The Political Red Cross: A Voice for Political Prisoners in Early Soviet Russia

FAIN: FT-56797-09

Stuart Finkel
Dartmouth College (Gainesville, FL 32611-0001)

To research the status of Soviet political prisoners in the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the Political Red Cross, an institution that lobbied on their behalf until the height of Stalin's terror. Studying this organization and Ekaterina Peshkova, its indefatigable leader, will illuminate the fate of political prisoners, the development of the Soviet punitive system, and the inner workings of the process of appeal and political patronage in the Soviet Union. It will also provide a glimpse into the lives of thousands of extraordinarily committed men and women, many of whom spent time in both tsarist and Soviet jails. This project, based on extensive research using Russian archival sources, some of which I have already completed, is intended to produce several articles and a monograph. An NEH Summer Stipend would allow me to pursue research at Stanford University's Hoover Archives, which has microfilmed copies of this organization's original documents.