"When I was arrested ..."

October 30 in Russia is the day of memory of victims of political repression. In different cities of the country, memorial shares are held. Their goal is to prevent the fate of innocent Soviet citizens who were shot, sent to the forced labor camps or subjected to other types of punishment. Researchers have long established that their score is in millions. However, not all citizens know that in their families, representatives of older generations were repressed. In the best case, close or distant relatives have information only about the very fact of arrest, deportation or death.

This is one of the reasons that now the request of society for tyrants is growing. Therefore, a monument to Ivan the Terrible in Orel became possible. Therefore, still not in the largest cities, monuments of Stalin began to appear.

Monument to Stalin in Surgut

Moreover, in Rostov-on-Don, at the Academic Theater of Drama named after Gorky in the spring of 2017 they promise to put a performance about Stalin . The theater artistic director Alexander Pudin defines the genre of the future production as a "biographical drama" and does not hide his sympathy for the main character:

It seems to me that today, when the country from all sides is clamped by the enemy vise and what was in the prewar years with the Soviet Union is repeated, the need for a bright leader, a leader who could unite the nation and respond to the challenges that he abandoned time, is acutely felt. The performance is seen as the confession of the hero from the rostrum of the mausoleum. A hero who is ready to appear before the judgment of God and the court of time. In fact, the monk monarch, ascetic, a man of a very complex disposition, who chose the path of selfless and disinterested service to his fatherland will appear before us.

From the other end of the country, from the Komi Republic, these days came that, in August, at the entrance to the women's correctional colony in the village of Mikun, a commemorative board was established to one of the worst concentration camps and executioners who worked in it. Not embarrassed at all, they wrote on the memorial sign:

"On August 16, 1937, the construction of a correctional colony began at this place (camp No. 19" Vod discordantlag - Mikunskaya "). The commemorative board was installed as a sign of respect and gratitude to first builders and employees - the creators of the colony."

Higher -level government officials, if they do not express publicly approval by such initiatives, certainly do not interfere with them. The idea that for the sake of a strong state it is not a sin to sacrifice some percentages of the population is imposed gradually, but successfully.

It is symptomatic that in Samara the city hall refused to coordinate the application for the day of memory of the victims of political repression of the mourning rally by the memorial to dead in the years of the Stalinist terror. The monument is not erected in a random place - in the Gagarin Park, on the site of the executions of political prisoners. Earlier, the event was held here on October 30 annually. However, now for the head of the Department of Public Relations of the City Hall of Sergey Samartsev, this is just a mass recreation area. The official explained his refusal with the following considerations:

"Carrying out mass events using prefabricated structures can interfere with pedestrians, participants in events, and the threat of life and health of citizens."

Samara human rights activists had to limit themselves to the laying of flowers to the memorial.

The bacchanalia of non -postalinism confronts that part of society that is convinced of the viciousness of the phrases "the forest chop - chips fly." The victims of repression are not chips and not a faceless mass. It is noteworthy that in recent years, projects have become more and more in demand, where the repressed are called name. It doesn’t matter if these were famous figures or, as they say, "ordinary citizens." Terror covered all segments of the population.

First of all, of course, we should mention the action "Return of the names" , which had passed last day for the tenth time near the Solovetsky stone. The projects “Immortal Barak” and “The Last Address” , which opened in the “Memorial” in Moscow, the 58th and Kostroma exhibition dedicated to Varlam Shalamov, are related to this event.

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Lyudmila Sadovnikova about a series of interviews with the victims of the Gulag

In the State Museum of the History of the Gulag, the main event on the day of memory of victims of political repression is a continuous, a single stream of showing a video interview. There are already more than a hundred of them in the collection of the museum studio of visual anthropology. According to the head of the studio Lyudmila Sadovnikova , work on the project "My Gulag" began three years ago:

- Then there were only a few people. Now several filming groups are already involved in the project. We slowly but surely write down the memories of the victims of repression. Slowly - because it is quite difficult to find people who agree to tell.

- Why? Does they still live in the fear of the release of the publication of such information?

- There are different reasons. I think that not everyone lives in all. But there are a huge number of people who are members of the families of those who passed the camps. Here they are even more inclined to move away from this topic. The fact is that their parents, leaving the camps, were configured to protect their children from the same fate. In general, all this strategy for the survival of a person who passed through the camp was built in silence. And the survival strategy of people who were witnesses of arrest or imprisonment was also sometimes built in silence. It was the most obvious and simple way to protect yourself and your family from further repression.

We have an interview with several people whose parents did not tell them anything after liberation. Never nothing! They forever said - quieter, quieter, quieter. Not only emotional motives worked. In addition, during liberation, people very often gave a signal of non -disclosure of what happened to them in camps or prisons. Often the details come up only now. For example, my great -grandfather, who was published in 1939 by an acquittal (then there was such a wave of excuses), gave a subscription that he would not disclose.

