Getting documents from Russian archives delays work on political exiles

The committee that works on cases of victims of political repression has revealed that the names of 29,800 of the 35,000 recorded as killed have so far been cleared. Their families and descendants have received MNT19.8 billion as compensation. Besides, MNT2.5 billion more have been spent in the last two decades on building apartments and gers for 470 citizens who had been orphaned because of the repression. Another MNT110.8 million has been given as assistance to 9,722 citizens.

One group of sufferers who have been somewhat neglected consists of those who were forcibly relocated from their native place. The Secretary of the Redressal Committee, O.Lkhagvarentsen, answers our journalist’s questions on this and other issues.

How much longer will their case linger?

Such people and their families have received only compensation because they do not legally qualify to be counted among victims of political repression. We are also giving them the pension that they would otherwise have been entitled to. However, many of their children could not find a proper job because of their parents’ relocation and should now receive social welfare, including an apartment or a ger, but the law will have to be changed for this. The Standing Committee on State Structure has prepared a draft and once this becomes law we shall arrange for places for them to live in, raise their pension amount and also give cash assistance totaling between MNT3 million and MNT5 million.

There are people who could not produce documents to confirm their parents were victims. How do you deal with such cases?

The deadline for submission of documents and claims has been extended until December 31, 2011. It takes about 3 years for us to verify these.

Many documents were in the former Soviet Union and it is difficult to get anything from the archives there. What can be done?

There is information that more than 400 Mongolians were forcibly taken to the former Soviet Union between 1930 and 1940. Former Presidents N.Bagabandi and V.Putin reached an agreement to access documents in Russian archives but the problem is they can be copied only by hand, according to Russian regulations. This is time consuming work and it also often takes long to trace documents. So far we have recovered records relating to 80 victims.