.” Through its efforts, memory books have been published for Tagillag, Bogoslovlag, Bakalstroi-Chelyabmetallurgstroi ITL, Sevurallag, Vosturallag, and Ivdelag. Requests for clarifying existing information can be sent to: history_vmk@mail.ru.

The most advanced integrated electronic resource for personal information is the data bank of the Russian Ministry of Defense, launched in 2007 (obd-memorial.ru, podvignaroda.ru, pamyat-naroda.ru). The funds invested in its creation, state support, and professional execution have resulted in the most sophisticated electronic database, which is an indispensable resource for finding information about specific individuals, including those who fell victim to repressive policies.

The history of repressive policies against Russian Germans and electronic databases

One of the ethnic groups in the USSR subjected to total repression was the Russian Germans. According to the 1939 census, there were 1,427,232 Russian Germans in the USSR, of whom approximately 1.3 million had been rehabilitated by 2003.

Researchers studying the totalitarian state’s policies toward Russian Germans have formulated several conceptual positions and conclusions of fundamental importance. They identified stages and types of repressions: terror during the Civil War and the period of "War Communism"; the fight against emigrant influence in the 1920s; dekulakization in the late 1920s to early 1930s; the anti-German campaign of 1933–1935; the "German Operation" of 1937–1938; deportation and labor mobilization in the 1940s; special settlements (1941–1955); rehabilitation (1955–2000s).

A concept has emerged suggesting that Russian Germans rejected Bolshevik ideology due to their European mindset, which was rooted in the inviolability of private property, individualism, and Protestant ethics. The thesis of the anti-German nature of socialist transformations has been substantiated. Researchers have concluded that the formation of the image of a German "fifth column" in the USSR occurred in 1924–1925. German colonies were considered the "hotbed and base" of counterrevolution and German espionage. The policy of "indigenization" of local government bodies did not justify itself, as German village councils fell under the influence of communal traditions. Scholars have formulated the concept of the "ethnic mentality" of Russian Germans, which shaped their enduring image in the eyes of the Party as disloyal to socialism and the people's authority. For this reason, Germans became the focus of the state's repressive machinery.

At the same time, many researchers believe that, until their deportation in 1941, Russian Germans maintained a positive ethnic and civic identity. It was only the policies of deportation and special settlement in the 1940s and 1950s that triggered a spiritual crisis and gave prominence to the concept of the "ancestral homeland." Only a small portion of this generation of Germans remained loyal to the USSR. The process of rehabilitating Russian Germans was never fully completed, leading to mass emigration to Germany.

The Presidential Program for the Development of the Socio-Economic and Cultural Base for the Revival of Russian Germans for 1996–2006 included efforts to create a data bank of repression victims with an address database. To date, this work remains incomplete.

At the initiative of the Public Academy of Sciences of Russian Germans, the “Gedenkbuch: Memory Book of Russian Germans – Victims of Political Repressions, Participants in Wars and Conflicts” project was approved at the end of 2000. The goal of the project was to create a unified electronic data bank containing information on four categories of individuals: victims of political repression, deportees, labor-mobilized individuals, and participants in wars and conflicts.

In 2000, the Historical Informatics Laboratory of the Nizhny Tagil State Social and Pedagogical Academy became one of the initiators of the “Gedenkbuch” project. Currently, the team of scientists working at the laboratory has access to electronic databases (EDBs) on Russian Germans who were inmates of forced labor camps in the Urals, comprising a total of about 100,000 individual records.

To date, 13 memory books have been published as part of this project. Additionally, three albums on the deportation, labor mobilization, and special settlement of Russian Germans have been released, featuring dozens of eyewitness accounts of the national tragedy alongside academic articles. The history of repressive policies against Russian Germans has been reconstructed in three volumes of the Encyclopedia of Russian Germans and in hundreds of articles presented at 18 international and 4 scientific-practical conferences organized by the International Association of Researchers of the History and Culture of Russian Germans.

