Today, 55 years ago, died Josef Stalin
Probably none of the people living in the Krasnoyarsk Territory today think of planning and organizing anything special in remembrance of this day, with the exception of very few individuals. Some very old people might sadly look at the numerous medals they were decorated with during their life, raise their glass on the q.t. to calm themselves whispering: “ What a fellow he was ….!” – However, there are others who, on this special day, will disdainfully spit on the floor while execrating the tyrant again and again audibly, whose existence and practices entailed immeasurable grief and misery to their families. We scarcely have any choice put to understand both attitudes. This is your and our common history. It is a very interesting fact that 55 years ago, on the 5 March 1953, Stalin’s death was taken in entirely different ways, too, both in the USSR in general and in Soviet Siberia which was affected by forced labour on a large scale.
More than half a century has passed since the day of Stalin’s birth; nonetheless, the majority of the Russian population does not yet know all details about the last days of the “Leader of all peoples”. History books used in schools just report very briefly about those events that happened early in March 1953 on Stalin’s dacha, confirming that his death was caused by a serious, long-lasting stroke. Scientists, who studied the large number of documents with information and evidence given by guards and servants who were then working on the dacha, until today dispute about how to exactly reconstruct the hours and minutes of Stalin’s final phase of life, between the 3rd and 5th of March. Even nowadays documentary films shooted on this subject show utterly strange variants of his death. Lavrentiy Beriya, having already fallen in disgrace at that time, poisoned Stalin, who lost consciousness, thus being unable to reach the button of the warning bell to call for help. Or – Stalin, tired to death, decided to commit suicide – his end is and will always remain shrouded in mystery. Nobody will hardly ever succeed to throw light on the facts, for many documents were intentionally destroyed and, apart from this, a lot of contemporary witnesses have already passed away by natural death, for reasons of age (and many of them kept their written promise of “nondiclosure” till the end of their life not talking about those events to anybody). However, this is mainly due to the fact that the former USSR created a regime of secrecy, the aftermaths of which will still provide historians with a lot of to think and discuss about.
By March 5 the whole country was aware of the fact that Josef Stalin had come down with some serious disease: as from early February announcer Levitan had been reading out bulletins about the state of health of the 74 year-old leader every day. Nevertheless, life went on as usual: production plants and factories were running, children went to school, scientists wrote down their formulas, soldiers expressed their happiness about the atom bomb, while hundreds of thousands of prisoners were killed in the forest districts. The Krasnoyarsk Region was no exception. Nobody was particularly alarmed or lapsed into hystery, although eye witnesses of those occurrences report that most of the people were somehow worried, anyway. How were you supposed to know that …
News regarding Stalin’s death broke in on the population of the Soviet-Union through different channels. Soldiers learned about the state of emergency a little earlier than the rest of the people; they were informed via their special radio channel, just like like the employees of the State Security Service. The majority of the population, however, was listening to the radio news on March 5, in the second half of the day, when “some news of importance from the part of the government” were transmitted. Witnesses give different particulars about the exact time – statements vary from 2 pm to 5 pm. But the all unanimously say: this newsbroadcast was like a clap of thunder in the clear sky; it caused an enormous state of shock among the people.
Most of the common residents of the city of Krasnoyarsk and the Krasnoyarsk Territory who heard the news, began to burst into violent sobs and did not feel embarrassment to let their tears flow freely. A great number of women fainted. The exiles, however, behaved in a completely different way. Such as Yuriy Ivanovich Chirkov, just to give an example. He was informed about what had happened by the granddaughter of his landlady:
- The granddaughter came running home from school with her eyes all red from crying. At the threshold she began to scream: “Granny, Stalin is dead. What are we going to do now – without him?” – The old woman opened her toothless mouth and murmed something; she stood there bowed, holding the oven fork in her hands: “You say he is dead? Hence, he cast the ankor; our lives go on, we will make it somehow or other”. Ninka immediately asked with deep concern: “Granny, what are we going to eat/” – The old woman replied: “We will find ourselves something – it will all work out!” – And life took its normal course. The exiles, however, were rather worried. What will happen to us now? Some immediately came to the conviction that everything would soon take a turn to the better. Others did not believe this at all. The exiles received telegrams from their relatives in Moscow, and the proud and happy addressees carried them around with them all thrpough the town: the telegrams said that the question of the former deportees would soon be looked into and be subject to final decision. The people united even more closely. But days, weeks and months passed by. It was learned that prisoners were to be amnestied; it turned out that this amnesty was only applied on criminal offenders.
