This article takes a look at some of the specific projects our investigators have in the works relative to the reported transfer of American servicemen to the former Soviet Union. Elsewhere in this issue, you can read a summary update on the work of the U.S. Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (see U.S. Russia Joint Commission, by Irene Mandra).

Last October, the Moscow Times reported that the St. Petersburg Medical and Military Archive released ‘fresh’ information to a french organization, the Association Edouard Kalifat, which is dedicated to tracing hundreds of French nationals who disappeared in the Soviet Union during and after World War II. The article stated that the archive, which is part of the Russian Defense Ministry, contains medical documents from all military conflicts in the former Soviet Union since 1938, running up to Afghanistan and Chechnya. The repository houses approximately 60 million files.

Vladimir Yurko, who heads the archive’s largest section, is quoted as saying that, after WWII, French families received official Soviet letters telling them when and how their relatives had died, when in fact the relatives had been put in prisoner of war camps and were still alive. According to Yurko, there were 5,500 military hospitals in the Soviet Union during World War II, with between 300 and 500 also treating foreign prisoners of war. View a map of the camps.

The Korean War broke out five years later and, as we now know, hundreds of American servicemen (if not more) reportedly were taken to the Soviet Union and not returned, as part of a clandestine KGB program.

Last April, investigators from the U.S. side of the Joint Commission on American POW/MIAs approached the St. Petersburg Military and Medical Archive and requested their help in searching the archive’s collection for relevant information. The investigators were told that the archive contained information only through WWII, and also that it was undergoing renovation, so no help could be offered.

With news that the same archive is helping the French, and that the collection in question does indeed go through the Korean and Cold War periods, one has to question the Russians’ level of cooperation on the American accounting. Our investigators have now been in touch with the French Association Edouard Kalifat and discussed how they might assist in the effort to locate information about Americans. The French have indicated a willingness to help, and the two teams are now working to set up a meeting in Russia to discuss just what the French have found, who they’ve been dealing with in the St. Petersburg Archive, and other such matters.

The U.S. team of Joint Commission investigators recently completed a study of the Soviet Gulag system, and reported sightings of Americans within that system. The study was handed to the Russians last year, with a request for their assistance in resolving some of those reports. So far, the Russians have not taken any initiative on this matter, but the U.S. team has.

The Khomi Republic, which is north and east of Moscow, is a region that contained a lot of Soviet coal mines, as well as a number of Soviet gulags whose prisoners were forced to work in the mines. U.S. investigators have established a relationship with a civic organization called Memoriale, which is located in Vorkuta, a city in the Khomi Republic.

Memoriale dedicates its efforts to finding out what happened to people who were caught up in the Soviet gulag system, and to gaining benefits for survivors. Memoriale has access to 1.5 million catalogue cards from the gulags. These cards contain personal files of inmates. The organization is also authorized to follow-up on information it locates in these files. The U.S. team is hopeful that Memoriale will be able to search Soviet gulag records for information about Americans that might have been taken to gulags in the region, or even elsewhere.

The U.S. team is also working with a museum in the Khomi region in search of information about American POWs who were brought to the region during the Soviet era.

The gulag study indicates that other regions of the Soviet Union might also have been the destination of transferred Americans. U.S. investigators plan to expand their regional efforts to areas beyond Khomi. Right now they are considering an area south and east of Moscow, the Perm Republic. The hope is to visit Perm, or some other area that might yield productive investigation, this spring. Local sources such as civic organizations, historians, political figures, archivists, and local residents who might have first-hand information will be contacted in a consolidated effort to flush out information that was compiled in the gulag study.

We will have more details of the gulag study in the next issue of the newsletter.

Last fall, U.S. investigators from the Joint Commission interviewed a veteran of the Soviet Army who served in North Korea during the Korean War. Vladimir Yakovlevich Lukinykh served as a MIG-15 aircraft technician in Korea. He also led several search groups whose orders were to locate downed United Nations aircraft.

Each Soviet regiment was responsible for providing personnel to confirm claims by Soviet pilots that they had shot down U.N. planes. Lukinykh reports that the 133rd Fighter Aviation Division also dispatched search groups. Lukinykh stated that remains and live air crews would definitely have been considered evidence that a plane had been shot down, and would have ben brought back to division headquarters. He said he had standing orders to bring anything found that would verify a shoot down back to headquarters, including remains and including live men.

Lukinykh said he never found a corpse or a live pilot at a crash site, but he reported that, during the summer of 1952, he saw an American POW in the hands of another Soviet search group in the viscinity of the Yalu river. That search group was on its way back to division headquarters, with the pilot. Lukinykh described the American as between 25 to 30 years old; with red hair; somewhat short; wearing black boots that came to his calves. The pilot was clean shaven and was not wearing glasses. Lukinykh said the other search group told him the pilot was American, and said the American was pleading not to be turned over to the Chinese.

U.S. investigators from the Joint Commission have discussed these search teams with the new leadership at the Podolsk archives and has requested assistance in trying to locate records of these units. The new leadership has indicated a willingness to help on this project.

As a side note, we have learned that DPMO has just made a gift of six computers to the Podolsk archives, two of which are to be dedicated to the Commission’s work on missing American servicemen.

The Soviet era Border Guards are believed to have been involved in the aftermath of Cold War shoot downs of American planes. U.S. Investigators have made repeated requests for access to Border Guard records, which are apt to contain information that might clarify the fate of some of the crews who remain missing. To date, the Border Guard has refused to open up its records. In fact, the Border Guard did not even send a representative to the 17th Plenum of the Joint Commission in November.

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