Memo.data

A hackathon based on Memorial's data

Memorial has collected numerous databases during the years of its work: Victims of political terror in the Soviet Union, a general database and The list of state security agency workers, addresses and descriptions of repressive institutions in Moscow, Moscow Oblast and on the ex-territories of USSR, written testimonies of repression victims.

Most of this data has been published by Memorial in form of books, however not much was published in form of websites or computer apps. Our database is used by projects such as open list, gulag.online, october30.name. We want more project such as these.

Because of this we invited programmers, geographers, and designers to hackathon Memo.data.

Data for the hackathon

lists.memo.ru
List of political repression victims. Currently it is the main database of political repression victims which includes more than 2.6 million people. It uses regional books of memory, the materials of state archives, individual databases and the archive of Memorial as its main source.
Database in spreadspreadsheet form (.csv) on Github
Database in .json format

mos.memo.ru
Executed in Moscow, muscovites from lists.memo.ru database, grouped together by their last address of residence. Also available in MySQL format.
Database in spreadspreadsheet form (.csv) on Github

stalin.memo.ru
Stalin's execution lists. The database with a possibility to see regional lists is based on 383 lists of people sentenced to death by the members of the politburo in 1937-1938 and includes 44.5 thousand names. Also available in MySQL format.
Disc image with application for Windows

nkvd.memo.ru
Personnel list of state security agencies of USSR in 1935-1939. Includes names and biographies of more than 41 thousand NKVD workers collected using state awards from that period. It allows you to search people by their place of work, their rank and awards. Members of the agency who were repressed are highlighted. The database is published in MediaWiki format, unprocessed data can be accessed by writing to the authors of the index list.
The description of the spreadsheet forms
designations.cvs spreadsheet
ranks.cvs spreadsheet
prizes.cvs spreadsheet

"The system of concentration camps in  USSR" textbook
Main information on more than 470 camp managements in USSR; titles,  subordinations, time of existence, number of people, production force, heads and etc.
Data spreadsheet on Github

topos.memo.ru
"Topography of Terror. Moscow": addresses and descriptions of objects, associated with the history of political repression in Moscow and the Moscow oblast. Contains the description of more than 740 locations, organized by thematic layers.
Geographical data of the “Topography” (.json)

tastorona.su
Memoires of ostarbeiters "The Other Side". Oral history archive of ostarbeiters and war prisoners represented in about 300 interviews in Memorial’s oral history center. The archive contains thematic, geographic and names indexes.

ost-db.tastorona.su
Database of soviet citizens forced forced labor in Germany. It has information from more than 320 thousand letters of ex-ostarbeiters sent to Memorial. The information is being verified by volunteers.
List of toponyms and their synonyms

Wiki-version of "Chronicle of current events"
Web-publication of the samizdat human rights bulletin "Chronicle of Current Events" with pointers. Texts of the "Chronicle" without the pointers: hts.memo.ru

List of International Memorial databases

Participants projects

Automatic Identification of the Repressed Families
(Iliya Voronzov, Gleb Suvorov)
How to find children and parents in the lists.memo.ru database?
Presentation
Code

Headlining the professions of the repressed
(Denis Kiryanov, Yulia Zinovoeva, Maya Zhigalova, Polina Shirokshina, Samer Fatayri)
How to unite all 500 thousand professions mentioned in the lists.memo.ru database?
Presentation
Code

Houses on the Shooting List
(Nikolai Voroshilov, Anna Kovalenko, Yulia Lukyanova)
What unites the executed residents of the 10 houses in the mos.memo.ru database?
Presentation

Quiz/Test: What if You Lived in 1937
(Boris Klus, Nikita Safonov, Nikita Kryazhev, Olga Khokhryakova)
Test, answers to the question which will tell you about your possible fate during the Great Purge period
Presentation

Your Alien
(Yulia Korcha)
An attempt to show data on the deportation of nations from 1939 to 1945 on an interactive map
Presentation

Researching Letters From Camps
(Andrei Kalmykov, Margarita Kozhekina, Alexandra Malafeeva, Timur Surkhaev)
An analysis of 5 thousand deciphered letters of GULAG prisoners in Memorial archive
Presentation

Strange/Productive questions on the database search of the repressed
(Sergei Bondarenko, Anna Lvova, Yulia Tuvaleva, Vlad Lavrichenko)
Various types of inquiries in the database of 2.8 million people. What can be learned from incomplete and unequally distributed data? How to see not only the statistics of the repressed, but also the level of study of that theme (by periodization, by region and etc.)?
Presentation

Alexandr Petukhov worked on the tools for working eith the database lists.memo.ru
Code

If you’re interested in any of the described databases or the participants projects and you would like to get to familiarize yourself more thoroughly write to [email protected].

Partners
Faculty of Communication, Media and Design High School of Economics Теплица социальных технологий