No statute of limitations

On May 9, our country celebrated another anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the seventy-fourth. Those alive today honored the memory of those who gave their lives for future generations, for the sake of making that terrible war the last on our land. It was those generations of our compatriots who bore all the hardships and horrors of the war on their shoulders – both at the front and in the rear. But in Belarus, there was another category of the population that suffered from the war and survived the war years under the aggressor's rule: those who lived in the territory occupied by the invaders, and who remained to live there not by their own will. It's just that the Red Army of the Soviet Union could not protect them.

As in all countries during the war, these people behaved differently: some joined the partisans, the underground resistance, some simply survived and adapted, and some began to help the occupiers. It is about the latter that we will talk.

In the Criminal Code of the BSSR of 1928, there was Article 65, which provided for responsibility for assisting in any way a foreign state that was at war with the USSR. This crime was classified as a crime against the state or, as they were called then, counter-revolutionary.

According to the norms of the Resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus of 06.06.1991 "On the Procedure for Rehabilitating Victims of Political Repressions of the 20s-80s in the Republic of Belarus," persons who committed this crime are not subject to rehabilitation, provided that their guilt in this is indisputably proven by the materials of the relevant criminal cases.

People who lived in the occupied territory of Belarus during the war survived in different ways. That is why many went to work organized by the occupation authorities, were forced under threat of punishment, up to execution, to perform other duties. But there were others who offered their services themselves, showed initiative and zeal, sometimes even loyalty to the new government.

With regard to the latter category of citizens of the BSSR, law enforcement agencies conducted investigations after the liberation of the territory of Belarus, and in case of confirmation of their voluntary and

for their active cooperation with the occupation authorities, they were brought to criminal responsibility under the aforementioned article of the Criminal Code of that time.

The archives of the state security bodies of our republic hold many examples of such behavior of citizens and their subsequent responsibility for it. But there were also examples of improper assessment of the actions of such persons, so to speak, with an "overreach".

When considering the appeal of a resident of the city of Vitebsk for the rehabilitation of his grandfather and grandmother, the prosecutor's office of the Vitebsk region established that the applicant's grandfather was unjustly convicted by a military tribunal in 1945 for treason under Article 63-1 of the Criminal Code of the BSSR of 1928, although he did not commit the actions listed in this article.

In accordance with the disposition of Article 63-1 of the Criminal Code of the BSSR of 1928, treason was recognized as actions committed by citizens of the USSR to the detriment of the military power of the USSR, its state independence or territorial integrity, such as: espionage, disclosure of military or state secrets, defection to the enemy, escape or flight abroad.

The guilt of the convicted person consisted in the fact that, while working as the director of an orphanage, he identified children of Jewish nationality, handed them over to the German authorities, sent children to work in Germany, and organized pro-fascist agitation in the orphanage.

Therefore, the prosecutor of the Vitebsk region protested the verdict of the military tribunal in terms of qualifying the actions of the orphanage director as treason, in the supervisory procedure to the presidium of the Vitebsk Regional Court, which agreed with the protest arguments and reclassified the convicted person's actions to Article 65 of the Criminal Code of the BSSR of 1928.

Of course, for the grandson of the convicted person, who asked for the full rehabilitation of his grandfather, this is not the satisfaction he wanted, but still, his grandfather is no longer considered a traitor to the motherland, although he did contribute to the occupiers to some extent.

But the Law must be just, without a statute of limitations.

Senior Assistant Prosecutor of the Region
for Supervision of Legislation Enforcement
on State Security
V.N. Belous