Alexander Spiridonovich Novikov was born in Bryansk, district of Fokinsk, near the station of Bryansk II, on the 3rd of February 1914. He was the son of a working-class family: his father occasionally worked for the landlord’s workshop, his mother was a housewife. In 1914 his father was called up into the army. At the Mazurian lake district he was taken prisoner of war by the Germans. My mother then was a soldier’s wife. She stayed behind with two little children (my sister and me). Father returned from captivity in 1918. Afterwards he worked as an attendant for the consumers’ cooperative. Mother was a housewife, later she worked for the green-grocery station. She preserved vegetables by salting. My parents had 8 children: 4 girls and 4 boys. Two of the girls died when they were still minors.
I went to school, finished the 8th grade. My field of specialization was chemistry. I began to work in 1930 having pretended to be two years older. I found a job in Bryansk, in Bezhitsk district, at a factory called „Red Trade-Union International“ (*). I worked there as a metal tuner in the 4th wage group. My work-place was in workshop No. 33. We manufactured projectiles, wheel hubs for gun carriages, sockets for oil pipelines used by the „Embaneft“ company, as well as other products.
Having finished the evening classes at the workers’ faculty of the Moscovitan Institute of Engineers in 1932, I went to the Bezhetsk Institute of mechanical engineering and transport systems, which I finished in 1937. I was now a specialist in the field of mechanical engineering for the car building industry. I started to work as a technical designer for the factory „Red Trade-Union International“. My work-place was situated in the drafting room for railroad cars; later I worked for the Special Bureau No. 1 (where they designed armoured railway platforms).
In 1938 I went to the army having renounced my special privileges. At first I served in Stariy Peterhof in a separate armoured training batallion, company A, 6th platoon. I participated in the training course for a period of one year. When the Russian-Finnish War broke out in 1939-40 I was nominated head of the artillery workshop of our batallion. I retained this position throughout the whole war. In 1940 I tookpart in the annexation of Estonia to the USSR. During the actions I was wounded and suffered contusions. In 1939, at the front, I became a member of the VKP/B (All-Russian Communist Part/Bolsheviks; translator’s note). I was a member of the Young Communists League from 1930 until I joined the party. I was demobilized due to illness caused by the contusions. On account of my poor visual faculty and bad power of hearing I was acknowledged an invalid of the 2nd category – an invalid of the Great Patriotic War.
After the disbandment I worked for the Kirov works (No. 13) in Bryansk as the managing technologist of workshop No. 17, as the right hand of the senior technologist. Together with the factory I was evacuated to the Ural, to Ust-Katav, to the site of the former railroad car factory. There, in the Ural Mountains, we manufactured cannons, anti-aircraft appliances, individual parts for the „Katyusha“ rocket launchers and other weapons.
On the 25.02.1944 I was detached off from the Kirov factory (No. 13) to Stalingrad, where I was assigned a job as chief tchnologist for the „Barricades“ factory No. 221. My place of work was in workshop No. 3. At the same time I held the position of the acting representative of the factory’s party secretary.
On the 30.11.1944 I was dismissed for section 47 „D“ of the labour law and arrested. On the 09.04.1945 the Stalingrad regional NKVD military tribunal sentenced me on section 58-10,2 and 58-14 of the USSR Penal Code to a 10 years’ detention in a corrective labour camp, the subsequent deprivation of all political rights for a period of 5 years and the confiscation of my property. The beginning of my term was fixed for the 13.02.1945.
At first the tribunal had sentenced me to the „supreme measure of punishment – execution“. However, due to my social origin (worker from a working cclass family), the fact that this was my very first conviction and the „honest confession of my guilt“, they amended the sentence into a 10 years’ detention (in front of the tribunal I declared: „If Lenin was still alive, then everything would be quite different!“).
I was kept in the place of confinement for 8 years, until the 23.03.1953. Then I was released early from confinement for highly-productive labor. During the first time I served my sentence in the forced labour colony No. 1 in Stalingrad. I worked there as an engineer. Afterwards, having made the corresponding application, they sent me to Krasnoyarsk by a train transport in 1949, to the OTB No. 1 (Special Technology Office No. 1; translator’s note). I worked there as a project engineer for the electromechanical unit. Marchuk was the head of the department. From the OTB-1 they transferred me to Tuva in 1952, where I was supposed to work for the Ak-Dovurak mine as a simple worker.
