Dear comrades!
My name is Gennadiy Petrovich Kapustinskiy. I was born and grew up in Kansk.
I would like to share my thoughts with you, thought which have been deeply moving and haunting me for many years already. Fortunately, I came across your address by accident and would now like to make good use of it.
What I am concerned about is the fact that - as is generally known - in the city of Kansk and its surroundings two camps were organized at Stalin's times and after his death, the Kraslag and the Yenisseylag. In these places, as well as everywhere, thousands of well-known and unknown people suffered the torments of hell. These people were detained in camps, exposed to terrible sufferings and reprisals; they grew ill and died. In a number of cases they were killed. Many places in which such people were buried remained unknown, others have already been destroyed long ago, and a considerable number of prisoners, who disappeared in the camps of the Kraslag and Yenisseylag, were never heard of again. After the war, when my father and his brothers returned from the front, they started to build houses in the suburbs of Kansk for themselves, where the premises of the wood-processing factory (cellulose works) are situated, just beside the airfield of the Kraslag. The near surroundings were completely uninhabited, there was not a single house - we were the very fist settlers there. I do remember that time very well, since I was already 7 or 8 years old then (I was born in 1939). My cousins, too, have not forgotten about those times yet. I know where they live; in case you wish to have their confirmation about what I am telling you here, I will be voluntarily prepared to pass you their addresses.
The airfield was situated on the steep bank of some nameless stream - a tributary of the Tarayka, which the above-mentioned cellulose works (today called biochemical factory) have successfully polluted with lignin.
The airfield was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Not far from the hillside there stood a hangar with airplanes - so-called "Kukuruzniki" of the PO-2 type. This was were my uncle, Vladimir Pavlovich Kapustinskiy was working; and he piloted these airplanes; he had been a front-line soldier, a hero of the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, he has already died.
150 - 200 metres behind the airfield boundaries there was a cemetery, on which they used to bury the inmates of the nearby camps. On the edge of this cemetery stood a wooden dwelling house, in which a grandfather and a grandmother lived - obviously the cemetery attendants. Beside the house there was another building with a smokestack - evidently a crematory. At that time the adults told us that this was a tallow-melting factory, where carrasses (dogs, cats and other animals) were burned.
We, that is me and my brothers and sisters (there were no other children of the same age in the neighbourhood) went fishing at the lake just beside the stream, where we would successfully catch minnows. Our way always lead us over the cemetery. We often noticed new burial places, saw many old grave mounds, which had already caved in; there were no commemoration tablets. Nobody ever cared about all this. New graves would usually come up during the summer, in the morning, after the cemetery had been encircled by soldiers the night before, many cars had arrived and airplane engines had roared throughout the whole night. Towards morning it became quiet again, there just remained the yapping and howling of the dogs. In the morning, when we went fishing, we recovered new graves, evidently mass graves, as well as numerous cartridge cases, which had been fired from machine psitols not long ago. This happened quite often. During the winter, too, such actions were carried out; however, there were no new graves then, but the whole day smoke came up from this "tallow-melting factory". It meant that there, in this very place, they carried through executions, to be more precise - mass executions. We were yet children at that time, who restlessly tried to figure out what all this meant, and asked our adult relatives questions about what was going on here. And then they prohibited us from going to the lake, terribly scolded us and gave us the expressive order not to tell anybody a single word about it. Nevertheless, we continued to go there, particularly after the old people had disappeared and a new family with a child had moved into the house. The boy was about our age, and we soon made friends. His name was Volodya Stadnik. We even were at his home a couple of times, in the yard. But after we had noticed a collection of various skulls in the barn - some yellowish, some white, small and big ones, with teeth or without, we stopped visiting him. It seemed that he played with these skulls.
After 1953, after Stalin's death, the airfield was closed, many camps were dissplved, others transferred to Reshoty. And after a certain time they began to urgently erect private apartment houses, the cemetery was levelled, the tallow-melting factory disappeared and the municipal hospital built in this place, which has been standing there on human bones up to this day. From 1989 till 1993 I have continuously been writing to the local newspaper "Power of the Soviets", to the KPSS (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), to the town comitee, to the VLKSM (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), in order to mark this situation. With utmost exactness I described everything and in 1991, when I came to see my parents, I even called on the newspaper office and the VLKSM in person. They listened to me with a polite attitude, replied that there were no archives, that nothing had been preserved - and that was all. I had merely intended to initiate the setting up of a commemoration tablet. We are human beings, after all. Many live there without knowing that so much blood was shedded in this place, that, in fact, every simple building was erected on bones. My personal conscience does not allow me to pass this over in silence.
I am able to quite exactly show that place. And my cousin, Valeriy Kapustinskiy, also lives in Kansk. He knows this place very well, too. Besides, my parents are still alive and Valeriy's mother, Maria Dmitriyevna Kapustinskaya, who also knows about the matter.
Maybe, it is actually difficult now - is it possible anyway? - to recall the people, who perished and were buried at that time.
But putting up a commemoration plaque, in order to be at least able to pay the dead the last honours and lay flowers, is a must by all means. And it will remind the living about what happened to the country and its people in those times.
And this is the reason, why I also addressmyself to you, asking for your advice and support. Maybe the people of "Memorial" concern themselves with this question? I will give you another few personal data. I was born in Kansk in 1939. After having finished school, in 1957, I went to the army, finished the military college, later the military academy, and then served in the armed forced for 30 years. Now I am on pension, rating as a colonel, and live in the city of Novosibirsk. My parents live in Kansk, in Aerodrom Street No. 51 (thus named in
remembrance of that airfield). Next-door live my cousin Valeriy and his mother, Maria Dmitriyevna. The other cousins, who also know about what I remember, live in different places. I have their addresses.
Yours truly,
Kapustinskiy
23.12.1993