"Everyone was killed in a row"

Exactly 79 years ago, on July 24, 1938, 77 people were shot on the outskirts of Kansk: 76 Estonians and one Latvian. The executions continued all summer. Another day of the mass execution fell on August 22: then another 70 Estonians who lived in the Rybinsk district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory were shot.

For several decades, nothing was known about the fate of these and hundreds of other people. The relatives did not know where and under what circumstances they died, where they were buried. Most likely, they would not have known, if not for one person - Oswald Egorovich Bogdanov , the descendant of one of the executed Estonians. He witnessed the arrest of his father and only after many years, in the 80s, he learned that his father died not in a camp from sclerosis of the vessels of the brain (as was written in the certificate issued to the family), but was shot on July 24 in Kansk. With this, his huge research work began, which lasted almost 20 years, until the death of Oswald Yegorovich in 2006. The result of this work was the book of memory of the Rybinsk region - "Guilty without guilt." Thanks to this study, the fate of almost 1000 of its residents repressed - not only Estonians, but also Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians are now known.

First category limit

There were many Estonians in the Rybinsk district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory: those who came to Siberia at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries, wanting to build their economy on uninhabited lands, and those who were brought here later - according to Stolypin reform.

When the repression began, the farm was burned to the ground, the families scattered on collective farms

“Daddy's relatives came from Estonia to Siberia in 1898,” says Elena Osvaldovna Bogdanova , daughter of Oswald Yegorovich, the granddaughter of the repressed Estonian, a resident of the Rybinsky district. - When Estonians move to Orthodoxy, most of the surname changed: it is painfully difficult for the Russian ear. So we have all the descendants of the Estonians here - Ivanov, Timofeevs, Bogdanovs, Rodionovs ... The immigrants gave lifting - 25 rubles. For this money, they could buy, for example, a cow - for 3 rubles, and for 5 rubles - a horse, the rest went to acquisition. And they were given the forest for construction. That generation of Estonians built here the Kabritsky farm. About 150 people lived on the farm. And as in their homeland they plowed, the same way here. They worked a lot, they had solid houses, everything was equipped in the mind. The cheese and sausages themselves did. And when the repressions began, the farm was burned to the ground, the families were scattered over collective farms, and 2-3 Estonian families tried to distribute one collective farm into one collective farm.

Now you often hear stories that people, even in the most difficult times, were able to at least partially preserve traditions, way of life, native language. But Elena Bogdanova claims: there was no question of this.

- What do you! They lived like everyone else. In the Estonians from Kabritsky, everyone was burned, destroyed, driven into collective farms naked and barefoot, what traditions there are! The same language. Grandma and grandfather spoke, although with an accent, but in Russian. And the next generations have already forgotten the native language. Or pretended to be forgotten. And then executions began.

We only later learned that we were not driving anyone to any camps, killed right there

-Grandfather was taken in February 1938. Immediately after celebrations in honor of February 23, at the same time they also celebrated the launch of the new electric line - he laid it, ”says Bogdanova. - He returned home - he was already waiting. They said - they take it for a while. But he never returned. Then we only found out that they did not take anyone to any camps, killed right there. Dad told me about the repressed ones: the first wave was the Russians, then, the second wave, the Estonians went, then the Latvians and the Lithuanians. In the 38th year, everyone was killed precisely on a national basis-there was no other, right there all the peasants. The three sits - everything, shooting. They did not understand anything. One Estonian family adopted a 14-year-old orphans who got to Siberia from Kazakhstan. They shot him. They killed in bucks, buried, threw the earth. The inhabitants of Kansk were afraid to go to the outskirts of the city - the shots were heard continuously.

So many years have passed, and before my eyes there is still a picture of our date. A kerosene lamp is on, three arrested are sitting at the table. Encavedeshniki in dark blue overcoats stand and sit on the sides and behind

But how about the arrest of his father, his brothers and the 17-year-old nephew recalls Oswald Egorovich Bogdanov himself: “Closer to midnight, we were searched for at home. All documents were taken away, the photo of his father and the hunting rifle with supplies. My mother and I were allowed to meet with my father. Mom took a lot of money and we went to the office of the department. For so many years, the picture of our date is still in front of my eyes, three arrested ones are sitting at the table and sitting in the back of a dark blue tires I only managed to say: "I will even say goodbye to the house tomorrow.

