Russia releases documents on Czechs and Slovaks interned in gulags during WWII

Historians from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes have gained access to several thousand documents from Russian archives relating to Czech and Slovak soldiers fighting in exile who were interned in Soviet gulags by the communist regime during WWII.

This is the first time that Moscow has released these sensitive documents for study outside Russian territory. They were acquired by Museum of the Slovak National Uprising which has given Czech historians access to them as well.

According to the head of the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising Stanislav Mičev close to 70,000 Czechs and Slovaks were interned in Russia between 1941 and 1945, among them two generals and 159 lieutenants. Over 4,000 of them never came home.