The book “Crimes of Communism in Estonia — Supplementary Register 1940–1990”

In August a fresh book produced by us was published: “CRIMES OF COMMUNISM IN ESTONIA — SUPPLEMENTARY REGISTER 1940–1990”, series number 8/2.

Our lead contractor Raul Juurma was responsible for the entire book layout, tidying the register, statistical analysis of the processed data, photo editing and communication with the printing house.

Why a supplementary register is a job of its own

A supplementary register complements volumes published earlier, which means it has to match them exactly: the same record format, the same abbreviation system, the same column layout. The reader has to be able to move between the old and the new volume without having to relearn how a record is read every time.

Tidying the register itself is a bigger job than the layout. The data arrives from different sources and in different shapes — some typewritten, some in tables, some amended by hand. Before it can go on the page it has to be harmonised, duplicates found and checks made that the same person does not appear in two forms. Only from a tidied dataset can the statistical overview presented in the book be produced.

The same series

We have laid out other volumes in the same series as well: “Brief Records for the Memorial to the Victims of Communism 1940–1991” and “Register of Those Deported from Estonia 1945–1953”.

You can browse the book here.