Unlike the common people, those who were later called and acknowledged victims of political repressions, took the news about Stalin’s death differently. One of them is Anatoliy Bakanichev who had been a forced labourer in Norilsk, until he was entirely exhausted:
- I learned about Stalin’s death, while I was working “in the depths of a Siberian ore more” – in the true sense of the word. We were making an excavation underneath the administration building of the factory – about 10 meters deep. Above the excavation there was a rope winch. It was operated by my work-mate. I was trying hard to pick up the frozen subsoil by means of a pickhammer and chisel. And then I had to throw the pieces into a tub, which my comrade would heave up from time to time. Work got ahead slowly. Suddenly, I heard my work-mate call: “Tol, come up, the fool kicked the bucket!” – I climbed into the tub and he heaved me up. A lot of people had already gathered there. They had learned the news from the master, a free worker. Flags of mourning had been hoisted in several places. Everybody was in a good mood. Your could recognize this by their facial expression and the jokes the prisoners were making. I could not avoid stating that master and foreman were happy about the news, too. Nobody asked us to go back to work this very day.
By the way, the news about Stalin’s death were spread much later in other Siberian GULAG camps. When, for example, the shocking news reached on of the camps in Khakassia, the hads of the camp authority panicked: they would not allow any of the prisoners to leave the barracks to set off to work for three days. They just supplied them with their food rations. A rumour was buzzing about among the people: “The moustached bit the dust”. On the fourth day, the prison yard was encircled by armed detachments. In the following, all prisoners were evacuated. There was a tumult. And then, all of a sudden, ine word was heard clearly from all the babble of voices: “Pegged out…”. Now everything was clear, and thousands of forced labourers began to scan: “Pegged out” Pegged out! Pegged out!”
In some other camp the prisoners took off their caps and silently threw then up into the air, after the camp supervisor had asked them to remove their headgears and hold a minute of silence in memory of the deceased.
As already mentioned before, the country was overcome with grief. Cereminies were held in schools (during one of these events the director – a woman – asked the children to kneel down in front of Stalin’s portrait and cry; those who did not immediately manage to burst into tears were slapped to the back of the neck), there were workers and staff meetings, gatherings of soldiers within their units. At the same time, thousands of people were filled with happiness and relief; they were deeply convinced that they would soon get rehabilitated and released from slavery.
Afterwards, two funeral ceremonies took place, which many people all over the world including the relatives of the great composer and pianist Sergei Prokofiev would not forget for the rest of their life, for this great composer also died on the 5 March; however, the mourning congregation could not see a single flower on his grave, to say nothing of wreathes: all available flowers had been taken to Moscow to decorate Stalin’s mortal frames. By the way, many people remember that there was a huge crowd on the day of the leader’s funeral in Moscow the tyrant took a last heavy toll of lives from his subordinates; many were trampled to death and the leader took them along into the other world. Until today there are no official figures and data about what actually happened.
Last victims
Only very few people are aware of the fact that that Stalin’s death was followed by the misfortune of numerous, entirely innocent people living in Krasnoyarsk. Such as Tatyana Permyakova. She was unable to read and write, working as a bath attendant for the Krasnoyarsk railroad at Tinskaya Station. When she learned about Stalin’s death on the 6 March, she said swearing like a trooper: “He will be replaced by somebody else…”. She was arrested on the 28th April and only released in 1954 for lack of corpus delicti. Or the Ukrainian planer and economist Mikhail Muzyka who was working for one of the forest districts of the Soviet (Today Berezovsk) District as a rate-setter. He was sitting in the Berezovka teahouse and got angry, for they did not serve him for a long time. He kept complaining and swearing all the time … But just at that time they were broadcasting Stalin’s funeral on the radio. The people present asked him to be quiet; as a reply he began to swear again and even say obscene words on Stalin’s death. He was later sentenced to a long term, which was, however, decreased one year later. Many, many others were to suffer the same fate …
Hence, the country was sobbing and suffering in different ways. Not without good reason the poet Josed Brodskiy said: “I doubt that there has ever been a murderer in the world, who the people bewailed so violently”.
P.S. The “Krasnoyarsk Komsomol” is very grateful to the regional Krasnoyarsk “Memorial” Organization for having made available its materials.
Krasnoyarsk Evening Paper, 5 March 2008, Author: Igor Klebanskiy