The logic of repression in the late 1930s within the former Tobolsk Province

Based on the archival documents introduced into scientific discourse, the article sets an aim to trace the logic of repression in a provincial part of the USSR, the western part of the Omsk Region, coinciding with the boundaries of the former Tobolsk Province, the future Tyumen Region. Repression is seen through the main categories and groups the author singled out that were involved in the political processes within the designated territory in the last third of the 1930s, i.e. in the period determined by the time of the “Great Terror”. Documents used are investigation files from the Archive of the Regional Directorate of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the Tyumen Region, Fund 5, List 38. The main categories of the repressed, taking into account belonging to the territory, according to the documents identified, are the exiled (for political and administrative reasons) and local residents. Groups of repressed persons are identified on the basis of the main factor reflected in the investigation documents, which became the main conditions for involving in political processes. The following groups were determined: (1) people serving in the Tsarist army, participants of the White Movement; (2) participants in the Uprising of 1921, which was the most mass part of the repressed; (3) “kulaks”, traders, relatives of representatives of this group; (4) the exiled: excluded from the Bolshevik party, members of former socialist parties, the exiled having relatives abroad, bearers of nationalist convictions. A special group of the repressed, quite massive, is formed by the Orthodox clergy and their relatives, both among the exiled and local residents; they had different places of service at the time of arrest and in the past. The group of the participants in the Uprising of 1921 is the most massive in 1937-1938, the following two years this group was replenished with relatives of the participants in this uprising. Even relatives of those who were shot during the uprising were also repressed. The proportion of women in the political processes was, according to the author's 134 data, not more than 2%. There is evidence that the woman's having little children was not an obstacle in the imposition of the sentence in the form of a death penalty. Most of the repressed were born in 1888-1895. The oldest among the repressed and sentenced to a death penalty, according to the documents studied, was 84 years old. The analysis of the documents allows concluding that the terror of the late 1930s was aimed at the extermination of people with flaws in biographies.

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