Biographies by name

Gleb Alekseev (1892 - September 1, 1938), born Gleb Charnotsky, was a Russian writer and journalist whose life was shaped by revolution, war, exile, and political repression. Born into the family of a rural schoolteacher of Polish descent, he began publishing in Moscow newspapers while still a teenager. During the First World War he served in the aviation corps and was wounded in combat. Rejecting the Bolshevik Revolution, he joined the White movement and spent the early 1920s in exile in Yugoslavia and Berlin before returning to the Soviet Union in 1923.

Aleksseev’s literary work reflects the upheavals of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, exploring themes of displacement, violence, and moral uncertainty. His prose, including the collections “Zhivaya Tup” (1922) and “Dead Run”(1923), established him as an important voice of the post-revolutionary generation. Despite publishing successfully throughout the 1920s, he became a victim of Stalin’s Great Terror. Arrested in 1938 on fabricated charges of participating in an anti-Soviet terrorist organization, he was executed later that year and posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

Forced Omission #91

Anton Antonov-Ovseenko (February 23, 1920, Moscow - July 9, 2013, Moscow) was a renowned Russian historian, writer, survivor of Soviet repression, and a tireless advocate for human rights and memory.

Born in Moscow into a prominent revolutionary family, Anton was profoundly affected by Stalin’s purges. His mother was arrested in 1929 and died by suicide in prison. His father, the revolutionary Vladimir Antonov‑Ovseenko, was executed in 1938. Branded the “son of an enemy of the people,” Anton was expelled from the Komsomol and the Pedagogical Institute, despite being reinstated in the same year.

From 1940 onward, he was arrested three times (in 1940, 1941, and 1943) spending a total of 13 years in prisons and labor camps across Turkmenistan, near Volga, Moscow suburbs, Pechora, and Vorkuta. Released after Stalin’s death, he was fully rehabilitated in 1957.

Following his rehabilitation, Anton devoted himself to historical research and writing. Under the pseudonym Anton Rakitin, he authored biographies of his father, including “In the Name of the Revolution” (1965) and “Vladimir Antonov‑Ovseenko” (1975). In 1980, his critical study of Stalin, “Portrait of a Tyrant”, was published in New York, an act that led to renewed harassment by the KGB, including house searches and confiscation of his archives.

In 1995, Anton became the head of the Union of Victims of Political Repression for the Moscow region, and in 2001 he founded and became the first director of the State Museum of the History of GULAG, cementing his legacy as a guardian of historical truth and human rights.

Anton Vladimirovich Antonov-Ovseenko died on July 9, 2013, in Moscow, Russia, at the age of 93.

Forced Omission #35

Raissa Azarkh (May 2, 1897, Shcherbinovka - November 9, 1971, Moscow) was a Soviet writer, and military memoirist. She was one of the first women in Soviet Russia to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1928.

Azarkh graduated from the medical faculty of Kharkov University in 1917 and participated in the October Revolution in Moscow that same year. She served as a commissar in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, holding various positions including head of sanitary units on the Ukrainian Front, chief of the sanitary service of the 5th Red Army, and chief of the Main Sanitary Directorate of the Transbaikal region. She played a pivotal role in combating typhus epidemics in Siberia.

In 1936 - 1937, Azarkh volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War, serving as an advisor to the Republican Army and the Ministry of Health, and organizing sanitary units for the Republican forces. Following the Spanish Civil War, Azarkh continued her military service during the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland (1939) and the Soviet-Finnish War (1939 - 1940), serving as a representative of the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. During the Second World War (1941 - 1945), she worked as a war correspondent for several newspapers.

In 1947, Raissa Azarkh was arrested during the height of Stalin’s political purges, reportedly due to her association with Anna Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s second wife, who had fallen out of favor. Charged with political crimes, Azarkh was imprisoned and endured harsh conditions until her release in 1954 following Stalin’s death and the subsequent political thaw. Despite the interruption to her career and personal hardship, she remained committed to her work and continued writing after her rehabilitation.

Her notable works include “At the Great Sources” (1967), a memoir detailing her experiences during the October Revolution and the Civil War.

Forced Omission #75, 167, 168, 169

Isaac Babel (July 13, 1894, Odessa - January 27, 1940, Lubyanka Prison, Moscow) was a Russian-Jewish writer and journalist, acclaimed for his vivid short stories that explore themes of violence, identity, and revolution.

Born in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, Babel grew up in the Moldavanka district, a setting that would later inspire his “Tales of Odessa” (1931), depicting the Jewish underworld of his hometown. He also authored “Red Cavalry” (1926), a collection based on his experiences as a war correspondent during the Russo-Polish War, and “Story of My Dovecote” (1926), a semi-autobiographical work reflecting on his Jewish upbringing.

Babel’s literary style is characterized by its aphoristic precision and metaphorical richness, blending journalistic realism with modernist aesthetics. His works gained prominence in the 1920s, earning him the patronage of Maxim Gorky and recognition as a leading Soviet writer.

However, during Stalin’s Great Terror, Babel was arrested in May 1939, falsely accused of espionage and anti-Soviet activities. After enduring months of torture and a brief trial, he was executed on January 27, 1940, in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison. Isaac Babel was posthumously rehabilitated in 1954 during the Khrushchev Thaw.

Babel’s works have been translated into numerous languages and continue to be studied for their profound insights into the human condition amidst political turmoil.

Forced Omission #25, 152, 153, 155

David Bergelson (August 12, 1884, shtetl of Okhrimovo - August 12, 1952, Moscow) was a revered Yiddish-language writer and a pivotal figure in modernist Jewish literature. Born in the shtetl of Okhrimovo, near Uman (present-day Ukraine), Bergelson grew up in a traditional, prosperous Jewish household, receiving both religious and secular education in Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish.

He began his literary career writing in Hebrew and Russian, but found true artistic voice in Yiddish. His breakthrough came with his novella“At the Depot” in 1909. Later works like “After All Is Said and Done” solidified his reputation as a leading modernist in Yiddish prose. In 1917, he co-founded the avant-garde Kultur Lige in Kiev, promoting Yiddish culture and literature.

In 1921, Bergelson relocated to Berlin and later moved back to the Soviet Union in 1933, driven by ideological alignment and concerns about rising Nazism. His early writing reflected critical modernism, but by the 1930s he increasingly embraced socialist realism and became active in Soviet literary institutions. He joined the Jewish Anti‑Fascist Committee, contributing to its wartime publication, “Unity”.

However, during Stalin’s postwar crackdown on Jewish intellectuals, Bergelson was arrested in January 1949 in the antisemitic campaign against so‑called “rootless cosmopolitans.” Following a secret trial, he was executed on August 12, 1952 (coincidentally his 68th birthday) during the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets.

After Stalin’s death, Bergelson was posthumously rehabilitated, and his works were republished in the Soviet Union starting around 1961.

Forced Omission #26, 50

Olga Berggolts (May 16, 1910,  St. Petersburg - November 13, 1975, Leningrad) was born to an educated family and began publishing poetry in her teens. In the 1930s, she worked as a journalist and editor, enduring devastating personal losses: the deaths of her two daughters and the execution of her first husband, the poet Boris Kornilov, in 1938 during Stalin’s Great Terror.

Later that year, Berggolts was arrested on fabricated charges of plotting terrorism and held for seven months. She was pregnant at the time and miscarried during a brutal interrogation. Her diaries were seized and annotated by interrogators. Despite torture, she never confessed to any false charges. Eventually, she was fully exonerated and reinstated to the Writers’ Union.

Her ordeal left deep scars. She later wrote: “They took my soul, dug in it with stinking fingers… spat on it, defiled it, and then gave it back and said, ‘Live!’”

During the Siege of Leningrad, Berggolts refused evacuation and became the city’s voice on Leningrad Radio, broadcasting poetry and hope to a starving population, her words serving as a lifeline. One of her phrases, “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten”, was later etched into the walls of Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.

After the war, she continued to write, publishing poems, memoirs, and essays. Though officially rehabilitated, she never fully recovered from the trauma. She supported censured writers like Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, risking further persecution. Her prison diaries, withheld during her lifetime, were finally published after the fall of the Soviet Union, revealing a voice of deep moral clarity and resistance. She suffered from alcoholism, which worsened in her later years, and died in 1975. Despite her cultural legacy, a monument at her grave was only installed in 2005.

Forced Omission #124 - 150

Grigory Belykh (1906-1938) was a Russian Soviet writer, born in 1906 in St. Petersburg. Orphaned early, he experienced homelessness after the Revolution and was placed in the Dostoievsky School-Commune for difficult children (SHKID), a formative Soviet re-education institution. There he befriended Alexei Eremeev (later writer L. Panteleev), and together they wrote Republic of SHKID (1927), a landmark semi-autobiographical work about Soviet orphanhood and juvenile institutions.

Despite literary success and praise from Maxim Gorky, Belykh later faced ideological criticism. In 1935 he was arrested during Stalin’s purges under Article 58 for alleged counterrevolutionary activity, reportedly linked to satirical or politically sensitive writing. He was sentenced to three years but died in 1938 in a transit prison from tuberculosis at age 31, becoming one of many Soviet writers destroyed by state repression. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.

Forced Omission #45, 165, 166

Anna Berzin (19 January 1897 - 8 October 1961) was a Soviet writer, editor, memoirist, and literary critic whose life was profoundly marked by Stalinist repression. Active in Moscow’s literary circles during the 1920s, she published fiction under the pseudonym Ferapont Lozhkin and worked as an editor for the State Publishing House and the journal “Foreign Literature’”. She was closely associated with the poet Sergei Yesenin and later married the Polish writer Bruno Jasieński.

In 1937, after Jasieński was arrested during the Great Terror and executed, Berzin refused Party demands to denounce her husband as an “enemy of the people.” As a result, she was expelled from the Communist Party, arrested, and falsely accused of maintaining ties with Polish intelligence. She was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag followed by three years of internal exile. Imprisoned in Sevzheldorlag in the Komi Republic, she worked as a nurse and organized the camp’s amateur theater before being transferred to forced settlement on the Kola Peninsula.

Berzin survived imprisonment and exile and was rehabilitated after Stalin’s death. She is also remembered for secretly preserving the manuscript of Jasieński’s unfinished novel “The Conspiracy of the Indifferent”, hiding it through years of incarceration and exile until it could finally be recovered. She died in Moscow in 1961, several years after her official rehabilitation, having survived the purges

Forced Omission #48

Yuly Berzin (1904 - 11 June 1942) was a Soviet writer, playwright, and prose author whose career was cut short by Stalinist repression. Born in Polotsk into a Jewish family, he studied law at Leningrad University and began publishing fiction in the mid-1920s. A member of the literary group Smena and later the Union of Soviet Writers, he became known for satirical and adventurous prose that explored the contradictions of early Soviet society.

During the Great Terror, Berzin was arrested in Leningrad on 10 February 1938 on fabricated charges of participating in an anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization among Leningrad writers. In 1939 he was sentenced to eight years of forced labor and deported to Sevvostlag in the Soviet Far East. While imprisoned, he was accused a second time of conducting “anti-Soviet defeatist agitation.” On 16 May 1942 a military tribunal of the NKVD at Dalstroy sentenced him to death, and he was executed on 11 June 1942 in Magadan.

Berzin was posthumously rehabilitated in two stages, first in 1957 and again in 1990 after the annulment of his second conviction.

Forced Omission #121

Aleksei Bibik (October 17, 1878, Kharkiv - November 18, 1976, Mineralnye Vody) was a Russian and Soviet writer, dramatist, and revolutionary, recognized as one of the pioneering working-class novelists in Russia.

Born in Kharkiv to a metal turner, he received a modest education, attending a two-class Church parish school. At age 14, he began working as an apprentice in Kharkiv’s railway workshops, later advancing to roles as a turner, draftsman, and machine designer.

In 1895, Bibik joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and became an active revolutionary. His activism led to multiple arrests and exiles: in 1900, he was sentenced to three years in Vyatka Province; in 1903, he was exiled to Arkhangelsk Province for propagating among peasants. The 1905 Revolution temporarily freed him, but he remained in hiding until 1911.

During the 1910s, Bibik worked as a machinist in Riga and later in Rostov-on-Don, where he continued his literary pursuits. His first published story, “On the Pier,” appeared in 1901 during his exile. His notable works include the novel “To the Broad Road”, published in two parts in 1912 and 1921, depicting pre-revolutionary factory life and the rise of worker consciousness. Other significant works are“On the Black Stripe”,“Katryusha’s Tower”, and the play “Black Bird”.

In February 1938, Bibik was arrested and imprisoned in a GULAG labor camp. He was released in late 1946 and fully rehabilitated in 1988. Bibik passed away on November 18, 1976, in Mineralnye Vody. His contributions to Soviet literature are commemorated through a museum in his honor and a street named after him in Mineralnye Vody.

Forced Omission #82, 84, 89, 101, 109, 118

Konstantin Bolshakov (26 May 1895, Moscow - 21 April 1938, Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow) was a Russian poet, novelist, and prose writer associated with the Russian avant-garde and the literary movements of the Silver Age. Born in Moscow, he began publishing poetry as a teenager and was influenced by Symbolism and Futurism, maintaining close ties with leading literary figures including Valery Bryusov. After studying law and military science, he served during the First World War and later fought in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Following his demobilization, he turned increasingly to prose, publishing historical and autobiographical novels that explored revolution, war, and Russian history.

Despite becoming a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, Bolshakov fell victim to Stalin’s Great Terror. He was arrested in September 1937 on fabricated charges of espionage and participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. After more than a year of imprisonment and interrogation, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and executed on 21 April 1938 at the NKVD execution site at Kommunarka near Moscow.

Bolshakov was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956 during the Khrushchev Thaw and reinstated in the Union of Soviet Writers.

Forced Omission #154

Ekaterina Boronina (April 3, 1907, Saint Petersburg - May 29, 1955, Leningrad) was a Soviet children’s writer and a member of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Soviet Writers. She was born into the family of a conductor in the military engineering corps.

In 1924, Boronina completed her education at the 190th Unified Labor School and entered the Higher State Courses in Art Studies at the State Institute of the History of Art, studying in the literary department. She became involved in radical politics in 1923-1924, joining the underground anarchist circle led by Yury Krinitsky and helping to organize an anarcho-syndicalist student group. In 1926, at the age of 19 she was exiled to Tashkent for a period of 3 years for participating in a “counter-revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist circle”. Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya, a famous Russian writer, poet, and dissident, worked diligently for her release, and at the beginning of 1928, Boronina returned to Leningrad.

