General-education secondary (boarding) school Bolshoi-Monok and general-education secondary school of the Beisk District, Republic of Khakassia.
Author: Natalia Aleksandrovna Chebodaeva, student of the 11th form.
Project leader: Vera Alekseevna Sulberekova, history teacher
Bolshoi-Monok, 2006.
Dear Jury!
We have decided to participate in your competition, as many others did.
We live in the Republic of Khakassia, in one of the subjects of the Russian Federation.
Our village is not very big: there are merely five streets, the population figure is 618. Although the village is that small, people of different ethnic groups live here. Khakassians, Russians, Germans, Tadzhiks, Ukrainians.
Our village was founded by the cossacks Ivan Baikalov, Semen Tersky, Yegor Makarov and Wasiliy Yermolaev not far from the mouth of the Monok River in 1768. At that time they called the village Baikalovo. In 1842 it was renamed as Bolshoi Monok. Over the years people of different nationalities were settling down in the village.
The subject of the competition is “Russian everyday life between 1945 and 1965”; the aim of the competition is to motivate young people to deal with the research of Russian history during the past century of on their own initiative, for without comprehending the events of the 20th century – one of the most dramatic periods in Russia’s history – it is impossible to understand the presence or to imagine how our future might look like. During our research we attached particular importance to the reciprocal effects between individuals, society and state, for it was just in the 20th century when the fight for freedom, right and dignity of man took place, when in the country of the Soviets a party in power and a government being like a slave to it, provided the theoretical and practical basis for the genocide of their own people. Millions of own citizens were killed in the name of the revolution, state, party and people. The victims came from all classes and social groups: workers and farmers, cossacks and militiamen, representatives of the intelligentsia and clergymen. The very best of the nation, the most talented and hard-working representatives of the people were affected by repressions. Even the initiators and proponents of the system sooner or later became its victims …
The whole country was affected by the Stalinist repressions, including the Germans who lived in our village. On the 28 August 1941 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet passed the Decree “about the resettlement of all Germans living in the Volga Regions”. On the basis of this directive 2.463.940 people were subject to special resettlement, whereby they were assigned to live in different regions within the USSR, among them Khakassia. At present, the following persons are specified on the list of repressed citizens of the Bolshe-Monoksk territorial authorities of the Administration of Municipal Education in the district of Beisk: W.E. Erdle (born in 1938), W.I. Erdle (born in 1938), B.A. Moor (born in 1937), N.I. Moor (born in 1937), I.I. Erdle (born in 1935), M.A. Erdle (born in 1935), J.A. Graf (born in 1916), E.A. Krais (born in 1933), P.P. Dornes (born in 1935), E.A. Dornes (born in 1937), W.E. Gärtner (born in 1934) …
The aim of our research work is to find out and understand the relations of these people (the repressed Germans during the war) towards the people who lived in their vicinity, but belonged to a different ethnic group - the place which became their second home after after the repressions… We think that, by means of people’s biography, by listening to what their relatives say, it is much easier to imagine and understand the past of one’s country, one’s home and the relations of people among eachother; we therefore decided to realize this paper by researching the history of the Germans in Russia and by questioning witnesses of the historical events of that time (20th century).
The Germans have already appeared in Russia a long time ago. According to the information of the brilliant historian Karamzin, Germans already existed in Russia in the late 1st millenium before common era.
In the year 961, upon an invitation of sovereign Igor’s widow Olga, a delegation was sent to the Kievan Rus – with Holy Adalbert in front. At that time Russian sovereigns began friendly relations with Germans by bonds of matrimony. Sovereign Yaroslav’s sons, for example, were married to German women. Another notable group were invited doctors and scholars.
The predominant part of today’s Germans, however, was made up by descendants of the colonists, those many thousands of people, who settled in the Volga Region, in Siberia, the Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus, in Kazakhstan and the Middle-Asian republics, on the bases of a decree passed by the Russian tsarina Catherine II.
The reign of Peter I. plays an important role in the history of resettlement of the Germans to Russia. Thousands of militiamen, scholars, teachers, artists and architects followed his invitation to come to Russia and helped him “to open the window to Europe”.
In 1763 tasrina Catherine II issued a manifest appealing foreigners to resettler to Russia. 27.000 foreigners followed her invitation and arrived on the river Volga, a small area of thehuge Russian empire. In cooperation with the leading powers of former Russia the Germans did a lot to accelerate and advance progress. Let us just recall the names of Dahl, Krusenstern, Kuchelbecker, Schmidt and thousands more. The ancestors of Ryleev, Herzen, Blok were Germans, too – on their mother’s side.
