Our village Dvorets, Kezhma district, region of Krasnoyarsk, is situated on the river Angara and belongs to the flood plain, as well as many other settlements around the Boguchansk hydroelectric power plant. Nowadays these villages are practically deserted.
Dvorets was a small village – there were about 60 farmsteads and just one straight lane in perfec5 order and of an examplary cleanness. The houses looked well cared-for; they were surrounded by green plantings; the wooden fences of the front yards were painted. The path lead around the entirely fenced village – some kind of poles looking like posts. In the summer the meadows sparkled with forget-me-nots, giving the impression of a lakeland area when looking down from out of a plane - and the whole village was filled with a faint, wonderful smell. This is how it was in former times, but meanwhile everything has turned into a state of desolation and depopulation.. I went there this summer: five or six residential buildings are left; everything has become overgrown by grass.
From what rich parts of the country had they chased us away!? In the river Angara they used to catch sturgeons, some of them weighing up to 80 kgs, starlets, graylings, huchen, perches, pikes, Manchurian trouts. In the woods one could hunt wild animals, and there were all kinds of berries in abundance. There were plenty of mushrooms, too. However, we confined ourselves to gathering milk mushrooms and lactarius, the others were considered to be unfit for consumption. The farmers here had always been engaged in agriculture, cattle breeding and hunting. Before the revolution the young men had done wage labour in the gold mines for a period of one or two years. My father did so, too; at that time he was still unmarried (we are still keeping a photography taken in this gold mine).
On the opposite bank of the river Angara there was the village of Monastyr with its old, solid brick church. Nowadays, both do not exist anymore, neither the village nor the church. I do remember the times, when the church had already been closed; and mum told us that in the old days, on religious holidays like Epiphany, so many people came from everywhere that the thick sheet of ice on the Angara started cracking, when the water was consecrated and all the people were walking across the river. After the church had been closed, the inhabitants left Monastyr little by little. Many resettled to Dvorets: where we lived, there was farmland, as well as meadows, but in the environs of Monastyr there was nothing else but wooded areas. In the course of time the deserted church was pulled down: the people came and took away the bricks, whenever they were in need of building materials for their own use. The stones were so hard that they even gave a clinking noise; they were of a light colour and bigger than those that are being used today.
During the collectivization period they organized a collective farm in this place, too. It was called „Power of the Soviets“. On the collective farmlands they cultivate rye and wheat; there were cattle and pig breeding farms and, until the outbreak of the war, even poultry and sheep farms.
During the collectivization process the kulaks were dispossessed as everywhere in the country. Our family was expropriated, too, everything was confiscated, we had to leave the house, but they did not deport us. The wife of dad’s elder brother took us in. Dad’s brother had already died, and dad himself was not with us at that time, as far as I remember: they had arrested him, but later set him free again. Since I was a little child then, I do not know, when this precisely happened and under which circumstances. Some time later mum mentioned that dad had not been at home for ten months. And my cousin called to his mind that my dad came slowly walking along the Taishet road, being nothing but skin and bone, with long hair and a strubbly beard – this road lead via Dvorets to the village of Cheryanka in the Irkutsk region. They had probably released dad, because he was a former partisan.
Today, nobody is left, who I might ask for the reasons of the dispossession of the kulaks or on how it was carried through – all my relatives have already died. At that time our family consisted of mum – Evdokia Gavrilovna ROZHKOVO (1902-1982), my elder brother – Nikolai Petrovich ROZHKOV (1920-1963) and me – Anna Petrovna ROZHKOVA (born in 1925). We did not own a big farm. My cousin remembers, how they shook out the confiscated linen floor coverings.
In 1938, in the spring, there was a series of arrests in our village. They also came for my father – Petr Vasilevich ROZHKOV (1896-1938) –
late in the evening or even in the middle of the night. With him they arrested Ivan Konstantinovich POPOV, who was a little older than dad.