After my release in 1953 I got a job as a heat engineer for the Ak-Dovurak mine, but when the mine was shut down, they attached me off to the „Yeniseystroy“ mining administration of the USSR Ministry of Metallurgical Industry. I worked there as an engineer and designer for the transport office of the Sora mine in the Autonomous Republic of Khakassia. Unfortunately, I was given notice on the 15.07.1955 on the grounds that I had not voted. However, there official version was: ... „due to the reduction of permanent posts“. Once again I was to suffer pains for being an „enemy of the people“. My passport bore the entry: „Disfranchisement“. And nobody wanted to employ me.
I somehow managed to find a job as a mechanic for the SMP-237 (construction and assembly line) of the Abakan road construction department. But due to various arbitrary measures carried through by the head of the SMP, Mironov, the former head of the political department, I had to give up this job, as well. I was out of work again. My wife and I lived in the village of Sosnovka next to Krasnaya Sopka station. We suffered want and hardship. One of our neighbours, the kolkhoz farmer Nosenko, helped and supported us.
Some day, purely accidentally, I heard about the construction project of the Nazarovsk hydroelectric power station. I decided to go to Nasarovo, where I found a job as the head of the mechanical workshop. I left the hydroelectric power plant on the 28.01.1957 and went away to Tuva, to Kyzyl, where I then worked as an engineer of energetics for the Tuvinian regional municipal economy and later as head of the electrotechnical department of the State regional planning board. On the 16.02.1962 I receive my rehabilitation, but only partially: I was not given back my party rights. Only 26 years later, on the 26.01.1989, the Fergansk town’s committee of the USSR Communist Party admitted me again, i.e. retrospectively as from 1939.
Now I am an invalid of the 2nd category, an invalid of the Great Patriotic War, because of my poor visual faculty and power of hearing.
I am in possession of the following decorations: the Order of the Patriotic War (1st class), two jubilee medals „40 years after the victory – Patriotic War 1941-1945“ and „70 years – USSR Armed Forces“.
One day they sent to us the head of the standardization department, a Jew called Unkeles. At first I was directly responsible to him. He did not do anything concrete and did not show the slightest responsibility. In 1944 the army introduced shoulder straps and officers’ ranks, and it became necessary to adopt the corresponding distinctive marks. Unkeles often went to Moscow for business matters. There he bought shoulder straps and all kinds of badges of ranks, which he then resold on the central market in Stalingrad.
About this I wrote a news item for the wall newspaper: „The long trip and adventure of Unkeles“. And this is what the whole drama started with.
The management placed an order: ten appliances and tools had to be manufactured urgently.
I had already elaborated quite a good technology to produce all these parts; only for one of them I did not dispose of any sketch or design. A few days later, Unkeles appears on the scene and – hands the missing design over to Tsikin, the head of the workshop. He says: „I found this on Novikov’s desk, he obviously delayed the execution of the order“.
We were all working in one room: I, the technologist Budilov, the head of the workshop – Budilov, the head of the factory workshop – Stepanov, his secretary, a woman who worked as a timekeeper and rate-setter and a norm setter.
The desks were simple kitchen tables without drawers. Designs were scattered all over the tables. And that was just the situation Unkeles had taken advantage of. At first he stole the design, then he brought it back and accused me of having retarded the delivery of the ordered tools. The order included the supply of 12 thread-cutting tools by means of which one could cut threads into the inner surface of rifle barrels. I had developed an excellent technology, according to which the tops of the threads were produced. However, during the production process, the milling machine operator working in the second shift seized the opportunity to warm his back on the radiator behind him – and dozed off. The milling machine worked on automatically. The cutter became blunt, the whole work-table began to vibrate. The worker, drugged with sleep, panicked and, instead of merely taking away and exchanging the cutter, stopped the milling machine completely. The cutter got stuck. When he tried to take it off, it broke. Without informing me about this, master Petrov (who was the party secretary of this workshop at the same time) gave the order to drive out the cutter by using a hammer and a chisel, weld the slit and then mill it out once again. This is what they did, however, they did not tell me a single word about it, the simply kept me in the dark. And then they brought an action against me, accusing me of having held back the delivery of the ordered goods.
Budilov, the technologist, went to the district town, where he overspent public funds. They did not sentence him for that: the Ministery of the Interior put him under its special protection, and, in return, he began to take an active part in the denounciation of people. Budilov, Petrov and Unkeles gave evidence against me and alleged that they had busily done their work, but that I had always tried to disturb them and retard the execution of the order by all means. A confrontation with these „witnesses“ did not take place ; all their official statements were considered to be „the whole truth and nothing but the truth“.
