By Adam Aydin | 2025-04-24

PRAGUE -- Thousands of Czechoslovaks were arrested without warning, loaded onto trains and disappeared into the Soviet Gulag.

A book recently published by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ISTR) in Prague sheds light on how Joseph Stalin's vast machinery of repression reached into Central Europe during and after World War II.

Drawing from thousands of investigative files kept by the NKVD, the Soviet Union's notorious secret police, The Gulag and Czechoslovakia: War traces how a system designed to silence dissent consumed citiznes of the former Czechoslovakia.

In an interview with Kontur, co-author Jan Dvořák noted that the events of the mid-20th century inevitably prompt reflection on the present -- especially in the context of growing authoritarianism and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Different paths, identical fates

Between 1939 and 1941, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 residents of then-Czechoslovakia fled to the Soviet Union, according to Dvořák. Many came from the Czech lands, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia, a region now part of western Ukraine. But instead of finding refuge, they ended up in Gulag labor camps.

"In total, we're talking about 15,000 Czechoslovaks or Czechs, who were repressed in the USSR from 1918 to 1956," Dvořák said.

The book draws on NKVD files documenting how these refugees -- along with ethnic Czechs already living in the USSR -- were detained, often at the border, and charged with offenses like "illegally crossing the border" or "illegal presence in the USSR." In some cases, the NKVD accused them of espionage. The NKVD usually detained refugees at border crossings, as it was no longer possible to cross the border legally after October 1939.

"Even Czechs who lived in the USSR or in [Soviet]-occupied regions before the war did not escape repression," Dvořák noted.

The NKVD sent most to labor camps in Russia's Komi Republic, where they built railroads and toiled in mines. "However, we found our compatriots in every part of the Soviet Union, even in relatively large numbers in the Kolyma camps in the Far East," he added.

Freedom is easy to lose

After Ukraine's 2014 Revolution of Dignity, authorities opened access to the full NKVD archives, a major shift that enabled Czech researchers to launch the project "Czechoslovaks in the Gulag." Over the next decade, the team at the ISTR examined thousands of investigative files documenting Soviet repression. That research forms the foundation of the new book.

The project marked the first time Czech scholars had gained access to NKVD records from the World War II era housed in Ukraine. Ukrainian historians and archivists played an active role in supporting the work. In addition to studying official records, the team gathered eyewitness accounts, published materials and archival databases.

This collaboration allowed for a more accurate picture of the scale of repression -- and of the individual lives caught in it, explained Dvořák.

The work is about more than historical truth, historian Ladislav Kudrna, director of the ISTR, emphasized.

"The younger generation needs to be aware of how easy it is to lose freedom," he told Kontur. "We must remind the younger generation of the horrors of totalitarian regimes such as Nazism and Communism."

The lessons of history

"One of the stories that touched me was the fate of the Végh brothers from Carpathian Ruthenia," said Dvořák.

In 1940, the elder brother, Mikuláš, fled the Nazi occupation of his homeland and crossed into the USSR, only to be accused of espionage and sent to the Gulag. His younger brother, Ljudevit, survived the war but spent more than 70 years searching for any trace of Mikuláš.

"We discovered that he died in 1942 in the Usollag prison in Solikamsk [in the Russian Republic]," Dvořák said. "Ljudevit was already over 90 when we told him what happened to his older brother."

For Dvořák, the story is a personal tragedy and a warning. The devastation of World War II, he said, should remind us of the true cost of war, especially in light of Russia's current aggression in Ukraine.

Before both world wars, inhabitants of many countries believed they would be spared, he noted. "And today, many of us Czechs continue to convince ourselves that the war in Ukraine does not concern us, that the situation is not that serious and that Russia will stop in Ukraine. I think this is wrong," Dvořák said.

"After all, our ancestors also believed they were not in danger, and it's unlikely that any of them imagined they could end up in the grip of Stalin's totalitarian regime, in Gulag camps thousands of kilometers from their homeland."

History should not be viewed as a collection of facts but as a source of lessons -- and a reminder of what is at stake when freedom is lost, Dvořák added.