Most of us learned about her existence when, in 1990, the very first issues of the “Ogoniok” magazine published a series of materials – rather drawings than texts, illustrations about life in the GULAG. The authour of this unique artwork was Yefrosinia Antonovna Kersnovskaia, who produced these drawings during the time of her detention in the GULAG. Her memoirs were partly published in “Banner” in those years. Afterwards, her album “Rock painting” saw the light of day, which comprised all 699 drawings including explainatory subtitles; a little later, her memoirs were published without illustrations, just the texts in a special edition. Unfortunately, there is no complete edition containing all texts and drawings, as Yefrosinia Antonovna had wished for.
Adequate material has already been written about the GULAG; there are historical research papers, collections of archive documents. However, this subject, just as life itself, is inexhaustible. Among the numerous kinds of sources Yefrosinia Antonovna’s illustrations are, in fact, unparalleled. They do not only describe her way from Bessarabia to Siberia, but capture situations in detail. If the Nuremberg Trials had been conducted against the Communist-Bolsheviks, Kersnovskaia’s books would have been considered as the basic pieces of evidence.
At the time of the “Ogoniok” publications Yefrosinia Antonovna lived in Yessentuki, having already suffered an apopletic stroke. Her artwork was met with response from America, which was published in issue N°. 8: “I am writing to you in the name of a group of staffers of the Russian section of “Voice of America”. We carefully read your reportage about the life and work of Y.A. Kersnovskaia, as well as the fragments from her illustrated memoirs published by the “Ogoniok” magazine (N° 3, 4). We belong to an entirely different nation and persuasion, but these materials leaved a deep, strong mark with us.
Nobody can bring lost life back to this woman; however, we would like to slightly ease the hard lot she has to bear. For this reason we organized a fundraising campaign to her benefit and spent the collected amount on the purchase of a wheelchair. Our colleague, the clergyman Viktor Potapov, will deliver it to the “Ogoniak” editorial office. Pan American World Airways guaranteed the free of charge carriage. We kindly ask you to assist us with the transmission of our present to Yefrosinia Antonovna. Tell her that we admire her from the bottom of our hearts. Her courage and humaneness just have to evoke enthusiasm. Ilya Talev, Washington, USA”.
Such a marvelous response right from the idiological center against peace and progress – the “Voice of America” (as our propaganda used to accent the situation at the time of the class struggle).
Vladimir Vagilianskiy described his feelings about Yefrosinia Antonovna’s work as follows (his comments were published by “Ogoniok”): “In my opinion the punchline lies with her drawings. Tell me one thing: where in the world do we find such a meticulous, accurate and unconscionable artist, who chronicles the “GULAG” system by means of exercise-books, without taking care of the quality of the paper or the safe-keeping of her drawings …
These drawings represent a complete encyclopedia. They reflect such a huge
amount of cognitions, which not even an utterly assidious and precise memoir
writer nor any collection of documents would be able to impart. The watchful eye
of the artist records situations, which could never be captured on photos or
films in the same intensity (photographs and cameramen were not admitted to
GULAG institutions!): life in solitary confinement cells, mass cells, the horror
of transit camps and prisoner transports, everyday life in Stalinist camp
baracks, work at the hospital, hard labour in the woods, the mortuary and the
pits. Kersnovskaia recalls everything, the slightest detail – not only how the
bucket looked like, into which the prisoners were to empty their bowels, which
garments they wore; she also clearly remembers the way of how interrogations and
personal searchings were carried out and gives detailed descriptions of brawls,
scenes from the bath-house, the prisoners way to the latrine, the burying of
dead bodies and love-making. Modestly and succinct, just in a way graspable for
either adults or children, she narrates those twenty years of her life she had
to spend in internal exile and at forced labour, pictures her companions in
misfortune, their executioners. The range of typical characters is impressing:
camp commandants and wardens, dangerous criminals, professors,
“clucking hens” (provocators; translator’s note), special forced labourers,
minors, goners (extremely emaciated prisoners on the verge of death from
starvation; translator’s note), farmers, thieves, brigadiers, male lesbians,
security officers, prostitutes! Kersnovskaia conceived all these specific
characters with kinematographic precision. There is no statics, no torpor in her
drawings – everything seems to be on the move, everything is “perfectly alive”.
It his hard to bear the psychological and emotional strain caused by these
pictures!”
Yefrosinia Antonovna was born in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, 9 years before its collapse. Her mother, who was a teacher of the English and German languages, was able to speak Ancient Greek, as well. Her father was a jurist and criminologist by profession. She received a brilliant education; she had a command of nine languages, which, according to her own opinion, was due to her mother’s influence. Later she studied animal health.
