Mishina E.M. The Stalinist repressions of 1935–1937:  an analysis of the social groups’  dynamics on the basis of the  “memorial books” of the Altay kray

Abstract: The author analyses the repressive mechanisms of the period, disclosed on the basis of a study of archival material. The first part of the article consists of a brief historiographical overview of the studies on this subject. The dominant opinion in scientific literature is that regional officials, usually following central instructions, fabricated investigational materials on the principles convenient for their regional authorities. The second part is dedicated to the examination of the repression dynamics on the main social groups: agriculturalists, industrial workers and officials. The dynamics’ data is divided by years and the author attempts to thus distinguish small repression campaigns of regional scale. The author comes to the conclusion that in most cases the repressions were conducted within one social group, with investigation files containing examples of interceding lines of repression of various social groups; however, the existing data is not enough to expose definite tendencies. Agricultural workers and administrators suffered most from the repressions. On the basis of archival investigation files, in conjunction with the deductive and inductive methods, the author distinguishes three repression mechanisms: “bottom-up”, “top-down”, and their synthesis – “mixed” type. In the given timeframe, the “mixed” type was the most common: it was characteristic for group investigations, falsified in a significant number of cases.

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