After Stolypin’s reform the Germans reclaimed the vast land in Siberia and the first settlements appeared.
In 1918 the German Autonomous Region was founded at the river Volga. In 1924 it was renamed as Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans, which belonged to the RSFSR.
The Stalinist repressions of the 1930s which affected the whole country, hit the Germans with might and main. They were accused by the NKVD organs of being “complices of Fascist Germany”. Between 1935 and 1938 thousands of innocent Germans were executed or lost their life in the camps of the GULAG system. The Great Patriotic War broke out, Germans were called up and completed the heroic army of the USSR. Among those, who did not fear for their lives, who were willing to defend their fatherland, were: Nikolai Geft, Richard Sorge, Rudolf Abel, Petr Miller and many others.
However, the Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet dated the 28 August 1941 “About the resettlement of all Germans living in the Volga Rayons” brought about a complete alteration of the situation. The decree ran as follows: “According to reliable information received by military authorities, the German population residing in the Volga Rayon is harboring thousands upon thousands of subversives and spies who, given only a signal from Germany, will cause explosions to take place in the region inhabited by Volga-Germans. Yet, no Germans living in the Volga Rayons ever reported to Soviet authorities of the presence of such great numbers of diversionists and spies among the Volga-Germans population. Therefore, the German population of the Volga regions is covering up enemies of the Soviet people and the Soviet power.
If diversionist acts were to take place under orders of Germany by German diversionists and spies in the Volga German Republic or neighbouring regions and there were bloodshed, the Soviet government would be forced, according to martial law, to adopt measures of reprisal against the entire German population. In order to avoid such undesirable occurrences and to frestall serious bloodshed, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR has found it necessary to resettle the entire German population of the Volga regions to other rayons under the condition that the resettled people be alloted land and given State aid to settle in the new regions. The resettled Germans will be given land in the Novosibirsk and Omsk districts, in the Altai region, in Kazakhstan and neighbouring localities rich in land.
In connection with this, the National Defense Council is instructed to resettle as soon as possible all Volga Germans who will be given land estates in new regions”.
On the basis of this decree 2.463.940 persons were deported for special resettlement: 655.674 men, 929.084 women and 979.182 children up to the age of 16. Most of them were resettled in the following territories: Kazakhian SSR (890.698 individuals), Uzbek SSR (17.992 individuals), Kemerovo Region (129.423 individuals), Kirgisian SSR (120.858 individuals), Krasnoyarsk Region (112.316 individuals), Tomsk Region (83.276 individuals), Altai Region (35.381 individuals), Novosibirsk Region (92.968 individuals), Tiumen Region (56.611 individuals), Chelyabinsk Region (44.767 individuals). 774.178 among them were Germans (122.336; 296.014; 355.828), 121.459 mobilized Germans (71.207; 50.252), 3.185 henchmen (335; 1.557; 1.093).
All soldiers of German nationality were removed from the army, even officers were discharged. As we are already aware, resettled Germans also happened to get to Siberia. Many people died on the way – of hunger and cold.
In the autumn of 1941 some trains with Germans arrived in Khakassia. The local residents received the hungry, half-naked, bare-footed and entirely scared people, allowed them to warm up and provided them with food. They were very appreciative of these unhappy people. Many special settlers were mobilized into the labour army, mainly men liable to military service and young women. The NKVD “work brigades” were part of the GULAG system - they did not differ from the Stalinist concentration camps. Lots of labour armists never returned to their families and relatives.
All special resettlers were permanently supervised by NKVD commandants’ offices. They had to appear there regularly for registration and did not even have the right to leave their settlement for one day.
On the 26 November 1948 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet passed a decree in which it was said that “The resettlement of the above-mentioned persons applies forever; they have no right to return to their former place of residence”.
After Josef Stalin’s death some of the restrictions with regard to the legal position of the Germans and their family members were abolished. The decree of the 13 December 1955, however, irrevocably confirms that they are not permitted to return to the places they were deported from. By menas of this decree the state condemned its citizens to eternal exile. The German families lived in very bad conditions, but they kept up and even lived happily in “their home region, which the government had forced on them”.
