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Ðóññêèé  Deutsch

Letter from N.V. Azarenko

In the issue of the “Krasnoyarskiy komsomolets” of the 05.02.1991 I saw a list of victims of political persecution in the Krasnoyarsk region. Among the family names I also found my father’s. In all, there were three persons bearing the surname Dyukov – all of them full brothers, inhabitants of the village of Tasseyevo in the Krasnoyarsk region. They and their parents were born in this village and lived there until the time when the reprisals began. Before the revolution and afterward they had been farmers. During the civil war they showed themselves as partisans. The Whites razed our village to the ground, and the inhabitants then lived in the taiga. After the expulsion of the Whites (Kolchak, Krasnov) the people were occupied with the reconstruction of the village and the farmers’ households. At the beginning of the collectivization all of them had to give away their farms to the kolkhoz.

Two brothers went to work: uncle Petya for the grain, uncle Misha for the fur procurement station. My father became the head of the kolkhoz “Red Partisan” in our Budyonny Street. He worked there for a couple of years but being unable to read and write sufficiently, then decided to give up this office. He became a brigade leader in the same kolkhoz and worked there till the day of his arrest. He was taken into custody late at night on the 7th of November 1938. He was kept in the Kansk prison. They sentenced him in Kansk in the winter of 1939 and carried him off to Norilsk. And later my seriously ill father was taken to Tayshet, where he died. Well, he is named in the list, but nothing has been written about him.

I am telling the following: Vassiliy Illarionovich Dyukov, born in the village of Tasseyevo in 1900, farmer, served in the town of Chita before the revolution. In 1914 and 1915 he fought at the German front. Both his legs were seriously injured; he had to walk on crutches and received medical treatment in Moscow for a year. Afterward he returned home on his own legs. He participated in the civil war (partisan – in possession of a corresponding pass). His whole life he worked for the welfare of his country and never did anything bad, just as his brothers.

About Pyotr Illarionovich you have some knowledge; about Mikhail Illarionovich I only know very little. He had no children. I do not know when he was arrested, since I was studying in Kansk at that time. I know that they carried through mass arrests in the village and everybody who had fought for the Soviet Power was put into jail on any possible pretext. Well, here they say that a son cannot be held responsible for what his father did, that a brother cannot be punished for his brother’s misdeeds, but they proceeded in just the opposite way. I was present at my father’s trial, and what did they charge him with? You will not believe it, but it is the truth. The sentence was: “ He does not admit his guilt; he appeared in court as Pyotr Dyukov’s brother, but Pyotr Dyukov is an enemy of the people; sentenced to maximum penalty – death by shooting.” The judgment was set aside and amended into 10 years of imprisonment, and there, in Norilsk, in the mines, in hunger and cold, they harrassed and tortured him. In this way they expressed their thanks.

Three of us stayed alive; mother had died in 1931. We all studied by means of a grant. We had no home; maybe this was the reason why we did not become victims of reprisals, as did the children of uncle Petya.

I, Nadezhda Vassilyevna Dyukova (Azarenko) worked as a teacher for 32 years. I have already been a recipient of a pension for a long time. I was born in the village of Tasseyevo in 1919, in the taiga, when everybody lived in the taiga. The village had been leveled to the ground (they say that Czech White Guards had razed it) and they were singing a song: “The evil Czechs hit us, they burned down our native village” and so on […]

Vassiliy Illarionovich Dyukov was born in 1890. He came from the village of Tasseyevo in the Krasnoyarsk region. He stayed to live in the place where he had been born. On the 2nd of October 1938 he was arrested by NKVD officers. He was accused of having joined in counter-revolutionary and rebellious organizations among the inhabitants, of having been engaged in counter-revolutionary agitation and of simply having appeared as the brother of Pyotr Illarionovich Dyukov. On the 26th of March 1939, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court sentenced him to the maximum penalty, death by shooting. Upon the decision of the USSR Judicial Oversight Collegium for Criminal Cases of the 22nd of April 1939 the charge of the regional court was amended to 10 years imprisonment. There is no evidence to be found in the court files about his fate. According to the information of the UVD (Administration of Internal Affairs) at the Krasnoyarsk Regional Executive Committee Vassiliy Illariono-vichs Dyukov died on 25.05.1945 at his place of detention in the Irkutsk region.

Upon the decision of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Court V.I. Dyukov was rehabilitated on the 31st of December 1957 in lack of a corpus delicti. 


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