From the Preface and Notes:
This group of documents comprises 62 files. Part of them was declassified in 2006. For this we want to thank head of Volgograd Oblast Ministry of Interior Affairs Chief Administration, General-Lieutenant A.N. Kravchenko and the staff of IC UVD…
The lists’ condition varies substantially. Lists on town residents (Stalingrad, Kamyshin, Sarepta) were typed on a typewriter and are easy to read; lists on village residents are very worn. Some of those are also typed, but the majority was handwritten in pencil or ink. In many cases the text is fading and almost impossible to read. While working with the lists, the following should be taken into consideration:
1. If the name was impossible to read, there is a note нрзб. (illegible). If the name was abbreviated and it was not possible to decipher it, it is typed the way it appears in the original, for example patronymic names “Ал.”, “Ив.” and others. In some cases not all the fields in the original were filled in.
2. The names are spelled the way they appear in the original documents even if they were misspelled. For example. Ema instead of Emma, Elma instead of Alma, etc.In some lists additional notes were found. They included places of residence in case when people from several locations were found on the same list; number of luggage pieces people were allowed to take with them; reasons for heads of families’ absence at the time of the registration; reasons for not been deported (illnesses, business trips, in some cases – Russian wives). It is often indicated in the lists that family heads were in the RKKA (Workers and Peasants Red Army). It meant that at the time of the deportation they were participating in combat.
Further we present brief description of individual deportation files. Documents found in the files allowed us to establish such information as a the loading point, route, train number, and the final destination station. If a family is found in a list, but the route is not specified, it means that the data is absent. It might be useful to study files on neighboring villages assuming that residents of those were deported to the same destination. Lists on some villages are found in more than one delo (file), so we recommend that users look carefully through the list of settlements in every file. Contents of every file differ: some have documents on how people were transferred from one NKVD official to another, and detailed reports on the procedures, others have no such documents.