Vladimir Varankin - Arrest, Execution, and Exoneration

Arrest, Execution, and Exoneration

During the night of 7 February 1938 — 8 February 1938 Varankin was arrested. They condemned him as an active member of Union Center, which never existed; he was accused with spying and sabotage, anti-soviet propaganda, plotting to murder Joseph Stalin and the like.

In April 1989 the Procurator's Office of the Soviet Union officially released the following information: Vladimir Valentinovich Varankin, born in 1902 in Nizhny Novgorod, member of the Communist Party since 1925, expelled from it because of a criminal accusation, director before the arrest of the 2nd Moscow Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, was sentenced by the Military college of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union to be executed by gunfire and to have all his possessions confiscated on the third of October 1938, for participation in a fascist spy organization "Sojuznyj Centr" (~Union Center), existing under the auspices of the Esperantist organization, with the aim of overthrowing Soviet power through espionage, sabotage, terrorist acts against the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. The verdict was carried out on the same day in Moscow without right of appeal or amnesty. All confiscated possessions, including manuscripts, letters, documents, archives, books were destroyed as "ideologically unuseful" and "without any current or historical value". The official answer says that "the place of burial is not indicated in the file".

Twenty years later the Military college of the Supreme Court looked into the matter. The investigation revealed that V. Varankin was convicted totally without basis, and in connection with that the Military college of the Supreme court of the Soviet Union nullified the verdict on 11 May 1957 and threw out the accusation as having an absolute lack of criminal content. V. Varankin was fully exonerated.