Back in Leningrad, Boronina worked for the newspaper “Chitatel’ i pisatel” (“Reader and Writer”) and began contributing children’s stories to “Chizh” (“Siskin” Children’s Magazine), “Yozh” (“Hedgehog” Children’s Magazine), and “Koster” (“Campfire”Children’s Magazine) throughout 1928-1929. In 1934, she officially became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers.

She lived through the Siege of Leningrad, remaining in the city and participating in the writers’ bureau for children’s literature during World War II. On October 30, 1950, Boronina was arrested for alleged anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. On February 17, 1951 she was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp at Potyma in Mordovia. She virtually lost her sight while imprisoned. On November 1, 1954, after Stalin’s death, the decision was revoked due to lack of criminal evidence, and she was released. She died on May 29, 1955 in Leningrad, at the age of 48.

Forced Omission #4, 170

Sergey Bondarin (14 January 1903 - 25 September 1978) was a Russian Soviet prose writer, poet, and memoirist whose literary career was closely tied to the cultural life of Odessa and later Moscow. Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire, he became part of the vibrant literary milieu of the 1920s, where he was associated with writers such as Eduard Bagritsky and Semen Gecht. He published poetry, short stories, and children’s literature, and by the mid-1930s had established himself as a recognized Soviet author and member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

During the Second World War, Bondarin served in the Black Sea Fleet’s political administration and participated in major military operations, including the defense of Crimea and the battles for the Caucasus. Despite his service, he became a victim of Stalinist repression during the postwar purges of returning intellectuals. In March 1944 he was arrested on fabricated charges of “anti-Soviet agitation,” and in 1945 was sentenced to eight years in forced labor camps.

He served his sentence in labor camps in Siberia and later in exile in Krasnoyarsk Krai, where he remained until his release in 1953. After rehabilitation, he returned to literary work and published memoirs and prose reflecting on wartime experience, imprisonment, and moral survival under dictatorship. He died in Moscow on 25 September 1978 and was buried at the Novodevichy (Donskoy) Cemetery.

Forced Omission #45, 160, 164, 172

Joseph Brodsky (24 May 1940, Leningrad - 28 January 1996, Brooklyn, New York) was a Russian-American poet, essayist, translator, and Nobel Prize laureate whose work became one of the defining voices of late 20th-century literature. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, into a Jewish family, he left formal education early and was largely self-taught, developing an intense engagement with poetry, philosophy, and translation. From the late 1950s he began writing poetry that circulated in samizdat and quickly attracted both admiration and suspicion from Soviet authorities.

In 1964 Brodsky was arrested on charges of “social parasitism,” a politically motivated accusation directed at his refusal to conform to state-defined labor roles. He was sentenced to internal exile in the Arkhangelsk region, where he continued to write under harsh conditions. International protests by writers and intellectuals contributed to his early release in 1965, but he remained under surveillance and was repeatedly harassed by Soviet authorities.

In 1972 Brodsky was forced to emigrate from the USSR, stripped of citizenship and expelled from the country. He settled in the United States, where he taught at several universities, including Yale, Columbia, and Mount Holyoke College. Writing in both Russian and English, he produced essays and poetry collections that established him as one of the major literary figures of his generation. In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Brodsky died of a heart attack in New York City on 28 January 1996 and was buried in Venice, a city he often described as spiritually closest to his poetic world. His work continues to shape modern poetry through its linguistic precision, philosophical intensity, and exploration of exile, time, and linguistic freedom.

Forced Omission #186 - 205, 223 - 225

Matvei Bronstein (December 2, 1906, Vinnitsa - February 18, 1938, Leningrad) was a brilliant Soviet theoretical physicist, widely regarded as a founder of quantum gravity and a compelling popularizer of science.

Born in Vinnitsa to a family of doctors, Bronstein showed exceptional talent early on. He graduated from Leningrad State University in 1930 and secured positions at the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, and Leningrad University. By 1935, he had earned his doctorate with a thesis on the quantization of gravitational waves, a pioneering contribution that underpinned the modern concept of graviton.

Beyond his academic achievements, Bronstein was an exceptional science writer. He authored influential textbooks, “Structure of Matter” (1935), “Atoms”, “Electrons and Nuclei” (1935), and the widely beloved “Solar Matter” (1936), crafted to ignite scientific curiosity in young readers.

On August 6, 1937, while visiting his parents in Kiev, Bronstein was arrested by the NKVD. His name was placed on a death list from the Leningrad region, signed by prominent Soviet leaders including Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, and Kaganovich.

On February 18, 1938, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court, chaired by Matulevich, condemned Bronstein to death. He was executed within minutes of the trial. The appeals from prominent scientists like S. I. Vavilov, A. F. Ioffe, I. E. Tamm, and poet S. Y. Marshak to commute his sentence were ignored.

Bronstein was believed to have been buried at Levashovo Cemetery, where Lydia Chukovskaya, his widow, later installed a memorial. He was posthumously rehabilitated on May 9, 1957.

Forced Omission #39, 44, 59, 60

Solomon Broyde (1892 - 25 May 1938) was a Russian Soviet writer, journalist, and publicist whose career combined literary work with active participation in revolutionary and early Soviet institutional life. Born in Kyiv into a Jewish family, he began publishing journalistic texts in 1910 and spent time in Berlin before the First World War, working as a correspondent for German-language publications. In 1912 he joined the Menshevik movement, and in 1916 graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Vladimir University in Kyiv.

After the 1917 Revolution, Broide worked in Moscow in administrative and supply-related institutions, including roles connected to food distribution and public organizations, while continuing to publish essays and reportage in Soviet newspapers and journals. His early experience of political turbulence and institutional instability later became a central subject of his writing.

In 1920 he was arrested by Soviet authorities and spent more than a year in detention in Moscow prisons, including the Butyrka prison, where he was involved in organizing a prison theatre. After his release, he published several works based on his imprisonment, including In the Soviet Prison and In the Madhouse, as well as later prose and documentary-style texts reflecting on violence, bureaucracy, and revolutionary transformation.

During the 1930s, Broide became a controversial literary figure, accused of misrepresentation and plagiarism in connection with several of his published works. In 1938 he was arrested during the Great Terror on charges of espionage for Japan. He was executed on 25 May 1938 in Moscow and later rehabilitated in 1959.

Forced Omission #52, 162, 163

Arkady Bukhov (January 26, 1889, Ufa - October 7, 1937, Moscow) was a prominent Russian Soviet satirist, feuilletonist, writer, and editor.

Born into the family of a railway worker, Bukhov began his higher education in law at Kazan University in 1907, but was expelled after being arrested twice for the alleged ties to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. He was exiled to the Ural gold fields for one year. Embracing his talent for humor, he began publishing satirical poetry and stories. By 1908, his work appeared in “Strekoza”, a precursor to the influential humor journal “Satyricon”.

After the closure of “New Satyricon” in 1918, Bukhov spent two years touring with a theatrical troupe in Lithuania, later launching and editing the Russian émigré newspaper “Echo” in Kaunas (1920 - 1927), which featured contributions from Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Teffi, and others. He returned to the USSR in 1927, contributing to satirical publications such as “Chudak”, “Begemot”, “Bezbozhnik”, and appearing in “Literaturnaya Gazeta” and “Izvestia”. In 1932, he assumed leadership over the literary section of the humor magazine “Krokodil” and was highly regarded by editor Mikhail Koltsov for his organizational skills and productivity.

From 1928 he was a secret employee of the Joint State Political Directorate-NKVD, which was the Soviet state secret police of the time, and responsible for carrying out Stalin’s purges.

Arkady Bukhov was arrested on June 29, 1937 and charged with espionage “for the benefit of foreign in telligence services.” On October 7, 1937, he was sentenced to capital punishment for counter-revolutionary activities, organizing terrorist acts for counter-revolutionary purposes and espionage, and was shot on the same day. He was buried on the territory of the Moscow crematorium (New Don Cemetery). Posthumously rehabilitated on July 7, 1956, Bukhov’s works were occasionally republished from 1959 onwards, partially restoring his place in Soviet literary memory.

Forced Omission #20, 183, 184

Sergey Budantsev (10 December 1896 - 6 February 1940) was a Russian Soviet prose writer, poet, journalist, and editor associated with the avant-garde and revolutionary literary culture of the early 20th century. Born in the village of Glebkovo in the Ryazan Governorate of the Russian Empire, he grew up in a large family and began publishing journalistic and literary texts while still a student. He studied at Moscow University and, during the First World War and the revolutionary period, worked as a correspondent and editor in various military and Soviet publications across the Caucasus and southern Russia.

In the 1920s Budantsev became known for his prose exploring the violence and ideological contradictions of revolution, war, and the collapse of imperial Russia. His works combined reportage, documentary fiction, and experimental narrative forms, reflecting the stylistic innovations of Soviet modernism. He published novels, short stories, and essays, and participated in the broader literary debates of the period.

Despite his integration into Soviet literary life, Budantsev was arrested during the Great Terror in 1938 on charges of counterrevolutionary activity. He was sentenced to eight years of forced labor and deported to the Kolyma region, one of the harshest areas of the Gulag system. Exhausted by imprisonment and camp labor, he died on 6 February 1940 in the “Invalidny” camp settlement in Kolyma.

Buddantsev was later rehabilitated in the post-Stalin period. His work is now read as part of the lost literature of early Soviet modernism and as testimony to the destruction of a generation of writers during political repression.

Forced Omission #173

Eghishe Charents (real name Eghishe Abgarovich Soghomonyan, March 25, 1897, Kars - date unknown, 1937, a Soviet prison, most likely in Yerevan, Armenia) was a prominent Armenian poet, writer, and translator.

He was born in Kars, then part of the Russian Empire, into a family of Armenian carpet merchants. At the age of 18, in 1915, Charents joined the Armenian volunteer units fighting for the liberation of Western Armenia. His experiences during this tragic period inspired his poem “Dante’s Legend,” one of the earliest literary works addressing the Armenian Genocide.

In 1921, after Kars was ceded to Turkey, Charents wrote the epic novel-poem “The Land of Nairi,” depicting the fall of Kars and the fate of its people. This work became a significant contribution to Armenian literature and historical memory.

Charents joined the Red Army in 1918 and participated in the Russian Civil War. During this time, he composed works such as “Soma” and “Furious Crowds,” celebrating revolution and freedom.

He was also known for translating major Russian and foreign authors into Armenian, including Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Blok, Goethe, and Gorky, enriching Armenian literature with world classics.

His personal life was marked by tragedy, with the deaths of his first wife and later his second wife’s arrest. Charents himself was arrested in 1936, accused of counter-revolutionary activities, and died in prison in 1937. His name was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955. His contributions were posthumously recognized with a house-museum opened in Yerevan in 1974. Since then, he has become a symbol of Armenian independence and national dignity.

A monument in his honor stands in Yerevan, and a street, school number 67, and the State Museum of Literature and Arts of Armenia bear his name. His portrait appears on the 1000 dram Armenian banknote and a commemorative 100 dram coin issued in 1997.

Forced Omission #33, 36

Boris Chetverikov (June 20, 1896, Uralsk - March 7, 1981, Leningrad) was a Soviet Russian writer, poet, and editor, known for his extensive literary output.

Born in the family of a traveling school inspector, he spent his formative years in a culturally rich environment, his parents were educators deeply involved in local theater and cultural life. Chetverikov completed his education at a school in Ufa and in 1917 began studying at Tomsk University. He dropped out to pursue a literary career, moving to Omsk, where he contributed to a newspaper and formed a lifelong friendship with writer Vsevolod Ivanov (a prominent Soviet Russian writer and playwright, best known for his vivid depictions of the Russian Civil War and life in the early Soviet period). In 1923, he relocated to Petrograd (Leningrad), where he edited literary journals “Lit Weekly” and “Zori” and helped establish the literary group “Sodruzhestvo,” alongside prominent Soviet writers.

Chetverikov endured immense hardship during the Soviet era. In April 1945, he was arrested and charged under multiple articles. His works and archives were confiscated, and he was imprisoned. In 1948 Stalin personally suggested Chetverikov as a candidate for the award of the Stalin Prize in the field of literature, for his play “The Crow Stone” (co-authored with Gruzdev). However, as a result of Chetverikov being in prison, he was removed from consideration for the award. In 1956, Chetverikov was rehabilitated, and in 1969 the Ministry of Defense awarded him a ceremonial dagger in recognition of his military‑patriotic literature.

Over a career spanning five decades, Chetverikov authored more than forty books, including novels, story collections, poetry, and plays. His renowned works include “Sated Earth”, “Ottawa”, “The Magic Ring”, “Weeds”, “Crimson Days”, “Lyuban”, “Sunny Stories”, “Weekdays”, “The Blue River”, “Immortality”, “Business People”, “Morning”, and “Toward the Sun”.

Chetverikov passed away in Leningrad in 1981 and was laid to rest in Komarovo cemetery, a resting place for many prominent Russian poets, writers, and artists.

Forced Omission #29, 64

Oles Dosvytnyi (real name Oleksandr Fedorovych Skrypal-Mishchenko; born November 8, 1891,  Vovchansk - March 3, 1934, Kharkiv) was a Ukrainian writer, editor, and political activist known for his vivid prose and engagement with revolutionary themes.

Raised in a poor family, Dosvitniy completed primary school through external exams, and studied briefly at the physics-mathematics faculty of St. Petersburg University. He was expelled due to participation in revolutionary agitation. During World War I, he served in the Caucasus corps and edited a soldiers’ newspaper. After being sentenced to death for agitation, he escaped arrest and fled abroad, living in China, the U.S., and Japan.

Returning to Ukraine in 1918, he joined the Communist Party in 1919 and worked as editor of agitational train newspapers such as “Bolshevik”, “Bread and Iron”, “Rural Truth”, and “Star” in Katerynoslav (now Dnipro). In Kharkiv, he edited the screenplay department of the Ukrainian photo-cinema administration and led the Ukrainian Society of Playwrights and Composers from 1924.

