I am 82 years old. With my daughter, who is also on pension, I live in Krasnoyarsk.
This year, 1988, we subscribed to the "Ogonyok" magazine, where they have a special section called "From the history of the presence". We always read it with utmost interest. And why should we not read it? It affects as so deeply, after all. We also watched a documentary film on TV - "More Light" -, and then the question arose to me: why do they only write about famous people having suffered from Stalin's reprisals - about soldiers, scholars, members of the Central Committee. Why do they not mention ordinary people in a single word?
"You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs". And this is what exactly happened to almost every family in the years 1937 and 1938. That is why I want to write about myself, about my husband, who died in the camp, about the director of the Moscow Technical Secondary School of Textile Industry (MTT) - Mikhail Sergeyevich Tokarev.
From 1927-1929 my husband Aleksey Vassilyevich Kaverin and I studied at the above technical school, where Tokarev occupied the position of the director. At the same time he worked for the MONO, the Moscow Affiliate of Public Education. In those years the young people considered him as being a friend of the city of Moscow. Before Mikhail Sergeyevich came to the technical school, he had organized the Moscow School of Textiles, with the first Communist borading-school, in Donskaya Street No. 45.
Having finished the Moscow School of Textiles (after 2 years) the students moved over to the newly established Technical Secondary School of Textile Industry, in Kaluga Street No. 63.
At that time I worked as a weaver for the Vysokovsk factory (in the city of Klin), from where I was called away to the MTT. At the same time I had also been nominated candidate for the membership in the All-Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. In the second course the employed me as a secretary for the Communist Young People's Organization at the technical school.
In 1928 a number of students from the 3rd course was selected for a trip to germany, where they were expected to acquire new technics for the production of textile goods. In the USSR we did not dispose of workbenches without weaver's shuttles at that time.
Out of 19 people they also chose my future husband Kaverin to take part in the trip. Having returned from Germany they wrote a book, which was even published. It's title: "Our Youth Abroad".
Mikhail Sergeyevich Tokarev unexpectedly died from a blood clot in his brain on the 1st of September 1929. The life of our teacher, friend and comrade had suddenly come to an end. He was only 40 years old. The funeral ceremony was organized by the Moscow Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks, where he had worked till his last days. i only remember that an enormous crowd of people moved towards the crematory and we, the students were somewhere at the very end of the procession. The urn with the ashes of the deceased was immured into one of the walls of the technical school. On the commemoration tablet there was an inscription in golden letters: "Friend of the youth of the city of Moscow - M.S. Tokarev", as well as the years of his birth and death.
After they had finsihed their education at the technical school (it was the first schoool-leaving year), the students able to learn well entered the Moscow Textile Institute and two of them, Maxnm Resnikov and Grisha Genesin, were assigned for a trip to Germany to collect experience. After they had completed the construction of the textile combine in Barnaul, Altai region, Resnikov was appointed its director and Genesin the technical manager.
Kaverin, I will call him my husband from now on, left for Noginsk after he had finished the technical school, for he had been assigned to work for the Glukhovsk factory. I followed him. During the first time I had a job as a timekeeper in the factory, my husband as a master workman. In the evening I additionally worked as a teacher (read and write), because in those times there were lots of illiterates among the women textile workers. I succeeded to lead two groups to the conclusion of their studies.
In 1930 our first daughter was born, and in 1932 we move to Serpukhov, where my husband's parents live. Kaverin starts to work for a factory school named Kosarev. In former times this had been the factory-and-works school, which Kaverin had just finished before his departure to Moscow. They had appointed him the head of the weaving mill.
I workes a s a rate-setter for the weaving and spinnning mill departments; with me there were four women timekeepers. Our section TNB (tariff and norm office), which belonged to the section where apprentices were trained, controlled the time of their work routine.
In 1935 our second daughter was born. Life is now going quite well, we already have a two-room apartment. Not of our own, of course, but in a communal flat for four families, but this does not annoy us. We harmoniously life together and do not even notice that the hurricane of the year 1937 that rages over the whole country also breakes over us.
