He was eight years old at that time. He woke up by the affectionate touch of his father’s hand (they always used to wake him this way in the morning). But why was the lamp on? He looked around and understood that calamity had befallen them. Men in uniforms were standing beside the door, his mother was leaning on the wall shivering and crying, while his father was hunkering over him with a trace of a smile on his face saying:
- It‘s nothing, my little son. I will be back soon. And now you will be the man in the house.
He jumped out of the bed, embraced his father, and did not release him for a long time, as if he felt that this was the very last time he saw him. Later, while he and his sister were killing time on lugubrious winter evenings, he often recalled this eerie, abhorrent moment.
The next day at school everyone was already aware about the incident ( the woman teacher had already informed the children: they arrested his father), and this was the beginning of a new, distressful and hard life of a son of an “enemy of the people”.
Childish cruelty can be utterly canny and unkind. Anatoly was bashed, joshed and exposed to tantalizing mockery and taunt. And when his mother, too, was unable to endure life in town any longer, they removed to the Shchetinkin sovkhoz, where she found a job with the school. A small, comfortable room, nutrimental meals for lunch. But they were excited about the turn for the better early. Who needs the wife of an enemy of the people and her children, who will be willing to put in a good word for them.
Several times they were forced to remove from one place to another. He and his sister harnessed themselves to a sled to transport their few belongings. Their mother followed behind on foot, carrying a big bundle and their youngest brother on her arms (he was born only after the arrest of their father).
The elder sister went to school, the mother was working and he took care of his little brother. Only three years afterwards, he had the chance to attend a school again himself. – the evening school. In those years of war it was very hard to make a living from just one little teacher’s salary. Any object they were able to spare were now exchanged for potatoes, they had to procure everything they need themselves. And they were happy about any kind of job they could get.
Once the neighbor came over and said:
- Your boy could go and get me firewood from Kriwukh, three cubic meters, I will give you two buckets full of potatoes then.
There and back by a big wooden sled, through deep snow (there were no roads), and this had to be done several times in succession. The neighbors used to employ cheap laborers: to saw firewood, to dig over the soil and weed.
Having finished the 7-term-school he trained as a motion picture mechanic. Now he was finally able to support his mother. He adored her. He was so grateful to her that she had instilled him into diligence and gentleness. She was working for the district office of national education in Yermakovo for about forty years. Already being on pension, many members of the teaching staff still recall this modest, untiringly working woman.
For a long time nobody told him who he was. His contemporaries were mobilized into the army, while he was terribly afraid of the thought that they might reject him. Hence he decided to write a letter to Stalin, in order to ask him for his permission to serve for the army. He received the following reply quite soon after: a son cannot be made responsible for what his father has done.
Anatoly was happy. But he had never considered his father to be an enemy, he knew best, after all, what kind of a person his father had been. Martin Karlovich Chakar was honored personally by Shchetkin for his participation in the Civil War – by a weapon showing his name. Later, during one of the combats , his right hand was penetrated by a bullet. After this incident he was no longer able to bend it. Hence, he began to do everything with his left hand – he ploughed and seeded, and he was very skilled in needing sourdough, and whenever it became necessary he would do the laundry, as well. Being already on pension, he managed his household, was keeping a horse and a cow. Martin Karlovich treated his children with outmost care, consideration and gentleness, he often read to t hem or told them fairy tales. Oh, Dad, oh, Dad!
Then he served for the army, where they accepted him into the Komsomol Organization (while they had excluded them from becoming a pioneer). Afterwards he got a job, completed training courses at the technical school, matriculated at the institute, which was later followed by a serious disease of one of his legs…
Forty years of his professional life alone have been noted in his workman’s passport. Anatoly had a hard life: he worked as a tractorist, mechanic, engineer and electric. And people could always trust him and rely on him. No matter where he was employed, he was again and again elected secretary of the party organization. People addressed themselves to him with complaints (when the management had treated them rudely), and he always behaved in a compassionate way, listening to their needs and worries. A serious disease put an end to his working life. But the lads from the agricultural-technical vocational school continued to regularly visit him and also invited Anatoly Martinovich to working with them.
Everybody was amazed by his diligence. Once a neighbor, watching him, said:
- Chakar will not die himself, and he will not allow other people to die,
either.
The neighbors, his beloved children and grand-children – they are all
demonstrating respect for him. I have been living with him for 52 years. And
only once I saw him crying, when he received a document saying that his father
had been rehabilitated. Obviously, he was terribly aggrieved about all that –
nobody brings his father back, nobody understands what it really means if the
person you love the most, is being considered an enemy of the people and when
they request you to dissociate from him. Nobody returns his childhood to him, a
childhood being besmirched by shame, infamy and anguish. Unfortunately, his
belated tears do not bring about much relief, either.
V. Chakar
Pain and Commemoration. Dedicated to the victims of political repressions during the 1930s till 1950s in Yermakovsk District, Volume 2