10 years without the right of correspondence
"10 years without the right of correspondence" was a clause that appeared in sentences of many victims of political repression during the Stalinist Great Purges in the Soviet Union. It implied a death sentence. It was used to keep family relatives of those executed uncertain as to the fate or whereabouts of the victims.
Meaning
"10 years without the right of correspondence" was used as a euphemism to cover the true nature of a court sentence.In many cases during the late 1930s 'Great Purge' campaign of political repression, the sentence "10 years of corrective labor camps without the right of correspondence" was announced to relatives, while the paperwork contained the real sentence: "the highest degree of punishment: execution by shooting". Many people did not understand the official euphemism and incorrectly believed that their relative was still alive in prison.
As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it in The Gulag Archipelago:
For example, all of the bodies identified from the mass graves at Vinnytsia and Kuropaty were of those people that had received "10 years without the right of correspondence".
Notable victims
- Mikhail Koltsov, executed February 2, 1940. When his brother, Boris Efimov, by a miracle got an appointment with Vasiliy Ulrikh, the latter told him that Koltsov was such sentenced.
- Matvei Petrovich Bronstein, theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum gravity.
- Volodymyr Zatonsky, Ukrainian Soviet leader