A prolific author, Dosvitniy wrote short stories and novels such as “Repentance”, “Whose Faith is Better?”, “The Tungus” (1924), “Alay” (1924), “Gulle” (1926), “Americans” (1925), “Who?” (1927), “There Were Three of Us” (1929), and “Quartzite” (1932). His works often explored themes of social justice, revolutionary identity, and the destinies of marginalized characters. They were translated into several languages.

Arrested in Kharkiv on December 19, 1933, Dosvitniy was accused of counterrevolution and involvement in a plot against Soviet leader Pavel Postyshev. After extensive interrogations and forced confession, he was sentenced to death and executed on March 3, 1934 at the age of 42. He was posthumously rehabilitated in October 1955.

Forced Omission #6, 177, 161, 212, 214-216

Pavel Dorokhov (January 1886 - 1938 or 8 May 1942) was a Russian and Soviet prose writer, journalist, screenwriter, and dramatist whose career developed in the turbulent cultural and political landscape of the late Imperial and early Soviet periods. Born in the village of Malaya Tarasovka in the Samara Governorate of the Russian Empire, he received a general education in a city school and began working in provincial administrative service as a statistical clerk. Early in life, he became involved in revolutionary circles and spent time under arrest for political activity.

Dorokhov began publishing literary works in the early 1910s, contributing stories and journalistic texts to regional newspapers. After 1917, he took an active role in public and cultural life, working in revolutionary press and participating in the formation of new Soviet institutions. During the Civil War period, he continued writing and publishing prose reflecting social upheaval, ideological conflict, and the transformation of Russian society.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Dorokhov worked as a professional writer and screenwriter, contributing to early Soviet cinema and literary publications. His scripts included works for silent film productions, and he became part of the expanding Soviet cultural apparatus.

In the 1930s, Dorokhov was arrested during Stalinist repressions on charges that remain inconsistently documented across sources. He died either in 1938 following execution or in 1942 in detention, likely in the Gulag system. His exact fate remains uncertain, reflecting the archival gaps surrounding many victims of the Great Terror. He was later rehabilitated in the post-Stalin period, and his work is now regarded as part of the fragmented legacy of early Soviet literature shaped by censorship and repression.

Forced Omission #104, 106, 117

Ilya Dubinsky (29 March 1898, Butenky, Poltava region - 5 October 1989, Kyiv) was born into a modest family in a rural Ukrainian village. He completed his secondary education at the Kobelyaky Commercial School before enrolling at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute.

In August 1918, he joined the Bolshevik Party and embarked on his military career, fighting as a partisan against German forces, Petliura’s troops, and later commanding roles in the Red Cossack formations of the Red Army. He participated in major battles against the Whites and Polish forces, and despite being seriously wounded, he continued to serve with distinction. In 1928, he graduated with honors from the Frunze Military Academy and subsequently held various leadership posts in cavalry and tank units, as well as staff roles in the Ukrainian Soviet government.

Dubinsky’s writing career began in the early 1930s, when he published short sketches and essays in newspapers and magazines, often drawing on his experiences in Soviet Ukraine. His early work leaned toward reportage and humorous short prose, depicting the lives of workers, collective farmers, and small-town characters with warmth and irony.

In July 1937, amid Stalin’s purges, Dubinsky was dismissed from military service, expelled from the Party, and arrested. After a three-year investigation, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court sentenced him to ten years in corrective-labor camps, which he served in Krasnoyarsk region. Following his sentence, he was exiled and settled as chief mechanic at a Machine-Tractor Station in Taseevsky District.

In 1954, Dubinsky was rehabilitated, reinstated in the Party, and restored to the rank of colonel, along with the right to wear his uniform. He then relocated to Kyiv, where he chaired the Commission under the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Repression.He passed away on 5 October 1989 in Kyiv and was buried at Baikove Cemetery.

Forced Omission #65, 73, 178

Sergey Durylin (14 September 1886 - 14 December 1954) was a Russian religious thinker, literary scholar, art historian, and writer whose work bridged the intellectual and spiritual culture of the Silver Age and Soviet scholarship. Born in Moscow into a merchant family, he studied at the Moscow Archaeological Institute and early on became involved in literary and philosophical circles associated with Symbolism and Russian religious thought. In the 1900s-1910s he published essays and studies on literature, theatre, and art, engaging with figures such as Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, and other representatives of the Russian modernist movement.

After the 1917 Revolution, Durylin increasingly turned toward religious philosophy and theology. In the early 1920s he was arrested by Soviet authorities in connection with his religious activities and spent time under investigation and in detention. Following his release, he was effectively removed from active church life but continued his scholarly work in literary studies, theatre history, and the interpretation of Russian cultural heritage. His writings from the 1920s-1940s focused on Russian literature, iconography, and the history of theatre, often published under strict ideological constraints.

Despite restrictions and surveillance, Durylin became an important figure in Soviet humanities scholarship. He was eventually recognized within academic institutions and awarded state honors in the late 1940s for his contributions to the study of Russian theatre and literature. He died in Bolshovo on 14 December 1954 and was buried in Moscow.

His life reflects the complex trajectory of a religious intellectual navigating repression, adaptation, and partial rehabilitation within Soviet cultural history.

Forced Omission #103

Nikolai Fedorovsky (12 December 1886 - 27 August 1956) was a Russian and Soviet mineralogist, geologist, and founder of applied mineralogy in the USSR. Born in Kursk in the Russian Empire, he studied at Moscow University, where he later became associated with leading figures of Russian geology, including Vladimir Vernadsky. From the early 1910s he participated in geological expeditions and quickly emerged as one of the key organizers of Soviet mineral resource science.

After the 1917 Revolution, Fedorovsky played a central role in building Soviet geological institutions. He was one of the founders of the Moscow Mining Academy (1918) and later served as director of the Institute of Applied Mineralogy and Metallurgy, which evolved into the All-Union Institute of Mineral Raw Materials (VIMS), becoming one of the most important centers for Soviet resource science. He also contributed to the development of methods for systematic exploration and classification of mineral resources and helped establish the foundations of the Soviet geological planning system.

In 1933 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In October 1937, during the Great Terror, Fedorovsky was arrested on charges of participation in an anti-Soviet organization. In 1939 he was sentenced to a long term in the Gulag system and spent years in Vorkuta, Norilsk, and other camps, where he continued limited scientific and teaching work under imprisonment conditions.

He was released in the early 1950s and formally rehabilitated in 1954. After suffering a severe stroke following his rehabilitation, he died in Moscow on 27 August 1956. His life reflects both the achievements of Soviet scientific institution-building and the devastating impact of political repression on the scientific elite.

Forced Omission #105, 122

Dzaho Gatuev (1892 - 11 June 1938) was an Ossetian writer, journalist, publicist, and revolutionary cultural figure whose work was closely tied to the formation of Soviet literary culture in the North Caucasus. Born in Vladikavkaz into a family of a priest, he studied at Moscow University beginning in 1912, where he became involved in Marxist student circles and revolutionary underground activity. During this period he also maintained contacts with Bolshevik organizers and participated in the dissemination of political literature in the Caucasus.

After the 1917 Revolution, Gatuyev took part in establishing Soviet power in the North Caucasus and worked as a journalist and cultural organizer. He contributed to early Soviet press organs and held positions in regional administrative and cultural institutions, including roles connected to education and publishing. In the 1920s he also engaged in ethnographic and historical research on the peoples of the Caucasus, combining literary production with fieldwork and archival study.

Gatuyev became known for prose and essays exploring the social transformation of the Caucasus, including works such as Inghushi (1926) and other historical and documentary narratives. His writing often combined political engagement with ethnographic observation and was widely published in Soviet journals throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1937 he was arrested during Stalin’s Great Terror on fabricated charges of participation in an anti-Soviet nationalist organization. He was sentenced to death and executed on 11 June 1938. He was posthumously rehabilitated in the 1950s.

Forced Omission #175, 176

Aleksei Gastev (October 8, 1882, Suzdal - April 15, 1939, Kommunarka shooting ground) was a pioneering Soviet figure whose work bridged revolutionary politics, avant-garde poetry, and groundbreaking labor science. He was a poet, trade-union activist, and the leading architect of scientific management principles in the USSR.

Born in Suzdal, Gastev lost his father early and was expelled from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute for political activity. He became a professional revolutionary, repeatedly arrested and exiled for his activism, before emigrating and later returning to Russia.

After the Revolution, Gastev became the founder and longtime director of the Central Institute of Labor (CIT), established in 1921. Under his leadership, CIT developed the theory of “labor installations”, a scientific approach to worker training that emphasized human agency over rote task repetition, a novel departure from Taylorist and Fordist methods.

Between 1924 and 1926, he chaired the Soviet Committee for Scientific Organization of Labor, and from 1932 to 1936, led the All-Union Standardization Committee, solidifying his role as a key institutional strategist in labor policy. His works included “Labor Instructions” (1924) and other influential texts on industrial and cultural organization.

However, the political atmosphere shifted dramatically in the late 1930s. On September 7, 1938, Gastev was arrested by the NKVD under fabricated charges of involvement in a “counter-revolutionary terrorist organization.” He was sentenced by the Supreme Court’s Military Collegium and executed on April 15, 1939, at the Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow.

After Stalin’s death, Gastev was rehabilitated on March 17, 1956, restoring his reputation as an innovative thinker whose labor theories significantly shaped Soviet professional training and scientific management.

Forced Omission #37, 72, 108, 110, 113

Isaac Goldberg (27 October 1884 - 22 June 1938) was a Russian and Soviet writer, literary critic, journalist, and public figure whose work was closely connected to the cultural and political life of Siberia in the early 20th century. Born in Irkutsk into a working-class family, he received a basic education in a city school but did not complete formal secondary certification due to repeated arrests connected with early revolutionary activity. In the first decade of the century he became involved with the Socialist-Revolutionary movement and participated in the 1905 Revolution, for which he was persecuted by the authorities.

Between 1907 and 1912 Goldberg was exiled in Eastern Siberia, including time in the Buryat and Tunguska regions. After returning from exile, he became an active figure in Siberian journalism, contributing to and editing a range of regional newspapers and journals. His early prose and reportage focused on social inequality, provincial life, and the transformation of Siberia during industrial and political change.

After the 1917 Revolution, Goldberg continued to work as a writer and editor, contributing to Soviet literary journals such as Siberian Lights (Sibirskie ogni) and participating in the development of regional literary institutions in Irkutsk. His work combined documentary observation with literary narrative and often reflected on revolutionary upheaval and its social consequences.

In 1937 he was arrested during the Great Terror on fabricated political charges. He was sentenced to death and executed in Irkutsk on 22 June 1938. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.

Forced Omission #58, 116, 217

Dmitry Gorbunov (23 February 1894 - 19 July 1970) was a Russian Soviet poet, prose writer, playwright, and cultural figure whose career developed from rural origins into a prominent position in regional Soviet literature. Born in the village of Kiselyukha in the Yaroslavl Governorate of the Russian Empire, he began life in a peasant family and received only a basic early education. As a child he worked in St. Petersburg in manual and service jobs, including as a shop assistant, baker’s helper, and newspaper seller, before being drafted into military service during the First World War.

After the 1917 Revolution, Gorbunov became involved in local Soviet administration in Yaroslavl and soon turned to literature and theatre. He wrote early plays for workers’ and soldiers’ amateur stages, including agitational and anti-religious works, and began publishing poetry in regional newspapers. By the 1920s he had become an active participant in Soviet literary life, joining writers’ associations and publishing poetry collections and plays performed in local theatres. His work often reflected themes of revolution, social transformation, and everyday life in the early Soviet period.

In the 1930s Gorbunov worked as a correspondent for ROSTA (later TASS), continuing his literary and journalistic activity. In October 1936 he was arrested on fabricated charges of participation in a “counterrevolutionary group.” He was sentenced to long-term imprisonment and spent years in the Kolyma labor camps and Siberian exile.

After his release and rehabilitation in 1955, he resumed literary work, publishing poetry collections, plays, and autobiographical prose. In 1969 he was awarded the title of Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR. He died in Yaroslavl on 19 July 1970.

Forced Omission #156, 157, 158, 171

Tishka Hartny (real name: Dmitry Fyodorovich Zhilunovich, October 23, 1887, town of Kopyl - April 11, 1937, Mogilev) was a Belarusian Soviet writer, editor, and public figure, and a pioneering voice in modern Belarusian literature. Born on October 23, 1887, in the town of Kopyl, Slutsk Uyezd, he grew up in a poor peasant family; his father worked as a seasonal laborer, and his mother wove linen. From childhood, Hartny knew hardship, working as a shepherd for five years before becoming a leather workshop laborer. In 1906 he began associating with the local RSDLP organization (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), traveling widely across Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Latvia in search of work.

Hartny’s literary debut came in 1909, when “Nasha Niva” published his poem “The Deprived”, dedicated to Yanka Kupala. His 1913 collection Songs marked his early lyrical period, and his works also appeared in Bolshevik newspapers “Zvezda” and “Pravda”. In 1918, he joined the Communist Party, helped publish “Dzyannitsa”, the first Soviet Belarusian newspaper, and became a leader in the movement for Belarusian statehood, finding support from Lenin and Stalin. On January 1, 1919, he was elected chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of Belarus.

A prolific prose writer, Hartny authored “Soki Tseliny” (“Sap of the Virgin Land”), considered the first Belarusian novel, published between 1922 and 1929. His short stories portrayed peasant life, class struggle, and anti-fascist themes. He was active as a poet, dramatist, and critic, while holding prominent cultural and political posts, including editor of “Savetskaya Belarus” and “Polymya”, and as an academician of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences (from 1929).

In 1931, Hartny was expelled from the Communist Party, accused of ties to “national-democratic and fascist elements.” Arrested in 1936, he was tortured and died in a Mogilev psychiatric hospital on April 11, 1937 (by some accounts, he died by suicide). Officially rehabilitated in 1955 and fully politically exonerated in 1988, Hartny remains a central figure in Belarusian literary and political history.

Forced Omission #85, 111, 151

David Hofshteyn (June 24, 1889, Korostyshev, Kiev province, Russian Empire - 1952, Lubyanka building, Moscow) was a Soviet Yiddish poet, editor, and translator, known for his early revolutionary enthusiasm and later tragic fate during Stalin’s purges.

Hofshteyn came from a deeply religious Jewish family. He studied at a heder and later pursued education in Kyiv and St. Petersburg. Initially writing in Hebrew and Russian, he began composing poetry in Yiddish in 1909. His debut collection was published in 1917, and he became involved with the Jewish Socialist Workers Party, contributing to its newspaper, “New Era”.