In March 1937 Kaverin occupies the post of a technical director at a school. One day I somehow drop in at Kislevskiy's, the head of the weaving mill, and behind his desk sits Kaverin reading the newspaper "Light Industry". Disturbed and seized with terror he addressed me with the words: "Look at this! It seems that our guys Resnikov and Genesin who work in Barnaul are enemies of the people! Here is an article on them!"
On the 10th of April, in a closed session; Kaverin was expelled from the All-Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks for keeping up relations to enemies of the people. As I later learned from letters I received from my husband, it had obviously been Kislevskiy who had urgently informed the party organization about Kaverin maintaining relations to enemies of the people. They immediately came for him and arrested him at work, while they left me in peace for the time being. We all live in the same apartment; all neighbours and friends have turned away from us. They try their best not to meet with us, and in case this nonetheless happens from time to time, they simply do not greet.
Alexey works in a foundry as a fitter. He is an industrious man, but after two or three months his family name has already been put on the Red Board hanging at the works' entrance. When I went to the foundry after his arrest, in order to get his wages, I saw his name on the board myself.
Meanwhile, the hurricane that swept across our country had become stronger. Every day we learned about new arrests, known family names, which alarmed and upset us. Alexey asks me to secretly supply him with makhorka tobacco. He hides it in a place which I only find out about on the day of his arrest at home.
And then came this unfortunate day, the 3rd of October 1937, which would tear as apart forever. My husband was working in the second shift; he came home late, and we were not yet asleep. At one o'clock in the night there was a knock at the door and a man came in, alone, without any witnesses. He showed us a search-warrant and a warrent of arrest. He carried out the search in a very superficial manner, took a glance at a couple of books, even without leaving them through and took some photographies from an album, which had been taken in Germany.
He stepped up to me and said gently and politely: "Don't worry about all this, we will settle the matter. He will come back!" Then he turned to Alexey with the words: "If you are a smoker, then take some tobacco with you! And something to eat for one day and one night!"
I did not get up from the divan, did not accompany my husband. I was unable to get up: my legs failed me. Whn my husband said goodbye to our sleeping children he said: "Take care of the children". This was all that happened in the night of the 4th October 1937.
At 5 o'clock in the morning I nevertheless set out for my parents-in-law, dragging myself along, in order to let them know the terrible misfortune that had befallen us. I was dismissed from my position as a rate-setter and removed to the bookkeeping department as an accountant. A horrible time when all people close to you suddenly start turning away from you, avoiding a meeting.
When I was on the point of going home from work, our old woman instructor stopped me and uttered her sincere sympathy regarding Kaverin. During our conversation I remarked: "They arrest the good people, while they are leaving the bad ones behind". These words were heard by Shumilina, another woman instructor, who just passed by, and she obviously informed against me at the NKVD, as the investigator later accused me of just this sentence.
On the 7th of December 1937 I was summoned to the NKVD by a phonecall and asked to get in touch with the person in room No. 7. I thought they had sent for me because of my husband, since - during the past two months - I had appeared before the investigator almost every day to convince him of my husband's innocence.
As I did not think at all about the possibility of being arrested myself, I did not go home first to say goodbye to my children, but went straight to the NKVD and was sitting in the investi-gator's office already thirty minutes later. In front of me an uncouth, ungroomed, quite old man. He opened a file folder and began to accuse me of completely absurd things. Above all I ostensibly had not kept a sharp eye on Tokarev while I had worked as a secretary for the Communist Young People's Organization, having not unmasked him as being a Trotskyite. he reads on: that Tokarev had alloted us a sum of 1000 rubels after my marriage with Kaverin had officially been registered. I violently repudiated these false accusations. But he reacted in an utterly malicious way and said: "But you are certainly not going to deny having mentioned the following sentence during a conversation with the woman instructor: the good people they arrest, the bad ones they are leaving behind". I answered: "Yes, that is what I, in fact, said - and I am prepared to repeat it right here!" He seemed to be pleased about my godd memory and gasped out: "Well, this, in your opinion, means that your husband is good and Stalin is bad?" I was flatly indignent about this comparison and roughly replied: "You are merely a very stupid man; if there only were unprejudiced people who could open our souls and define, who is an enemy and who is a friend of the Soviet power!" Again he started talking about Kaverin as being an enemy of the people. This made me furious and I got rude again. He did not beat me, but called for a guard and sent me directly to the remand cell, where I spent the first night.