During the civil war Yefrosinia Antonovna’s father was arrested. He was supposed to be shot with another 700 men who, when the Whites withdrew, were not willing to leave their home territory. Her mother went to church and prayed for the father; she would not leave the place, until her husband had returned. He was saved as if by a miracle: the militia man escorting the column of prisoners to the place of execution, recognized my father as the very man, who had once bailed him out … Jefrosinia Antonovna’s mother came to an agreement with a couple of Greek fishermen, who accepted to ferry them across the sea to Romania. There, in Bessarabia, not far from the town of Soroki, in the village of Tsepilovo, there was the estate the family was originally from. And this was exactly the place, where Jefrosinia Antonovna, having finished the grammar school, made the decision to become a farmer, although her father suggested that she should study in Paris. Her elder brother was already living there. Her father died in the late 1930s. Mother and daughter could now have lived quite well in their three-room house, but sometimes things do not turn out the way you expect: at that time Molotov and Ribbentrop, who had both signed the Non-agression Pact between the USSR and Germany in August 1939, basically splitting their “spheres of influence” in East Europe among eachother, began to interfere with their lives. The Red Army advanced from the West, and the people living in these “spheres of influence” were loaded on freight cars and deported to the East. Kersnovskaia was among them … for being the “owner of an estate” and “coming from a rich family”. Before leaving, she sent her mother to Romania, deeply convinced that “they would not be separated for long”. In fact, their separation lasted for twenty years. Which islands of the “GULAG Archipelago” did she get to see? She was in a camp in the Tomsk Region, where they forced her to fell trees. She ran away and managed to cover all alone a distance of 500 kms on foot. During her imprisonment, from 1942 till 1952 – the preliminary proceedings in the Altai Region, afterwards Novosibirsk, where she had to do the laundry for the front hospitals in ice-cold water, then Zlobino, the “Norilsk market of the unfree”.
In her paintings she illustrates the entire period of her being a Siberian forced labourer and of her life in internal exile. From these drawings we learn a lot about all the hardship she had to go through at the time of the development of communism. … My whole life in those years was a chain of unparalleled, absurd events, which are usually beyond the grasp of any reasonable person – and nobody will ever be able to exactly imagine or reproduce the feelings of those who survived! – This is how Kersnovskaia characterized this period.
Thus, the woman who had been a citizen of Bessarabia until 1940, who was a citizen of the USSR, exile, arrestee and prisoner in many Siberian camps, reflected the “history of those years”, when she was finally resumed her liberty – “this horrible, dolorous, unhappy university of my live”.
Which were the lessons she was forced to learn during this “graduate GULAG programme” taught at the “university” of immoderate evil?
From the South-West frontier of the USSR up to Narym she travelled in a waggon, which did not even dispose of a little sales booth, and where boredom turned out to be the worst mental torture.
Jefrosinia Antonovna spent eight month in internal exile, where she was working for the timber industry (felling trees), just as her deceased father had prophesied her in a wise dream. This is the place she ran away from. Across the taiga in the middle of the winter, all alone, without any food, with just a sole blanket …
“When I fell to the ground with weakness and tiredness, I dug myself a hollow into the snow, somewhere below the rootage of a big tree, and fell asleep, but all the time I had the dim feeling that death was lurking about … I have no idea, which power finally made me wake up”. – “And how did you recover your strength to continue your way?”
“Wide, deserted country lay ahead of me – a river. Which river? The Ob? The Yenisey. Both flow towards the north. The bushes bend to the right Hence, the north must be to the right side. And I am standing om the right embankment. If I followed the Yenisey, however, I would be on the left banks. Consequently, this is the river Ob. How many times did I have to solve similar “geographic problems”! How many times did I regret the fact that I knew so little about Siberia’s geography. Having crossed numerous smaller rivers and brooks, I did my best to warm myself up by running fast.
Like any other escapee Kersnovskaia arrived at the conclusion that it would be better to rest during the day: first of all it was much warmer, secondly it was less dangerous. It was more reasonable to continue to walk at nighttime.
A distance of 500 kms – all on foot.
We have no information on another attempt to escape.
“Children were sawarming around the unharvested wheat field like bees: It looks as if the teacher is explaining something to them … Finally I understand: these entirely weakened, hungry children are greedily chewing seeds…”.
“When I noticed such a mismanagement for the first time, I could hardly believe my eyes! At that time I was convinced that many facts of life had been caused by the war …, until I finally realized that the reason for those pitiful circumstances was an entirely different one”. It is very painful to me to add more details to thehorrible observations I amade and the feelings I had when I saw all the misery – it made my heart bleed.”
Take away all life from one’s own people just for the realization of a few starry-eyed ideologic dogmas – an everlastin example of the rulers’ way of acting: the rulers of the past acted this way, today’s rulers do and the ruling power of tomorrow will, of course, too. This kind of an economy was the characteristic of the Soviet policy of destruction and extermination.
