In Russia, the only archives with repression in the USSR are destroyed on the basis of a secret interdepartmental order, from 2014, reports Kommersant newspaper, citing a statement of Roman Romanov, the director of the Museum of History, Gulag.
The information about the destruction of the archives repressing the USSR also reached the adviser of the President of Russia, the head of the Human Rights Council, Mihail Fedotov. The official promised to investigate the situation.
According to Fedotov, the destruction of these archives means the complete elimination of information on Gulag convicts and can have disastrous consequences for studying history, camps and obtaining data on victims of repression.
Researcher Sergei Prudovsky was the first to find out about the destruction of these archives. Prudovsky sought information about Fyodor Chazov, a simple man who was sentenced to five years in camps and subsequently sent to the Magadan region. The investigator requested information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Magadan Region but was told there that the prisoner’s personal file was destroyed in 1955, according to the order, at that time.
“At the same time, the archive box was found to be destroyed,” said Prudovsky. When asked what order, the head of the center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Magadan Region, Mihail Sereghin, stated that there is an interdepartmental order labeled “for official use” of 2014 “regarding the approval of the instructions regarding the maintenance and use of operational documents, centralized criminal and investigation bodies, formed on the basis of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation”.