In 1956, the Bogdanov family received a certificate of death of her father and a reference of rehabilitation.

“It was stated that Yegor Fedorovich died in the Magadan camp in 1942 from sclerosis of the vessels of the brain,” says Elena Bogdanova. - The other fellow villagers received similar certificates: everywhere the cause of death is named diseases: pneumonia of the lungs, heart attack, intestinal cancer, meningitis ..

And only with the onset of perestroika, in the late 80s, Oswald Yegorovich (he was then at 60) after a long correspondence with different authorities, he managed to find out that his father was not in any camp at all-he, along with his brothers, nephew and other relatives and villagers arrested later, were shot five months later-all in the same day, July 24, 1938, in Kansk.

Oswald Bogdanov was not a historian by education: in 1947 he graduated from agricultural engineering in the Rybinsk district, where he lived all his life. He worked at first as an agronomist, then an economist, and retired from the office of the accountant.

“I honestly admit, at first I had no intention of looking for victims of repressions throughout the Rybinsky district. I did not know the scale of repression. I only knew that my relatives and my fellow countrymen did not return home after arrest,” he writes. “Where to start? From the White Leaf? I connected it to the search for relatives of the farmers, which I knew. I could not fall asleep in one day: the cute persons and their execution are distributed quickly.

At that time, to which these records (the beginning of the 2000s) include Oswald Yegorovich already managed to establish the fate of 607 people who lived in the Rybinsky district. Including 148 Estonians, 33 Latvians, 13 Poles, 8 Chinese, 3 Austrians, 3 Tatars, 2 Germans, one Uzbek and one Romanian, 395 Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. "Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Chinese, Austrians, Tatars, Germans and Romanians were arrested during the second wave of repression, in 1938," Bogdanov writes

- As soon as the restructuring began, Oswald Egorovich almost earlier than us began to collect information about the repressed Rybinsk district. He began with a search for his father. Then he found out the fate of relatives, close friends of the family. Bogdanov was looking for relatives of those people about whom there were only fleeting evidence - often a surname and nothing more. “On the chain”, the data surfaced about someone ... ”says Alexei Babiy , chairman of the Krasnoyarsk branch of the Memorial Society. - Oswald Egorovich acted "the method of folk correspondence." And in a certain sense, he went on than we: did not wait for the provision of information from somewhere, but he himself mined it. We can say that he spurred the process of rehabilitation of the repressed. He writes a request to the organs - they begin to move there, restore data. The uniqueness of his work is also that he carefully and meticulously collected inquiries: when exactly the man was sent to the camp, where and from what he died. We were no longer enough for this work. Shortly before his death in 2006, Oswald Egorovich handed over his entire archive to his daughter. I asked Elena Osvaldovna these folders and continuously scanned and digitized them for two months. This is a unique array of documents that have yet to be processed.

According to Alexei Babi, made by Bogdanov is comparable to the work of the regional branches of the Memorial. Here are just a few stories of repressed Estonians from the Rybinsk region, who were collected by bit by the Oswald Bogdanov:

Raud Daniil Petrovich , Estonian. He worked as a locksmith in the village of new paces, illiterate. Five children. Accused of participating in a nationalist rebel organization. Shot on August 22, 1938, the burial place is unknown. The family was informed that Raud was sentenced to 10 years of camps and died in 1942 from pneumonia.

Uybo Gottard Andreevich , Estonian. He worked as the director of the Novopechersk school, the family - his wife and six children. He was accused of espionage, shot on August 22, 1938 in Kansk. The burial place is unknown. The family was informed that Gottard Ubo died in 1943 in places of imprisonment from the liver abscess.

Valdes Yakov Timofeevich , Estonian, worked as an elevator driver. Accused of espionage and counter -revolutionary agitation. Shot on August 22, 1938, the family was told that he died in a camp in 1944 from meningitis.

