Author: Natalia Specht, student of the 9th term of the municipal secondary school of general education N° 7.
Project leader: L.F. Morosova, chief of the local history and geography circle
Tolstyi Mys
2007
Man in history … Until recently I was convinced that the history of our country is made up just by facts from the lives of great personalities or well-known people. In the course of time I understood that the lives of entirely common people can be very interesting in almost the same manner. Their fates reflect the history of our country just as clear as the lives of outstanding figures. I reached this conclusion after having learned more about the lives of my relatives.
My family lives in the settlement of Tolstoyi Mys, which is situated directly at the Khakassian border. The republic attracts many a people because of its famous health resorts, others because of its past, ins ome ways interesting culture, its cinnection between past and present, its unique nature, climate and wonderful flora and fauna. I am also interested in all this, mainly since Khakassia is the home country of my ancestors. I have interesting roots. My father, Andrei Davidovich Specht and all relatives from fis side are Germans. And grandmother is still alive; she can still be questioned about her life, in order to write a dignified paper on this. My brother and I bear a German surname, but I also do not want our Khakassian roots to get lost, for many of those relatives have already passed away, among them my grandmother, my mother’s mother. Her death put an end to our Khakassian lineage. I would like to dedicate this paper to her, Nina Semenova Tormozakova, my grandmother.
My family roots from my mother’s side start with a very old Khakassian family. My great-grandfather, Semen Timofeevich Tormozakov was a representative of a formerly rich, but later impoverished clan. His own family did not belong to the rich, but you could not characterize them as poor, either. Allchildren of the Tormozakov family received elementary school education. The years were passing by. Sema, the boy, grew up, and Smen Tormozakov, now being a young man, fell in love with a beautiful girl from some wealthy, Middle-Asian great land owner’s clan – Masha Tinnikova. Her parents, however, flatly refused to give her daughter away to Semen. Hence, he decided to kidnap his beloved and – realized his plan. Great-grandfather took my great-grandmother to the neighbouring village of Askis, where they got married and began to live with eachother. My great-grandfather worked there as a book-keeper.This was a rarity at that time: only very few Khakassians were able to read and write. Children were born. Maria attended to her tasks at home and regarding the education of the children. Six children were born to them, but only three daughters survived their childhood: Anna, Klavdia and Nina. And then came the fateful year 1937. Many people were arrested as a result of defamatory statements; there fates took a tragic turn. The Tormozakov’s too, were affected by unhappiness and misery.Having been denounced, great-grandfather was arrested for being an enemy of the people; he was taken to the Orlovsk prison by prisoner transport. This happened in the summer of 1937, about two months before his wife gave birth to their youngest daughter Nina, who was later to become my grandmother (my mother’s mother). Four years went by after the arrest. How much willpower and firm belief were needed to cope with these hard times, survive, fight and hope for the victory of justice. During this time, grandmother wrote three petitions to Stalin, asking him to have great-grandpa Semen’s criminal case revised. She never received a reply. The Great Patriotic War broke out. The Germans moved their troops forward, far into our country. When they approached Orel, almost all prisoners jailed in Orel prison were shot dead in a hurry. One of the executed men was my great-grandfather. A few months later, the family received a letter certifying that he had been amnestied, but it was too late. His daughters yet had to suffer from being labelled “enemies of the people” for a long time.
Anna, the eldest daughter was born on the 1 January 1924. Being her father’s favourite, she later treaded in his footsteps: she became an accountant. In 1946 she left her home village and set out for Abakan. There she finished courses in accounting and began to work. In 1947 she got married to officer Stepan Vasilevich Slepkov, who had returned from the front – a crucial fact for their fate. Being the wife of a retired officer and former combatant, it was much easier for her to organize her life and advance and be successful in her job than her sisters. In 1948 their first son Valera was born. At the beginning, the young parents worked for the Krasnoyarsk Railroad, afterwards they had a job at the Abakan – Taishet junction. Little Valera was brought up by grandmother Maria. Four years later the second son – Vladimir Slepkov – was born. The years passed by. The Slepkovs were allocated a flat in Abakan. Anna quickly worked her way up. She became senior bookkeeper for the great “Abakanwaggon mash” factory (Abakan waggon and machinery; translator’s note). The sons grew up, served their time, and each of them later had two sons, as well. Their mother dies in 1981.
