From arrest to arrest: experiences of the re-convicted victims of Stalinist terror in the USSR, 1930-1953

20世纪90年代苏联解体后，有关苏联恐怖活动的最重要文件变得可供查阅。然而，斯大林主义受害者的确切人数这一核心问题仍然存在广泛的争论(赫列夫尼克，2022年；惠特克罗夫特，2022年；朱拉夫斯卡娅等人，2021年)。这尤其是因为，为了准确估计，研究人员仍然需要确定所谓的“重复者”(Povtorniky)的数量，即在斯大林统治期间多次被捕的人。大多数解密的统计数据描述了逐年逮捕或定罪的数字。简单地把所有这些数字加起来是不可能的，因为许多人会被计算两次。一些研究人员估计，10%-15%的古拉格囚犯再次被捕(赫列夫纽克，2022年)。然而，这些估计是基于精选的司法统计数据，这些数据不仅描述了政治犯，也描述了“普通”罪犯。这项拟议中的研究将为当局两次或两次以上因政治原因被捕的人数提供更准确的估计。“重复者”的案例也将告诉我们极权主义下的长期生存战略。斯大林主义20多年的独特历史为纵向研究提供了丰富的素材。从监狱释放的人是否(故意或强迫)搬到另一个地方，或改变他们的工作场所？他们的家庭地位和关系发生了怎样的变化？最后，这项研究将丰富国家安全机构的史学。根据前恐怖实施者的证词，他们在不同的恐怖活动中使用了“可疑”人员的卡片索引(“重复者”也在其中)(Hagenloh，2009；Sheeller，2009)。逮捕“复仇者”的浪潮与一般浪潮重合吗？特定的种族或社会或性别群体是否不成比例地成为目标？这项研究是基于几个档案来源，包括数字化和模拟。我将分析一个大型在线数据库，苏联政治恐怖的受害者(纪念馆，2017)，其中包括300多万本简短的传记。此外，我还将审查由俄罗斯联邦国家档案馆(GARF)保存的莫斯科地区恐怖受害者调查文件的数字化文件集。为了将大规模镇压运动与现有的统计数据联系起来，我将在美国斯坦福的胡佛研究所图书馆和档案馆进行研究，那里收藏了大量来自俄罗斯主要档案馆的副本。为了更广泛的区域视角，我将在摩尔多瓦共和国国家档案馆(NARM)工作，该档案馆保存着1991年后从前摩尔多瓦克格勃档案中继承下来的关于20世纪30年代和40年代镇压的档案收藏品。此外，我将调查同样位于胡佛研究所档案馆的格鲁吉亚内政部档案馆的一批副本。在方法上，这一研究项目将使用复杂的数据分析工具，在数据库中以很高的概率确定同一人随后被逮捕的情况。例如，机器学习算法将被用于对受害者的社会档案进行分类，并将使用地理参考来跟踪受害者出生地和居住地的变化。这一研究项目将阐明斯大林独裁统治的重要特征，包括政治压迫的受害者总数、他们的生存经验和战略，以及国家安全机构的运作。斯大林主义是持续时间更长、规模最大的独裁统治之一，这使我们更深入地探讨了苏联的刑罚制度和受压迫公民的经历，这对于查明、了解和解决当今世界各地独裁政权下政治犯的状况和前景具有极大的价值。

The most important documents about the terror in the Soviet Union became accessible after its dissolution in the 1990s. However, the central question of the exact number of victims of Stalinism is still widely debated (Khlevniuk, 2022; Wheatcroft, 2022; Zhuravskaya et al., 2021). This is, not least, because for precise estimation researchers still need to identify the number of so-called 'repeaters' ('povtorniky'), i.e. people arrested multiple times during Stalin's rule. Most declassified statistics describe the numbers of year-by-year arrests or convictions. It is not possible to establish a total simply by adding up all these figures because many people would be counted twice. Some researchers have estimated that 10-15% of Gulag prisoners were re-arrested (Khlevniuk, 2022). However, these estimations are based on selected judicial statistical data that describe not only political but also 'ordinary' criminals. The proposed research will offer a more precise estimation of the number of people arrested two or more times by the authorities for 'political' reasons. The case of 'repeaters' will also tell a lot about the long-term strategies for survival under totalitarianism. The unique history of over 20 years of Stalinism provides abundant material for a longitudinal study. Did people released from prison move (intentionally or forcedly) to another place, or change their workplace? How did their family status and relations change? Finally, the study will enrich the historiography of the state security agencies. According to the testimonials of former perpetrators of terror, they used card-indexes of 'suspicious' persons ('repeaters' were counted among these) for the different campaigns of terror (Hagenloh, 2009; Shearer, 2009). Did the waves of arrests of 'repeaters' coincide with general waves? Were specific ethnicities or social or gender groups disproportionately targeted? The research is based on several archival sources, both digitised and analogue. I will analyse a large-scale online database, Victims of Political Terror in the USSR (Memorial, 2017), which includes more than 3 million short biographies. Additionally, I will examine a collection of digitised documents from terror victims' investigative files from the Moscow Region, held by the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). To contextualise the massive repression campaigns and explore available statistics on 'repeaters', I will conduct research at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford, USA, which contain a large collection of copies from major Russian archives. For a broader regional perspective, I will work at the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova (NARM), which holds archival collections on the repressions of the 1930s and 1940s inherited after 1991 from the former Moldovan KGB archive. Furthermore, I will investigate a collection of copies from the Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, also located at the Hoover Institution Archives.Methodologically, this research project will use complex data-analytics tools to identify within the database subsequent arrests of the same person with a high degree of probability. For example, machine-learning algorithms will be used to classify victims' social profiles, and georeferencing for tracking changes in victims' places of birth and residence.This research project will elucidate important features of Stalin's dictatorship, including the total number of victims of political repression, their experiences and strategies for survival, and the functioning of the state security agencies. Stalinism was one of the longer-lasting and largest-scale dictatorships and this makes a deeper exploration of the Soviet penal system and the experiences of repressed citizens of the utmost value for identifying, understanding and addressing the conditions and prospects of present-day political prisoners under authoritarian regimes across the world.