Political exile in the USSR was an important tool for controlling the behavior of the intelligentsia and a way of restricting the rights of social groups hostile to the Soviet system. The article deals with an episode of liquidation of one of the "anti-soviet groups" seized by the NKVD bodies from the staff of the Novosibirsk Regional Museum. The author describes the process of collecting and using "compromising materials" for the arrest of employees of the museum and their associates; presents

more »

... data on the previous career of intellectuals and their social origin. They were exiled scholars and artists, accused of spreading bourgeois ideology and fascist views. The article describes the course of the NKVD "investigation" and the procedure for sentencing; provides information about the fate of convicts after leaving the camps of the Gulag.