The first thing coming back to my mind were my children - I had left them behind with strange people, after all! Will they be taken to their grandparents or to a childrens' home? The whole night I paced up and down in this tiny cell, three steps to - and three steps back.
They did not fetch me to any interrogations any more, but the next morning a militia man took me away to the Serpukhovsk prison. This prison, as those where I was later taken to, was completely overcrowded: there was no space left on the plank beds, only on the floor. As son as they had pushed me into the cell, I saw criminal "recidivists" for the first time in my life, and at once a thought flashed through my mind: it means that they put me on the same level with these girls! And immediately I made the vow not to drink, not to swear filthily, not to smoke but stay the one I had been when I got into this "bad company"! I do not want to conceal anything that happened on the first day, in the first hours, in prison.
I have already mentioned having got into prison directly from work, with nothing in my hands except the clothes I was wearing, not even a towl. And when they distributed the bread ration and put it on my knees, a girl of about 14 or 15 years came running along, seized the bread and started eating greedily. Immediately some of the criminals pounced upon her and beat and insulted her without mercy. I felt sorry for the girl, I tried to speak up for her, but they explained to me that there was an iron law among the criminals: the food ration remains untouched. Bread must never been taken away from anyone: everything else is okay, but bread - never.
8 days later, in the middle of the night, they come for me and directly drive me off to a prisoner transport, neither indication the section on which I had been sentenced, nor the term of confinement. Upon entering the heated goods waggon they read out forms and I hear that they call out Kaverin's anme in the neighbouring waggon. This meabs that they will take us to Moscow in one and the same transport. In Moscow they put me into the Novinsk women's prison, and him to the Sretensk prison, as I later learn from letters.
One short day in January, in the middle of the night, they had loaded us on the train in Serpukhovo. We were forced to get off the train, also at night-time, at some remote station on some Moscow circular railroad line. We were closely guarded, even by dogs. By means of certain forms they counted the prisoners and then the "Black Mary" (a bus without windows) went off to the prison. They put as in a cell of about 50 square meters, without plank beds, just a concrete floor and - already crowded with other inmates. Our place, the place of the newcomers, who had just been brought here from other prisons, was beside the door, beside the latrine bucket. Here are many wives of high-ranking workers. They have already been "stamped" as being the wives of an enemy of the people - sentenced to 10 years.
After 7 days they call me out to the corridor for the first time and force me to sign a receipt saying that I have been sentenced on the anti-Soviet agitation section - term of confinement: 10 years. There is no table, I have to sign the paper at the wall. The term has been decided by a troyka of the NKVD.
On the 22nd of January 1938 I, as well as many others are called out to the cell to go on transport. Again the "Black Mary", the prisoners being closely guarded, dogs.
The first prison we came to was in Syzran, which would not even been called a prison at all, just a simple barracks erected in the prison yard in great haste, plastered with fresh stable manure and mud. There was a terrible dampness. The plank beds were all occupied by local prisoners, so that we had to move near the door again. The next prison - Novosibirsk. We are travelling in heated goods waggons; I do not remember, how many days we were on this trip, but it was a long time: we are already in the month of February. The criminals take up the bed boards, we, the "enemies of the people" have to find ourselves some space at the door again.
The next prison - the most horrible of all, the central prison in Irkutsk. We did not stay for a long time, but were soon transported further to Svobodny (on the river Zeya). Only late in April our train arrived at the transition camp, at Izvestkovaya station, Khabarovsk region.
After a quarantine of more than two weeks we were assigned to different camp colonies: to Kuldur, Urgal and other stations.
The camp is by far no prison. Here we inhale as much fresh air as we like to, and if you show a serious attitude towards work - then you will get food in a sufficient quantity, although it tastes bad.
