Kherson State University

The regional commission for the rehabilitation of victims of repressions of the communist totalitarian regime of 1917–1991 has resumed its work in the Kherson region. Its key goal is to restore the honorable name of people who became victims of the Soviet penal system. At the first meeting of the renewed commission, the case of Serhiy Fedorovych Lavirko was considered, the story of which was presented by his great-granddaughter.
The 37-year-old man was arrested in 1937. Absurd accusations of “counter-revolutionary” agitation and criticism of the Stalinist constitution became the basis for the sentence. An extrajudicial body – the so-called “troika” of the NKVD – sent him to camps for 10 years without the right to defense. He died six months later.
Only 27 years later did a Soviet court overturn the sentence “due to the absence of elements of a crime,” but the family never saw full rehabilitation.
Under the chairmanship of Dementiy Bely, the members of the commission studied the archival criminal case in detail and unanimously formulated substantiated proposals for the National Rehabilitation Commission to recognize Serhiy Lavirko as rehabilitated.