"Without the right of correspondence" (WRC) (russian: Без права переписки, abbreviated as БПП in official documents) was a clause in a
sentence of many
political repressions victims of
Stalinist Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
s in
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
that implied death. It was used to keep family relatives of those executed uncertain as to the fate or whereabouts of the victims.
Meaning
WRC was used as a
euphemism to cover the true nature of a court sentence.
In many cases during the late 1930s '
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
' campaign of political repression, the sentence handed down was "10 years of
corrective labor camps without the right of correspondence", which was announced to relatives, while the paperwork contained the real sentence: "the highest degree of punishment:
execution by shooting
Execution by shooting is a method of capital punishment in which a person is shot to death by one or more firearms. It is the most common method of execution worldwide, used in about 70 countries, with execution by firing squad being one particu ...
".
Many people did not understand the official euphemism and incorrectly believed that their relative was still alive in prison.
As
Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it in ''
The Gulag Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr So ...
'':
For example, all of the bodies identified from the mass graves at
Vinnytsia
Vinnytsia ( ; uk, Вінниця, ; yi, װיניצע) is a city in west-central Ukraine, located on the banks of the Southern Bug.
It is the administrative center of Vinnytsia Oblast and the largest city in the historic region of Podillia. ...
and
Kuropaty had received a WRC sentence.
Notable victims
*
Mikhail Koltsov
Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov (russian: Михаи́л Ефи́мович Кольцо́в) (The record of the birth of Moisey Fridlyand in the metric book of the Kiev rabbinate for 1898 ( ЦГИАК Украины. Ф. 1164. Оп. 1. Д. 442. Л. 13 ...
(a Soviet writer and correspondent, a prototype of Karkov in
Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fi ...
's ''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
''), executed February 2, 1940. When his brother,
Boris Efimov
Boris Yefimovich Yefimov (russian: Бори́с Ефи́мович Ефи́мов; ,The birth record of Boris Fridlyand (Boris Yefimov) in the metric book of the Kiev rabbinate for 1900 ( ЦГИАК Украины. Ф. 1164. Оп. 1. Д. 454. Л. ...
, by a miracle got an appointment with
Vasiliy Ulrikh
Vasiliy Vasilievich Ulrikh (russian: Василий Васильевич Ульрих, 13 July 1889 – 7 May 1951) was a senior judge of the Soviet Union during most of the regime of Joseph Stalin. Ulrikh served as the presiding judge at man ...
, the latter told him that Koltsov was sentenced to 10 years WRC.
Михаил Ефимович Кольцов — За что? Почему? (часть-1)
/ref>
*Matvei Petrovich Bronstein
Matvei Petrovich Bronstein (russian: Матве́й Петро́вич Бронште́йн, , Vinnytsia – February 18, 1938) was a Soviet theoretical physicist, a pioneer of quantum gravity, author of works in astrophysics, semiconductors, q ...
(executed in 1937), a theoretical physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
and a pioneer of quantum gravity.
*Volodymyr Zatonsky
Volodymyr Petrovych Zatonsky ( uk, Володи́мир Зато́нський, russian: Влади́мир Петро́вич Зато́нский ''Vladimir Petrovich Zatonsky''; July 27, 1888 – July 29, 1938) was a Soviet politician, aca ...
(executed 29 July 1938) a Ukrainian Soviet leader
See also
*Nacht und Nebel
''Nacht und Nebel'' (German: ), meaning Night and Fog, was a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 7 December 1941 targeting political activists and resistance "helpers" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, who were to ...
*By administrative means
By administrative means (В административном порядке, "V administrativnom poryadke") was a term used in the Soviet Union when some actions which would normally require a court decision were left to the decision of executive ...
References
External links
* {{imdb title, id=0099413, title=Desyat let bez prava perepiski, a 1990 Russian film ("Ten Years without the Right of Correspondence")
Euphemisms
Political repression in the Soviet Union
Soviet law
Soviet cover-ups
Capital punishment
Soviet phraseology