Apart from this, they found with me an excerpt from a book written by a French author: „Hitler over Europe“. The examinating magistrate was sure that it was Hitler’s book „Mein Kampf“ („My Struggle“; translator’s note). He arrived at the conclusion that I was in possession of anti-Soviet publications.During the proceedings I said that everything would be completely different, if Lenin were still alive.
Thus, they sentenced me and declared me an „enemy of the people“. Two sections were mentioned: 58-10 + 58-14. They condemned me to a 10 years’ detention of freedom and 5 years disfranchisement, civic degradation and confiscation of my property. Well, this seemed to be the distinction to my heroic conduct during the Great Patriotic War.
When they put me to the inner prison of the Ministry of the Interior, they took away from me all important documents, including the bread ration coupons. And I was thinking: when they now decide to release me, I cannot even get myself something to eat.
While I was on remand, I exclusively received very bad food. Balanda (a disgusting wateyr soup; translator’s note) made of millet and green potatoes, as well as 400 grs of bread. During this time I caught scurvey and seriously wasted away, until I was nothing but skin and bones. They did not beat me, but tortured me by starving me and not allowing me to go to sleep. They called me out in the night to question me. They asked me to stand with my face towards the wall and kept me standing there till the next morning; and in the daytime the jailor would not permit me to sleep in my cell. Hardly I had dozed off, when the guard, in looking through the judas window, noticed it, opened the cell door and woke me up.
After such torments I had nothing but a single wish – that all this would stop very soon. Any defence and acquittal was entirely out of question. It was useless to grasp at a straw.
After the tribunal they took me to the prison in Stalingrad. All politicals prisoners were crammed into one cell. We had to lie ont he floor packed like sardines. By command of the cell elder everybody turned over to the other side. Healthy and tuberculous individuals had to stay in one and the same cell. Due to the great number of bugs it was impossible to fall asleep. All night we were depserately trying to pick them from our bodies and get rid of them.
From prison they transferred me to an ITK (corrective labour colony), to the district, where the tractor works were located. They escorted us to work. We had to unload debris from freight cars and salt from barges, we where forced to build a puinishment cell and the like. One day the head of the corrective labour colony No. 1, lieutenant Levchenko, sent for me. He had come to the colony to select qualified prisoners for his labour colony. He also chose me, for I was a skilled engineer.
Next to the prison I then started to work for the ITK-1, performing all turning up tasks of an engineer: I did the projecting, made various designs, developed templates and sawing tools for the joiner’s workshop, etc. On the initiative of colonel Kotov ten prisoners each were assigned living space in a lodging house within the living zone. The food supply improved. In our group there were engineers, master workmen, book-keepers and personal chauffeurs. Due to our work input, the production volume of the colony increased from 75.000 to 1,5 million roubles. We manufactured ironware, spades, beds, furniture and many more products, among them doors for the Stalin Museum in Stalingrad.
„Enemies of the people“ were not allowed to be taken down-town. The free employees who worked for the penitentiary institution acted more or less kindly towards the prisoners – for the simple reason that many of them had been prisoners themselves in the past. But there were some very dangerous subjects among them, like Sarafanov, for example, - the head of the KVCh (Culture and Education Unit), and Gordeyenko (junior) – the head of the OTK (Technical Control Unit). Gordenko (senior) had „risen“ as high as the position of a senior engineer of the ITK No. 1. They were usually illiterate persons or at least unable to correctly read and write – they were entirely uneducated and uncultured people.
In spite of a certain indulgence, the prisoners of the colony had a bitter life. Hard labour and an inadequate food suuply contributed to the bad situation. Many became total invalids. I still remember some of them: a blacksmith, who worked hard for the workshop near the blast furnace and later showed various physical anomalities; a trained cook, who operated the workbench in the joiner’s workshop. For some reason or other his fingers got into the running machine tool, so that his hands became mutilated. The head of the nickeling workshop, Ivan Mozharovskiy, and many, many others became invalids, too. Since I was fulfilling two jobs at a time, I was (in fact) imposed on all duties of a technical safety inspector, as well. I started files, wrote official documents on accidents, which occurred in great number, and accounted for them. Nikiforov, the senior mechanic, was officially responsible for all safety measures and checks: however, in practice, he did not lift a finger – he merely received his wages. And this was the way all free employees used to work. They were all heads of some department or other and drew their wages, but the actual work was done by the „substitute actors“ – the prisoners.