This is what Josef and Minna-Dora Erdle (a married couple) told us. They have been living together for more than 50 years, and they always kept in mind their home on the river Volga. Josef Josefovich says: “I was born in the village of Vollmer, Saratov Region, Krymsk District, on the 9 July 1935. There were three children (I, brother Viktor and the elder sister Maria). Father was called Josef Petrovich, Mum – Anna Sevastianovna. Mum had three sisters and two brothers: Lisa, Rosa, Katharina, Ivan, Josef).
In 1941 we were compelled to leave our native village. We left the Saratov Region by horse and went till Krym, where we boarded a steamship; and, finally, we were loaded on a train and taken to the village of Yudino (Bondarevo) by a certain distribution system. The people there met us friendly. They gave us food and clothes, but we had to work for it. Dad started working for the smithy. In 1942 they called him up into the labour army. We have never seen him again and did not learn what happened to him, either. We had no idea where he was, if he wais alive and in good health. Only in 1997 the law-court informed us that Dad got seriously ill. He was released from the labour army and sent home by train. Unfortunately, he did not live to see us, his family, again. They carried him off the train at Omsk Station. He had died during the trip. They buried him somewhere on the cemetery in Omsk.
Immediately after they had called up Dad into the labour army, we removed to the village of Bolshoi-Monok; Mum had been offered a job for the dairy farm, where she was to work in the calf barn. We removed to the taiga. When we returned from there to the village, they gave us a semidetached house; the other half was inhabited by another family. From that time I went to school – until 1952, i.e. I finished 9 terms altogether, and I did not find learning difficult.
Having finished school I immediately began to work, for I had to support Mum and may sister. At first I found a job for the sovkhoz, but did not receive any wage. In the summer of the same year I began to work for the floating station, in order to earn a crust, for I did not want to starve.
In 1957 I met Minna-Dora in the club for the first time, my bride-to-be. She insisted that I should train as a driver. And so I went to Abakan, where I took training courses with the DOSAAF. Upon my return I worked for the kolkhoz farm as a driver for a short time, then went back to the floating station, where they now took me as a driver, as well.
During this time, on a rotational drive, I overturned a motorbike; its driver, a young man, jumped off the seat in time, but the passenger, an old gammer, did not comprehend the situation and was unable to react quickly enough. As if being hit by a horsewhip, she dropped and died on the frosted road. I was sentenced to a two years’ detention with general prison regime. After having been released I began to work for a construction site in Abakan.
Later I found a job as a tractorist for the floating station again. Once, when I was working on the conveyer belt of the wood-chopping machine, I lost four fingers of my right hand and one of the left due to incautiousness. They were just torn off by the belt of the conveyer. Now I am an invalid, incapable of working.
At present, we are doing quite well. My wife and I have two grown-up and married sons: Aleksander (born in 1957) and Yuriy (born in 1959). There are four grand-children: Yura (born in 1979) and Katyusha (born in 1981), Sasha’s children, as well as Olga (born in 1984) and Sergey (born in 1987). Till this day we all live in the village of Bolshoi-Monok. The eldest grand-son, Yuriy, got married to hos Julia on the 2 September 2000. I hope that I will get to see great-grandchildren, as well. My sister Marusia and her husband Aleksander Karp left fpr Germany. My brother lives in our village, too. His wife (Vera Graf) earlier worked as a teacher, now she lives on pension; they have two children and five grandchildren”.
Minna-Dora, Josef’s wife, also told us about her fate: “I was born in the village of Grais, Saratov Region on the 22 June 1935. We were three children: I – Minna-Dora, my brother Eiwol (Ewald, born in 1934) and our younger sister Erna (born in 1938). Mum’s name was Anna Genrichovna, Dad was called Adam Krais.
In 1938 Dad was arrested and executed for being an enemy of the people.
In 1942 we got to Siberia by way of a distribution system, more precisely – to Khakassia, to the village of Kaibaly, Beisk District. We lived in a village, which was mainly populated by Khakassians; we were unable to understand and speak their language.
