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Deportations from East-Volhynia and East-Podolia (1929-1930)

These deportations started already in 1929. In September 1929 the exile transports started heading, one after the other, from the western parts of the Kiev region (today Zhitomir region), from the Vinnitsa and Kamenyets-Podolsk regions (today Khmel'nitsa region) to Siberia. About the ethnic structure we can say that farmers were predominating among the deportees, but there were also many merchants, teachers, engineers, craftsmen (tailors, hairdressers and others). Ukrainians were, of course, in the majority. The second place in number was obviously held by Poles, however, there were Germans and Jews, as well.

Some of the trains were unloaded at Yaya station in the Siberian region (today Kemerovo region). Most of the exiles were kept there in "transit camps" behind barbed wire fences for months. Some of the deportees were taken from Yaya station to Tomsk. Other trains with exiles were unloaded in Irkutsk. Thousands of exiles, including children, were moved to the old, half-destroyed Alexandrovsk central prison, where the rainwater came through the roof, and it was already winter. There were exile transports, which were unloaded without ever having reached Irkutsk: in Angarsk, Nizhneudinsk, Tayshet.

In the spring of the year 1930 the exiles from Yaya, Tomsk and Irkutsk were sent to our region. [It is true that some of the exiles were also taken from there to other regions]. Only those exiles who had been taken to Angarsk were transferred to our region much later, that is in 1935 (when they were resettled to the settlement of Dudovka in the district of Kasachinskoye).

The exile transports from Volhynia and Podolia deported in 1930 were already taken directly to our region, as far as we know.

Many exiles, who had been detrained in Krasnoyarsk, remained in the local woodworking factories: the Woodworking Factory No. 1 (as of 1933 - Krasnoyarsk Woodworking Combinate), the Woodworking Factories No. 3 and 4 (Pashenniy Island). Others were either taken from Krasnoyarsk to the south into the mountains (settlement of Kichibash on the Sissim River and other places of exile), or down the Yenissey River to the north to Yenisseysk and afterward to the "Yartsevo subregion" on the left banks of the Yenissey and its tributaries near Yartsevo.

At that time these places belonged to the district of Turukhansk (they were traditionally called "Turukhansk region"), but when its population was increased significantly by the number of exiles, the State authority created a new district named Yartsevo. Later, after many deportees had been released, the population decreased again considerably, so that the district was abolished and annexed to the district of Yenisseysk. In these places the exile settlements were scattered all over the countryside, as they were mainly connected to the woodworking factories and the rafting of timber.

In the years 1932-1933 many internal exiles were transferred from the Sissim and Irbey rivers, from the mountain valleys, to places situated closer to the Yenissey River, to the settlement of Zhulget, to Smolenka and other villages. In the years 1935-1937 many of them were taken to the Woodworking Combinate and the woodworking factories in Krasnoyarsk.

Some trains (a guarded transport from the Alexandrovsk central prison, see above, for example) were unloaded at Kamarchaga station, Mana district, from which the exiles were taken to the settlement of Oreshnoye in the mountains, to settlements on the Mana River and its tributaries: Bol'shoy and Maly Ungut, Lebyazh'e, Narva, Kolba, etc.

Many exiles were taken to Kansk, to settlements with woodworking factories. Others were relocated from Kansk to the adjacent district of Ilansk on the Poyma River, where the exile settlement of Khremovo was then set up on previously uninhabited ground. Here they only took Ukrainian deportees (Poles and Ukrainians); other exiles were not moved to this place. In the spring of 1938 all exiles from Khromovo were resettled partly to the woodworking factory in Kansk, partly to the Mana River (see above), and in the settlement of Khromovo they established the Ilansk OLP (= separate forced labor camp sub-sector) of the Kraslag (P.O. Box Y-235).

Many Ukrainian exiles were taken to exile settlements on the Agul and Kungus rivers in the district of Irbey, where deportees from Buryatia had already been resettled before. We do not have any information about how they were taken there: either via Kansk, Irkutsk or Nizhneudinsk. In 1938 these exiles, as well as those from the settlement of Khromovo, were taken to that place, as well, and even for the same reasons: instead of exile settlements these places were now occupied by the zones (= compounds) of the Agul, Zhedarba and Tugach separate sub-sectors of the Kraslag forced labor camp.

Early in the 1940s some of the internal exiles from the woodworking factory in Kansk were transferred to Krasnoyarsk, to the Woodworking Combinate and the woodworking factories.

It was only a comparatively small group of exiles from Ukrainian transports that was transferred to Igarka. They were exiles who had initially been taken to Yaya station. Exiles from this stream (obviously in small groups) also happened to get to Kemchug station (west of Krasnoyarsk) and to Uyar ( east of Krasnoyarsk).

One exile group from Ukrainia (possibly by way of Tomsk) also happened to get to Olkhovka (Artyomovsk), today district of Kuragino, to the gold mines in the East-Sayan mountain range. But we do not have any information about the existence of internal exiles from Volhynia and Podolia there. To this place they took deportees from the south-western parts of Ukrainia and the Odessa region.

Table of main places of exile of deportees from Volhynia and Podolia

See:


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