The Supreme Court recognized as legal the classification of the NKVD officers involved in the Great Terror

According to Novaya Gazeta, the lawsuit was prepared by the historian Sergey Prudovsky, who is researching the Harbin operation of the NKVD - mass repressions against former employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway. During this operation, over 21 thousand people were shot.

In 2019, the historian initiated the declassification of the case of Tatyana Kulik, who was shot as a Japanese spy in 1937. Kulik was later rehabilitated, but the names and positions of those who fabricated her case were classified.

In substantiating this, the courts of four instances, including the Supreme Court, referred to a presidential decree, as well as a secret order of the FSB, which protects the personal data of counterintelligence officers. Prudovsky said that the decree was written inconsistently, since it allows the NKVD officers to be attributed to counterintelligence officers. The historian demanded the abolition of the provisions of the decree and filed a lawsuit against the president.

The President was represented in court by FSB officers. They insisted that the abolition of the decree's provisions would threaten Russia's defense capability. The court dismissed the claim.

Recall that at the beginning of last month in the Ivanovo region, representatives of the FSB did not let Prudovsky into the archives of the NKVD troikas, explaining the refusal to grant admission by possible "incitement to hatred".

Having received refusals in Ivanovo and Tula, the historian filed a lawsuit against both regional FSB, demanding that the security forces provide him with access to the protocols. However, at a meeting on October 28, a representative of the Ivanovo FSB said that access to archival documents related to the era of mass political repressions had been limited because, according to the expert commission, they "contain information the dissemination of which may entail incitement of national, racial or religious hatred or enmity"...