He was born around 1890. I do not know, where he was working; his daughter – Maria Ivanovna Karnaukhova – lives in Sayanogorsk. Petr Trofimovich PANOV probably was of father’s age (born between 1894 and 1896); he worked for the Kezhma timber industry, in the Kezhma woodlands, not far from where we lived; Nikon Vasilevich VERKHOTUROV, who was a little older than my father, his son Stepan Nikonovich Verkhoturov – he lives in Krasnoyarsk, Shchors Street No. 51, apt. 4. I do not remember all arrestees, but I recall to mind that two political prisoners lived in our village as exiles, members of the intelligentsia from some big cities in the west; I did not know their surnames, only their first names. Ivan Ivanovich, already advancee in years and baldheaded, and Anisim Nikolaevich, who was a little younger and always went into the woods together with our wives in order to gather wild berries; they lived on what their relatives sent them (parcels, money), but did not pursue any work themselves. Anyway, Ivan Ivanovich and Anisim Nikolaevich were arrested, too. I know this very well, because they were all detained in one of the narrow rooms of a two-storeyed building before being transported away to Kezhma. This building served as a school or club at that time. So many people were waiting there. And I, a 12-year-old girl, somehow managed to steal in through some hole int he chimney. When I, all of a sudden, appeared in front of them, Anisim Nikolaevich burst into laughter: „Well, just fancy that! Anyutka has also come here to join us!“ They had neither lost their courage nor hope at all. When I started to cry my father said: „Why are you crying little girl? I have not done anything wrong, I am completely innocent: they are merely going to take us to Kezhma, and from there I will return home!“ But none of them every returned. It was rumoured that they had transported the prisoners down the river Angara on ilim boats (big, covered boats, which were pulled by a cutter), and, having reached the Yenissey, sent the boats to the bottom.
In order to learn the details concerning my father’s fate, I sent a formal request to the public prosecutor’s and the Krasnoyarsk regional KGB administration in 1990. The answered in the following words: „Your father, Petr Vasilevich Rozhkov, born in Dvorets in 1896 (exact date unknown), to the end resident in Dvorets, Kezhma district, Krasnoyarsk region, Russian, citizen of the USSR, non-party member, able to read and write, was sentenced twice under criminal law.
He was arrested for the first time on the 23.04.1932. He was accused of anti-Soviet agitation against the collectivization and of having menaced several kolkhoz farmers. Upon the decision of a troika of the OGPU plenipotentiary representation at the East-Siberian region dated the 16.02.1933 P.V. Rozhkov was sentenced to a 10 years deprivation of freedom.
For his previous conviction, following a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 16.01.1989 on „supplementary measures concerning the restoration of justice in connection with victims of political reprisals (reprisals that took place during the 1930s, the 1940s and early in the 1950s), P.V. Rozhkov was rehabilitated by the Krasnoyarsk public prosecutor on the 28.07.1989.
P.V. Rozhkov was arrested for the second time by the Kezhma NKVD district office on the 24.03.1938. He was again prosecuted. He was found guilty of having been a member of a counter-revolutionary, insurgent organization and of having taken an active part in illegal assemblies, on the occasion of which they had discussed about possibilities of rising up in arms; moreover he was reproached of having spread among the people provoking rumours about the war and the downfall of the Soviet power, as well as slanders on the party leaders and the Soviet government. Upon the decision of a troika of the Krasnoyarsk regional NKVD administration dated on the 14.04.1938, P.V. Rozhkov was sentenced to maximum penalty, i. e. death by shooting. He was executed on the 28.10.1938 in Yenisseysk, region of Krasnoyarsk.
Due to the fact that some documents are missing (untraceable), it is not possible to locate the place, where he was buried.
By order of the Presidium of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court of the 21st of June 1958 the decision of the troika dated the 15.04.1938 was set aside and the case dismissed, since the crimes P.V. Rozhkov was blamed for remained unprovable. P.V. Rozhkov was rehabilitated“.
- „In connexion with P.V. Rozhkov’s criminal prosecution in the years 1933 and 1938 his property and personal belongings were not confiscated“.
