The article focuses on the analysis of the character references presented by village councils and boards of collective farms in the Vinnytsia region for those people who were subject to exile to remote regions of the USSR in accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the eviction of the individuals for evading agricultural work and leading an antisocial parasitic lifestyle from the territory of the Ukrainian SSR” of February 21, 1948. The research methodology is based on the combination of general scientific (abstraction, analysis and synthesis, generalization) and specific historical (historical and critical, historical and systemic, concrete and problematic, quantitative) methods with the principles of historicism, consistency and scientific nature. The paper’s scientific novelty lies in the analysis of the previously unexplored archival sources and documents which served as the basis for exiling the villagers to special settlements for 8 years. Conclusions. Materials of character references confirm the practice of permanent coercive methods of regimes in relation to the rural population that refused to work in collective farms primarily due to the lack of interest in the results of labor, minimal payment, or its complete absence.