After the October Revolution, Hofshteyn worked in the Jewish Department of the Ukrainian Central Council and contributed to the Yiddish press in Kyiv. In 1923, he emigrated to Palestine, where he wrote both in Hebrew and Yiddish. There, he published dramatic works such as “Saul – The Last King of Israel” (1924) and “Messiah’s Times” (1925).

Returning to Kyiv in 1926, Hofshteyn faced increasing pressure to conform to Soviet ideologies. He joined the Communist Party in 1939 and continued to write, though his earlier works were increasingly suppressed. In 1948, following Stalin’s withdrawal of support for Israel, Hofshteyn was arrested along with other members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. He was executed on August 12, 1952, during the Night of the Murdered Poets (the night when thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals, writers, poets, and artists, members of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, were executed by the Stalin’s order).

Posthumously, Hofshteyn was rehabilitated after Stalin’s death, and his works reappeared in Russian translations in 1958.

Forced Omission #7

Alexander Isbach (February 12, 1904, Dvinsk, Latvia - February 3, 1977, Moscow) born Isaac Abramovich Bakhrakh, was a prominent Soviet writer, literary scholar, and journalist. He published under the name Alexander Isbach from the early 1920s.

After beginning his literary career in provincial newspapers (“Vitebskie Izvestia”, “Kolomensky Rabochy”), Isbach moved to Moscow, contributing to central outlets such as “Rabochaya Moskva” and other periodicals. He graduated from the Literary Department of Moscow State University in 1924 and from the Institute of Red Professors in 1934. He was an organizer of important Soviet literary groups including “Rabochaya Vesna”, “Oktyabr”, and VOAPP (All-Russian Organization of Proletarian Writers).

Isbach’s early works focused on the Red Army, combining field reportage with literary sketches. Notable collections include “With Rifle and Book” (1926), “Red Army Men” (1930), and “Privates” (1932); he also wrote the novella “The Collapse” (1930), addressing conflicts with Trotskyist ideologies.

During World War II, he served as a military correspondent on the Northwestern and Second Belorussian Fronts for “Za Rodinu” and “Frontovaya Pravda”, reaching the rank of Major. He received the Order of the Red Star (1942), the Order of the Patriotic War II Class (1943), and the Order of the Red Banner (1945) for his service.

In 1949, amid the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans,” Isbach was arrested on charges of bourgeois nationalism and Zionism. The basis for this persecution was his autobiographical stories “Years of Life” (1948), which included Jewish religious and cultural elements. He was sentenced to ten years in labor camps. Released in 1954 and subsequently rehabilitated, he resumed teaching and writing.

Isbach continued producing autobiographical works, among them “Path to Life” (1957) and “My Youth, My Komsomol” (1966), alongside literary portraits (“Face to the Fire”, 1958; “On the Literary Barricades”, 1964) and studies of French literature.

Forced Omission #12, 74

Bruno Jasieński (July 17, 1901, Klimontów, Poland - September 17, 1938, Kommunarka shooting ground) was a Polish and Soviet writer, poet, and playwright. Born into a Jewish family, he was the son of Jakub Zisman, a prominent physician. In 1908, he was officially adopted by Ivan Yaseninsky, and his surname was changed to Yaseninsky. He studied at the University of Kraków and began publishing poetry in 1918.

In the early 1920s, Yaseninsky became involved with the Polish Futurist movement and adopted the pen name Bruno Jasieński. He was known for his radical political views and satirical works. In 1925, he emigrated to France, where he joined the French Communist Party and published the revolutionary-utopian novel “Je brûle Paris” (“I Burn Paris”), which was later translated into Russian. He was expelled from France in 1929 due to his political activities and moved to the Soviet Union, where he became a Soviet citizen.

In the USSR, Jasieński became an active member of the literary community. He was a member of the All-Union Writers’ Union and worked as the editor of the journal International Literature. He also contributed to the propaganda book “The White Sea–Baltic Canal” (1934). His notable works include the novel “The Man Who Changed His Skin” (1932 - 1933), which was repeatedly reprinted until his arrest, and the unfinished novel “The Conspiracy of the Indifferent” (1937).

In the summer of 1937, Jasieński was removed from all positions and expelled from the Writers’ Union “for counter-revolutionary activities”. Information about his death is contradictory. According to official data he died in exile in 1941, but according to the Memorial Society, the date and cause of his death were falsified, and in reality he was shot at the Kommunarka shooting ground (former dacha of secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda, that was used as a burial ground from 1937 to 1941) on September 17, 1938 after having been arrested on the 7th of August, 1937, and accused of participation in the terrorist organization.

Bruno Jasieński was posthumously exonerated on December 24, 1955, and his works were subsequently republished.

Forced Omission #15, 32, 83

Mikheil Javakhishvili (20 November, 1880, village of Tserakvi - September 30, 1937, Tbilisi, Georgia) was a Georgian writer and novelist, widely regarded as one of the most significant literary figures of 20th-century Georgia. Born in the village of Tserakvi in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Georgia), he initially bore the surname Adamashvili but later adopted his grandfather’s surname, Javakhishvili. He studied horticulture and viticulture in Yalta but was forced to abandon his education following a family tragedy in 1901, when robbers killed his mother and sister, and his father died shortly thereafter.

Javakhishvili began his literary career in 1903, publishing his first story under the pseudonym “Javakhishvili.” He became known for his critical journalism, often challenging the Russian imperial authorities. In 1906, facing repression, he emigrated to France, where he studied art and political economy at the University of Paris.

Between 1908 and 1909, he traveled extensively across Europe and the United States. In 1910, he returned to Georgia under a false identity and began publishing the journal “Eri,” advocating for Georgian nationalism. This led to his arrest and exile in 1910. He returned to Georgia in 1917 and resumed his writing after a 15-year hiatus.

Javakhishvili’s notable works include “Kvachi Kvachantiradze” (1924), “Jaqo’s Dispossessed” (1925), and “The White Collar” (1926). His writing often depicted the lives of ordinary people, blending realism with elements of Georgian folklore. In 1923, he was arrested and sentenced to death by Soviet authorities but was released after six months due to intervention by the Georgian Union of Writers.

Despite his previous release, Javakhishvili faced continued scrutiny under Soviet rule. In 1937, during the Great Terror, he was arrested again, tortured in the presence of Lavrentiy Beria, and executed on September 30, 1937. His property was confiscated, and his works were banned for nearly two decades. He was posthumously rehabilitated in the late 1950s, and his literary legacy has since been recognized as a cornerstone of Georgian literature.

Forced Omission #93, 114, 120

Ivan Kasatkin (30 March 1880, Kostroma Governorate - 19 or 21 April 1938, Moscow) was a Russian writer, editor, and revolutionary whose life and work reflected the turbulent transitions of early 20th-century Russia. Born into a poor peasant family in Kostroma Governorate, he began working at age nine and taught himself to read. In 1899, Kasatkin moved to Saint Petersburg, working as a metalworker while becoming active in Marxist underground circles. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902 and was repeatedly arrested and exiled.

Kasatkin established an underground printing press in Nizhny Novgorod in 1904, assisted by the young Heinrich Yagoda, who would later head the NKVD. Around the same time, he began writing and publishing fiction rooted in peasant life. From 1908, Kasatkin entered a long correspondence with Maxim Gorky, who mentored him and helped publish his work in leading journals.

After the 1917 Revolution, Kasatkin worked in Soviet institutions including the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Gosizdat, and the People’s Commissariat of Education. He was involved in organizing shelters, managing cultural policy, and promoting Soviet literature. He traveled on the Lenin Agitation Train and helped shape early Soviet publishing.

Kasatkin’s stories focus on the rural poor, written in a restrained, realistic style. Major works include “Tyuli‑lyuli” (1925), “Galchata” (1930), and “Tak bylo” (1935). His collected works were published during his lifetime and posthumously.

On January 31, 1938, Ivan Kasatkin was arrested during Stalin’s Great Terror. He was executed by firing squad in Moscow shortly after, on April 19 or 21, 1938, the exact date is unknown. He was posthumously rehabilitated in the 1950s after Stalin’s death.

Forced Omission #87, 90, 92, 102

Viktor Kin (January 14, 1903, Borisoglebsk - April 21, 1938, in or near Moscow) was a Russian Soviet writer and journalist whose literary journey was marked by service in war, letters, and unjust repression.

Kin was the son of a railway machinist. He began writing as a teenager, contributing epigrams and feuilletons to his self-published journal, “Bedlam”. After the October Revolution, he joined the Bolshevik underground and worked for the local newspaper “Kommunist”. In 1920, he volunteered for the Polish front and later participated in suppressing the Antonovshchina peasant uprising in the Tambov region. He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1920.

Kin’s literary career flourished in the 1920s. His novel “Beyond the Other Side” (1928), based on his experiences in the Far East, gained significant attention. He worked as a correspondent for TASS in Rome (1931) and Paris (1933). In 1936, he became the editor of the Moscow weekly “Le Journal de Moscou”.

In November 1937, Kin was arrested by the NKVD on charges of being an “enemy of the people.” His unfinished works, including the novel “Lille” and a story about journalists, were confiscated. He was executed on April 21, 1938, and posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

Forced Omission #24, 46

Vasily Knyazev (18 January 1887, Tyumen - 10 November 1937, Atka, Magadan Oblast) was born into a prosperous merchant family; his grandfather, Konstantin Vysotsky, founded the town’s first printing press and local newspaper. He studied at a school in Yekaterinburg but did not graduate due to illness, and in 1904  -05 attended a teachers’ seminary in Saint Petersburg before being expelled for political activity.

In 1905 he began publishing in satirical leaflets and journals, including Satirikon, under numerous pseudonyms. His debut poetry collections, ”Satirical Songs” (1910) and “Two-legged Without Feathers” (1914), contained satirical verse in sharp, topical style.

After the October Revolution, Knyazev joined the Bolshevik cause, writing for Krasnaya Gazeta under the pseudonym”Red Bell-ringer”, and issued revolutionary-themed collections such as”Songs of the Red Bell-ringer” (1919) and “Red Leninist Village”(1925). During the Civil War, he traveled to the front with a Proletkult agit-train.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Knyazev focused on folklore: collecting and publishing kubarets, folk proverbs, and ditties, with works like”Book of Proverbs” (1930), “Contemporary Chastushki 1917–22” (1924), and”Rus’: Selected Proverbs and Sayings” (1924). In 1934, under the pseudonym Ivan Sedykh, he published the novel”The Elders”,  depicting Siberian merchant life.

Arrested in March 1937 on absurd charges of counter-revolutionary agitation, Knyazev was sentenced to five years in labor camps by a special collegium and transported to the USSR Far East. He died on a prison transport in the settlement of Atka (Magadan region) on 10 November 1937. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 30 June 1992 by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation.

Forced Omission #57

N. Konstantinov is the pseudonym of the Soviet journalist and satirist Konstantin Bogolyubov (March 18, 1905, Pskov - November 24, 1937, Leningrad) was a Russian journalist and satirist. Born into the family of a priest (who died early), he was raised in the family of his uncle, also a priest.

From 1928, he worked in the editorial office of the Leningrad magazine “Around the World”, and in the same year, as a young journalist, he published two science fiction stories in Leningrad magazines (“The Things of Mr. Peak” and “The Plain of Tua”). He wrote science fiction (under the pseudonym N. Konstantinov) in collaboration with B. Rest, together they published under the common pseudonym “Cobra” since 1933. During these years, Bogolyubov was the editor of Lendetizdat and deputy editor of the “Koster” (“Camp Fire”) children’s magazine. The collection “What Cobra Told” (1963) includes three fantastic humoresques/parodies.

On September 5, 1937, he was arrested by the Leningrad regional NKVD, accused of membership in a counter‑revolutionary Trotskyist organization linked to Japanese intelligence and engaging in subversive political activity. By decree of the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor’s Office on November 19, 1937, he was sentenced to death; the sentence was carried out on November 24, 1937. Years later, on September 13, 1957, the Military Tribunal of the Voronezh Military District fully rehabilitated Bogolyubov.

Forced Omission #16

Mikhail Kozyrev (1892 - 20 May 1942) was a Russian Soviet prose writer, playwright, and cultural figure associated with early Soviet literary institutions and the development of popular narrative forms in the 1920s and 1930s. Born in the Russian Empire, he came of age during a period of revolutionary upheaval and Civil War, which strongly shaped his literary orientation and thematic focus. His early work emerged in the context of post-revolutionary cultural reconstruction, when new Soviet literary organizations were forming and writers were expected to align artistic production with ideological transformation.

Kozyrev worked as a writer and editor within Soviet literary circles, contributing prose and dramatic texts that reflected contemporary social change, revolutionary experience, and the building of new Soviet realities. His work was published in periodicals and circulated within the expanding network of Soviet cultural institutions during the 1920s and early 1930s. Like many writers of his generation, his career was closely tied to shifting ideological demands and the increasing pressure on literary expression.

In the late 1930s, during the Stalinist purges, Kozyrev became one of the many cultural figures targeted in waves of political repression against the Soviet intelligentsia. He was arrested on charges typical of the period, involving alleged counterrevolutionary activity. He died in 1942 under circumstances associated with imprisonment and the broader system of detention and exile characteristic of the Gulag era.

Forced Omission #225

Yan Larri (February 2, 1900 - March 18, 1977) was a Soviet children’s writer of Latvian descent, best known for his science fiction classic “The Extraordinary Adventures of Karik and Valya”.

Born in Riga, Larri was orphaned around age nine and spent his youth wandering across Russia, working as an apprentice watchmaker, tavern boy, and more. He served in the tsarist army during World War I and joined the Red Army during the Civil War. Afterward, he studied biology, graduating from Leningrad University. He also worked as a journalist and fishery factory director.

Larri debuted in the 1920s with children’s stories. In the early 1930s, he turned to science fiction, publishing “Five Years” (1929), “Window to the Future” (1930), “Notes of a Horseman” (1931), and “The Extraordinary Adventures of Karik and Valya” (1937). His utopian novel “The Land of the Happy” (1931) imagined communism without totalitarianism and warned of future global crises. The book led to censorship and blacklisting for several years.

