Russian military court has revoked rehabilitation of more than 250 victims of political repressions in last four years, journalists find

Russia’s Military Cassation Court, which handles cases of victims of political repression, has revoked the rehabilitation of more than 250 people since 2020, BBC News Russian reported on Tuesday.

In at least 90 of these cases, the victims were charged with treason under the Soviet Criminal Code. Another 80 of them were charged with state treason under the modern Russian Criminal Code.

In one case, the court revoked the decision to rehabilitate three individuals executed in 1919 by a verdict from a commission led by Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky. Journalists also found that multiple rehabilitation decisions made in the USSR shortly after Stalin’s death have been revoked in recent years.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office created a process to rehabilitate victims of political repression in 2015. In June 2024, the government amended the process, removing the word “mass” from the description of Soviet-era repressions, among other changes.

In September 2024, the Prosecutor General's Office proposed conducting “ongoing work” to identify and revoke rehabilitation decisions for individuals charged with committing grave and especially grave crimes, war crimes, and crimes against peace and humanity. The office later reported that it had reviewed over 14,000 rehabilitation decisions and had over 4,000 of them revoked.