“A stakhanovite (shock worker; translator’s note) is a stakhanovite, in order to get his fill.
This, Kersnovskaia’s, conclusion is confirmed by everyday Soviet demagogy which says that workers became shock workers due to outstanding work results; they had exceeded the norm in an exemplary manner. In actual fact, however, this was nothing but “tufta” (faking of numbers and statistical data, in order to reach the planned quota;translator’s note). When Kersnovskaia was kept in prison in the Altai Region, she had the opportunity to upgrade her knowledge in elementary politics. She writes: “A young woman who was walking with us in the prison yard, had been arrested for having missed to denounce a man who had first formed the “fateful” number “666” by means of 15 matches, then the word “snake” and finally “Lenin”. It seemed to me, the “ignorant Jewish girl”, as if one could only hold someone to account for an offense committed. In the beginning, I was hardly able to believe that here, in this country, they could also consider someone a criminal for what he said, but to be put in prison for something you have simply heard or listened to – no! Such a tremendousness even exceeds the imagination of a lunatic, who is in a state of delirium!” – Many, many more times Yefrosinia Antonovna will broaden her knowledge in lunacy.
“Every now and then company arribed in the piggery … This time, Irma Melmann had brought along an anthology of antireligious lines. I find it hard to say, which of the poems was the most stupid and mean one.
“You want to learn my opinion about this kind of “poesy”?
- Well, a piggery probably is the best place to read out such lines. Or maybe a – cesspool …”, I responded to Ira Melmann’s question. Shrugging my shoulders I turned away from her and set out to feed the piglets. I was far away from thinking that this situation would set the seal on my fate …”.
“I was found guilty of having committed anti-Soviet agitation and sabotage while I was working for the piggery. Apart from this I was accused of showing a strong feeling of hatred against the “proud of Soviet poesia – Mayakovskiy”.
Yefrosinia Antonovna was sentenced to serve her time in the Norillag.
One day a woman came running into the mortuary lamentating heart-rendingly: “ I killed my baby girl, I crushed my child!” – In her outstretched arms she was holding a dead child, about 9-10 months old. She explained to director Nikitin: “Our room is 11 square meters in size. On the table – the old people, grandpa and grandma. In the corner, right beside the locker - some tenant with his wife and child. My husband and I – on the bed. Our little childen, too – one between our feet and the baby close to my side…”. Nikitin contacted the public prosecutor by phone, who ordered him to go there and verify the situation on the spot. When he returnes, Pavel Yevdokimovich threw his hands up in horror and said: “See Frosenka, I am actually surprised that the grandparents did not crush eachother, and the tenant and his family … How could it happen that they did not crush eachother?” The poor woman was not found guilty of having killed her child.
This is, how free workers used to live in Norilsk. And camp prisoners had to make do with a living space of just 50 cms – where was a human soul to find a place for itself under such conditions!
Before the war they used to bury the dead in coffins hammered together from lath wood; during the war, however, the number of corpses increased so dramatically that … they invented a kind of a catafalque – a wooden box on wheels, where the naked “blind cows” (dead bodies; translator’s note) were piled up – always two lying with their heads in opposite directions.
An irony of fate: for the master who had invented this “catafalque” died shortly after and thus was one of the first who were transported away by it.
In 1947 they began to remove the dead in coffins again – those coffins, from where they were just tipped over into mass graves.
In her stories, Kersnovskaia often gives examples of how she was punished just
for having adopted a merciful attitude towards someone.
One day, at work, while she was watching the sick persons in the camp hospital in Norilsk, the first case of death happened. “A Crimean tatar died. Being at the end of his tether, he summoned me and said: “COme over here! Here is my wife’s address… Write to her”. I fulfilled his last wish and was reprimanded! How could I know, after all, that a prisoner does not have the right to say good-bye to his family, when he was breathing his last – not even by letter? Should I once again dare to communicate someone a death notice, I would end up in a penal camp – to shovel sand”.
“… He was riding across the field… I have no idea, who it is. This rider would best fit into a group of “oprichniks” (private army of Ivan the Terrible, 1565-1573; also called “the Tsar’s dogs”; translator’s note). The only difference between them was that he had no dog heads and brushes hanging from his saddle, but a bundle of shoulder-bags. What is all this about? Why were these entirely exhausted and semi-famished children and old people accounted guilty for having just collected a handful of spikes? In the village they gave me the following explanation: “If they fulfill their daily workunits, they won’t receive anything at all. But when they collect spikes, they may collect up to 10 kgs…”.
“But it means that the spikes get lost anyway!” – Yes, that’s true, but when you permit them to collect spikes, nobody will go to work anymore. Or they will leave them over on purpose”.
