Newly published collection of documents on Soviet persecution of Czech minority in Ukraine

Four Czech and Ukrainian historians and archivists have presented a newly published collection of documents entitled "The Great Terror in Ukraine 1937-1938: Persecution of the Czech Minority".  The book is the result of several years of Czech-Ukrainian cooperation, which began in 2008 with the signing of a framework agreement on cooperation between the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the State Security Service of Ukraine. The publication contains a representative sample of hundreds of annotated documents published in the Russian original and a Czech translation, which show the form of Soviet state terror applied against the Czech minority in Ukraine. Among the documents are materials relating to the largest mass execution of people of Czech origin on the territory of the Soviet Union on 28 September 1938 in Zhitomir, when eighty people were executed, including 78 Czechs.