On 9 March 2021, Вести Тула (Tula News) reported the publication of a new volume in the series “Без срока давности” [No Statute of Limitations], part of an ongoing effort to collect and declassify records documenting crimes and atrocities committed during the Great Patriotic War against non-combatants by occupying Nazi forces and their accomplices. The volume in question deals specifically with activities in the Tula Oblast.
The foundation responsible for collecting, recording, declassifying, and publishing the documents aims to show “the various aspects of the implementation by the Nazis and their accomplices of a genocide policy against the Soviet people: punitive operations and mass destruction of civilians, persecution by starvation and the creation of living conditions incompatible with life, crimes against youth, forced labor and the deportation of civilians to Germany, and the killing of non-combatants in hospitals and other medical institutions.” It covers all regions occupied during the Great Patriotic War.
The volumes are available to download for free, published in Russian. It goes without saying that many of the documents are alarming, to the point that correspondence regarding the atrocities accounted written as late as the 1970s were still classified as ‘Top Secret’ (until their declassification and publication here).
The Tula Oblast volume, over 800 pages long, is the latest (47th) in this amazing series.
The Без срока давности website is here, where you can read about the program’s progress, and the individual volumes can be downloaded here.
Your favorite blog for translations of declassified Soviet historical documents will periodically offer translations of the documents contained in these books; if there’s a specific area or document you’d like to see translated, drop us a line.
Translating History 