Picked up by the elements: a view on the peasant insurgent movement for the resumption of unr througharhival-criminal cases on its ordinary participants

Abstract

Archival-criminal cases on participants of 1921 – 1925 peasant insurgent movement for the resumption of the Ukrainian National Republic make up a massive and little studied part of the documents of the state security bodies of Soviet Ukraine. First of all, the attention is drawn to the cases concerning the «political banditry» of ordinary insurgents and members of their families. Thousands of such cases are kept in the funds of the Branch state archive and archives of temporary keeping of Security service regional bodies of Ukraine. A considerable part of the repressed peasants are not rehabilitated till today. In the overwhelming majority of cases to their destinies no attention was paid on behalf neither of historians, nor of representatives of the public, nor of their relatives. Behind numerous archival-criminal cases many great tragedies of human lives remain latent, in particular, broken and spoilt destinies of ordinary peasants, torn off from their land and picked up by elements of revolutions, civil and national-liberation wars. In the articles characteristic destinies of those whom the Bolshevist extrajudicial repressive bodies defined as «bandits» are investigated, such as conscious, irresponsible, and conditional insurgents, as well as insurgents’ brothers, mothers, and brides. Not only unjustified cruelty of their punishment, but also recognitions by the recent time «competent bodies» and the current legislation of independent Ukraine of their «guilt» as such that does not provide rehabilitation are common to the destinies of figurants of the investigated cases. The push to a new powerful rehabilitation have, with a supports of the state, public, and science figures should be given by Law of Ukraine on rehabilitation of victims of political repressions in a new wording dd. March 13th, 2018.