Klavdia, the second daughter was born in 1926. She was a very active child, disobedient – frolicking all the time. She was very enthusiastic about sports, took part in athletics championships and horse-races. On such an occasion she placed second for Siberia and the Far East Region. At the age of seventeen she fell in love with a beautiful gypsy, who was travelling through with his people, being prepared to leave the place with him, but her mother precluded her from doing so. The fate of her daughter was the repetition of her mother’s fate: forbidden marriage, parents putting a hex on her and, as a consequence, an entirely inordinate life. Klavdia became a cashier for the village school. However, she permanently embarrassed herself due to her frivolous character. Finally, she was sentenced to a ten years’ camp detention for having embezzled an insignificant amount of money. She was unable to get controll over her personal life; it was not granted to her to have children, but she adored her nephews. Klavdia was very skilled in needlework, she was an excellent sempstress and new to embroider in different ways. She was also very talented in baking and cooking and liked to have company. She died in 1972 at the age of 48.
Nina, the youngest daughter was born in 1937. She never got to see her father, for he had been arrested. When she was fourteen, her mother died from a serious disease. The two elder sisters were not willing or able to look after Nina; hence, she was sent to a boarding school. Having finished the final term she got registered with the Krasnoyarsk medical Institute. She remained without any support and assistance, but found herself entirely abandoned. She was even forced to accept a job with th hospital in order to make a living. She fell ill very often.
Due to all these circumstances Nina was excluded from the courses of study after the first semester: the decision was made on the grounds that she had not been successful. This was the beginning of Nina’s odyssey in search of luck. She travelled all over the Sovietunion, tried to dabble in various jobs: she worked as a cook helper, nurse, kindergarten teacher in a children’s home, governess in a boarding school. In Krasnoyarsk she became acquainted with a red-haired, blue-eyed fellow from the proximity of Riazan – Viktor Gadyshev. Fate was to bring them together and – separate them. Four years later they got married. At that time Viktor was serving in the army; he was to serve his time for another two years yet. The couple got registered with the civil registry office of Shurya town. They had nothing but a bed sheet and a blanket, which Viktor’s unit had given him as wedding present. After the registration Nina went to the town of Frunse, where her daughter Natasha, my mum, was born in October 1963. Having served his time, Viktor returned to his wife and child to Frunse. The young woman was to expect no help from anybody at all. Viktor’s father died, and then his mother, who lived somewhere near Moscow, fell seriously ill. In 1969 another daughter, Lyuba, was born to the Gladyshevs. At that time the family removed to Abakan. Due to the fact that Nina was the daughter of a victim of political repressions she was assigned an apartment. She was working as a sorter at the railway junction, later as an engineer. She was in possession of a service card, allowing her to work in different locations. Viktor had a job as an engineer on some diesel locomotive. In 1977 their son Denis was born. Nina Semenovna Gladyshev, my grandma, died in Abakan in 1998; she was buried in Tolstyi Mys, a place, which the families of her children including all relatives, use to visit once a year.
The eldest daughter uf the Gladyshevs is my mum. She became a teacher of the French and English languages. She removed to the Novoselovsk District, where she has now been working as a pedagogue for the grammar school in Tolstyi Mys for more than twenty years: fourteen years as an English teacher, four years as deputy director of teaching and educational work and, for the past two years, as school principal. Tolsyi Mys is the place where she got married, too.
What kind of a fate would the family of my great-grandparents have met, in case Semen Timofeevich had not become a victim of political repressions? Who suffered most from this situation? The young woman, who lost her beloved husband, who concentrated all her energy on the education of her two daughters, who aged untimely and died so early that she left behind a daughter of only fourteen as an orphan? Or, maybe, Klavdia, the second daughter, who did not manage to create herself a happy family life and demonstrate her abilities? Or was it Nina, who never got to see her dad, who grew up without a bright, severe but caring father and without a strong, indispensable, male shoulder by her side? I think they all suffered a lot - and society, as well. May, under different circumstances, Khakassia could have been proud of Klavdia’s gacy success and Nina would have saved a lot of people’s lives as a doctor.