In 1940, Larri began “The Heavenly Guest”, a satirical novel portraying Earth through the eyes of aliens. He sent the chapters anonymously to Stalin, believing he was the only worthy reader. In December 1940, he included this letter:

“Dear Joseph Vissarionovich! Every great man is great in his own way. One is remembered for great deeds, another, for amusing historical anecdotes. Not a single historical figure has ever had a personal writer. Someone who writes solely for one great man. Incidentally, literary history has never seen a writer with only one reader. I take up my pen to correct this oversight. I will write only for you, asking for neither commissions, nor fees, nor honors, nor fame. So as not to tire you with dull pages, I’ll send you my first story, made up of very short chapters. You will never know my real name. But I want you to know that in Leningrad, there is a strange man who is creating a literary work for one person only, and that this strange man has decided to sign himself as Kulidzhara.”

Four months and seven chapters later, Larri was arrested by the NKVD on April 11, 1941. On July 5, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and five years of political disenfranchisement. He was rehabilitated in 1956 and returned to writing children’s books, including “The Adventures of Kuk and Kukki” (1961). He lived in Leningrad until his death in 1977.

Forced Omission #2, 53, 77, 211, 212

Linard Laicens (November 3, 1883, Metumi, today Latvia - December 14, 1938, Moscow) was a prominent Latvian and Soviet writer, translator, and political activist.

Laicens began his literary career in 1904 and participated actively in the 1905 - 907 revolutionary movement. He was detained from 1909 to 1911 for his involvement. Later, he studied at A. Shanyavsky Moscow State University, graduating in 1917.

In Latvia, Laicens organized legal workers’ press and served as a deputy on the Riga City Council in 1928 and as a member of the Latvian Saeima (Parliament) in both 1928 and 1931, positions held under a trade-union list that masked his affiliation with the banned Communist Party of Latvia.

In 1932 he emigrated, first to Italy and then to the Soviet Union. His literary output, characterized by revolutionary fervor and critique of bourgeois society, included several poetry collections, story compilations, novels, and plays. Among his works are: “Caravans” (1920), “Ho-Tai” (1922), “Semaphores” and “Berlin” (both 1924), “Politics and Lyrics” (1930); the short story collections “The Justified”, “Beautiful Italy”, “Cells”; the novels “Emigrant” (1926), “The Crying Corpses” (1930), and “Limitrophia” (1935); and the plays “Alpha” and “Auto” (1925) and “Compromise” (1926).

Laicens was arrested on June 2, 1937, accused of anti‑Soviet terrorist activities. He was swiftly tried and executed in Moscow. Posthumous rehabilitation followed in 1954.

Forced Omission #11, 27

Abram Lezhnev (original name Abram Zelikovich/Gryelik; June 19, 1893, Parichi - February 8, 1938, Kommunarka shooting ground) was a Soviet literary critic and theorist celebrated for his original contributions to Russian literary scholarship and his leadership within the influential “Pereval” group of critics. He came from a wealthy timber merchant’s family and initially studied medicine in Geneva before completing his medical degree at Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) in 1922.

Lezhnev began publishing in 1922 and from 1924 regularly contributed to “Pravda”, “Novy Mir”, “Prozhektor”, “Pechat’ i revolyutsiya”, “Krasnaya Nov”, and “Sputnik kommunista”. In 1926 he became a leading theoretician of the “Pereval” literary group, advocating for “organic art” that fused ideology with aesthetic significance. He opposed the rigid “social order” theories of the LEF (Left Front of the Arts: an influential Soviet avant-garde artistic and literary group active in the 1920s. LEF promoted Constructivism and Futurism, emphasizing art as a tool for the socialist revolution. Key figures included Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Eisenstein) and the Constructivists and also criticized RAPP’s (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers: a Soviet writers’ organization active from 1925 to 1932. RAPP promoted “proletarian literature,” insisting that literature serve the Communist Party and the working class exclusively) narrow populism. His sharp and original analysis of writers such as Pasternak, Babel, Gorky, Sel’vinsky, and others earned him recognition as one of the era’s finest critics. He also notably questioned the authorship of Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don”, asserting stylistic inconsistencies that implied another author. Lezhnev also translated André Gide during Gide’s visit to the USSR.

In the height of Stalinist repression, Lezhnev was arrested on November 5, 1937, accused of participating in a counter‑revolutionary terrorist organization. He was swiftly tried and sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the USSR’s Supreme Court, shot on the same day, February 8, 1938, at the Kommunarka execution site outside Moscow.

Following Stalin’s death, Lezhnev was posthumously rehabilitated on August 11, 1956.

Forced Omission #18, 31

Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev (November 28, 1906, Saint Petersburg – September 30, 1999, Saint Petersburg) was a preeminent Russian medievalist, cultural historian, and moral authority of his time.

After remarkable progress as a linguistics and literature student at Leningrad State University, Likhachev’s life was dramatically altered in February 1928. At age 22, he was arrested on charges of counter‑revolutionary activity linked to a semi‑clandestine student group called the “Cosmic Academy of Sciences”.

He was sentenced to five years at the Solovetsky Special Camp, the original GULAG, in the remote Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. Despite the brutal conditions, Likhachev assimilated into the prison milieu, earning the nickname “Copper Shtim” for his intellect. There, he wrote his first scholarly article, “Card Games of Criminals”, published in “Solovetskie Isles” in 1930.

On the night of 28 October 1929, he was summoned from a visit with his parents and ordered to join a party of 300 prisoners destined for execution. Wishing to spare his parents the trauma, Likhachev told them that he had been summoned for night work and that they should not wait for him. He then hid behind a wood pile and listened as the three hundred prisoners were shot and thrown into a mass grave. The next morning, Likhachev returned from his hiding place as a completely different man. In a 1987 interview with David Remnick, Likhachev recalled the events of that night and concluded, “The executioner is older than me, and he is still alive.”

Released in 1932, Likhachev returned to Leningrad and rebuilt his academic career, becoming an editor, then joining the Institute of Russian Literature (“Pushkin House”) in 1938, where he remained for decades. During the Siege of Leningrad, he remained in the city, recording its horrors while continuing his scholarly work.

Over the following years, he became widely regarded as a guardian of Russian culture, recognized by the state and public alike for his deep integrity and moral authority.

Forced Omission #17, 19

Benedikt Livshits (6 January 1887 - 21 September 1938) was a Russian poet, translator, and memoirist, and one of the central figures of early Russian Futurism. Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire into a Jewish merchant family, he studied law at universities in Odessa and Kyiv before devoting himself to literature. From the late 1900s he became involved in the avant-garde literary scene, and in 1910s he joined the cubo-futurist group Hylaea alongside David and Vladimir Burliuk, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. His poetry and essays played a key role in shaping the theoretical and aesthetic foundations of Russian Futurism.

During the First World War, Livshits served in the Imperial Russian Army and was wounded. After the 1917 Revolution he remained active in literary life, publishing poetry, translations, and memoiristic prose. His most important later work, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, is a major first-hand account of the Russian avant-garde and its intellectual milieu.

In the 1930s Livshits was increasingly marginalized within Soviet literary culture. In October 1937 he was arrested during the Great Terror on fabricated charges of participation in a counterrevolutionary terrorist organization. After prolonged imprisonment and interrogation, he was sentenced to death and executed in Leningrad on 21 September 1938.

He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.

Livshits’s work is now regarded as a key document of Russian modernism, combining poetic experimentation with a detailed testimony to the cultural revolutions of the early 20th century.

Forced Omission #182

Mikhail Loskutov (September 24, 1906, Kursk - July 28, 1941, Leningrad) was born into a railway engineer’s family. Passionate about writing from a young age, he began his journalistic career at just 15 and, at 16, became editor of the regional Komsomol newspaper “Voice of Worker‑Peasant Youth”. He was also a regular contributor to “Kurskaya Pravda”.

In 1926, Loskutov relocated to Leningrad, where his essays and feuilletons appeared in “Yuny Proletary” and the newspaper “Smena”. His first book, a collection of stories titled “End of Bourgeois Lane”, was published in 1928. The following year, in collaboration with S. Urnis, he published “The Golden Void”, and released another collection, “Won from the Vodka”.

Loskutov was deeply involved in literary journalism, traveling extensively. In 1933, he joined the Moscow–Karakum–Moscow motor expedition, transforming his experiences into his book “Stories about Roads” (1935). His works, such as “White Elephant”, “Blue Shore”, and “Thirteenth Caravan” (1938), vividly capture the Soviet East and the conquer of the desert. In 1933-1938, he produced a striking cycle of Central Asian stories.

In January 1940, Loskutov was arrested on charges of leading a counter-revolutionary terrorist group. Subjected to physical and psychological coercion, he was coerced into false confessions, tried in a three-minute session, and executed on July 28, 1941.

He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956, and his writings reemerged in the Soviet literary canon, beginning with the publication of “White Elephant” in 1958.

Forced Omission #30, 55, 79

Ivan Makarov (30 October 1900, Saltyki village – 16 July 1937, Moscow) was a Soviet writer and revolutionary.The son of a shoemaker and revolutionary, Makarov graduated from Ryzha Men’s Gymnasium in 1919 and joined the Red Army during the Civil War. He later worked in various educational and party roles in Ryazan and Siberia, including heading a land reclamation technical school.

Makarov began his literary career in 1920 with the agitational play “The Deserter” and gained national recognition in 1929 with his novel “Steel Ribs,” published in “Molodaya Gvardiya”. His works, such as “The Island” (1930), “Black Shawl” (1933), and “Misha Kurbatov” (1936), depicted the lives of Soviet workers and peasants, often focusing on the challenges of socialist construction.

In 1937, Makarov was arrested on charges of participating in an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization and preparing terrorist acts against Communist Party leaders. He was executed on 16 July 1937 and buried at the Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 18 July 1956.

Makarov’s legacy is commemorated in Ryazan, where a museum dedicated to him is located at his former school in Saltyki. Memorial plaques honoring him are also found at School No. 1 in Ryazhsk and at the Russian Classical School No. 7 in Ryazan.

Forced Omission #43,  49, 76

Isaac Nusinov (1889, Chernyakhov -1950, Moscow) was a Soviet Jewish literary critic, historian, and linguist, renowned for his scholarly contributions to Russian and Yiddish literature. He received a traditional Jewish education and became active in the Bund, a Jewish socialist workers’ movement, from 1905.

Between 1914 and 1917, Nusinov studied literature and philosophy in Switzerland and Italy. Upon returning to Russia after the February Revolution, he was arrested in Kyiv in 1918 by the Directorate authorities and sentenced to death. He managed to escape from Lukyanivska Prison. In 1919, he left the Bund and joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

From 1922, Nusinov resided in Moscow, where he completed his studies at the Russian Academy of Social Sciences in 1924. He lectured on Western European literature at Moscow State University and taught Jewish literature at the Yiddish department of the Second Moscow State University. He also served as a professor and head of the Jewish literature department at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. Nusinov was an active member of the editorial board of the Literary Encyclopedia and contributed numerous articles on various literary figures, including Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Pushkin, Hugo, Zola, and Shakespeare.

During the campaign against “cosmopolitanism” in the late 1940s, Nusinov faced persecution. In 1947, a press campaign led by Alexander Fadeyev and Nikolai Tikhonov targeted his book “Pushkin and World Literature” (1941) as “anti-patriotic” and “sycophantic.” In 1949, he was arrested and died in custody during the investigation, reportedly due to a hunger strike in protest of the treatment of a fellow prisoner. He was posthumously rehabilitated on April 26, 1958.

Forced Omission #8

Mikhail Osharov (4 November 1894 - 24 December 1937) was a Russian Soviet writer whose prose was devoted to the landscapes, peoples, and oral traditions of Siberia and the Far North. Born in the village of Lebyazhye in the Yenisei Governorate of the Russian Empire, he grew up in a peasant Cossack family and began working from an early age as a carpenter’s apprentice, farm laborer, and metalworker. He later completed his studies at the Kansk Realschule and attended the Moscow Commercial Institute, as well as the Shanyavsky People’s University.

After military service during the First World War, Osharov spent much of the 1920s living and working among Indigenous communities of the Yenisei North, including the Evenki, Ket, and Nenets peoples. This experience became central to his literary practice. From the early 1920s he began publishing short prose and ethnographically informed fiction in Siberian journals such as “Siberian Lights”, developing a distinctive voice focused on northern nature and traditional lifeways. His major work, the novel “The Great Argish”, combined epic structure with ethnographic detail and was intended as a broader trilogy on Siberian life.

In 1937, during the Great Terror, Osharov was arrested on fabricated charges of involvement in a counterrevolutionary organization. He was sentenced to death by an NKVD troika and executed in Novosibirsk on 24 December 1937. His manuscripts were partially lost or destroyed during the arrest period.

He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. Today, his work is read as part of the erased literary history of Siberian modernism, shaped by both ethnographic curiosity and the violent rupture of Stalinist repression.

Forced Omission #218

Lev Ovalov (29 August 1905 - 30 April 1997) was a Soviet writer and author of popular detective fiction, best known for creating the character of Major Pronin, one of the iconic figures of Soviet spy literature. Born Lev Shapovalov in Moscow (according to other accounts, during his family’s travel through the Russian Empire), he came of age during the revolutionary period, joining the Komsomol in 1918 and later the Communist Party. In the early 1920s he worked in regional Soviet youth organizations and pursued studies at Moscow State University, where he became involved in literary circles and began publishing journalistic and literary sketches.

From the late 1920s Ovalov worked as an editor and journalist for major Soviet publications, including Komsomolskaya Pravda, Vokrug sveta, and Molodaya gvardiya. His early fiction combined adventure narratives with ideological themes, but he achieved wide popularity in 1939 with the story “Blue Swords,” the first in the Major Pronin series. These works established him as a leading figure in Soviet popular literature, particularly in the genre of intelligence and counterintelligence fiction.

In 1941 Ovalov was arrested on charges of divulging state secrets and sentenced to long-term imprisonment. He spent approximately fifteen years in prisons, labor camps, and internal exile, during which he worked as a physician. His literary career was effectively interrupted during this period.

He was rehabilitated in 1956 and returned to Moscow, resuming writing in the late 1950s. He continued the Major Pronin cycle and published several novels and collections in the following decades. Ovalov died in Moscow on 30 April 1997.

