TOPOGRAPHY of the RED TERROR - A Reflection on Stalinism
The difficult times of Stalin’s regime have left a painful trace upon many Georgian families whose members were subjects to repression or worse. The “Red Terror” was associated with victims and heroes but there has been a lack of understanding of which factors supported the regime and society’s role in the wrongdoings. The Stalin era is one of the unexplored periods of Georgian history which needs to be investigated, analysed and the history revised in order to equip the next generations of Georgians with truthful information about these historical crimes and their consequences. dvv international-Georgia and the Heinrich Boell Foundation (HFB) Southern Caucasus initiated a Project which was dedicated to studying the history of Stalinism. The main goal of the Project was to provide comprehensive historical research and initiate public discourse related to the complicity of society to the Soviet crimes. A guided city tour and a map of Tbilisi containing different types of historical places related to the atrocities would be the main output of the Project called a “Topography of the Red Terror”. The beneficiaries include experts, historians, school teachers, young people and anyone interested in the history of Stalinism and all it entails. The tour will be of interest to foreign tourists and, in particular, those from the countries of the former Soviet Union.
As the initial step of the project, a two-day international workshop was prepared by dvv international-Georgia and the HBF on 9-10 November 2009. It gathered experts with experience in studying the history of totalitarianism in the international context including specialists from Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia as well as scientists, journalists, employees of archives, libraries, museums and students interested in the issue.
The participants of the workshop created a working group. Lasha Bakradze, a famous Georgian historian, Anna Margvelashvili, the Regional Co-ordinator of Caucasus House, Giorgi Kldiashvili, a journalist from Archive Messenger and students David Gogishvili and David Jishkariani are members of the working group. Their aim was to provide a deep and comprehensive academic analysis of the history of the “Red Terror” in Tbilisi including both the victims and the people who supported the regime.
It was difficult to find the evidence needed to reconstruct this particular period of history due to a large portion of the documents having been destroyed during the civil conflict in Tbilisi during the 1990s. The researchers started to work with the documents in the State Archives of Georgia, the Archives of the KPSS (Communist Party of Soviet Union), the Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, the Museum of Soviet Occupation of Georgia, the Stalin Museum and the National Library of the Parliament. The researchers managed to find some investigative materials, minutes of the meetings of the Troikas (commissions of three people employed as an additional instrument of extrajudicial punishment), minutes of the judicial sessions of the Georgian Cheka (Committee for Special Tasks), collegiums and orders of execution. The Laboratory also took advantage of the current trend in social media and created a special group on Facebook for public discussions and the sharing of information.
The working group set up named Soviet Past Research Laboratory to further consolidate and disseminate their research.
The researchers interview victims and members of their families as a means of collecting oral stories and memories. They study old address register books to compare the memories of the victims to the records in the books. They also compare the information obtained with articles from newspapers issued during the investigative period. The researchers search out old photos, maps and other city plans. As well, they are interested in visiting prisons, cemeteries and places of tortures and execution as well as the victims’ places of residents as well as of those who supported or executed repressions.
The working group investigates apartment houses and streets where massive arrests of inhabitants had been observed. The findings of the research will be put on the Laboratory’s website in the near future.
With the oral histories and of the people’s recollections having become an important instrument of the research, a training session on the techniques of oral history and memory work took place on 27 June 2010 in Tbilisi. The target group included the members of the Laboratory itself, the staff of dvv international-Georgia and the HBF as well as volunteer students who were selected to be trained and involved into the activities of the Project.
On 1-2 July the next international workshop analysing and reviewing the work done, its findings and the lessons learned hold in Tbilisi.
If you have any information which could be interesting for the researchers and the Project on Georgia’s “Red Terror,” please contact the Laboratory at [email protected]