My first job in the transit camp was that of a laundrywoman for the hospital train. On the banks of some little stream they put two waggons on a sidetrack. One of them was equipped with two large kettles and an oven beneath. In the kettles we have to boil water. A container with clean water is in the second waggon. Everything is done by hand. The people from the prisoner transport are taken away all their clothes and underwear (if one can really call it this way). Four laundrywoman stuff the laundry into the hot water and start stirring it with a stick.
They gave us two pieces of soap. Then they picked out the washing with a fork-like stick, threw it into the clean water and later dried everything on the bushes growing near the waggons.
Having already spent five months in prisons or on goods waggons, I unconditionally wanted to work, occupy myself with something, no matter what kind of a job it was, just not sit passively around. It was also the age of a 32 year old woman, which demanded a toll, i.e. work. Around 3 or 4 o'clock we had done with our tasks and delivered everything to the clothespin.
At this time there stood a waggon at Izvestkovaya station, in which Davydov lived - I d o not know, whether he was a general or a colonel; I had merely seen a couple of medels on his breast. As I learned later he had been a collaborator of Blücher, who was just staying in Vladivostok.
During the days of the quarantine, the transit prison was filled up to one thousand inmates. It is warm in June, and since no canteen can seat all prisoners at one time, they were devided into groups and ate their meals in the street, at tables, which had been hurriedly arranged. After I had finished my work, at six o'clock in the evening, I was assigned to distribute the food rations - just like a waitress. And once, during the dinner, when Davydov watched the people passing by, he called for the head of the transit camp and said something to him. The following day, accompanied by a guard, I was sent to the canteen for the free workers, which was situated about one kilometer away from the transit camp.
Meanwhile I had worked my way up to a chied waitress. Zhe head of the canteen also was a free worker; most of the workers had been sentenced on non-political every-day crimes. And my paragraph "ASA" (anti-Soviet agitation) was probably compared to the section concerning the "socially dangerous elements".
After a few days, as per Davydov'y instruction, I started serving the collaborators of the NKVD, who used to come to the canteen at night-time; and then I did not have to go back to the transit camp any more. From time to time Davydov would drop in, but in most cases his guard would come, fetch the lunch and take it to Davydov's waggon.
In the canteen workers of the Sikhote-Alinsk expedition used to take their meals, as well; a friendly relationship developed among ourseles. I asked them to provide me with a notebook and a pencil. Now I can write Stalin an official complaint. One day in September, I do not remember the exact date, nobody came over from Davydov's waggon to get his lunch: I understood that the waggon was not there any more; they had chased Davydov away to Moscow. Then we learned that Blücher had also been arrested. A couple of days later all prisoners sentenced on section "KR" (counter-revolutionary), who worked in the canteen, were put to the isolator in Izvestkovaya.
They also changed my section from "ASA" into "KR" and sent me away by a prisoner transport, together with all the others, to work for the construction of the railroad line. And then I find myself in the 3rd colony, gravelling the roadbed. This is about 20 kms away from Izvestkovaya, to the direction of Kuldur and Urgal.
It soon became obvious that, still in Moscow, an extra piece of paper had been attached to my file: "Assigned to work for the Bamlag in her specialty, according to her qualification". And so I began to work as a rate-setter. In my habds I already hold the "means",i.e. paper and oencil, and I have a desk where to write; I start to draw up my official complaint to Stalin, ask to revise my file once again. I quickly receive the reply: "Rejected!" I acknowledge receipt of the notice of rejection, sit down and immediately write a new complaint. During our stay in Izvestkovaya we learned that Yezhov did not exist any more, that Beriya had already become the head of the NKVD. I address my complaints to Beriya now and once again receive negative replies. And this correspondance continues until 1944, when I finally decided to stop writing any petitions or complaints, but simply a letter to the attention of M.I. Kalinin, the president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
During these years I also had to work as a norm-rater for the brickworks, whereby I tried to combine this work with the tasks of an inspector, checking how many trees had been cut sown in the forest zone, where they got wood for the burning of tiles. These tiles were produced for the school in Tyrma, the only brick building in town. Today Tyrma can already be found on the map.
