Authors

Discussion

While re-arrests of released political prisoners were common in the Soviet Union under Stalin, it was not until 1948 that this practice became formally institutionalised through a specific directive. Between 1948 and 1953, over 58,000 individuals were re-arrested for the same crimes they had previously been convicted of and sent into exile in the remote regions of the Soviet Union.

This paper examines the implementation of the directive concerning 'repeaters' (povtorniki), utilising individual investigative files of those exiled after 1948. The new wave of mass arrests provoked varied reactions from the victims, including suicides, as many knew what awaited them in the Gulag. Most of those exiled were only released after Stalin’s death, having spent 12-17 years of their lives in camps and exile. However, some former Gulag prisoners escaped exile under this directive 'for operational reasons'. This paper argues that the secret police, in the course of implementing the directive, expressed doubts about the quality of their predecessors' work, highlighting a shift in repressive politics from the 1930s to the late 1940s.