REPRESSION AGAINST WOMEN — UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (BASED ON ARCHIVAL INVESTIGATION OF TEOFILIA VOYSLAVSKA’S CASE)

Abstract

This article is the research on the biography of Teofilia Voyslavska, the teacher of the Polish Pedagogical Institute in Kyiv and an immigrant from Poland, that is based on the archival-investigation profile. The repression of the scientific and pedagogical intelligentsia and representatives of the Polish national minority in Ukraine in 1930 is outlined from the scope of biographical research. Teofilia Voyslavska was born in  Warsaw in  a  wealthy Jewish family. In 1923 she moved to  the  USSR and received Soviet citizenship. She studied and graduate from  high school and worked as  a  teacher of Polish language at  Polish Institute in Kyiv. In August 1937 Teofilia Voyslavska was arrested on charges of  belonging to  an  anti-Soviet Polish Military Organization and counter-revolutional activities. The  investigation was carried out by  a simplified system, only two interrogations were held, witnesses were not questioned, evidence of guilt were not presenting. In October 1937 special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR issued a judgment — 10 years of corrective labor camps. She died next year in the Novosibirsk camp. Her orphaned 9-year-old son was sent to a special boarding school for children of the repressed. In 1957 due to the retrial she was posthumously rehabilitated for lack of evidence. The  criminal proceeding against Teofilia  Voyslavskа was conducted under the  so-called “album” NKVD operation against the Polish national minority.