Pulkovo case (1936-1937)
The PULKO CASE (1936-1937) was fabricated by the NKVD against a group of scientists on charges of "participation in the fascist Trotskyist-Zinovievist terrorist organization that arose in 1932 on the initiative of the German intelligence agencies and aimed at overthrowing Soviet power and establishing a fascist dictatorship on the territory of the USSR." The P.D. affected geologists, geophysicists, astronomers, and mathematicians from scientific and educational institutions in Leningrad, Moscow, Kyiv, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Novosibirsk, Tashkent, and other cities. Many who passed through P.D. specialists were associated with the search for mineral deposits, primarily oil, with the development and application of new methods of geological exploration. In Leningrad, more than 100 leading scientists, researchers and specialists from the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, the Central Research Geological Prospecting Institute (TsNIGRI), the Leningrad Mining Institute, Leningrad State University, etc. were arrested. arose later and was not used in the case file. The so-called geophysical branch of P.D. preceded the actual "case of astronomers" or P.D. in the narrow sense, understood as repression at the Main (Pulkovo) Astronomical Observatory. In the second half of 1936 - the first half of 1937, Leningrad geophysicists Yu.N. Lepeshinsky, P.P. Kuznetsov, V.R. Bursian, S.K. Girin, M.A. Baldin, I.D. A.N. Fok, director of the Pulkovo observatory B.P. Gerasimovich, his deputy B.I. Shigin and 13 more Pulkovo astronomers (in total, about 30 astronomers were arrested on P. d.), as well as the wives of seven of them. The participants in the "conspiracy" were accused of preparing terrorist acts against Stalin and other leaders of the CPSU (b), as well as "wrecking" (sabotage of observations of solar eclipses, concealment of mineral deposits, etc.). Those accused of P. d. were convicted at an exit session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Leningrad from May 20 to May 26, 1937. Baldin, Girin, Kuznetsov, Lepeshinsky, Sokolov, P.M. Karatygin, A.P. Konstantinov, A.S. Sluchanovsky were shot; the rest were sentenced to 10 years in labor camps and other terms of imprisonment. The massacre of scientists associated with P. D. continued after May 1937. Gerasimovich was shot on November 30, 1937, E.Ya. Perepelkin on January 13, 1938, D.I. Eropkin, M.M. Musselius and A.P. , Frederiks, S.A.Shatilov, P.I.Yashnov. In the fall of 1937, as "members of the families of traitors to the motherland" (ChSIR) they were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment in labor camps and exiled to their wives and other relatives of convicted scientists. Some of those repressed for P. d. were rehabilitated in 1955 - 1958. In October 1996, a monument to astronomers - victims of political repressions was erected on the territory of the Pulkovo Observatory (author A. Murashev).