Mum, grandfather and other family members who live in Abakan told me about my ancestors. I also obtained a lot of informaton from existing photos (see appendix). However, none of them shows Semen Timofeevich Tormozakov or Maria Mikhailovna Tinnikova. Unfortunately, nobody was able to preserve any of their personal documents. In view of my age and level of education I did not succeed to realize the whole extent of those tragic, bitter losses and disappointments which afflicted my ancestors at the turning point of our homeland’s history, but there is one thing I understood very well: the history of our country is made up of the personal history of each of us.
I am deeply convinced thyt they will preserve my paper in our family archive, so that our offsprings, too, will not forget about their Khakassian roots. They will learn about the life of their ancestors and be proud of them; they will learn from them how to cope with problems and adversities, they will aspire to be diligent and determined and they will always practice kindness and show respect to other people.
Three years ago I decided to participate in a competition having to give a presentation on a subject called “My family tree”. I gave a detailed description on my Khakassian ancestors, whose lineage ended with the sudden death of my grandmother Nina Semenovna Gladysheva, my mum’s mother. All our family spent long evenings with touching conversations about love stories, parental maledictions and the strokes of fate my great-grandparents and their children were forced to meet with. My father did not even hide his irritation and parental jealosy: he wanted to know, why I had not yet started to write about his ancestors, as well. At that time I obviously had a clear answer at the ready: the history of mum’s family was all clear an transparent – a romantic history to a certain extent. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that a family could not be afflicted by even more grief and despair. What could this Khakassian lineage, the descendants of steppe inhabitants, have in common with those emigrants from Germany, who had settled in Russia, on the territory of Crimea, as from the 18th century? And what supposed to be so interesting about the life of my grandmother, dad’s mum? I adore her; she lives in Tolstyi Mys, not far from us, and nothing special, nothing extraordinary or stirring ever happened in her life. In the very beginning, I only set about researching father’s family, because I did not want to hurt him; however, I was shaken to the core when learning about the facts concerning the fate of my relatives from my father’s side. While my mum had been a good advisor to me in the past year, it was now utterly difficult to get information on the history of the family members of my father’s side and to analyize them: granny forgot many things which happened in her past, and there are many events she simply does not want to recall. I had to contact acquaintances and relatives and was forced to access print work and literature, for Dad does not know really much, either. And, as I said before, Grandma is in no way talkative. I also did not want to burden her unnecessarily with grievous memories, disquiet or even terrify her. Unfortunately, no relevant documents of those times have been preserved at all.
My father’s family has deep German roots. Their history is known to us from the very moment when the first Germans settled in Russia, beginning to buildtheir own national colonies. One of these colonies was called Straßburg in the Odessa Region. Nowadays, this area is situated in a nearby foreign country, but at that time Straßburg was part of the huge Sovietunion. It was a big, wealthy village, and there even was a Catholic church. The German families were characterized by a strong feeling of solidarity and they had many children. The majority owned big farms, farming and stock-breeding were prospering. One of these families were the Fischers.
Jakob grew up in a family, where diligence and respect towards the older generation were ranging among the most important traditional values. The family members lived together in harmany and peace, they were well-off and wanted for nothing. Admittedly, Jakob offended against principles set by his family, when he met Margarita. She was a girl with extraordinarily beautiful eyes. She gave him a glance, which outstared him: the young man’s heart was at once pierced by the arrow of love. (Though advanced in years, she still had this wonderful expression in her eyes). They fell in love with eachother. But Jakob’s parents were categorically against their relationship, for Margarita was from an untypical German family – as we would say today: a family where many things went wrong or turned out badly. Although Jakob’s family execrated him and in spite of the fact that all relatives dissociated from him, he decided to get married to his beloved girl and remove to his own house with her. These were my great-grandparents – Margarita Adamovna Masset and Jakob Andreevich Fischer. The lived together and peace and harmony, adored eachother, although it was hard for them to organize their life without any support from their parents. On the 12 January 1940 their third child was born. The called the little girl Regina – to the honour of its grandmother. This little girl Regina later became my grandmother.
