jokuvaan
10-16-2009, 07:49 AM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/15/russia-gulag-historian-arrested
Mikhail Suprun was detained last month by officers from Russia's security services. They searched his apartment and carried off his entire personal archive. He has now been charged with violating privacy laws and, if convicted, faces up to four years in jail.
Suprun had been researching Germans sent to Russia's Arctic gulags. A professor of history at Arkhangelsk's Pomorskiy university, his study included German prisoners of war captured by the Red Army as well as Russian-speaking ethnic Germans, many from southern Russia, deported by Stalin. Both groups ended up in Arkhangelsk camps.
"I had been planning to write two books. I need another two or three years before I can finish them," Suprun told the Guardian today. The historian – who described his arrest as "absurd" – said he had signed an agreement with local officials not to talk further about his case.
Suprun's project was done in collaboration with Germany's Red Cross. The organisation is still trying to establish the fate of thousands of Germans transported to Soviet Russia as prisoners during the war – many of whom never came back. The German Red Cross today said it was baffled by the historian's arrest. It was "completely unacceptable", Erica Steinbach, a rightwing German MP, added.
Mikhail Suprun was detained last month by officers from Russia's security services. They searched his apartment and carried off his entire personal archive. He has now been charged with violating privacy laws and, if convicted, faces up to four years in jail.
Suprun had been researching Germans sent to Russia's Arctic gulags. A professor of history at Arkhangelsk's Pomorskiy university, his study included German prisoners of war captured by the Red Army as well as Russian-speaking ethnic Germans, many from southern Russia, deported by Stalin. Both groups ended up in Arkhangelsk camps.
"I had been planning to write two books. I need another two or three years before I can finish them," Suprun told the Guardian today. The historian – who described his arrest as "absurd" – said he had signed an agreement with local officials not to talk further about his case.
Suprun's project was done in collaboration with Germany's Red Cross. The organisation is still trying to establish the fate of thousands of Germans transported to Soviet Russia as prisoners during the war – many of whom never came back. The German Red Cross today said it was baffled by the historian's arrest. It was "completely unacceptable", Erica Steinbach, a rightwing German MP, added.