In transliterating from Russian to English a modified version of the Standard Library of Congress system for the Russian vowels was used, especially in the initial positions:

E = Ye (Yezhov, not Ezhov),

Ia = Ya (Yagoda, not Iagoda),

Iu = Yu (Yurii, not Iurii).

In the final position of last names ‘ii’ becomes ‘y’ (Trotsky, not Trotskii), and ‘iia’ is usually given as ‘ia’ (Izvestia, not Izvestiia).

On first usage, the names of institutions are given in transliterated Russian (in italics) followed by the English translation.

The majority of documents translated and cited in this book come from the following Russian archives:

APRF Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiskoi Federatsii [Presidential Archive]
FSB Archive Tsentral’nyi arkhiv FSB Rossii [FSB Central Archive; FSB = Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti or Federal Security Service]
RGVA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv [Russian State Military Archive]
TsAMO Tsentral’nyi arkhiv Ministerstva Oborony Rossiskoi Federatsii [Defense Ministry Central Archive]
GARF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [State Archive of the Russian Federation]

If a document was published in a Russian book that includes a compilation of documents and could be found in many libraries, a reference to the document in this book is given, and the archival reference can be found in the book. For the documents published or cited in the Russian periodicals and found by the author, the complete reference to the document is given. Russian archival documents are cited and numbered by collection (Fond), inventory (Opis’), file (Delo), and page (List’ or L., or in plural, Ll.)

Original documents were found in the RGVA (Moscow), GARF (Moscow), the archive of Vladimir Prison (Vladimir, Russia), the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, Washington) and the Archives Branch of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM, Washington). Additionally, I used documents connected with the Raoul Wallenberg case available on the website of the Swedish Foreign Office and some documents available on the website of the British National Archives (Kew, Surrey).

The work in the RGVA in Moscow needs a comment. In 1990–91, when I had access to the files of the former foreign prisoners kept in the RGVA (Fond 451), it was called the Special Archive, and only researchers cleared by the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti or State Security Committee) could study documents there. I did not have security clearance and worked there as a representative of the International Commission on the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg. I had no access to the catalogues of the Special Archive and simply submitted to the head of the archive lists of names of foreigners who had been in Soviet captivity, in whom I was interested in connection with the Wallenberg case. After a while this man brought me archival personal files of most (but not all) of the listed people and I studied the files in his office. As a result, since I did not see catalogues, I do not have archival numbers for all files, and in the text I refer to the file of a particular person without a file number.

There was a similar situation with the Vladimir Prison Archive. In the autumn of 1990, members of the International Wallenberg Commission were allowed to study archival prisoner cards (each prisoner had a special card filled in when he or she was brought to the prison). From a file (kartoteka in Russian) of about 60–70,000 cards a few hundred cards of political prisoners kept in Vladimir Prison in the 1940–50s were selected and filmed. Later a computer database was created and a printout of the card records is kept in the Memorial Society Archive in Moscow, which I used in this book.