KRASNOJASK ■ An ice-cold winter evening in Siberia and a letter to Stalin
It is early in January 1938. Siberia, too, at this time, is being affected by Stalin's purges.
Three-and-a-half months after his marriage militiamen arrest the railway-engine mechanic Vikentiy Labetskiy, the husband of Valentina Labetskaya, in Krasnoyarsk. He is accused of being a spy for the Japanese.
Not only in order to achieve his immediate release, but for the purpose to learn, after all, were he was brought to, the 18-year-old Valentina soon afterwards decides to write a letter to Moscow. A letter, addressed to the Central Committee, to Stalin personally: “Dear Iossif Vissarionovich. My husband has been arrested, but he is innocent, he comes from a worker’s family, his sister is a meritorious member of the Komsomol”. While Valentina Labetskaya is writing the first sentences of this letter, it has already been determined that her husband is assumed to be deported to the “NorilLag”, a detention camp, north of the polar circle. There he will have to endure eight strong winters at temperatures of up to minus 40 degrees centigrade and, like hundreds of thousands of prisoners, build up the town of Norilsk and an industrial combinate, which until today belongs to one of the biggest nickel producers in the world.
It is certainly not Stalin’s fault, Valentina says, after more than 65 years recalling to her mind the events of the year 1938. “I do not understand, why he permitted all this. I believe it was Beriya, the head of the secret service, you know, who caused this disaster”.
With the clear sound of a bell the wall clock in her cosy apartment on the ninth floor of a large-panel construction at the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk strikes the full hour. Valentina is lost in thought: “Of course, they only arrested Vikentiy by accident. They were in need of cheap workers. The Norilsk nickel combinate was built on bones”.
She continues to tell that she got to know her husband in the spring of 1937 during a trip up into the Stolby rocks near Krasnoyarsk. They married already in September 1937. Their luck lasted for three-and-a-half months only. “As usual, I returned home from work in the evening,
an ice-cold, uninviting evening in January – and my husband was not there”. At this time Valentina and Vikentiy life in the town center of Krasnoyarsk, in Mir street No. 105, at the mother-in-law’s. “I immediately ran off to see his friends, and they told me that he had been summoned to the militia and they did not know further details either. Later I learned that Vikentiy was requested to sign a paper saying that he had received money from Japan, since he was a spy for the Japanese. However, he refused to doso – why, after all, should he admit a crime he had not committed?”
In fact, at this time Vikentiy’s family was very short of money. “At my mother-in-law’s we even did not have our own bed and often had to sleep on the floor at night. A terribly stale air filled the bare, narrow and miserable room which we crept into every evening. But due to the fact that I had not yet reached the age of 18 at the time of our wedding, the authorities had not registered our marriage. I think this was my rescue. Elsewise they would probably have arrested me as an enemy of the people, as well.”
Vikentiy is finally sentenced to ten years of camp detainment without the permission to write and receive letters “for agitation against the Soviet Power and for having received money as a spy”. Until today Valentina did not find any explanation of why the judges passed such a sentence. “Maybe it was a mistake that he always produly mentioned in all documents that he was a Pole. But this can hardly have been the true reason”.
Having several times called at the public prosecutor, Vassiliy Abramov, after the trial, Valentina learns that her husband is still in Krasnoyrask. As it turns out, Abramov used to play football with Vikentiy. “But in fact, he was unable to do anything for him. At that time even public prosecutors were affected by arrests. Every night they knocked at someone’s door in Krasnoyarsk. The party secretaries in the firms were affected, as well. During this years they permanently convened meetings. The firm managers warned about spies. And a week later they were all arrested themselves and being accused of espionage activities. However, my husband was not acquainted with these people. He was a mechanic repairing locomotives, and that’s all”.
