"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
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...
Great Purges in
Soviet Union 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
A euphemism () is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes ...
to cover the true nature of a court sentence.
In many cases during the late 1930s '
Great Purge' 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 particula ...
".
Many people did not understand the official euphemism and incorrectly believed that their relative was still alive in prison.
As
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
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 S ...
'':
For example, all of the bodies identified from the mass graves at
Vinnytsia 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 ...
'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 assigne ...
''), 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 caus ...
and a pioneer of quantum gravity
Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics; it deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the vi ...
.
* Volodymyr Zatonsky (executed 29 July 1938) a Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
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 t ...
*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