Oswaldo Bogdanov often managed to find relatives of the repressed Estonians and supplement their biographies with family memories. And often, on the contrary, the descendants of the Estonians who died in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in their search at least some information about their dead relatives themselves went to Oswald. Here is an excerpt from the letter of the daughter of Yakov Valdes, Alidia Yakovlevna: “The dad was taken right from work. There was a search, took his documents and photographs. My mother and I wore him programs for a month, but the Black's neighbor (her husband also took it) said that they were taken away on the fourth day. It turns out that she was waiting for her Gregory at the station and saw them. They will go out to work at night, and I ran away from home, left for a day at the prison, I thought it and prove it to everyone that he continued to correctly and devotely to wait. "A capable girl, but you can’t learn further."

Alexei Babiy says: those mass executions were explained by the plan with a plan.

Of all those people who were massively killed, spies are like a ballerina. All of them were peasants, for the most part - illiterate or completely illiterate

- Of all those people who were massively killed, spies are like a ballerina from me. All of them were peasants, for the most part - illiterate or completely illiterate. Few have a connection with the relatives who remained in Estonia. In families-six to seven children. But the authorities had to fulfill a plan for the disclosure of espionage - they fulfilled. On January 31, 1938, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks gave the Krasnoyarsk Territory an additional limit - 1,500 people in the first category and 500 people in the second. This means: another 1,500 people were allowed to be shot, and 500 to send to the camps, ”says Babi.

"This is my pain"

Oswald Egorovich Bogdanov lived all his life in the Rybinsk district, in the village of Kamala. By the beginning of the 2000s, he prepared the first version of his "Book of Memory of the Rybinsk District". And in 2004, his book "Guilty without guilt" was published. Bogdanov also participated in the creation of the regional book "Memory of the victims of political repression", he dreamed of eating a monument repressed in the Rybinsky district, but did not have time. He dreamed that a memorial would be created in Kansk at the site of mass executions, but also did not wait.

The television men came to Kamala a film about his father. They caught some drunkard on the street and let's breathe in him: "Who is Bogdanov?" They specifically searched for such a thing ...

“We have a house in Kamal, his mother was given as an excellent student of popular education, a well -deserved teacher of Russia, this is our tribal nest,” says Elena Bogdanova, who has been living in Krasnoyarsk for many years. - After the death of parents, we do not sell him. You can’t sell relatives and friends at home, it is not good. Although in Kamal we are not so often and visit. The village is dying. Now only the CES - the central power networks remained. The boiler house was like a monument - it was laid by prisoners. But everyone was dismantled. In Kamal, mostly old people now live. Of the "city -forming enterprises" - the boiler room itself and the nursing home: it occupies the first floor of a two -story building, and the second is empty. Now the ownerless houses in Kamal buy dysfunctional families on maternity capital or drunkards and drug addicts just instill. No one stores any story, of course. And recently it became so offended by me: the television men came to Kamaly a film about my father. They caught some drunkard on the street and let's breathe in him: "Who is Bogdanov?" They specifically searched for such a thing ...

The name Bogdanov is not very known in Estonia. Elena Osvaldovna maintains a connection with the relatives there, corresponds (by the way, not so many Estonian families returned from Siberia to the historical homeland in the post -Soviet era). But at the "official" level, she says, there is almost no information about Bogdanov and the fate of the "Siberian", "Rybinsk" Estonians.

- Already more than ten years ago, the Ambassador of Estonia came to the anniversary of the national community in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Dad met him, proposed to publish a book about the fate of the Estonians who lived in the Rybinsk district. They told him: only if there is a preface about how bad the Estonians are now living in Russia now, ”says Elena Bogdanova. - So the pope almost did not have enough heart attack. He would never have gone to say something bad about the Soviet regime. I always told him: dad, how can you support the Communists? They shot your father and brothers. And he to me: "This is not your pain, but mine." Interesting business! Are they not relatives? I don’t know why he reasoned like that. Maybe because he grew up here ... his whole life has passed here ...