Mum was working for the oil and butter factory. Sometimes she would bring home curdled milk, whey and other dairy products. We nourished on these foodstuffs. In lack of a sufficient quantity of food and clothes, Mum delivered us to a children’s home, which was situated in the village of Yudino (Bondarevo). During that time my brother and I were separated; obviously, girls and boys were accomodated in different wings or buildings. My brother was crying all the time, refused to eat and was sitting, drowned in tears, beside the door, behind which my group was kept. When we learned that in a couple of days we were to be transferred to a children’s home in the Tashtypsk District, we decided to run away. We did not have to run for a long time; not far from the building, in which the children’s home was housed, a woman noticed us. She gave us a few potatoes and a piece of bread. When we arrived at home, a little surprise was waiting for us: Mum was there. At that time, she lived with a man – Kaspar Petrovich. He had an underage son – Eiwold (Ewald), born in 1939. Due to pangs of hunger and the lack of all things that were absolutely necessary, we were forced to beg fpr alms and steal oats. And I had to work as a nanny. Although I was only 8 years old I had to work. I worked for a Khakassian family; their children were very weak and hardly became older than five years. At that time there was only one child in the family. I lived with them. One day, the landlady coshed me with a ladle, for I had not paid attention to the soup; it had been boiling and boiling, until it finally overboiled and spread all over the stove. After this incident I left their house.
Soonafter we removed to the village of Bolshoi Monok. We were accomodated in a house, where, nowadays, live the Sapasnis: Tamara, Anataoliy and their daughter Oksana.
Shortly after, Erna got married to her Peter Dornes and left the house. Then I married Josef Erdle and a little later Ewald his Galina.
At present, everything is okay with Erna and Peter. They have three children (Olga, Irina, Vladimir) and eight grandchildren (Yelena, Petr, Aleksei, Mikhail, Olga, Yevgeniy, Yevgeniy and Vladimir).
The brother, too, has a family with many children: 5 children, 10 grandchildren. Their youngest son is just serving his time”.
Theresia Gärtner from Saratov recalls her hard life with the following words: “The beginning of my life was happy and clear. I was born in the Republic of the Volga-Germans, in the village of Ryzanovka (Neid), not far from Marxstadt. I grew up in a simple, very considerate farmer’s family; in the estimation of the Volga-Germans the members of our family were rational and intelligent. I was the last of six children altogether.
Before the war I finished the 7-class school, the technical school of German language and the Institute of Languages (3 years) in Saratov. Afterwards I was offered a job in Grozny , where I was supposed to teach children – I agreed.
However, on the 4 September 1941, the beginning of an entirely different fate was in store for me, the beginning of a very hard life”. At first, the young, interested German teacher found herself in the Petropavlovsk Region in Kazakhstan, later in Akmolinsk (Akmolu).
“In Kazakhstan, not far from Akmolinsk, they forced us to drag along bricks for the construction of the rail roadline by barrows; I noticed that I was unable to do this kind of work on high-heeled shoes. But I did not have other footwear. A little later they gave me some course, wooden overshoes, which were by far too big in size. We had to offload the bricks, chisel the frozen ground by means of a stake and heap up the railroad embankment. Our hands were all covered with blood, but we had to work on and on, for if you could not manage to fulfill the norm of 1,5 square meters, you would receive nothing but 150-200 grams of bread.
Some time later they stroke my name off the list. I found this decision very inappropriate, for being without work meant being without food, without a roof over your head. But you will always find good people in the world. The boss of the railroad construction site N° 21, his name was Aleksandrov, succeeded in finding out the whereabouts of my parents; they lived in the Novosibirsk Region, Olyashinsk District.
I went to live with my relatives. Aleksandrov even gave me money for the ticket. When we saw eachother again, tears of joy were running over our faces. I found a job as a bookkeeper for the pig breeding sovkhoz in the place, where my parents lived. Shortly after, I began to teach again, this time for the Malinovsk high school. After my father’s death, in 1953, I removed with my mother to Uralsk, where my brother lived, and from there to Sarativ in 1957.
One day, a huge bunch of roses was delivered to my brother’s apartment, where we had found accomodation. The blossoms lay all scattered on the floor. This is, how my friends demonstrated their love. In Saratov they had been waiting for me.
I found a job for the local Institut of Medicine and, at the same time, finished my correspondence courses with the Institute of Pedagogics, enabling me to continue teaching lessons. Later I taught German at the polytechnical university in Saratov.
At present, I live on my pension only. As a person who knows the German language very well, I would have enjoyed to go on working. Unfortunately, the circumstances do not permit this: my ability to see has considerably deteriorated”.