After my term of confinement had expired, i.e. after 6 years and 8 months, they yet assigned me to work for the central laboratory, where they analyzed the conditions of concrete, gravel and ground. My task was to collect the results of all the tests and send them to various addresses, to construction departments. I also had to work as a norm-fitter for the central tailor's shop, as well as for the "Elga airfield". This was an urgent construction project - a little airfield on the mountain. They most probably intended to get prepared for the war against Japan.
From Elga we already went on foot, for the rails had been disassembled and transported away to some unknown place, a fact that obviously had something to do with the war. Thus, we went along the very same roadbed which we had thrown up ourselves three years ago.
I yet have to mention that, as soon as I had managed to get hold of the notebook and the pencil, I began to look for a possibility to enter into correspondance with my husband and children, who had stayed behind in Serpukhovo. From my husband’s parents I had learned that he was in Rybinsk on the river Volga. We were not deprived of our right to correspon-dance, so that I receive letters from time to time. My husband replied to my question about why he did not write an official complaint to Moscow: “I seriously believe that justice will gain the victory”. But he did not live to see this justice; he died in 1943, on the 23rd November, in Nizhniy Tagil, in the Ural, to where they had removed all camp inmates from Rybinsk when the front drew near.
I sometimes received a letter from my children, who already attended school, too. I learned that they had not been taken to a childrens’ home, but lived with my parents-in-law. The little one wrote: “We lead a good life, we have potatoes, white cabbage and sugar beets”. They did not mention the bomb attacks with a single word, although Serpukhovo was, in fact, bombarded and they had to hide in the basement.
On the 10th of August 1944 I worked in the 6th camp department and did not think about my release at all, for at that time even those, whose term of confinement had expired, were not released but kept there, “on the basis of some decree” till the end of the war. In fact, we were then paid
Wages already and moved into separate barracks, separate from the prisoners.
And suddenly, during the lunch break, the head of the General Supply Unit, Gelfond, calls me to his office and asks: “What did you dream of last night?” – “I didn’t dream of anything”. And he continuous: “Do you have children?” – “Yes, two”. – “Well, they released you. Go to the 2nd section, they will let you know all details there”.
It is hard to describe what happened in and around myself now. Tears of joy mixed with com-plete consternation, the more since I was neither in possession of a single kopek, nor any food ration cards or a roof over my head. And by that time I also was not aware of the fact that was to be kept in a transit prison for 3 or 4 days, while they put up my release papers in order. I felt it to be very hurtful and injust, when a guard accompanied me there.
Nevertheless I spent the first night in the camp headquarters. Honestly, the guard laughed and said: “Xou may go by yourself, you do not need me!” But I decided to go jointly with all in line.
1. Section 58-12 (family member of a traitor to one’s country). In the cell there also was Uglanov’s wife (she showed an utterly proud attitude), as well as Zinaida Nikolayevna Poznanskaya ( born around 1890), who had already been divorced from her husband at that time. (She had been transported to Izvestkovaya station, but was then sent further away to Akmolinsk, to the ALZHIR camp without delay).
2. Decree of the troyka of the Moscow regional NKVD administration of the 20.12.1937.
4. Obluchensk district, in the Jewish Autonomous Province, Khabarovsk region.
5. Bamlag, later Burlag (Bureinskiy reform labour camp). The text tells about a branch-line of the Transsib, leading from Izvestkovaya station to the north, to the direction of Urgal on the river Bureya.
6. Station on the Urgal branch-line (see above), halfway between Isvestkovaya and Urgal, in the Verkhnebureinsk district, Khabarovsk region.
7. Temporary airfield constructed as of 1941 near Elga station, on that very branch-line not far from Urgal (same district as above).
8. Alexey Vassilyevich Kaverin (1906-1943) served his term in the Volgolag (inRybinsk, region of Yaroslavl) and worked as a building supervisor for the construction of the canal. In the autumn of 1941 he was transferred to the Tagillag (Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk region).
9. The 6th camp department of the Nizhamurlag (Nizhneamursk reform labour camp, also called ITL “AS”), in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk region.