Confronted with similar questions as those aksed by Jefrosinia Antonovna, which she did not receive any reply to, we also found ourselves in a blind alley. Does it mean that we have such a historic fate – such an “oprichina” – ad infinitum and without any boundaries?
Inherently, the “rock painting” is a valuable fountainhead of the the history of repressions in general, particularly of the Norillag – a complete scenario with individual pictures suitable for a film.
In 1960 Y. Kersnovskaia, who was working for pit 13/15 as a shot firer at that time, wrote a letter to the editorial office of the “Zapolnyarnaia gazeta” (newspaper: translator’s note) about the violation of technical safety regulations. At the request of the editorial staff an authoritative, competent commission surveyed the facts and furnished an opinion, which said that the complaint was a serious defamation of Soviet man.
In truth, no critical remarks and comments had been made at all; the point was just to expressly emphasize the “infamousness” of the author, who came from a rich family and who’s parents had escaped to a foreign country. The letter mentioned her “bitchiness” towards all Soviet matters, which she had obviously inherited from her parents”, that she “supported Hitler’s henchmen publicly” (?) “and would not even stop her dirty activities after having served her sentence” (?). To make a long story short, while the pit workers did their best in order that their pit became categorized as one of the most productive pits of Communist labour, “Kirsanovskaia is still spraying poison” (they had misrepresented her family name in exactly this way in one of their articles titles “A fly does not obscure the sun”).
Due to the mean publication made by “Zapolnyarnaia Pravda”, we are today acquainted with the short text of the second letter Yefrosinia Antonovna Kersnovskaia wrote: “It was a misunderstanding. I was fooled by the promising name of the newspaper – “Polar Truth”. In actual fact, I got granular on the headline only today, and I learned that the newspaper is an organ of the party and the municipal counsil of deputees of the working people. Hence, it is not necessary and even entirely useless that I try to continue to interfere. I am neither a member of the party nor a deputee, I am pit worker”. In the following there were comments about the magniloquent term of a “Soviet pit worker”…
Later, they held a meeting at Yefrosinia Antonovna’s workplace, where the organs suffered a truculent defeat: the workers stuck up for her by saying that Kersnovskaia was an excellent shot firer, a reliable comrade and an exceedingly good woman. They refrained from “arresting” the truth-loving woman … And then she was given advice to leave the town of Norilsk. She asked for the permission to stay there for another year and four months, when she would have satisfied the criteria to retire early”. She reasoned that she intended to take her mother from Romania in, who she had not heard of for more than 18 years. Her request was rejected. Hence, she left Norilsk in 1959.
Yefrosinia Antonovna bought a little house in Yesentuki and took her mother in, but their happiness did not last for a long time – her mother died three years later. After her death Kersnovskaia set about writing a book about her life – with illustrations … What a hard labour she had done in her life! In Zlobino she had been forced to load barges, build a house in Sevastopol street; she had worked as a nurse for the central camp hospital and had had the “opportunity” to work for the most “hospitable” house in town – the mortuary; she had buried “blind cows” (corpses; translator’s note) on the cemetary, scrubbed the floors of the barracks. She had cleared away refuse, mud and dirt from the isolator, done repair work at the railroad line and worked for the pit … She was released from there, but did not receive an identity card or passport. The most unrestricted place she could find was the underworld, the pit. But they would not permit her to earn money, so that she she would later be able to live on a sufficient pension. She remained an “enemy” in Norilsk. Yefrosinia Antonovna was such a truth-loving person, that the Soviet power, in her eyes, was not even false in the Christian sense.
In her memoirs Kersnovskaia mentions numerous names, we are partly familiar with; others we have never heard of. She mentions an Olympic champion from Estonia. Erik Ottovich Sternbek, inhabitant of Norilsk – in her book she called him August Neo. It was just his life which was safed by Dr. L.B. Mardna in the camp hospital.
It became known, for example, that ten out of twenty heroes who survived in Norilsk, where shot dead during the battle of the Brest fortification.
Until today Russian historians dispute on the question about which kind of a socialism we built and which definite form this socialism assumed after all. The authour of the “Rock paintings” called the Soviet order slavery. She says: “Do you think you will find your angel in this place, who explains this S…. from the scientific point of view?”
Yefrosinia Antonovna Kersnovskaia was a person a true HUMAN BEING (to be written in capital letters). This veritable human woman, who backed the power of truth all her life, who was a talented writer and artist passed away in 1994. She found her past resting-place in Yesentuki. However, the sun never set for this remarkable personality – not even time was able to cast a cloud over her….
(Annotation by the editorial office of the Krasnoyarsk “Memorial” website: the full version of Y. Kersnovskaia’s book ”What is the Price of a Human Being?” can be read on her official website)