Shortly after, the Great Patriotic War broke out. They had to cope with numerous adversities, for the people did not trust them. Some night, when everybody was asleep, soldiers burgled the fisherman’s house und chased all family members into the yard; at this time, Jakob was fighting at the front. Great-grandmother Margarita Adamovna recalls: “We just took along what we were able to carry; anyway we were permitted to merely pack up a few kilograms altogether. We did not understand what was going on; we were frightened and scared. We were running about in the darkness for a long time, everybody was screaming, mothers held their little children on their arms. At first we were all driven into one room, where the decided who was going to be sent into which direction”
They were asked to board a train and travelled in heated freight cars, in which they were kept all penned up. Draught, cold, hunger, bombardment. An armed soldier guarded them during the trip. They were not allowed to leave the train when it stopped at the rail stations, and they would not permit Margarita to bury her dead child, either. Instead, they told her to throw the corpse out of the waggon at full speed. Great-grandmother did not talk about what her feelings were like at this very moment, but it is easy to imagine how terrible she must have felt and what kind of a hell she had to pass through.
They had no idea which place they were taken to, what would happen to them. It was a very long, exhausting trip for Margarita and her children. Based on the ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet dated the 28 August 1941, her family was subject to repressions with subsequent deportation to Yemelyanovo District, Krasnoyarsk Territory – to settle there under compulsion. They were allocated a single room for the whole family. Jakob was at war; hence, Margarita had to bring up her children on her own.; although she accepted different jobs, there was not enough money to send the children to school. A vegetable garden and the kind support of some local residents were a great help to her: they planted potatoes,cabbage, rutabaga, and carrots. Some villagers helped them out with clothes. What a strange fate: her husband at the front, wife and children in compulsory settlement. They were not allowed to go to Krasnoyarsk. It was a horrible time. We know the Siberian climate and got accustomed to it. But imagine, how our ancestors fared, who had lived on farming in southern regions of the country before. All this was now replaced by a rough climate and hard labour in order to provide oneself with foodstuffs in sufficient quantities. The situation regarding housing, food supply and clothing, as well as day-to-day conditions of living in general, turned out to be very difficult. The walls of the barrack, in which they occupied their room, had a lot of cracks; it was very cold and they had to spend all the time in a draught. There was practically no furniture – just a table, pallets instead of beds and a little stove. They did not have enough suitable clothes, either. Against all great odds the people’s life did not miss out on anything: there was illness, grief and despair, but there were joyous events, too. A couple of photos are lying in front of me – grandma gave them to me. One of them (see annex) particularly attracted my attention. It shows a girl in white dressing, similar to a wedding gown, with a curious chaplet on her head. I questioned grandma about this picture, and she told me that it was taken on the occasion of her first participation in the Lord’s Supper. It was a strange and uneasy time, when many German families who had been resettled to Siberia were compelled to start from scratch and under entirely new conditions. However, the circumstances that changed were merely of external nature; they did not forget about their habits and conventions, their traditions and principle of strong company. They continued to pass these attributes from generation to generation. The Germans had always attached great importance to educating their children in accordance with Christianity. And in this regard grandma’s family made no exception. They organized a Sunday school for girls in the colony to which they had “removed”, where they sang chants and learned to say prayers in German. When they most solemn point of time had come, the girls put on white dresses and decorated their hair with blossoms and lace. This dressing symbolized the purity of their behaviour and thoughts. At first, the girls used to sing a couple of songs and say prayers, and then the priest would disclose the secret of the first Lord’s Supper. After my conversation with grandma, I kept looking at the old, yellowed photo for a long time. How much time has passed since then?
Based on the ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated the 13 December 1955, my grandmother, Regina Yakovlevna, was released from special resettlement at the age of sixteen – on the 23 January 1956. Afterwards the family removed to Krasnoyarsk.
Regina’s elder sister Maria, who had meanwhile got married to a young beautiful man, Johann Specht, settled down in Tolsyi Mys. Novoselovsk District. He had a brother named David. One day, when visiting her sister, Regina became acquainted with David. Soon they got married and removed to Tolstyi Mys, as well.