Forced Omission #68

Efim Permitin (8 January 1896, Ust-Kamenogorsk - 18 April 1971, Moscow) was a Russian Soviet writer and educator, renowned for his works depicting Siberian life and the complexities of rural society.

Born into a family of Old Believers, Permitin completed a three-year urban school and, in 1913, graduated externally from a teacher’s seminary. He then moved to the Altai Mountains, where he taught in rural schools for two years. During World War I, he served as a platoon commander and later as a company commander in reconnaissance units. After the February Revolution, he was elected to the regimental committee. In July 1918, following the capture of Ust-Kamenogorsk by White forces, Permitin was mobilized into the 5th Steppe Siberian Rifle Regiment of the Semirechye Front. In early 1920, he was wounded and captured by a Red Army partisan detachment. He underwent verification and was placed under special supervision by the Semipalatinsk Military Revolutionary Committee as a former officer of Kolchak’s army. Subsequently, he worked as a schoolteacher and in the Ust-Kamenogorsk Department of Public Education.

In 1917, his first story, “The Last Evening,” was published in the Barnaul newspaper Life of Altai, marking the beginning of his literary career. In 1923, Permitin founded the first hunting literary and artistic journal in the country, Hunter of Altai, in Ust-Kamenogorsk. In 1925, he moved to Novosibirsk, where he headed the new journal Hunter and Furrier of Siberia, publishing approximately 40 essays. In 1928, his novel Trap was published, reviving the legend of Belovodye in the context of the pressing issue of collectivization in Altai.

In 1938, Efim Nikolaevich Permitin was arrested on false charges and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment and exile. According to his son, Yury E. Permitin, while held in Butyrka prison, Efim wrote around thirty sincere and honest petitions, including letters personally addressed to Stalin. Instead of receiving responses, he was sent into exile. Despite these hardships, Permitin continued to persevere, and after his release, he returned to literary work.

Forced Omission #70, 81, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99

Boris Pilnyak (11 October 1894 - 21 April 1938) was a Russian Soviet prose writer and one of the most prominent experimental authors of the 1920s avant-garde generation. Born in Mozhaysk in the Russian Empire into a family of a veterinary doctor of German descent, he grew up in provincial towns of central Russia and studied at the Moscow Commercial Institute, graduating in 1920. His early prose quickly gained attention for its fragmented narrative style, rhythmic language, and attempt to capture the chaos of revolutionary Russia.

In the 1920s Pilnyak became one of the leading figures of Soviet modernist literature. His works, often blending documentary prose, impressionism, and philosophical reflection, explored the collapse of the old imperial order and the violent emergence of the Soviet state. Among his most controversial texts was “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon”, which was widely interpreted as an allusion to the death of Bolshevik leader Mikhail Frunze and provoked strong political condemnation.

From the late 1920s his position within Soviet literary life became increasingly precarious. He was subjected to ideological attacks, censorship, and public criticism, and many of his works were suppressed. In October 1937, during the Great Terror, Pilnyak was arrested on charges of espionage and counterrevolutionary activity. After interrogation, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and executed in Moscow on 21 April 1938.

He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. Pilnyak’s legacy today is associated both with formal innovation in early Soviet prose and with the systematic destruction of literary life during Stalinist repression.

Forced Omission #219

Sergey Platonov (28 June 1860 - 10 January 1933) was a Russian and Soviet historian, educator, and one of the most influential representatives of the St. Petersburg school of historiography. Born in Chernihiv in the Russian Empire into a family connected with the printing service, he moved to Saint Petersburg in his youth and studied at the historical-philological faculty of Saint Petersburg University, where he came under the influence of leading scholars such as Konstantin Bestuzhev-Ryumin. From an early stage, he specialized in the political and social history of Muscovite Rus’, later becoming a central figure in the academic study of Russian historical statehood.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Platonov was a professor at Saint Petersburg University and a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. His major works, including studies on the Time of Troubles and the formation of the Russian state, shaped generations of historians and defined a methodological approach based on archival rigor and political narrative structure. He also held leading positions in Russian academic institutions, including the management of scholarly archives and historical commissions.

After the 1917 Revolution, Platonov continued his scholarly work in Soviet Russia, but in the 1920s he came under increasing political pressure. In 1930 he was arrested in connection with the so-called “Academic Case,” accused of participating in a counterrevolutionary monarchist organization. He was exiled to Samara, where he spent his final years in declining health.

Sergey Platonov died in Samara on 10 January 1933. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1967, and his work was officially reinstated in Soviet academic historiography. His legacy remains foundational for the study of early Russian history and archival-based historical methodology.

Forced Omission #42

Vitaly Primakov (18 December 1897, Semenovka - 12 June 1937, Moscow) was a Soviet military leader and writer, notable for his role in the Russian Civil War.

Born into a teacher’s family, Primakov joined the Bolshevik Party in 1914. In January 1918, he formed the 1st Red Cossack Regiment in Kharkiv, which later became a division and played a significant role in the Civil War, including battles near Oryol and Kursk, and the Soviet-Polish War. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner three times for his service.

After the Civil War, Primakov held various military and political positions, including serving as a military advisor in China (1925–1926) and deputy commander of the Leningrad Military District. He was promoted to the rank of Komkor (corps commander) in 1935.

In addition to his military career, Primakov was also a writer. Drawing from his personal experiences during the Russian Civil War and his military service, he authored works such as How the Revolution Fought, which offered a vivid and authentic portrayal of revolutionary battles and the spirit of the times. His literary contributions were valued for their historical accuracy and engaging style, helping to document and interpret the early Soviet era through a firsthand perspective.

In August 1936, Primakov was arrested on charges of being part of a “military-Trotskyist organization.” Under torture, he confessed to participating in an “anti-Soviet Trotskyist military-fascist conspiracy” and implicated others. On 11 June 1937, he was sentenced to death and executed. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 31 January 1957.

Primakov was married three times, including to Oksana Kotsiubynska, daughter of Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi. His son, Yuriy Primakov (born 1927), is a labor veteran. Streets in Saint Petersburg, Lhiv, and Chernihiv were named in his honor, though some were later renamed.

Forced Omission #80, 82

Konstantin Schulmeister (April 29, 1895, village of Kamenka - 7 January 1996, Volgograd) was born in the village of Kamenka into a Volga German peasant family. He graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute in 1917 with a degree in agronomy and began his career in 1918 as an agronomist and head of the Kamyshin Experimental Field.

In 1935, the Higher Attestation Commission awarded him the title of professor in recognition of his scientific work. He went on to lead the Department of Agriculture at the Saratov Agricultural Institute and served as Deputy Director for Academic and Research Affairs from 1936 to 1938.

During Stalin’s Great Terror, Schulmeister was arrested on July 22, 1938. In April 1939, he was sentenced to death with property confiscation, but two months later, the USSR Supreme Court commuted his sentence to ten years in a labor camp. He was sent to the Magadan region via Vladivostok.

In 1940, he was assigned to hard labor at the Lazo tin mine. A year later, declared medically unfit, he was transferred to a camp for disabled inmates near Magadan. He was later employed as an agronomist at the Kolyma Agricultural Experimental Station, and in 1945, transferred to a secret state farm (“sharashka”) as senior agronomist.

Though released in 1948 after serving his term, he was sentenced in absentia to lifelong exile in Magadan. He remained employed at the state farm for eight more years. Officially rehabilitated in 1955, he was reinstated as a professor in 1956. In 1957, he moved to Kokchetav (now Kokshetau, Kazakhstan), where he reunited with his wife, Olga Georgievna, and daughter, Margarita Konstantinovna Schulmeister, who had been exiled in 1941. His daughter was rehabilitated in 1994, and his wife in 1995.

Forced Omission #1, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210

Galina Serebryakova

(December 20, 1905, Kiev - June 30, 1980, Moscow), was a Soviet writer and journalist, best known for her historical novels about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Born in Kiev into a revolutionary family, she was the daughter of Iosif Moiseevich Byk-Bek, a zemstvo doctor and Soviet official, and Bronislava Sigismundovna Krasutskaya, a Cheka operative and party worker. She joined the Russian Communist Party in 1919 and studied at Moscow State University’s medical faculty from 1920 to 1925. In the 1920s, she began her career as an opera singer, performing in a major radio concert in London in 1928. She later transitioned to journalism, working for “Komsomolskaya Pravda” and traveling to China, Geneva, and Paris for assignments. In 1930-1932, she accompanied her husband, Grigory Sokolnikov, to England, where she gathered material for her novel “Youth of Marx”, published in 1934-1935. She became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934.

In 1936, Serebryakova was arrested following her husband’s arrest and was exiled to Semipalatinsk in June 1937 with her mother and two-year-old daughter. In December 1937, she was arrested again and sentenced to eight years in prison as the “wife of an enemy of the people.” She was released in 1945 and settled in Dzhambul, working as a feldsher. On May 28, 1949, she was arrested again and sentenced to ten years in prison for “counter-revolutionary agitation and participation in a counter-revolutionary organization.” She was released in August 1955 and sent into exile in Dzhambul, where she was soon freed. In 1956, she was fully rehabilitated and reinstated in the party, resuming her writing career.

In the early 1960s, she completed her trilogy on Marx, which included extensive material on the history of 19th-century Western Europe. After her rehabilitation, she remained loyal to the party and actively opposed liberal trends in Soviet literature. In March 1957, she participated in the campaign against V. D. Dudintsev’s novel “Not by Bread Alone”, and in 1963, she accused I. G. Ehrenburg during a meeting with N. S. Khrushchev. In 1967, her novel “The Tornado”, about her time in the camp, was published in Paris in Polish, against which she protested. The novel was published in Russian only in 1989. In her later years, she became religious while remaining a staunch communist, wearing a cross around her neck and carrying her party card in her dress pocket.

Forced Omission #47, 84

Alexander Shotman (born August 25, 1880, St. Petersburg - October 30, 1937, Kommunarka shooting range, near Moscow) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet statesman.

Born in St. Petersburg to a working-class family, Shotman began his career as a lathe operator at the age of 15. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1899 and became an active member of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. He participated in the 1901 Obukhov Defence and was a delegate to the 1903 RSDLP Congress, aligning with Lenin’s faction.

Shotman was arrested multiple times and exiled to Siberia. After the 1917 February Revolution, he returned to Russia and held various positions, including member of the Tomsk Committee of the RSDLP(b), delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(b), and member of the Pre-Parliament. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Petrograd district. Following the October Revolution, Shotman served as deputy People’s Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs, member of the Supreme Economic Council, and chairman of the Ural-Siberian Commission of the Council of Labour and Defence. He held leadership roles in the Northern Caucasus and Karelia during the New Economic Policy period.

In the 1930s, Shotman worked in the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

On June 25, 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD on charges of involvement in a counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization. On October 29, 1937, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and executed the following day. Shotman was posthumously rehabilitated on December 24, 1955.

Forced Omission #38, 115

Vasily Shulgin (January 13, 1878, Kiev - February 15, 1976, Vladimir) was a Russian political figure, journalist, and memoirist, recognized for his involvement in the February Revolution of 1917 and his subsequent role in emigration and Soviet imprisonment.

Born on January 13, 1878, in Kyiv, Shulgin was the son of historian Vitaly Yakovlevich Shulgin. Raised by his stepfather, economist and monarchist Dmitry Pikhno, Shulgin developed early conservative and nationalist views. He graduated from the law faculty of Kyiv University in 1900 and served as a deputy in the Second, Third, and Fourth State Dumas, aligning with the right-wing factions.

A prominent journalist, Shulgin edited the monarchist newspaper “Kievlyanin” and was an advocate for autocracy and Russian nationalism. He played a significant role in the events leading to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication in March 1917, alongside Alexander Guchkov.

Following the October Revolution, Shulgin joined the White movement, contributing to the formation of the Volunteer Army. In 1922, he emigrated, settling in Yugoslavia, where he continued his political activities and authored several works, including “Days” (1925) and “Three Capitals” (1927), reflecting on Russian émigré life and Soviet Russia .

In 1944, Shulgin was arrested by Soviet authorities in Yugoslavia and deported to the USSR. He was imprisoned until 1956 and then exiled to Vladimir. Despite his earlier opposition to the Soviet regime, Shulgin later participated in the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961 and appeared in the film “Before the Court of History” (1965), portraying himself.

Shulgin passed away on February 15, 1976, in Vladimir.

Forced Omission #107

Leonid Solovyov (19 August 1906, Tripoli, Lebanon - 9 April 1962, Leningrad) was a Russian writer and playwright best known for his satirical novels based on Central Asian folklore.

Born to Russian parents in Tripoli, Solovyov spent his early childhood in the Middle East before his family returned to Russia when he was three. After the Revolution, they settled in Kokand, Uzbekistan, where he immersed himself in local oral traditions and began writing as a correspondent for “Pravda Vostoka” in Uzbek.

His literary debut was the collection “Lenin in Eastern Folk Art” (1930), featuring post-revolutionary Central Asian folklore. In fact, this work was a deliberate literary hoax: Solovyov himself wrote songs about Lenin and presented them as translations of Uzbek, Tajik, and Kyrgyz folk songs and tales. This playful deception was later recounted in memoirs by V. S. Vitkovich. The episode gained further comic dimension when, in 1933, a hastily organized expedition by the Tashkent Institute of Language and Literature confirmed the supposed folkloric origins of the songs and even produced “originals” in Uzbek and Tajik, cementing the hoax’s ironic legacy.

In 1946, Solovyov was arrested by the Soviet authorities on fabricated charges of conspiracy and terrorism against the state during the postwar political purges. He was sentenced to a labor camp where he remained imprisoned for several years. Despite harsh conditions and limited resources, Solovyov completed the second part of “The Tale of Hodja Nasreddin”, titled “The Enchanted Prince”, by writing secretly and memorizing large portions to preserve the text. The novel circulated in manuscript form until his release in 1954.

After his rehabilitation and release, the two parts were published together in 1956, bringing Solovyov lasting recognition.

During World War II, Solovyov served as a war correspondent and wrote several wartime stories and screenplays. In 1946, he was arrested on charges of conspiring against the Soviet state and spent several years in prison camps until his release and rehabilitation in 1954. Afterward, he lived in Leningrad, continuing his literary career until his death in 1962.

Forced Omission #69

Dmitry Stonov (January 8, 1898, the village of Bezdezh, now Belarus - December 29, 1962, Moscow) was a Russian Soviet writer and journalist whose literary journey was marked by service in war and unjust repression.

