Barents professor detained by FSB
Mikhail Suprun, the famous professor of history of the Pomor State University in Arkhangelsk, was detained and interrogated Wednesday. FSB accuse him of disclosure of confidential information.
Professor Suprun is well known among historians in the Barents Region. He was one of the participants of the German-Russian project of publishing the “Book of Memory” about the ethnic Germans repressed during the Stalin’s period of the USSR.
The newspaper Novaya Gazeta writes that the FSB investigators say Suprun has illegally copied personal data of the Russian Germans in the archives of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He then took this information and sent it abroad claims FSB, the successor of KGB.
The production and publishing of the “Book of Memory” is a project by the Pomor State Univeristy in Arkhangelsk.
Professor Mikhail Suprun is known as a researcher interested in the history of the Second World War in the north. The professor has participated in several conferences and cross-border historical projects within the Barents Region.
He is the author of many books devoted to the Northern Convoys, liberation of the Norwegian county of Finnmark by the Soviet troops in 1944 and Russian prisoners of war in Norway.
Suprun is one of the members of the Editorial board of the website Lend-Lease of air force to the Soviet Union during World War II.
Suprun took part in several Barents projects and was a receiver of several grants from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat and the General Consulate of Norway in Murmansk.
