54 years ago a woman from Krasnoyarsk, Valentina Labetskaya, set out for the Norillag to see her husband, who had been placed there under detention. She did not only succeed to see her husband but to even bring about the „shrivelling up“ of his sentence.
Valentina’s husband, Vinkentiy Labetskiy, who worked as a mechanic for the
Krasnoyarsk electric railway-carriage repair works, was arrested
three-and-a-half months after his wedding. On the 19th of Juanuary 1938 he did
not return home from work. When the pregnant Valentina came running to his place
of work on the following morning, she was told that he had been summoned to the
NKVD „just for five minutes“ ...
The uncertainty carried on for several months. Only in June the municipal Department of Public Prosecution informed Valentina that her husband had been sentenced to 10 years im-prisonment without having the right to receive or send letters ... of having been engaged in agitation against the Soviet Power and allegedly having received money from spies.
„Of course, all this did not correspond to the truth“, Valentina Pavlovna says. – „I began to cry ... My husband was detained in Krasnoyarsk, where today is the special prison (isolator). What long lines of people stood there! People who intended to hand over parcels to the prisoners. A month later one of those who had been released from prison appeared at my mother-in-law’s. He brought news from Vikentiy. He let me know that I should come to the prison gate on a determined day, at a decided time, and that he would then wave to me from the window. I went there. You cannot imagine what I felt the moment when I saw a red handkerchief, with which he waved at me through the barred window ... We so much loved eachother!
In August I gave birth to my daughter Sveta. At work nobody new that my husband, Sveta’s father, was – an enemy of the people. They thought we were divorced.
Soon after my daughter’s birth, Vikenziy’s sister came running to me to inform that all prisoners were just hurriedly driven to the transit point on the right banks of the river. I left my daughter behind and rushed there. Nowadays it is hard to believe what I saw there: the column of prisoners extended from the prison as far as the riverside road.
Under escort and accompanied by dogs the inmates were chased through the whole town. Relatives ran after them.
At the transit point,which was surrounded by a high fence, they herded together prisoners from the whole Krasnoyarsk region. Valentina’s thoughts revolved around in full dispair: she was unable to do anything. Suddenly she noticed that a few prisoners threw her husband up into the air, so that he could see his wife, even though for one second only. And then, after a few minutes, a piece of paper, weighted with a little stone, came flying through the fence:
„Valechka, I would so much like to throw a glance on our little daughter Sveta, at least with one eye“.
At the transit point the convicts were detained another 10 days. Once again Valentina succeeded in seeing her husband, when the prisoners were led to the baths:
“I had bought a loaf of bread and a ring-shaped sausage. I threw myself at the guard’s feet – please allow me to hand it over to him! He glanced at me; I looked nice and likeable. He asked: “What’s his degree of relationship to you?” I shouted: “He is my brother!” The guard hardly noticeable nodded his head and I threw the food-stuffs to my husband. He caught and grabbed them and then pressed them towards his breast. We looked at eachother for a few seconds …
And then they send him to Norilsk, to the camp.
Trying to make her husband’s hard lot easier she made her way to Vassiliy Abramovich, the municipal public prosecutor in order to submit a request. He was a slight acquaintance and promised help:
“Vikentiy has to lodge an appeal, then we might possibly be able to do something”.
“But in his sentence it is said that he has no right of correspondance”, Valentina replied. –
“Well, in this case there is nothing I can do about it”.
“And so I decided for a daring step – I intended to go to Norilsk”, Valentina Pavlovna says.
“Mother grumbled, tried to keep me from carrying out my plans. Firstly this
was dangerous and secondly we were in lack of money. Anyway, bit by bit I
collected the last rubels for a train ticket and set off into uncertainty. The
only thing that could be helpful to me was the address of an acqaintance, where
I could get a place to stay. After a five days’ trip the steamship moored in
Dudinka, from where I continued for Norilsk. It was early in the morning; I
arrived at the indicated address and sat down in front of the entrance door.
I did not have any plans and was on the point of losing my head, but then Providence proved to be helpful. Just opposite this house prisoners of the Norillag were working for some object or other. Two of them moved towards me (it was not possible to escape from there, but a few steps the convicts could step aside). They understood that I had come here and asked – for whom? I answered that I had come here for Labetskiy. “We are working in the same brigade!
We will bring him here tomorrow!”
The following day Vikentiy, in fact, came to see Valentina.
“ He looked so thin and, as a consequence, appeared much taller than he did in the past.
We embraced and were unable to find any words for a long time. Then he began to speak: “Valya, the boys told me, you know – that a woman like you is worth to be kissed her feet! Having learned about your intentions, I have been sleeplessly sitting on my plank bed the whole night. Valya, you cannot imagine what went on inside me! We lived in tents being on the verge of freezing to death. They take the prisoners somewhere, one of them stumbles and
falls down, and nobody picks him up … They give us frozen cabbage to eat … Another time you are forced to become an eye-witness of how entirely clever people, professors, rummaged around in the garbage for something edible … “
The next day we met eachother once again. I had bought him a "flask" and a can of food. What else could I have done? I almost did not even have enough money for the return ticket. Vikentiy handed his petition over to me, as well as a few dozen letters from other prisoners, who had now found a possibility to transmit some news to their relatives. When we said goodbye, we could not help but simply embrace and kiss. It seems to me that this very moment, was the most heavy one in my life …
Having returned to Krasnoyarsk Valentina sent the letters and forwarded Vikentiy’s petition to the municipal Department of Public Prosecution. The Public Prosecutor was shaken: “You!? Is it really true that you, in all seriousness, went there !?” But he accepted the petition.
A few days later a whole lot of people from town came to Valentina’s house. Having learned that she had been to the Norillag, they hoped to hear some news from their relatives who were detained there.
“Valka, what have you done!” – the relatives threw up their hands in despair. “They will put all of us into prison”. But what is done cannot be undone.
Valentina Pavlovna was not able to say, who examined Vinkentiy’s petition
and on which level was finally dropped a decision. But the term was reduced from
10 to 7 years. Through all these years Valentina kept faith with her husband
(although many courted her). Their reunion already took place after the war. The
teenage Sveta saw her father for the first time.
The two lovers were immeasurably happy. Soon their second child, son Vadim, was born. Valentina and Vinkentiy lived together for many years. Vinkentiy died at the age of 75 (his health had been damaged too much during the last years of his camp detention).
“I have been loving him until today”, Valentina Pavlovna confesses. “All the time it seemed to me as if he were somewhere around, helping me to master difficult situations of life, just as I helped him in earlier times”.
Maria Mishkina, Photo: Valeriy Ivanov
“Krasnoyarsk Komsomolets”, July 20, 2002