Valentina does not know what to do in order to help Vikentiy. She does the rounds of all prisons and transit prisons in Krasnoyarsk. Once prisoners throw her husband up into the air so that she can see him, the next time he succeeds to wave at her with a red handkerchief from the cell window. Then Valentina learns, when the inmates will be led to the bath in column,
and she succeeds to throw some bread and sausage to Vikentiy. A few days later she is told that they deported him to the far north.
More than one year later, in the summer of 1940, Valentina buys a ticket, having scraped together the last rubels. She leaves behind her one-and-a-half-year old daughter Sveta with her sister who is twelve years old at that time – as her paralyzed mother has to stay in bed.
The young woman has to spend five days on the Yenissey, until the steamship has finally reached Dudinka. From there she continued her way to the “NorilLag“.
“Where should I search for him? Thousands of barracks were standing here, in this dreary area. I started praying to God that he would not begrudge me the luck of finding my husband.
Everywhere I saw prisoners wearing quilted jackets. They were engaged in some construction project. I asked one of the prisoners: you, by accident, know Vikentiy Vagevich? And then I asked another one and a third. I could hardly believe it myself, but one of them, in fact, knew him. Thus I was able to see Vinkentiy twice. He told me that there were even doctors and professors in the camp, that they received frozen cabbage or some watery soup with herbs and a dried fish”.
Valentina stayed for a week. “When I returned to Krasnoyarsk, many people admired me, also at the place of work. At that time I was working as a secretary for the agricultural department.
Some even said: “One should wash your feet and then drink the water”. Just the opposite with my father; he was terribly annoyed and shouted at me: “They will arrest all of us because of your doing things off your own bat””. Valentina is not impressed by this at all, she stays obstinent and persistent – and she stays in the Komsomol organization. “I think this helped a lot to finally get him released”. In 1946 Vikentiy is released from the camp, but has to stay in Norilsk in internal exile for another two years; however, he is already allowed to send letters to Krasnoyarsk. In the summer of 1948 he is finally released. In 1950 their second child, son Vadik, is born.
Valentina has pleasant memories of her husband. “He always had an athletic appearance and he sang very well”. In 1985 Vikentiy dies from cancer of the stomach. Valentina’s health, as well, is none too good. For several years already she does not leave the house anymore. Valentina is suffering from arthrosis in her legs. Her apartment looks like a refuge of memories. On the chest of drawers there is a little Lenin portrait, a big carpet hangs on the wall, besides a portrait showing Vikentiy. On her 80th birthday Valentina invited former colleagues. “We had a splendid time. I even sang the Murka – an old bandits’ song”.
Valentina does not understand that the Russian state only takes little care of her being the wife of a “repressed person”, as she calls it. “They have forgotten about me, as a "veteran of labour", as well as of others, who are still alive and suffered the same or a similar fate which started in the 1930s. Fortunately, I last of all had a good job on a poultry farm, now receiving quite a good pension in the amount of 1.500 rubels (45 Euro - annotation of the editor)".
The history of the Labetskiy family has come full circle in a strange way. Valentina's daughter Sveta got married to a Soviet officer and lived with him in Poland for a long time. Valentina's son Vadik has been living in Norilsk for 20 years, the town, which his father had to help build up as a prisoner. He is working in the above-mentioned nickel combinate, in the smeltery. That is a very hard work, but a well-paid job, the old lady proudly says.
Ulrich Heyden
Freitag, 14.03.2003
Between 1938 and 1956 one million of people were deported to the East-Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk and assigned to forced labor. They were political prisoners, rich farmers (so-called kulaks) as well as nationals of ethnic groups, which were categorized as being politically “unreliable”, such as Volga Germans, Balts, Ukrainians, Caucasians, Kalmyks and Greeks. About 300.000 prisoners served their sentence in each of the two big camps – “NorilLag” (construction of the nickel combinate) and the “KrasLag” (timber industry).
Before World War II there were about 40.000 inhabitants; today 900.000 people live there. Caused by the evacuation of civilians from the western regions of the Soviet-Union during the war, as well as due to political internal exile, the town grew bigger. The majority of factories was built by prisoners in the 1940s.