Czechoslovaks in the Gulag

Implementation: 2014–2017

Head of project: Adam Hradilek

Other members of the project team: Jan Dvořák, Štěpán Černoušek, Mečislav Borák, Zdeněk Vališ, Lukáš Babka

Description of project: The project’s main focus is the subject of repression of Czechoslovak citizens in the USSR using interviews with witnesses, documents from Ukrainian and Russian archives of the NKVD/KGB and Czech archives. The project develops the subject of the project Memory and History of Totalitarian Regimes. The witness testimonies have formed the basis of the research so far as it aims to map the individual destinies of the victims of repressions and conduct a more comprehensive analysis of the nature and extent of the repressions. The project team carries out research in foreign archives that store NKVD documents linked to persecuted Czechoslovak citizens (Ukrainian state archives; archives of the Ukrainian security service, SBU; archives of Georgia’s Ministry of the Interior; Russian state archives). One of the aims of the project is to extend the research, to process the acquired documents in the form of studies and to make them available to the public and to other researchers.

The outcome of the project include a three-part documentary cycle Čechoslováci v Gulagu (Czechoslovaks in the Gulag), which was made as a coproduction of the Czech Television and ÚSTR, and monographs Velký teror na Ukrajině 1937–1938. Český rozměr Gulagu (The Great Terror in Ukraine 1937–1938. Czech dimension); Čechoslováci v Gulagu (Czechoslovaks in the Gulag) and Židé v Gulagu (Jews in the Gulag).