Over the monthe, Regina took in her parents and grandma Regina Masset, who lived there until they died. David took Regina to Kazakhstan, where his parents lived. But they could not achieve a reasonable, happy family life. Hence, Regina returned to Tolstyi Mys without husband, but pregnant, with a one year-old child on her arms. In 1964 she gave birth to her son Andrei. David called on her several times, to take her back home. He entreated her to follow him, but she even refused to open the door.
Fate did not mean well to my grandmother, after all. She did not succeed to establish a family life, neither in the first marriage nor in the second; nonetheless, she was not broken down by grief. She brought up four remarkable children, the eldest of which, Andrei Davidovich Specht, is my father. She beqeathed this beautiful blue colour and this unique expression of the eyes inhered to Margarita, his grandmother, to him. My grandmother not only contrived to live her own life in dignity, she also taught her children how to follow this principle. She has been working hard all her life, never twiddled her thumbs. She had a job as an unskilled worker for the Novoselovo sovkhoz and always stood in the forefront. She was awarded certificates of honour and diplomas for having done taskwork, she was presented with valuable gifts. Once, they intended to invite her to Moscow to take part in the Exhibition of National Economic Achievement, but she declined the offer, as she did not want to leave her little children and household alone. She trained her children to be diligent, to master difficult situations and circumstances. Granny always contrived to manage her household in a way that she and her children did not only dispose of what was absolutely necessary, but, in spite of her low wages and nowadays a low retirement pay, always had something new and modern around (furniture, clothes, means of transport). In my opinion there is no such university in the world, where you could learn this trade. Life itself was grandma’s wisest taskmaster. She was a modest, unresting worker, who was hardly able to read and write.
A number of family relicts – photos – lie in front of me. On this one she looks very young, stirringly weakish in her white dressing; the first Lord’s Supper. And the next picture already shows her in advanced age surrounded by acquaintances and relatives, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (see annex). Many photos were taken at work, and grandma always looks quite serious. My grandmother is the most caring, thoughtful, endearing and at the same time most severe grandma one can have. She loves her grandchildren and great-grandchildren – and so far there are 13 of them. I have never seen my grandma just sitting inactively about, having a rest; she is always busy. And she took an active part in bringing up all her grandchildren. Granny is always keen to help everybody. She is a true paradigm of diligence, steadfastness and insistance whenever she wants to reach her target; she enjoys life and is always taking utmost care of the members of her family.
The conditions under which my grandmother was forced to live for many, many years, left there marks and scars on her character and way of living. Unfortunately, she is unable to speak German, although she understands most of the words you tell her in her mother tongue; human language, after all, is the most important element of mental culture. She is not familiar with nationale cuisine, either. Like all repressed Russian Germans, who practically lost everything that would remind them of their former life in their native places, grandma treasures a lot of things, kept them in good memory. Today’s Germans cannot be compared to those who came to this place more than sixty years ago. But until today they are aware who they are and who their ancestors were, and they are striving to communicate all their knowledge to us, their children and grandchildren.
Today I have quite different feelings about the people living around. I am aware that every life has its peculiarities – there is a mix of light and dark events, there are happy and bitter moments The history of each human being represents one piece of the mosaic of the history of our country.
My great-grandfather Semen Timofeevich Tormozakov and Jakob Andreevich Fischer never met eachother. Although they were entirely different in character, their fates had a great deal in common: their stories about love, fidelity and devotion, as well as the repressions and their aftereffects, the adversities caused by the war, the whole tragedy of what they were forced to go through. They are people of the 20th century, and the history of their individual life reflects the history of our country. It looks as if it is quite easy to kill a person, but it is impossible to bring a whole people to its knees. There are no bad peoples in the world, but there are a lot of human beings with a bad character. Once having realized this difference, we will have less conflicts among national groups and collocations like “repressed people” or “suppressed culture” will disappear from everyday life. For a certain part this trend depends on us. In everyday life we are facing the culture of different peoples, who live in our immediate vicinity, but we do not always respect and understand them. Having a different culture, talking in a different language does not mean that there culture is a bad one, that it is worse than ours. It is just different. Hence, let us respect other peoples and cultures, let us stop repressing their representatives in everyday life, let us go to any lengths to avoid a repetition of those awful mistakes made in the past.