They selected people from the ITK No. 1 to work for the construction of the Volga-Don- Canal. But they did not select any of those, who had been sentenced on section 58-10; they did not accept me, either. The administration did not have the intention to let us go. Why did so many prisoners try to take part in the building of the canal? Because there thw workdays were deducted from the sentence in accordance with the hardness of labour done – in a proportion of 1:3.
In 1949 I wrote a petition to the GULAG administration, asking them to assign me a job related to my profession. I had completed a specialized training for engineers and mechanics. As a result of this petition they sent me, together with other prisoners (via Moscow and Kirov) to Krasnoyarsk – to the OTB No.1, which they had just started to organize. It was something like a „golden cage“.
I worked for the OTB No.1 as a project planner. I designed pits, pitheads and factories. Moreover, we analysed ores for their chemical components.
The OTB No. 1 was connected to a non-ferrous smelting works, where they were processing conditionned antimony imported from China. By a defined remelting process the antimony was brought to the so-called „zero mark“. This was a very dangerous production sector. Arsenic developed in the air and on the slag. They used to work with breathing masks, but only for a period of 4 hours. Nevertheless, the neasel septum of all workers was destroyed. In places, where puddles had remained from rainshowers, the lying around slag would hinder any kind of plants from growing; the waste pipes were directly above the ground.
I committed an offence and had to leave the OTB No. 1: I had written some notes and remarks about Marchuk, the head of the electromechanical unit, for the wall newspaper. They transported me, together with some other prisoners, away to the Sorsk camp, to the Autonomous Region of Khakassia. There were two camps in Sora: one was a camp with an especially intensified regime, the other disposed of a normal penitentiary system. From there they transported me to the Ulensk camp in Tuva (in Tuvinian called „ak dovurak“, which means something like „white stone“). I served the rest of my sentence as a worker for the Dovurak asbestos mine. I won asbestos and helped to organize the work process within the mine.
I was released in 1953 and decided to live at Syr- Darinskaya station, not far from Tashkent. One of the prisoners had recommended it to me: he said that former dispossessed kulaks were living there, so that things would go well with me. However, the senior mechanic of the pit, Tkachenko, suggested to me to take over the post of a heat engineer for the mine administration. I thought this was a great success in my carrier, and so I gave my consent.
However, I only worked there for less than a year: the mine was shut down and I was detached off to Sora. When they held elections in Sora, I did not go to participate, because (as mentioned in the sentence) I did not have the right to vote.
Later they dismissed me saying that they were forced to „cut down permanent posts“. But there were no such cut-downs at all. I proceeded to seek protection with the mining committee. Representatives of the committee contacted the cadre unit, their head Gulyayev, asking him: „Why did you fire the head of the technical unit Novikov? He is doing his job well and is able to turn his hand to any work. He is needed here!“ – „We do not trust him“. – „Why?“ – „Well, that’s our business!“
And this is how my painful times of being an “enemy of the people” started. With a passport bearing the entry “deprived of the right to vote” nobody would employ me.
Meanwhile I received my full rehabilitation. I had to walk a long and hard way, but never lost my optimisim and feeling for human dignity. I will stand up for Gorbachev and his policy of the reorganization of our society to my dying day.
1. Aleksander Aleksandrovich Belinskiy, college teacher, inventor. He was transferred to Moscow – to the Matrosskaya Tishina prison.
2. Yevgeniy Vassilyevich Khitrov, Moscovitan, civil engineer.
3. Ivan Moszharovskiy, head of the nickelling works of the ITK No.1. The hardened professional criminals lost him at cards and made an attempt on his life. When discharging him from hospital, he was prematurely set at liberty; he remained an invalid for the rest of his life.
4. Vladimir Ivanovich Popov, he was from Stalingrad, a ship’s captain of the Volga fleet. During his stay at the ITK No.1, he was working as a technical engineer and personal chauffeur of the head of the ITK No.1, lieutenant Levchenko.
5. Nikolai Navrazhkov (I do not remember his patronymic); he had been sentenced on section 58-1. He was a man who liked to take the initiative. Engineer. While we were working for the ITK No. 1, he was the unofficial head of our group.
6. Tyurin, mechanic, born in Kamyshin, sentenced on section 58-10. He worked for the ITK No. 1 as a master.
7. Andrei Vasilevich Kitayev (if I am not mistaken), construction worker; his sentence was based on the “Law of the 7th of August 1932”.