Case N° 797
This is the case of a man, who was born in Germany and executed in Moscow. Heinz Katsch’s granddaughter recalls: “My grandmother died in the late 1960s; she had always feared to tell her daughters who and what kind of a man their father had been. She carefully kept everything so secret that my Mum only learned about her German father from an aged woman from some collateral relatives when she was a grown-up woman. Thus, she was not made aware his correct name, either. In 1948, finally, there was the possibility to “reestablish” the identity papers, which they had done immediately. Mum’s birth certificate was issued in the name of Liudmila Fedorovna Leonova instead of Lilian Katsch. The birth certificates of the children did not mention their true father’s name, but the name of a man, who had been killed in action at the Leningrad front in 1942. Mum and her sister grew up, without entertaining the slightest suspicion that their father had not only disappeared , but that his name had even been extinguished – for more than 59 years it was buried in oblivion and nobody ever mentioned it.
Heinz Katsch was born in Berlin in 1914. His father Robert was shot in 1919, because he had taken part in a demonstration of the Spartacus-League. Heinz himself belonged to a Young Communists’ Organization in Berlin since the age of 15, which had formed up within the “Red Front” Union. Under his command there was a whole unit consisting of 40 men, who were operating in Berlin’s Wedding District and often clashed with stormtroopers. Not only once he was arrested after such an incident and locked up in one of the cells of the notorious Moabit prison.
Katsch got to the USSR by accident: he had lurking in one of the suburbs of Berlin for a certain time, then took a chance to escape and reached the USSR, together with his friend Erich Mateblovskiy, illegally – via Czechozlovakia and Poland.
Katsch found a job as a driver for the grain sovkhoz in the village of Mankovo, Rostov Region. There he got married to my grandmother, who was teaching lessons at the secondary school. Two daughters were born.
By the course of time things became more and more intricate and difficult: first of all it turned out that in the USSR not all that glittered was gold. The people abroad had an entirely different imagination of what was actually in store for them in the USSR. Katsch did not receive a work permit and was therefore foced to go to Simferopol, in order to somehow earn his living there. Secondly, he obviously was under considerable strain for ideological reasons; he did not become a communist of firm conviction, bit tried to offer considerable resistance. The protocol of his first questioning contains the following note: “I was a member of the Komsomol organization of the Asov-Black Sea Region from 1933 – 1935. I left the All-Russian Leninist Communist Youth League, since the German Komsomol organization earlier had refused to accept me”. Another excerpt from the protocol says:
Question: “Which identity papers have you been using during your stay in the USSR?”
Answer: “After my arrival in the USSR I received a passport in Moscow which was valif for a period of 5 years, but it was either stolen or, maybe, I lost it. In 1936 they gave me some temporary identity paper”.
Question: “In 1936 you just had some written confirmation in your hands. Do you not want to consider yourself a citizen of the Sovietunion?”
Answer: “I did not apply for the Soviet citizenship – I even did not know that this was required. I have no idea why they did not issue a Russian passport in my name. I entirely feel like a stateless person …”.
Heinz answered all these provoking questions ingeniously and presumably did not understand that his reaction even made the work of the NKVD people much easier: in the file such spots were marked by a red pencil.
And finally and thirdly, Heinz had spent almost all of his short life fighting against the fascists, without ever intending to content himself with any pretended calm: “I was not content with my life; just work and sleep – that was not the life I had fancied”, he said. Therefore he took the decision to break away to Spain via the Gdansk Corridor, where he had a couple of friends within the Thälmann group. For this purpose he travelled to Moscow and appeared in the Germany Embassy.
At that time, such an action equalled suicide. When leaving the Embassy NKVD people arrested him for the second time. He had been living in the USSR for more than six years without comprehending that they had miticulously followed each of his steps and that his fate, the fate of ordinary Joe, who had ensnarled in the net of prevailing circumstances, had already been planned and decided since long (the state authorities had registered him with a nickname given to him already a long time ago).
And this is an excerpt from a report of an NKVD man: “I was assigned, for the disposal of some young second lieutenant of the State Security, who was working for the 4th department of the NKVD GUGB, an unknwon man nicknamed “Okun” (perch; translator’s note), who refused to show us his papers for identification purposes. … “Okun” was, in fact, Hein Robertovich Katsch, born in 1914, German. He was in possession of a temporary residence and work permit. “Okun” went to the German Embassy on the 24 and 25 September”.
During the first two interrogations my grandfather denied the charges saying that he was working for the German, Czechoslovakian and Polish intelligence service. During the third questioning, however, he suddenly pleaded himself guilty on all charges, “he is on his best behaviour, proves to be very helpful during the preliminary proceedings and accuses himself”.