However, there are families in which this knowledge was. And in others they tried not to embitger, not to set up their own children against the authorities.

-I believe, first of all, so that the children do not bother somewhere on the side of the superfluous.

- Of course, so as not to be blessed. At the same time, parents often visited the camps literally dictated to children the choice of profession. They insisted that it be useful in the camp of specialty. For example, a doctor or economist. Because all the humanities - both scientists and teachers - "were in the forestry. They died there." Without saying a word, several of our respondents reported this. We need a profession that will help a person survive in the camp! You can imagine what an altered consciousness of people who survived repressions! They have already prepared their children, who have nothing to do with this, they were preparing for the fact that they could potentially be in the camp. Once, they should survive there.

- With whom do you most often record an interview? With the descendants of those who passed the Gulag? Or is it with direct participants in the events?

- We have a sufficiently large number of people who themselves were in custody. As a rule, these are people who were arrested after the war or for the first time during the war - until 1956 they could be in camps. These people themselves carried out all the hardships and can tell about them. You know, because many of them came to the Gulag History Museum on their own initiative. One of the very first was Yuri Lvovich Fitelgolts . True, at first he had other goals. He wanted a book of his poems, who talk about his conclusion, to somehow promote. But he immediately agreed to cooperate with us.

Many of those who gave us interviews are regular participants in the rally at the Solovetsky stone. In general, these are often people with an active life position. In this regard, I want to mention Alexei Georgievich Nesterenko . His father was shot in 1937. And the son learned about this only when he entered the institute. For him, this was such a shock that he devotes his whole present life to the struggle for the building of the Supreme Military Collegium on 23 of the Supreme Military Collegium, a museum was organized. We are lifting all the shares that he holds at this "shot house."

Or here is the amazing heroine Lyudmila Alekseevna Khachaturian . It so happened that I called her to ask her - whether she agrees to give an interview. At first she said - no, I was sick, it is still unknown how to continue. Of course, we are people who do not want or cannot talk to us, try not to disturb. But suddenly, after a few months, she finds me herself and says that everything is in order with health and she wants to give an interview: "This is my duty!". Many, by the way, are aware of this precisely as a duty. They go to this, although it is sometimes very painful to remember the past. After all, each time a person is experiencing everything again, maybe he never remembered such a difficult experience or never spoke to anyone. Sometimes we see that our interlocutor pronounces out loud for the first time. This is a serious test, and still they go to it.

The age of our respondents is from 83 to 95 years. Having lived such a huge life, seeing everything that happened to the Soviet Union, observing what is happening now in our country, a person with this huge knowledge tells his story. I regard such behavior as a feat.

- As you know, the last Soviet political prisoners left the camps already during perestroika. You said that, basically, your respondents are people over 80. Those who have become prisoners at a young age in the 80s are now much smaller. Are they involved in your project?

- No. We do not take these people to take these people. We still have a time frame associated with the Gulag system. True, interviews with people who got to prison or went to the camp after the twentieth congress were recorded. That is, a few years after the official termination of the Gulag. Such records also accumulate. But, I repeat, while we are trying to find as much as possible and interview the people who found this Stalin Gulag.

- Your museum is in Moscow. Does this mean that the vast majority of your Muscovites respondents?

- Yes, that is so. True, when possible, we go to other cities. But this is, as a rule, near Moscow, sometimes St. Petersburg. Alas, for each expedition of each film crew, financial resources are needed. But recently, a very good undertaking arose. Increasingly, residents of other cities, having been in Moscow, come to the Gulag museum, and then they begin to record and send us interviews with their relatives. Moreover, they write these interviews as we ask. We give the necessary technical consultations and send our questionnaires.

This new practice is very valuable. For example, there was an opportunity to get stories of people who survived collectivization. In principle, there are very few such materials. District ordinary people, as a rule, did not leave any memories. In addition, we are talking about the early period, about the time in 1929 to 1930. And so we find such heroes who remember this collectivization. And their relatives send us a video from different cities. From these interviews we mount small films.

In any case, whoever the record was made, we once decided for ourselves that our archive should consist of large biographical interviews. And we are not just writing a conversation. We are still trying to record materials related to the life of our heroes. We leave with them to such places that are memorable for them. This may be the place of arrest or house where a person lived when he or his parents was arrested. We still want to learn about the whole life of a person. As these events - the Gulag, the repression in his family or the camp in which he was - was influenced by him. And what a person has become now, after all these tragic events. All this valuable material forms the basis of the museum archive. It is available to both researchers and people whose profession is not related to the history of the 20th century, but who are simply interested in this time, ”says Lyudmila Sadovnikova .