From this letter I did not quite understand, why my father had come home already after 10 months, although he had been sentenced to 10 years for his first „crime“, after all. To become clear about this I went to the Administration of the Interior. There they told me that no further details were available from his file, except those which they had already informed me about by letter. I believe that they released dad for his participation in the partisan movement under Kolchak’s rule: we are in possession of a witness’s statement of the 25.05.1932 signed by former partisans and bearing an authentication stamp of the Dvorets village Soviet.
Until today we have not dicovered any further details about our father’s fate.
When the war broke out, the children of „enemies of the people“ (to which my brother belonged, too) as well as dispossessed kulaks, were not called up into the field forces, but from the year 1942 they started to mobilize everyone, and then my brother was allso called up into the army.
During the war, in 1942, Russian-Germans were deported to Dvorets for compulsory resettlement. Their children went to school with all the others. I do remember some of the Germans: the BAUER family (from this family I only have a clear recollection of Mitya), the SCHMIDT family, Alexander KRIN (born around 1920); Andrey Ivanovich ANDREAS (born around 1926), his sister Frieda Ivanovna ANDREAS (born around 1927) - she is the wife of Alexander Petrovich ANDREAS (born around 1926), who bears, in fact, the same family name; Alexander Petrovich's sisters - Maria Petrovna ANDREAS (born around 1929) and Emma Petrovna ANDREAS (born around 1927). Alexander, Emma and Frieda ANDREAS live in Krasnoyarsk. The families of the two brothers Martin Christianovich and Robert Christianovich FLEISCHMAN both live in Krasnoyarsk; they bought a cooperative apartment at that time, but later left the place due to the flooding of the area.
In 1948 Lithuanians and Georgians arrived on the river Angara, in the settlement of Bolturino, which was approximately founded in 1946 and belonged to the Dvorets village Soviet, exactly in the place of the timber rafting enterprise. At first they lived in barracks, later they built themselves houses. Bolturino became a big settlement; there was also located the Bolturinsk branch office (timber station) of the Prospikhinsk timber industry enterprise of the Kezhma district. From 1954 I worked for the Dvorets village Soviet as a secretary and therefore do recall a lot of details.
From among the Lithuanians I remember: Ivan NAUJOKAS (born around 1927), Konstantin LANKUTIS (born around 1927), Regina Antonovna ANDREUSKAJTE (born around 1940); two years ago she was still living in Krasnoyarsk, together with her father, and worked for the regional pharmaceutical administration. Her sister DANUTE lived in Lesosibirsk; there was another sister yet - Viktoria, but I do not know anything about her fate. In Bolturino there was a young girl named Yura BABARSKENE (or Babarskite), a dark-skinned beauty, who died from diabetes. She was buried on the Bolturinsk cemetery (in the settlement there was a cemetery, where they used to bury all deceased).
From among the Georgians that lived in Bolturino I remember: Tit Kalistratovich NAPITVORIDZE (born around 1915), Izmail Sharashinidze (born around 1915), Taras Georgievich OKRASHIDZE (born around 1917) - sentenced on section 58; he was a party member. He received his rehabilitation. After Stalin's death he became a member of the party again; he was elected deputee of our village Soviet. Late in the 1950s or early in the 1960s Taras Georgievich left for Tbilisi; he kept in touch with the people from Bolturino by exchanging letters and even once came to visit the settlement. His wife was a Russian - Anna Vasilevna, he married her in Bolturino. There address in Tbilisi was: Tbilisi, 90,3rd side street A. Tsulukidze No. 4, apt. 19. Taras Georgievich died in the 1970s. Moreover I have a clear recollection of the Georgians: LORDKIPANIDZE (a woman), MAMIYA and GVILIYA (men). The children of the Georgians went to the Russian school: they learned very well, how to speak Russian perfectly.
After their release the Lithuanians and Georgians went back to their native soils; the Germans left, too, but many stayed there till the construction of the hydroelectric power station. Nowadays the settlement of Bolturino also belongs to the flooded area. There is a new settlement with the same name, but it is situated 6 km away from the river Angara in the taiga.
Recorded in the words of A.P.Panova by K.A. Dzyuba,
"Memorial" Society, Krasnoyarsk,
April-September 1990