And while they were questioning him for the forth time, he once again refused to confess. Much later, after having obtained the expert opinion of a graphologist, it turned out that “the signatures which confirmed the correctness of the replies definitely did not correspond with Heinz Katsch’s handwriting at all – the charakteristic upstroke he usually made when writing capital letters was missing, and the family name was written in a different way, too: in much bigger letters and more “peppy”. And when comparing the style, the phrasing of the first two questioning and having a look at the replies given in the course of the third interrogation, one easily finds out that this German man, who was hardly able to speak Russian, all of a sudden, within a month, commanded Russian as if it were his mother tongue. In other words – signatures and answers were faked up”.
In principle, they shot my grandfather dead just because he was German. In 1998, having submitted a corresponding request to the authorities in charge, Heinz Robertovich Katsch was rehabilitated”.
Viktor Aleksandrovich Moor was the sixth child of his parents; he was born in the Saratov Region.
As a consequence of the Decree “About the resettlement of all Germans living in the Volga region” his family lived in Bolshoi Monok as from 1941. In 1953 he finished the 7th term and then began to work in a carpenters’ brigade. In 1956 and 1957 he attended training courses in mechanics. Afterwards he found a job with the “Gorkiy” machine and tractor station, which was attached to the “Gorniy Abakan” kolkhoz farm. In the cause of his long, long professional life he was working for a kolkhoz farm, a sovkhoz and a rafting station. In 1992 he left the Askisk timber-processing combine as a pensioner. He had been one of the best workers of communist labour (this title he was bestowed upon in 1976). He is uin possession of several letters of thanks, certificates of honour and valuable gifts. In 1962 he was decorated with the emblem of the “Best maize-picker”; the very same year he received a bronze medl for his successfulness with regard to the national economy of the USSR. In 1958 he got married. He raised four children, was elected deputee of the Bolshoi-Monok village council.
Already in his boyhood W.A. Moor enjoyed to deal with market gardening. His mother Yekaterina Georgievna probably bequeathed him this enthusiasm about horticulture. He brought homethe shoots of cherry trees, gooseberry and raspberry shrubs and various apple hybrids from different seedling nurseries and even from the famous gardener Ivan Leontievich Baikalov. But the main thing was that W.A. Moor gave a hand to his neighbours, when they were trying to raise plants in their gardens.
W.A. Moor always participates in the social life of the village, usually playing
an active roll.
He and his bayan (Russian accordeon; translator’s note) will never be missing,
when the village people celebrate a festive day, when there is a wedding
ceremony or a good-bye party for young recruits who have to leave for the army.
When he recalls his life, he does not complain saying: “I came to Khakassia when I was still a boy. Inspite of the fact that we were Germans the Khakassians received us well: they harboured us, supplied us with food, although they were impoverished themselves … My wife and I raised four children, and now I help to bring up our grandchildren. I never felt any regret for my life, although I had to go through very hard times. Many Germans known to us left the country and emigrated to Germany, but I do not want to leave this place. As long as I am not at the end of my tether, I would like to stay and live in Bolshoi Monok. All my life took place here, after all. This is my home village”.
Late in the 20th century many Germans left for Germany, the home country of their ancestors. In our village there live about 20 families of German nationality. 8 of them emigrated to Germany. To our great surprise it turned out in the course of the interviews that those Germans, who nowadays live in our village, consider our country as their homeland, and the village of Bolshoi Monok is their little homeland. They do not want to leave this place and go abroad.
Every year, on the 30 October, we celebrate a very sad day, the day in commemoration of the victims of political repressions. It is celebrated all over the country by organizing a series of commemoration ceremonies in various utility institutions and public places. It seems to us as if there is no indifferent person, as if everybody takes pity on the families of the repressed and the hard lot the victims of political repressions had to go through. We would like to finish our written work by the words of B.T. Povolotskiy:
Folks, look through the prism of the present time,
Recall the bestiality of those blood-splattered leaders.
We are unable to forget their arbitrariness,
which has to be prohibited and outlawed for ever.
Victims of political repressions, ingeniously
proclaim everlasting peace and quiet.
Light candles, kneel down,
keep them in your memory – for ever!
1. “Moscovitan Newspaper”, column: “History and Culture”, “Human fates”,
“Society and Politics”, Moscow, 1999.
2. Reports from families of victims of repressions.
3. Journal “History lessons at school”, Moscow, “Illumination” Publishers, 2000.
4. “Book of Memory, in commemoration of the people repressed in the Republic of
Khakassis”, Abakan, 2002.