The publication of printed memory books and electronic discs containing expanded databases on labor army members has not fully addressed the issues of international open access to information about the repressed or the ability to search for information about relatives. A fitting response to these challenges would be the creation of an electronic website with comprehensive databases, a search system, and a guestbook to handle requests from relatives of the repressed, regardless of their location. The increasing number of inquiries received by the Historical Informatics Laboratory from countries within the post-Soviet space and beyond underscores the need for such a platform.

In light of the above, a new step has become possible in reconstructing one of the foundations of national identity—the memory of the repressions endured in the 20th century.

At the beginning of 2015, the Historical Informatics Laboratory of the Nizhny Tagil branch of the Russian State Vocational Pedagogical University, with the support of the International Union of German Culture, launched a project to create a Unified Data Bank titled “The History of Repressive Policies Against Russian Germans in the 20th Century.”

The goal of the project is to create a modern informational resource (a unified electronic data bank) as a means of commemorating the victims of political repressions and providing a single access point for retrieving data on the repressions against Russian Germans for various users, including researchers, relatives, and others.

The objectives of the project are the consolidation and summarization of existing local and regional databases, memory books, and other sources containing information on labor-mobilized Soviet Germans; the quantitative and qualitative expansion of informational content, including coverage of various categories and groups of repressed Soviet Germans and the incorporation of new sources of information, such as personal records; and the development of a section titled “Repressive Policies Against Russian Germans in the 20th Century” on the RusDeutsch portal.

The main directions for implementing the project are as follows:

Consolidating existing memorial databases into a unified data bank, containing information on Soviet Germans who were labor army members in Tagillag, Bogoslovlag, Chelyabmetallurgstroi, Usollag, and the Komi ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic).

Regularly updating the unified data bank with new datasets on Soviet Germans who were labor army members in other NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) camps; mobilized for labor in enterprises of other commissariats; registered as special settlers; repatriated and deported from the Baltic States and Eastern Europe; or repressed during the period of the "Great Terror."

Expanding the database fields to ensure the potential inclusion of the maximum amount of information about an individual: biographical data, family composition, work activity, type of repression, etc., including the ability to attach photographs and documents.

Developing dictionaries, reference materials, and cartographic resources (locations of settlements after the 1941 deportation; facilities where labor army members were mobilized; special commandants' offices and settlements).

Establishing a partnership network (public associations of Germans, state agencies, and enterprise archives) to support the operation and expansion of the data bank, along with providing methodological support for their activities.

The most important section is the one presenting the unified data bank of labor-mobilized Germans from forced labor camps. The integrated search system allows for searches by letters of the alphabet and various filters, providing the ability to generate personalized profiles. As a result, a unified electronic data bank is created with information on more than 68,000 labor army members, facilitating contact with their relatives and handling inquiries. In the future, the data bank will need to be continually updated with new resources. However, this will require addressing the challenging issue of standardizing data collected from diverse sources. Within the framework of the GEDENKBUCH project, a unified standard for entering information from labor army record cards was adhered to only by specialists from the Historical Informatics Laboratory of NTSPI. Other creators of memory books and electronic resources on the repressed generally did not follow such standards.

Adjacent to the previous section is the Photo Gallery, a database of photographic materials with an integrated search system. This section is linked to the previous one and allows photos of labor army members to be added to their personal profiles.

The Cartography section contains maps of camps and special settlements created by staff of the Historical Informatics Laboratory at NTSPI. This section will be regularly updated with additional cartographic materials.

The next section, "Memorial Sites," is intended to feature information about monuments and memorial markers related to the repressions against Russian Germans. Each entry would include a photo or illustration, an annotation text, and the location coordinates.

The "Sources" section is quite complex in its composition. It includes documents from archives, memoirs, biographies, testimonies, letters, personal documentary collections, publications in the media, videos, audio recordings, creative works, links to electronic resources, and electronic books.

We are currently processing a large volume of labor army members' memoirs, which, over time, are planned to be compiled into a database with a highly detailed thematic search system. In addition to the materials listed above, this section may be supplemented with additional information gradually collected from website visitors, such as memoirs, document copies, and photographs. These materials will be processed, converted into PDF format, and photographs restored. With the collection of photo materials accompanied by detailed, comprehensive commentary, it may also be possible to create a separate subsection: "Photo Album of German Labor Army Members."

