Index of Victims of Soviet Repression

The “Index of Victims of Soviet Repression” is the only on-going research programme in Poland dealing with the comprehensive documentation of the fate of named Polish citizens who suffered repression at the hands of the Soviet Communist Party apparatus during the period 1939-1956.

The programme has been in existence since January 1988. It was initially run by the Eastern Archives and subsequently by the KARTA Centre. The “Index” contains computerised data from questionnaires relating to individual persons who were subjected to repression and it is envisaged that, with time, it will also include collected source material. The data base can be accessed in the offices of KARTA and it contains some 980,000 biograms (every item of source information is entered in the data base separately, so a single individual’s name may appear several times).

With the political breakthrough in 1991, access to former Soviet archive material through the “Memorial” Association in Russia, made it possible to give the project a professional methodological basis. Categories of repression were classified and work commenced on statistical and historical verification of the data. The aim of the programme, which was carried out in strict cooperation with “Memorial”, was to establish – as far as possible – a comprehensive and verified list of names within the individual categories, comparing Soviet data with Polish data.

Thus verified, the data is available to the public in the form of volumes published in the “Index” Publications series. The published biograms contain basic personal data, information relating to the nature of the repression suffered in the USSR, as well as the catalogue references of the archival sources, in which the given individuals appear. Since September 2001, these biograms have also become available on the web-site of the “Index of Victims of Soviet Repression” (ICIR).

Since 2008, biograms have also been included in the ICIR which do not result from comprehensive lists based on post-Soviet documents but which have been prepared on the basis of other creditworthy sources, such as: personal questionnaires, statements obtained through the “Memorial” Association, material copied by the Army Archives Committee, documentation from the Polish Red Cross Information and Tracing Department, the Association of Siberian Deportees etc.

Today, there are over 298,000 biograms in the ICIR; these include people who appear in the two original lists – the so-called Ukrainian list of 5th March 1940 (prisoners executed on the orders of the Soviet authorities) and also the list of cases under investigation by the NKVD’s Western Ukrainian and Belarussian apparatus – this is an authentic list of persons who were arrested and who were under investigation during the Soviet occupation of 1939-1941).

The success of the programme is due to cooperation between many communities and institutions, both in Poland and abroad – the “Memorial” Association in Russia, the Centre for Research into Genocide and the Lithuanian People’s Resistance Movement in Wilno, the “Pokayaniye” Foundation in the Komi Republic, the Polish Red Cross, the Department for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression, the Association of Siberian Deportees, the Central Military Archives, Central Archives of Modern Records, and other state archives and ex-combatant associations. During the period 1997–99, the “Index” programme came under the patronage of the Ministry of Justice.

The programme has been supported for many years by the following institutions: the Foundation for Polish Sciences, the Institute for National Remembrance (a patron since 2002) and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (formerly the Committee for Scientific Research). The “Index” programme of activities has been sponsored since 1988 by, among others: the Ford Foundation, the Ministry of Justice, the National Endowment for Democracy (USA), the Polonia Aid Foundation Trust (London), and the Department for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression.

It is our wish that the data contained in the “Index of Victims of Soviet Repression” be seen as an informational monument to the memory of those Poles and citizens of the II Republic of Poland who were victims of a repression instigated by the state apparatus of the USSR.

At the same time as KARTA carries out research into the documentation of the individuals who suffered repression at the hands of the USSR, work is also proceeding on the documentation of the human losses incurred and of the victims of repression resulting from the German occupation of Poland. This programme is run by the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation.