"I liked my grandfather." How granddaughter was looking for traces of repressed

Tatyana Litvinova, the granddaughter of the Red Army soldier arrested in 1942, had been waiting for grandfather's documents for three years. After the ships, requests and many months of waiting, she learned the main secret of the family and for the first time “met” her native grandfather through the protocols of his interrogations. The lawyers of the Memorial* (recognized as a foreign agent), which the Prosecutor General’s Office demands to eliminate the great work in this process.

“He went to war and went missing” is all that she knew about her native grandfather Fedor Shatalov all her life. Tatyana calls him a Grandfather’s giving and admits that she always tried to find out more about him: she asked her mother and grandmother, but mother Raisa She remembered almost nothing - she was only 4 years old when her father went to war.

"Let's write to red trades, what if they really help to find something?"

- Mom has two children's memories of his father. She remembers that he had a desktop with papers and pencils, and he allowed her to "draw" how she knew how. He also remembers how the snow piled up to the roof in winter, and he planted it on the edge of the roof. It was in Kazakhstan, ”says Tatyana Litvinova.

Tatyana’s grandmother, Anna Vasilievna , stopped all the talk about her grandfather like this: "My first husband was bad and the second good." The first was Fedor.

-I was a Soviet girl, a pioneer, I once read about the Red Rangers. I thought they could really find something. And I said to my grandmother: "Let's write to the red trades, suddenly they really help to find something?" If, as I thought, he went missing, then maybe where is alive? But the grandmother said: "Why?" - recalls Tatyana.

Perhaps Anna Vasilievna did not want to turn the past: before leaving for the front, Fedor ordered his wife to protect her children, and she could not: during the war, their son Nikolai died from pneumonia. Or maybe she was simply afraid: in September 1942, Fedor Shatalov was arrested by the special department of the NKVD and convicted by the military tribunal for "counter -revolutionary crimes" for 10 years. But Tatyana found this after the death of her grandmother.

-I suspect that my grandmother knew something. Most likely, she was very frightened and lost, because often after her husband her wife was also arrested. I fantasized a lot on this subject. But I think that if she swept the tracks so, then maybe this is the best that she could do. They could plant her, and my mother would have grown up in an orphanage, ”says Tatyana.

Search history

She began the new search for her grandfather in 2018. On the eve of May 9, I decided to check if her grandfather’s name was in the database. It turned out that there is.

-I thought I would suddenly find something, now such bases are good. And immediately found it in the database of repressed. But in another database, also under the name "Memorial", but the Russian Ministry of Defense, I found the information and document "report on irrevocable losses" from the front. There was a list of 70 people convicted by a tribunal, the last on this list was my grandfather. Then I realized what I would look for further, ”Tatyana recalls.

She wrote a letter to the International Memorial (recognized as a foreign agent): there she was given advice on what requests should be sent to receive not just unsubscribes, but full -fledged answers and documents. So she received a brief archival certificate from the FSB in the Kursk region about who the arrested Fedor Shatalov was.

"Fedor Ignatievich Shatalov, born in 1904, the village of Maly Shchigorschik, Russian, Russian, citizen of the USSR, education of the secondary special" hydraulic engineer and accountant, "the certificate says.

I am very grateful to the "memorial", because I myself would not have reached this information without them

According to Tatyana, Fedor was from a rich family, but from the age of 20, life began to "wind it around the country." He lived in the Donbass, and in Tashkent, and in Chkalov, and since 1936 - in Kazakhstan, at the Charskaya station. There he met Anna, Tatyana's grandmother. Officially, their marriage was not registered, but the couple had two children - the son of Nikolai and the daughter of Raisa. But in the summer of 1941, the family broke up: Fedor went to the front, Anna and her children left for her relatives in central Russia, and from there to the Komi Republic.

What exactly led her grandmother to the north, Tatyana does not know, and her mother Raisa no longer remembers - in her 83 years she hardly communicates and does not get out of bed. But it was the Syktyvkar Ministry of Justice that stood in the way of Tatyana Litvinova two years ago when she requested a copy of the documents of the interrogation of her grandfather in the FSB archive. In order to give them out, Tatyana had to prove that her mother Raisa was her dear daughter Fedor Shatalov. It was not easy to do, because after the war, grandmother Anna got married again, and the new husband adopted Raisa.

- According to the law, the adoptive parent is considered his own father, and the secret of adoption is unlimited. Even if the child signs the statement that he wants to receive documents, then all this is done only through the court under Russian laws, ”says Tatyana. - The lawyer of the Memorial helped me, the story stretched for a year. There were two civil proceedings in court. I am very grateful to the "memorial", because I myself would not have reached this information without them.

At the end of 2020, the Court of Court of Komi ordered the Ministry of Justice to issue a certificate of its adoption to Raisa Litvinov. So Tatyana was able to submit a request to the archives again, from where she answered that she had to wait again - the case of Fedor Shatalov was classified.

“I don’t understand what was secret there, but I had to wait almost another year,” she says.

"I liked my grandfather"

So, almost 80 years after the events, in the fall of 2021, Tatyana first “heard” her grandfather from the protocols of the NKVD interrogations, which were carried out after his arrest.

I saw an eccentric who went to the front with the map of the Soviet Union and the German textbook

- I learned important things: what exactly he said, for which he was arrested. This is important. And sad. He was under investigation for six months. I looked at these interrogations: there are almost the same questions and answers. And I do not know what to do with a person all this time so that he answered this way. It’s scary to think about it, ”says Tatyana. “But I liked my grandfather: he turned out to be a thoughtful person who says something of his own reasoning.” Such a side of my grandfather, which I did not know, opened. I saw an eccentric who went to the front with the map of the Soviet Union and the German textbook.

“I kept the German textbook, because I wanted to repeat the German language that I once knew, but I already forgot a lot. Since I was driving to the front, in which case I could talk to the captive of the captive. I could only keep German leaflets (in the amount of 3 pcs.), I kept German money, since I could be delivered to the bank and replaced with Soviet money. He presented, considered it uncomfortable, they were lying around me somewhere in my pocket, ”Fedor said during interrogation about seized things.

Shatalov did not hide that he was critical of the actions of the authorities at the beginning of the war. In particular, he criticized Order No. 227, signed by Stalin in July 1942, which forbade the retreat of the Red Army without advice, nicknamed the people with an order “not a step back”. He did not like the idea of penalties.

"In relation to Order number 227, I said that this was the recognition of our government: at first they did not write that they surrendered so many territories, lost wealth, and then they immediately announced that they passed half of Voronezh and other cities. And then I spoke in relation to the penalty mouths and battalions. On this issue I said:“ No worse will be that they created the penal battalions, my companies and foreign traffic? So we will not make the people surrender to the Germans more? "In this matter I misunderstood, I thought:" How so? A guilty person can be put on the front line of the front and force him to fight under the force of weapons. "I believed that these penal battalions and companies would not justify themselves,” said Fedor Shatalov.

Having studied all the documents, Tatyana concluded that her grandfather paid for his straightforwardness, curiosity and insight. On the map of the Soviet Union, which he took with him to the front, according to the reports from the front, he tracked how the Red Army was moving, and also shared his thoughts with fellow soldiers.

I do not fully believe in it, because it is very similar to "10 years without the right to correspondence"

- For example, he said that the second front will not be opened soon, because both England and America are capitalist countries, they will not really want to support the Soviet Union. He said that he knew that the Germans would go to the Caucasus because they need oil. And indeed, the second front was not opened soon, but the Germans went to the Caucasus, because they needed oil. That is, the grandfather was not a fool, ”says Tatyana. - Grandfather said such a thing: the Germans will drive their own on ours and shoot in the back so that they do not retreat, and ours will drive our Germans and shoot in the back so that they do not retreat. So we, together with the Germans, will overcome everyone and the war will end. The gloomy joke of my grandfather turned around what she turned around ...

Tatyana found information about where her grandfather died. She was already sent to a request from the Center for Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions of the Sverdlovsk Region.

“They answered me that he was in the Sevurallag camp, that there, around 1942, he died in a camp in the diagnosis of tuberculosis and polyvitaminosis,” she says. - I do not fully believe in it, because it is very similar to "10 years without the right to correspondence." He was rehabilitated in 1992.

And Tatyana hopes to find a photo of Grandfather Fedor. The materials that came to her from the archive indicated that during the search they seized 11 photos, but they were not sent to her. Now she is preparing repeated requests to find out whether they are preserved or not.

Mom has one memory: he had small antennae

- I hoped that for the first time in my life I would see a photograph of my grandfather, but I did not see her. They are not at home, mom says that their grandmother broke them all. I now understand that he was like an enemy people. And then the explanation was one thing: the grandmother tore the photograph, because she was going to marry a second time and began a new life. But I think this is just explaining. Everything is too much destroyed, ”says Tatyana. “I have never seen how he looked.” Mom has one memory: he had small antennae. And that everyone said that he was a handsome man.

"We need to talk about everything good and be silent about everything bad"

Tatyana - a psychologist by profession, went to this sphere, in order to find answers about herself and her family. But along with answers, questions come. For example, she recently stumbled upon one interactive online museum in Moscow on the names of soldiers arrested by a military tribunal, who were on the same list with her grandfather. She did not find the name of Fedor Shatalov. But all convicted dates of death for some reason include the dates of sentences.

- Yes, they were all participants in the war, but the date of their condemnation by the military tribunal is as the date of their death in the war. I have no words. And who, it turns out, rewrites the story? I am very angry about this. It's sad. He wants, for example, a descendant of one of these people to find his ancestor, he will stumble upon information in this museum on the Internet and will understand that this date of the death of his relative at the front, and this is not true. This is the date of his condemnation by the military tribunal, ”she says.

And now we are returning to this: we need to talk about all the good and be silent about all the bad

Tatyana also monitors the story around the "memorial", which the Russian Prosecutor General demands to eliminate. She is sure that the authorities are trying to hide their “skeletons in the closet” with these actions, which for more than 30 years “Memorial” have been helping to get.

- In the Soviet school and the institute, we were told about the fact that everything was good, but there wasn’t all bad. We taught a story in which the Great Patriotic War was, but there was no Gulag. And now we are returning to this: we need to talk about everything good and be silent about everything bad, ”says Tatyana. “But families in which they hide something bad, not very good families.” Because the truth will still find a loophole. And the "memorial" is needed to get these secret skeletons. So that we do not repeat this. If you can’t get skeletons, do not speak, then this may be repeated. And at the level of individuals, both at the level of families, and at the level of society.