Raised in a Jewish merchant family, Stonov studied in Brest-Litovsk and worked as a weaver in Łódź before joining the construction of the Valdai railway in 1916. He volunteered in the Civil War, joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and adopted the pen name “Stonov” when he moved to Moscow in 1922. Stonov became a respected journalist, writing for “Izvestia”, “Gudok”, and “Trud”, and earned the support of contemporaries like Mikhail Bulgakov and Yuri Slezkin for his clear, compassionate prose.

During World War II, Stonov served on the Stalingrad and 4th Ukrainian fronts. After his wartime service and convalescence from a serious concussion, he worked in Sovinformburo and the Radio Committee and taught at the Gorky Literary Institute.

On the night of March 12-13, 1949, amidst Stalin’s anti-Jewish purges, Stonov was arrested by the Ministry of State Security and imprisoned in Lubyanka. Despite harsh interrogations and a harsh sentence, he was released on August 20, 1954, after Stalin’s death and following protests from literary figures like Konstantin Fedin and Leonid Leonov.

After his return, Stonov wrote a celebrated cycle of memoirs, “Over the Night”, recounting his GULAG experience with clarity and humanity. He remained an active and gentle chronicler of ordinary lives until his death in Moscow in 1962, where he was buried at Vvedenskoye Cemetery.

Forced Omission #21, 40, 51, 63, 71, 77

Yuri Steklov (August 15, 1873, Odessa - September 15, 1941, Saratov) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet historian, journalist, and editor.

Born into a bourgeois family, Steklov began revolutionary work in the late 1880s, organizing Odessa’s first workers’ circle as a student. Expelled for political reasons, he finished his education externally in 1891. In 1893, he joined the Social Democrats and the Marxist literary group “Borba.” Arrested in 1894 for organizing a secret workers’ group, he was exiled to Yakutia for ten years.

After release, Steklov took part in the 1905 Revolution and was a delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDLP, siding with the Bolsheviks. Following the 1917 February Revolution, he became the first editor of “Izvestia” and helped draft the 1918 Soviet Constitution, also contributing to the 1924 USSR Constitution.

Steklov was arrested in February 1938 during the Great Terror and sentenced to 8 years in a Soviet GULAG. On May 22, 1941, Steklov wrote a letter to Stalin saying,

“Joseph Stalin! You know very well that based on my whole life I deserved to be treated differently. I don’t have long to live, am I really doomed to give up the ghost in prison, in terrible conditions of captivity, and for what? I have been suffering for four years now. My family is destroyed. My wonderful son, an ardent party member, is dishonored and languishes in the Kolyma GULAG. My wife is threatened with death from illness and moral shock. Is it really possible that this revolutionary family, in which my wife and I gave almost half a century to the party, in which our son began working at the age of 12, will perish under Soviet power? This cannot and should not happen. Let me go, I will finish the books about Bakunin and Chernyshevsky, and will not get involved in politics. Prisoner of cell No. 33 Steklov.”

Steklov died in Saratov prison September 15, 1941 from dysentery and extreme exhaustion, he was 68. In 1956 he was posthumously exonerated.

Forced Omission #13

Ivan Strod (born 29 March 1894, Lyutsin, now Ludza, Latvia - 19 August 1937,  Kommunarka or Butovo shooting grounds, near Moscow) grew up in a feldsher’s family and received basic education in a parish and three-class urban school.

With the outbreak of World War I, Strod volunteered for service in the Russian Imperial Army. Displaying remarkable courage, he was awarded all four Crosses of St. George and promoted to the rank of praporshchik (ensign).

He joined the Red Army in 1918 and initially fought alongside the anarchist-communist partisan N. A. Kalandarishvili in Siberia. Captured by White forces in November 1918, he spent over a year in Olekminsk prison before escaping or being freed in December 1919; soon after, he led a volunteer revolutionary detachment.

From October 1920, he commanded a cavalry unit within the People’s Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. Between 1921 and 1923, as battalion commander and deputy regimental commander, he courageously fought in the Yakut Rebellion, traversing some 2,800 km from Irkutsk to Yakutsk and helping defeat General Pepelyaev’s forces. For his valor, he received multiple Orders of the Red Banner: one in 1922 for the battle near Ulkhunskaya station, two more in 1924 for defending Sasyly-Syssy and suppressing Don’s partisan band in Irkutsk region.

In 1927, after completing the “Vy­strel” courses and joining the Communist Party (b), he was medically discharged from the Red Army and relocated to Tomsk, where he worked in Osoaviakhim and began writing memoirs.

In Moscow, Strod became a recognized memoirist, publishing works such as “V yakutskoy tayge” (“In the Yakut Taiga”). He also briefly held the status of a personal pensioner of the Red Army.

On 4 February 1937, Strod was arrested on fabricated charges of “participating in an anti-Soviet terrorist organization.” He was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and executed on 19 August 1937, the sentence was carried out the same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 23 July 1957.

Strod’s legacy endures: streets in Yakutsk, Amga, Nelkhan, and others bear his name; a memorial complex and statue stand in Sasyly-Syssy; a ship was named after him; and a “Last Address” plaque marks his former residence at Basmannyy tupik 10/12, Moscow.

Forced Omission #54

Alexander Svechin (August 17, 1878, Odessa - July 28, 1938, Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow) was a prominent Russian and Soviet military theorist, educator, and author, renowned for his seminal work Strategy.

Born in Odessa to a military family, he graduated from the prestigious General Staff Academy in 1903 and served with distinction in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. His expertise and leadership led to his promotion to major general in 1916.

After the October Revolution, Svechin aligned with the Bolsheviks in 1918, contributing significantly to the Soviet military establishment. He was appointed head of the All-Russian General Staff and later served as a professor at the Academy of the General Staff, where he developed his strategic theories. His 1923 book Strategy introduced concepts such as “annihilation” and “attrition,” emphasizing the need for adaptability and a deep understanding of warfare’s complexities. Svechin’s work was considered a cornerstone of Soviet military thought and influenced military strategies worldwide.

Despite his contributions, Svechin’s career was marred by political purges. In 1931, he was arrested during a crackdown on former tsarist officers and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. He was released in 1932 and resumed his duties, but in 1937, during the Great Terror, he was arrested again, falsely accused of counter-revolutionary activities. On July 28, 1938, he was executed in the Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow.

Svechin was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. His legacy endures, with his strategic writings continuing to be studied and respected in military academies globally.

Forced Omission #112

Alexander Sytin (June 20, 1894, Karachev - August 18, 1974, Zugdidi, Georgia) was a Russian and Soviet writer and traveler, known for his vivid portrayals of Central Asia and his experiences during the Russian Civil War and Soviet repression.

Sytin was the son of Pavel Semyonovich Sytin, a coachman, and Praskovya Yakovlevna Karisheva, from a priestly family. After his father’s early death, the family moved to Tiflis, where Sytin completed his education at the Second Tiflis Gymnasium. From the age of 15, he supported himself by giving private lessons.

During World War I, Sytin served as a lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Army, participating in the Brusilov Offensive. He was severely wounded and evacuated to Central Asia, where he spent six years, deeply immersing himself in the region’s cultures and landscapes. These experiences profoundly influenced his later literary works.

In the 1920s, Sytin became a prominent writer, publishing several novels and short story collections, including “Contrabandists of the Tien Shan” (1926) and “The Shepherd of the Tribes” (1929). His works often depicted the struggles of Soviet authorities against local resistance in Central Asia, reflecting his firsthand experiences.

However, in 1930, Sytin was arrested by the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate) on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. He was sent to the Solovki Islands. Following his release in 1935, Sytin continued his literary career, though under constant surveillance.

He passed away in Zugdidi, Georgian SSR, in 1974.

Forced Omission #23, 223, 224

Elena Tager (November 3, 1895, St. Petersburg - July 11, 1964, Leningrad) - Russian poet, prose writer and translator, memoirist. She began publishing her poetry in 1915, when she entered the Circle of Poets at the Pushkin Society at St. Petersburg University, and participated in the Pushkin Seminar. There she met other prominent poets like Yuri Tynyanov, Yulian Oksman, Alexander Blok, Osip Mandelstam, and Leonid Dobychin. In 1922, Elena Tager was accused of espionage by the USSR and imprisoned for two years.

During the Great Terror in 1938, she was again arrested as a result of a fabricated case against the writer Nikolai Tikhonov, in which a large number of writers were arrested and some executed. Under torture, Tager signed a statement against Zabolotsky (in 1951, during a new arrest, she retracted it). She was sentenced to 10 years in a GULAG. In 1951, she was arrested for the third time and sent to a special settlement in Kazakhstan. After Stalin’s death in 1954 she was exonerated, however, a number of manuscripts confiscated during her arrests have not yet been discovered. She saw renewed attention to her writing: Winter Shore was republished in 1957, and her memoirs about Mandelstam and a children’s book were published posthumously.

Elena Tager wrote many poems reflecting on her experience of exile in various prison camps and GULAGs. Here is one of them:

The same way as a blade with no arguing,

Lies down into its familiar sheath,

That same way, habitual grief

Enters my humble heart.

I know, the heart is not a stone,

It’s not made from cold gray granite;

I’ll squeeze it tight with my hands

And let it keep its grief.

Forced Omission #3, 61, 67, 215

Ilya Vasilevsky (December 28, 1882, Poltava - June 14, 1938, Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow) was a Russian journalist, satirist, editor, and literary critic known by pen names such as Ne-Bukva, A. Glebov, Phoenix, and I. Poltavsky.

Born into a Jewish family in Poltava, he began publishing as early as 1903, appearing in periodicals like “Journal for All”, “Poltava Vedomosti”, “St. Petersburg” and “Exchange Gazettes”, “Novosti”, “Odessa News”, “Southern Region”, and the satirical “Svobodnaya Mysl” (“Free Thought”).

Vasilevsky co-founded and edited the influential newspaper “Svobodnaya Mysl”(“Free Thought”), which featured writers such as Arkady Averchenko, Sasha Chyorny, Korney Chukovsky, and O. L. d’Or. The publication endured persistent bans and closures, resulting in at least 11 title changes, including “Labor and Freedom”, “Freedom and Life”, “Young Life”, “Fate of the People”, and “Morning”. Between 1915 and 1917, he edited the “Journal of Journals” in Petrograd and subsequently published “Kiev Echo” in Kyiv (1918–1919).

In 1920, Vasilevsky emigrated, first to Constantinople, then to Paris, where he resumed “Svobodnaya Mysl”, and later moved to Berlin, contributing to “Nakanune”, a Smenovekhovtsy publication (a political and intellectual movement among Russian émigrés in the 1920s). He also published several critical pamphlets, including “Literary Silhouettes”, “Count Witte and His Memoirs”, “Nicholas II”, “In the Boudoir” among many others.

Upon his return to Russia in 1923, he continued publishing and, by 1929, became editor of the magazine “Inventor”, where he wrote under the pseudonym I. Poltavsky, primarily on the topic of invention and innovation.

However, during Stalin’s Great Terror, Vasilevsky was arrested on November 1, 1937, accused of participating in a counter‑revolutionary terrorist organization. He appeared on Stalin’s execution list dated June 10, 1938 (No. 23 of 152 under “Moscow–Center”). He was sentenced and executed the same day at Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow on June 14, 1938. He was posthumously rehabilitated on February 14, 1961.

Forced Omission #41

Pavel Vasiliev (18 January 1887, Tyumen - 10 November 1937, Atka, Magadan Oblast) was born into a prosperous merchant family; his grandfather, Konstantin Vysotsky, founded the town’s first printing press and local newspaper. He studied at a school in Yekaterinburg but did not graduate due to illness, and in 1904-05 attended a teachers’ seminary in Saint Petersburg before being expelled for political activity.

In 1905 he began publishing in satirical leaflets and journals, including Satirikon, under numerous pseudonyms. His debut poetry collections, ”Satirical Songs” (1910) and “Two-legged Without Feathers” (1914), contained satirical verse in sharp, topical style.

After the October Revolution, Knyazev joined the Bolshevik cause, writing for Krasnaya Gazeta under the pseudonym”Red Bell-ringer”, and issued revolutionary-themed collections such as”Songs of the Red Bell-ringer” (1919) and “Red Leninist Village”(1925). During the Civil War, he traveled to the front with a Proletkult agit-train.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Knyazev focused on folklore: collecting and publishing kubarets, folk proverbs, and ditties, with works like”Book of Proverbs” (1930), “Contemporary Chastushki 1917-22” (1924), and”Rus’: Selected Proverbs and Sayings” (1924). In 1934, under the pseudonym Ivan Sedykh, he published the novel”The Elders”,  depicting Siberian merchant life.

Arrested in March 1937 on absurd charges of counter-revolutionary agitation, Knyazev was sentenced to five years in labor camps by a special collegium and transported to the USSR Far East. He died on a prison transport in the settlement of Atka (Magadan region) on 10 November 1937. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 30 June 1992.

Forced Omission #34

Georgy Venus (31 December 1898 - 8 July 1939) was a Russian and Soviet prose writer, poet, and former White Army officer whose literary career was shaped by war, emigration, and eventual persecution in the USSR. Born in Saint Petersburg into a family of German descent, he was educated at a German real school and completed accelerated military training during the First World War. He served as an officer on the Southwestern Front, was twice wounded, and received the Cross of St. George for bravery.

After the 1917 Revolution, Venus joined the White Army and fought in the Volunteer Army during the Russian Civil War, serving in the Drozdovsky regiment. Following the defeat of the White forces, he was evacuated through Constantinople and lived in exile in Gallipoli and later Germany. In the mid-1920s, during the period of partial Soviet cultural openness, he returned to the USSR with his family and settled in Leningrad, where he resumed literary work.

Venus published prose depicting the collapse of the White movement and the experience of soldiers in the Civil War. His work attracted attention in Soviet literary circles, and he maintained connections with prominent writers, but his status as a former White officer placed him under constant suspicion by the authorities.