8. Nikolai Filatov from Filonovo, first lieutenant. Sentenced on section 58-1
9. Grigorenko. I do not remember, which section he had eben sentenced on. He was the heart of the mechanical workshop.
10. Onopa, Ukrainian. He was put to prison for having repaired cars from capture material and selling them to Kolkhoz farms. He was also working as the head of some mechanical workshop.
11. Alexander Shagurin, pilot, sentenced on section 58-1. He worked for the senior mechanic Nikiforov.
12. Ivanov from the river Don. I do not recall, which section he had been sentenced on. He was working for Bobkov’s planning unit (Bobkov was a prisoner, too).
13. Miskin, Armenian; before his arrest he was vice-minister. He had been sentenced on section 58-10.
14. Nikolayev’s brother was in the colony at the same time (that very man, who had shot Kirov dead).
There were tremendously many prisoners in the colony. Iot occasionally happened that uo to one-thousand men lined up during the morning and evening roll calls.
1. Leonid Petrovich Azhar.
2. Demchuk, seniormetallurgist for the factory in Mariupol. Excellent specialist; while we were working for the OTB No.1, he was responsible for the processing of Chinese antimony. man full of energy. He was one of those the OTB No.1 relied on. He had been sentenced to 25 years.
3. Sassypkin. I do not know were he worked and what was his profession before the arrest. He grew seriously ill: he suffered from uroliths. He had been sentenced to 25 years.
4. Borisov, a seaman. He still went to sea during the Russian-Japanese war. In 1921 he took part in the Kronstadt revolt. And this was what they put him in prison for. He was a genuine patriot, who loved his fatherland. His bunk was above mine. He died from a heart attack
during his stay in the OTB No.1.
5. Tseytlin. He was a film director. He was able to demonstrate true conjuring tricks.
6. Tsinev, mining engineer, expert in his field.
7. Levinson, artist.
8. Vorobev, he was the head of some drawing office before his arrest. I do not remember the kind of job he was doing for the OTB No.1. His life of a prisoner hit him hard.
9. Sazonov, Candidate of science from Orel. A man, who used to work with utmost concentration and accuracy. He was not evry talkative. I do not remember, where he was working during his stay in the OTB No.1.
10. Sitnichenko.
11. Chirkov.
12. Lazarevskiy, Moscovitan, Candidate of science, fish-bredding expert. He had been an artillery officer during World War I; after the revolution he worked as a land surveyor. He was sentenced to 7 (or 5) years. He had to leave his wife and children in Moscow. In the OTB No.1 he was working for the chemical laboratory.
13. Funder, a Soviet-German. At the beginning of the Great Ptriotic War he was at the front, where he was taken prisoner of war not far from Bryansk. The fascists kept him in various concentration camps. He did not work for the Germans. Our troops freed him from one of the German camps, transported him away and put him to a Soviet one. Thus, he happened to get from one camp to the next.
14. Gennadiy Pismennyi. He and Funder were prisoners of war at the Germans. Both later worked for the OTB No.1 (afterwards in Ak-Dovurak).
15. Vinogradov from Leningrad, an excellent specialist in the field of woodworking. He worked for the OTB No.1 as the senior project engineer. Uner his supervision I made drawings for the DOK (wood-processing combine). He was comparatively young at that time, but in a bad physical condition.
16. Luchinskiy. He was working for the general planning and transport unit and lived in an adjoining room. He was an expert of a particularly high qualification.
I do not recall the family names of many prisoners sentenced on section 58, who lived in the other two rooms on the second floor. The guards tried their best to isolate us; they kept us under permanent control and untiringly soied on us. For that reason the prisoners avoided to be on friendly terms with eachother. They were on the alert and did not have any confidence in anybody.
There was another affiliate of the OTB No.1 in the village of Shilinka (Sukhobuzimsk district). I do not remember, which prisoners were kept there.
I only know very little about the OTB No.1 affiliate in Ak-Dovurak. A number of former prisoners was working there: my fellow-countryman from Bryansk-II, Ivan Kirillovich Zuyev (he stayed there after his release), Bobkov, Gennadiy Pismennyi and others.
In the Ak-Dovuraksk camp, there were the following prisoners: Rodchenko, Ustinov and the senior mechanic Tkachenko, as well as the Bakhurovs, who had been deported to the West-Ukraine.
The head of the camp was Titovkin, the head of the Ministry of the Interior – Alkhimenko, the responsible for the pit – Karlyukov. Tovkach was the senior geologist, Kravchenko the senior power engineering specialist. Nosenko was the head of the workshop, Goltsev worked there as a foreman.
A.S. Novikov, 20th March 1989