The sections "Historiography," "Bibliography," and "Guestbook" require no special commentary. They are filled with the most up-to-date information, with the possibility of further updates.

It is essential that the development of this project is carried out collectively, involving partners at various levels, including individuals, public organizations, and state institutions engaged in the rehabilitation and commemoration of repression victims.

The creation of such an informational resource represents a step toward forming an international database on repressed individuals and is currently the most modern and increasingly popular form of activity for organizations addressing issues of rehabilitation and memory preservation.

The above concept of creating an electronic resource dedicated to repressed Russian Germans was largely realized in 2016 with the launch of a subsite on the RusDeutsch portal titled “Gedenkbuch: Electronic Memory Book of Russian Germans.” However, during the actual implementation of the project, the current legal framework regarding access to personal information and copyrighted resources did not allow for all planned tasks to be accomplished.

The electronic resource was implemented in the following sections: About the Project; Photo Gallery (construction and operation of enterprises; labor-mobilized individuals; special settlements; rehabilitation); Memorial Sites (maps of labor camps and special settlements; necropolises and memorial markers); Publications (bibliography; research); Unified Data Bank (with a search system).

Undoubtedly, the central unifying component of this electronic resource is the database of individual profiles. It includes information on 68,000 German labor army members from Tagillag, Bogoslovlag, Bakalstroi-Chelyabmetallurgstroi ITL (Corrective Labor Camp), and Usollag, drawn from the archives of labor camps in the Urals during the creation of the memory books. This is complemented by information on 32,000 Germans repressed under Article 58, sourced from the International Memorial database “Victims of Political Terror in the USSR.” Due to legal constraints, we were unable to create an open-access resource (search is possible only by the surname known to the user).

The "Sources" section was particularly affected, as it had to be removed entirely because each document requires authorization from the copyright holder. Consequently, the "Research" section also turned out to be incomplete.

Another approach to implementing the idea of creating an integrated resource is the project “Research Database: Enforced Workers of the Urals,” which is being carried out by staff of the Historical Informatics Laboratory in collaboration with the Bavarian Cultural Center of Russian Germans (Nuremberg). In essence, this is a partial realization of the concept to establish a Unified Data Bank on labor-mobilized Russian Germans. This electronic database includes information on approximately 100,000 labor army members from the labor camps of the Urals (Tagillag, Bogoslovlag, Bakalstroi-Chelyabmetallurgstroi ITL, Usollag, Sevurallag, Vosturallag, and Ivdelag). All personal information has been translated into German. The database is supplemented with a photo gallery (featuring photographs of individuals and the infrastructure of the labor camps) and articles on six labor camps. The project’s website is currently in a trial launch phase.

Various Russian-German public organizations are engaged in restoring the memory of repressed compatriots and publishing memory books. Significant achievements in this noble cause have been made by Germans of the Komi Republic. They expanded the lists of repressed individuals by including the category of special settlers. One volume of the “Repentance” series (Vol. 10) is dedicated to German special settlers in the Komi ASSR. The National-Cultural Autonomy of Russian Germans in the Komi Republic worked in cooperation with the team of the “Electronic Memory Book of Russian Germans” project to create the “Necropolises and Memorial Markers” section.

In 2022, the project “Electronic Archive of Germans in Kazakhstan” was launched, initiated by the Revival society. Within the framework of this project, the creation of source-oriented databases on deportees (based on echelon lists) and special settlers is planned. The exploration of sources related to these categories of repressed individuals represents a new step in the development of an integrated informational resource.

In summary, it can be concluded that efforts to commemorate repressed Russian Germans are progressing gradually. However, to date, only source-oriented databases have been effectively created for two categories of the former special contingent: “labor-mobilized individuals from NKVD camps” and, partially, special settlers. The future goal is to establish a person-oriented data bank, where all types of repressions are linked to a single individual.

Completing this work will provide a solid foundation for an intercultural informational space for Russian Germans, rooted in the historical memory of the generations of the 20th century.