In 1935 he was arrested in connection with the post-Kirov repression wave and sentenced to internal exile. He was rearrested in 1938 during the Great Terror and imprisoned in Syzran, where he died in a prison hospital on 8 July 1939, suffering from illness and exhaustion caused by incarceration. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

Forced Omission #174

Alexander Voronsky (September 8, 1884, village of Khoroshavka  - August 13, 1937, Moscow) was a leading Russian Marxist literary critic, editor, and intellectual during the early Soviet period. Born to an Orthodox priest, Voronsky grew up in a religious household, but he soon gravitated toward revolutionary ideas. He enrolled in a seminary in 1900 but was expelled in 1904 for political unreliability. He joined the Bolshevik faction and was arrested following his participation in the failed 1905 uprising, later serving exile and prison terms.

After the 1917 Revolution, Voronsky played key political roles, serving on the executive committees in Odessa and Ivanovo-Voznesensk and editing the local newspaper “Workers’ Land”. His editorial skill and ideological breadth brought him to Moscow in 1921, where he co-founded the literary journal “Red Virgin Soil” with support from Lenin and Maxim Gorky. As its editor-in-chief, he published emerging Soviet writers, Babel, Pilnyak, Platonov, Yesenin, and contributed incisive essays on literature, Marxism, and culture.

Voronsky stood against the Proletkult movement, advocated for the importance of educating the proletariat, and defended cultural individualism under socialism. His views aligned him with Trotsky and the Left Opposition, which led to increasing political marginalization. Expelled from the Party in 1928, he was arrested in 1929 and exiled to Lipetsk. Though later allowed to return to Moscow, his influence waned.

On February 1, 1937, he was arrested again. Voronsky was executed, a speedy trial confirmed his death on August 13, 1937, in Moscow during Stalin’s Great Terror. His ashes were interred at Donskoye Cemetery. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957. His essays, memoirs, and criticism were censored for decades but have been republished and translated.

Forced Omission #9

Oleg Volkov (21 January, 1900, Saint Petersburg - 10 February 1996, Moscow) was born into a noble family, his father directed the Russo-Baltic Shipyards, and his mother was descended from Admiral Mikhail Lazarev. He attended the prestigious Tenishev School, sitting next to Vladimir Nabokov in class, and briefly entered Petrograd University around the time of the Revolution.

From 1922 to 1928, Volkov served as a translator in the Nansen mission, for the Associated Press, and at the Greek embassy. Everything changed in February 1928, when he was arrested after refusing to serve as an informer. He was sentenced for “counter-revolutionary agitation” to three years in the notorious Solovetsky Special Camp (SLON). His sentence was commuted in April 1929 to internal exile in Tula region, where he worked translating technical literature.

Volkov faced repeated arrests in March of 1931, when he was sentenced to 5 years in labor camp, returned to SLON. In 1936 his sentence commuted to exile in Arkhangelsk, where he worked in forest electrification research. In June, 1936 he was arrested again as a “socially dangerous element,” sentenced to another 5 years in Ukhta-Pechora camps. In March, 1942 he was arrested once more, sentenced to 4 years, freed on disability in April 1944, and relocated to Kirovabad where he taught foreign languages. In 1950 he was arrested again and exiled to Yartsevo (Krasnoyarsk region), working as a laborer, carpenter, and hunter. He returned to Moscow in April 1955 upon release from exile.

Only in 1957, upon recommendation by S. V. Mikhalkov, did Volkov join the Union of Soviet Writers. He published numerous books, and translated significant works. He is considered one of the founders of the Soviet environmentalist movement, and was a member of the editorial board of the hunting almanac “Hunting Spaces” from 1962 to 1976. His breakthrough came with the autobiographical memoir “A Journey into Darkness”, written in the early 1960s but only published in the USSR during Perestroika (1989) after being released in Paris in 1987.

Volkov became a passionate advocate for environmental and cultural preservation. He helped found movements to protect historical monuments and nature, though he later distanced himself due to bureaucratic constraints. He continued writing memoirs, essays, and translations until his death on 10 February 1996.

Forced Omission #28, 56, 66

Nadezhda Voytinskaya (13 December 1886 - 21 September 1965) was a Russian and Soviet painter, graphic artist, translator, and art historian associated with the cultural circles of early 20th-century Saint Petersburg. Born into an educated family, she studied at the Tatyana Gymnasium and was early recognized for her artistic talent, receiving encouragement from Valentin Serov. She trained at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and took private lessons with prominent artists including Mikhail Bernstein. In the 1900s she worked in lithography and portrait art across Europe and was close to the artistic circle of Mir iskusstva (“World of Art”).

In 1909 she created a series of lithographic portraits for the journal Apollon, depicting leading figures of Russian modernist culture. By the 1910s she shifted from graphic work to painting in tempera and oil and studied at the Bestuzhev Courses, though she did not complete them. After the 1917 Revolution, her artistic practice was gradually displaced by academic and literary work.

In 1938 Voitinskaya was arrested by the NKVD in connection with accusations of involvement in a “terrorist organization.” She spent sixteen months under investigation in Leningrad’s Big House prison and was released without trial due to lack of evidence, but remained under surveillance. During the Second World War she lived through the Siege of Leningrad, later working in cultural propaganda and teaching foreign languages in higher education institutions.

She died in Leningrad on 21 September 1965. Her legacy spans visual art, translation, and scholarship, reflecting both the vibrancy of pre-revolutionary artistic culture and the pressures of Soviet political repression.

Forced Omission #62, 100, 123

Ostap Vyshnya (Pavlo Mykhailovych Hubenko) (13 November 1889 - 28 September 1956) was a Ukrainian writer, satirist, and master of the short humorous sketch (usmishka), whose work became one of the defining voices of 20th-century Ukrainian literature. Born in a peasant family in the Poltava region of the Russian Empire, he studied at a military feldsher school in Kyiv and initially worked as a medical assistant in military and railway hospitals. He later entered journalism and literary work, publishing his first feuilletons in the early 1920s under the pseudonym Ostap Vyshnia.

His satirical prose combined colloquial language, irony, and social observation, quickly gaining immense popularity in Soviet Ukraine. By the late 1920s and early 1930s he was one of the most widely read Ukrainian writers, contributing regularly to newspapers and the satirical journal Perec.

In December 1933 Vyshnia was arrested during Stalin’s purges on fabricated charges of involvement in an assassination attempt against a Soviet official. He was sentenced to death in 1934, a sentence later commuted to ten years of forced labor. He spent the following decade in the Gulag system, primarily in the Far North, under harsh conditions that severely affected his health. Despite imprisonment, he survived, and his wife was permitted to live near the camp settlement for part of his term.

He was released in 1943 and formally rehabilitated in 1955. Returning to Kyiv, he resumed literary activity, again publishing satirical works and collaborating with Perec. He died in Kyiv on 28 September 1956. His legacy endures as a foundational figure of Ukrainian humorous prose and a symbol of cultural resilience under repression.

Forced Omission #185, 218, 219, 220

Nikolay Zabolotsky (7 May 1903 - 14 October 1958) was a Russian Soviet poet and translator whose work combined philosophical reflection, formal experimentation, and a deep engagement with nature and language. Born in Kazan in the Russian Empire into a family of a zemstvo agronomist, he spent his childhood in the Volga region and later studied at the Pedagogical Institute in Petrograd (later Leningrad). In the 1920s he became associated with the literary group Oberiu, alongside Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, where his early poetry was marked by avant-garde experimentation, absurdism, and linguistic innovation.

By the 1930s Zabolotsky had moved toward more structured poetic forms and philosophical lyricism, producing major works such as Columns (Stolbtsy), which nevertheless drew increasing ideological scrutiny. In 1938 he was arrested during the wave of Stalinist repressions against Leningrad writers on charges of participation in an anti-Soviet organization. He was sentenced to five years in forced labor camps and imprisoned in the Gulag system in the Far East and Altai region. During his imprisonment he continued to write under severe conditions, including extensive work assignments that allowed him limited survival and eventual continuation of his literary activity.

Released in 1943, Zabolotsky lived in internal exile in Kazakhstan before gradually returning to literary life in Moscow. In the postwar period he produced some of his most important works, including celebrated translations of medieval Russian literature such as The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, as well as refined lyrical poetry marked by philosophical depth and formal clarity.

He was fully rehabilitated in 1963, after his death in Moscow on 14 October 1958.

Forced Omission #179

Leonid Zavadovsky (April 9, 1888, the village of Spasskoye - February 21, 1938,  Dubovka near Voronezh) was a Russian Soviet writer celebrated for his vivid, naturalistic portrayals of rural life and his deep connection to the Russian countryside.

Zavadovsky grew up in Tambov, where his father worked for the Ryazan-Ural Railroad. He attended local schools but left it early. At age 17, he joined the revolutionary movement of 1905–1906, which led to repeated arrests. After his third arrest in November 1906, he was sentenced to 5 years and 4 months of hard labor and then endured exile in Eastern Siberia, returning only after the February Revolution of 1917.

Following the Civil War, Zavadovsky settled in the town of Usman. There, he supported himself as an art teacher and pursued his writing. His literary debut came in 1923 with the short story “Burun”, later published in prominent journals such as “Krasnaya Nov”, “Krasnaya Niva”, “Novy Mir”, and the Voronezh magazine “Pod’yom”.

He published multiple celebrated collections of stories, “The Song of the Gray Wolf”, “Enmity”, “Iron Circle”, “Selected Stories”, “Polova”, and other works capturing the lives of peasants, rural intelligentsia, and the Siberian taiga. His most notable work, the novel “Zoloto” (“Gold”), was serialized in “Pod’yom” in 1933 and published under that title in 1935-36 in Voronezh and Moscow.

Zavadovsky was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934 and represented the Voronezh literary region as a delegate to the First All‑Union Congress of Soviet Writers.

On February 2, 1938, he was arrested on charges of “counter‑revolutionary agitation.” After a brief investigation, Zavadovsky was sentenced by an NKVD troika and executed on February 21, 1938, in the nearby village of Dubovka. He was fully rehabilitated on March 22, 1958.

Forced Omission #10

Nikolay Zarudin (1 October 1899 - 13 August 1937) was a Russian Soviet poet and prose writer associated with the literary movements of the 1920s and early 1930s. Born in Pyatigorsk in the Russian Empire into a family of Russian Germans, he was educated in Nizhny Novgorod, where he began writing early literary and nature sketches during his school years. He graduated from gymnasium in 1917, on the eve of the Revolution.

During the Russian Civil War, Zarudin volunteered for the Red Army, where he served as a political commissar and became politically aligned with left-wing opposition currents. After the war he worked in Smolensk as a journalist and contributor to regional newspapers such as “Rabochy Put’”, and became involved in literary groups including Arena and later Pereval, one of the important Soviet literary associations of the 1920s. His prose and poetry are marked by lyrical descriptions of nature, philosophical reflection, and experimental narrative forms.

Zarudin’s major work, the novel cycle “Thirty Nights in the Vineyard”, is considered his most significant literary achievement, blending autobiographical memory with symbolic and impressionistic prose. Despite his active participation in Soviet literary life, he increasingly came under political suspicion during the 1930s due to his ideological associations and stylistic independence.

In 1937 he was arrested during the Great Terror on charges of participation in a counterrevolutionary terrorist organization. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and executed in Moscow on 13 August 1937. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

Forced Omission #5, 180, 181

Alexander Zuev (January 2, 1896, village of Padenga - May 11, 1965, Moscow) was a Russian writer, journalist, and editor. Born into a priestly family, Zuev’s early life was marked by the challenges of rural Russia. After his father’s death in 1906, he moved with his family to Shenkursk. He completed his education at the Arkhangelsk Theological Seminary in 1916 and briefly attended the historical-philological faculty of Perm University before being drafted into the army. He served as a junior officer in World War I and later participated in the Russian Civil War, aligning with the Bolshevik side.

In 1918, Zuev returned to Arkhangelsk and became the secretary of the editorial board of the newspaper “Izvestia of the Arkhangelsk Soviet”. He also organized the satirical newspaper “Mukhoboy”. His early literary works focused on anti-war themes, and he was an active participant in the literary studio of Proletkult. In 1922, he moved to Moscow and worked for the newspaper “Pravda”, later becoming the editor of the journal “Rabochi Korrespondent”.

Zuev’s literary output includes the novella “Taybola” (1928), the novels “The End of the Century” (1934) and “The World Signed” (1934), and the short story collection “Under the Northern Sky”(1938). His works often depicted the challenges and resilience of the Russian North.

In October of 1938 he was arrested, and in January 1939 he was sentenced to 8 years in a labor camp, which he first served in the Norillag GULAG, and in 1940 he was transferred to the Reshety camp for disabled people near the city of Krasnoyarsk. Upon his release in 1946, he settled in the city of Alexandrov, 200 km from Moscow, where he tried to return to literary activity, but in 1948 he was arrested again and sent into indefinite exile in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. He lived in the villages of Aban and Ustyansk, where he worked as a graphic designer, and then as a teacher of drawing and painting.

In 1954 he was exonerated and returned to Moscow, where he was hired as the head of the prose department of the “Friendship of Peoples” magazine, and then worked as its editor.

Forced Omission #14, 22

Mikhail Zuev-Ordynets (19 May, 1900, Moscow - 23 December, 1967, Karaganda) was a Soviet writer of historical and adventure fiction, born in Moscow into a family of Jewish artisans. After completing his education at the Higher Primary School in 1918, he worked as a clerk in various factories. In August 1918, he volunteered for the Red Army, completed the Moscow Artillery School of Red Commanders, and served on the front lines during the Civil War until 1921.

Demobilized in 1924, Zuev-Ordynets worked as the head of the district police in Vyshny Volochyok and concurrently contributed to the local newspaper “Our Land.” He began publishing his works in 1925 and moved to Leningrad in 1927, where he became the head of the prose department at the journal “Rezec.” In 1930, he graduated from the Leningrad Institute of History of Arts and was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers in 1932.

Zuev-Ordynets was one of the pioneers of Soviet adventure literature, traveling extensively across the country. His notable works include “The Master of Sounds” (1926), “The Yellow Typhoon” (1928), “The Stone Belt” (1928), “The Roar of the Desert” (1930), and “The Treasure of the Black Desert” (1933).

In April 1937, he was arrested on charges of espionage and counter-revolutionary activities, leading to his imprisonment in the Gulag for 19 years. During this period, he was prohibited from writing. He was released on 21 June 1950 and lived under surveillance in the village of Aktas. In 1956, he was rehabilitated, and his rights were restored. He later moved to Karaganda, where he continued his literary work.

Zuev-Ordynets passed away on 23 December 1967 in Karaganda.

Forced Omission #78