The materials of the collection refer to the repressed nobility, which after the October Revolution was officially outlawed as a class of "former." The realities of life under the Bolsheviks described in questionnaires and letters, the circumstances of the arrest, the course of the investigation, condemnation, subsequent persecution and humiliation in places of detention and exile give a picture of the life of the "former," being invaluable evidence of that terrible era. Questionnaires of prisoners of the Butyrka prison (from 1918 to 1922), letters from prisons, concentration camps and links sent by prisoners or their relatives to Pompolit or personally E.P. Peskova, as well as their statements to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Prosecutor's Office, the OGPU-NKVD or personally Stalin (from 1922 to 1937).