Sergey Prudovsky, a historian and researcher of the «national» operations of the NKVD, has presented his new book There was such ‘nation’ – the Harbins [«Была такая ‘нация’ — харбинцы»], published thanks to the support of the International Memorial. The book tells about the NKVD’s «Harbin operation». The «Harbinites» — workers and technical staff of the Chinese Eastern Railway, re-emigrants from Manchuria and their families — were charged with espionage and repressed during the «Great Terror».
The author recounts the fate of the victims of the «Harbin operation» and reconstructs its stages, naming all those responsible for making the decisions. The research is based on documents from the archive of the FSB and various state and departmental archives. Annotated index includes more than thousand names of the repressed, all of them were collected by Sergei Prudovsky. A significant part of the publication is biographical information about the victims. Many biographies are published for the first time.
* On 28 February, International Memorial was liquidated in Russia by court order.