Nikolay Fedorovich Golubev spent 10 years in the GULAG.
I, Nikolay Golubev, was born into a farmer’s family in the town of Vetluga in 1910. At first the family had lived on a solitary farm in Otlusikha, but the Soviet authorities ordered them to leave the place. Then they bought a little house in Vetluga. Our family consisted of four children, father and mother.
Father died rather early: I was three years old at that time. And so we started to ask an alms of other people – my sister and I roved through the surrounding villages.
Under the Soviet rule I finished the 4th grade at school and then began to work as an apprentice for the district consumer cooperative. When I lived in Vetluga, I also worked as a kind of sacristan. was responsible for the decoration of the altar. I have always been a religious man. Even in the most difficult years I never lost my belief.
In 1930 I got married to Marya Dmitrievna Gladkova. She was a countrywoman. Thank God, I had the privilege to live with her hand in hand till today. After our marriage I began to work for a hardware store and before I had learned the stove-fitters trade. I worked for the hardware store as the manager’s assistant. Before my arrest I managed the night and Sunday sales office. I lived and struggled hard.
One night they came for me. They reached out the indictment: it stated that I had plotted a consoiracy against the Soviet power, together with some clergymen. I had to leave my wife and three little children behind: Nikolay (7 weeks), Natasha (2 years) and Liudmila, who was in the 6th year of her life. My wife neither received any food rations, nor a piece of land to harvest hay and feed the cow – nothing.
That very night they transported me away as a prisoner to the town of Varnavin. Many days and nights went by, it was the time around Nikola Day, right in the middle of winter. They put me into prison and later transferred me to the prison in Nizhniy Novgorod. Good gracious, there were so many prisoners ... and other people, too. It was even impossible to lie down on the floor. The pushed 25 individuals into a solitary cell. At the cell doors the prisoners were sitting without shirts, but all those who were near the window wore coats because of the cold.
There were no legal proceedings. A troyka merely read out the sentence. They inflicted a 10 years’ camp detention on me and sent me to a camp in the Krasnoyarsk region – the „Kraslag“, which was situated in the town of Kansk. And I stayed there for the whole period of 10 years. I worked by the river: I had to raft wood. My daily food ration was 600 grs. Sometimes I received parcels or letters from my wife. The directors of the camp authorities did not do me any harm. Everybody asked me to fit stoves for them.
In 1947 I went home and worked for the State timber purchasing. In 1950 I was arrested once again. They put me to prison again on the basis of a fabricated case, on the identical charge for which I received the first sentence. They put me to prison in Gorkiy, where I grew mentally ill, had attacks and went insane. I spent a long time in the psychiatric clinic attached to the prison. My wife went to see NKVD leader Korolev in Vetluga to find out, why her husband did not send her any letters. Korolev replied that he had been referred to a psychiatric hospital. And then my wife came to Gorkiy, but they did not give her the permission to see me, justifying their decision by the fact that I, her husband, was too weak to stand a meeting. However, they accepted to take the parcel she had brought along and promised to hand it over to me.
Later they forced me to go into internal exile, although I was so terribly ill. They had to support me under the arms, when leading me out of the prison. And then they sent me to Kazakhstan, to Bulayevo station – a sovkhoz 100 kms away from Petropavlovsk.
Other people from our region had already been deported to this place earlier. They had bought themselves a dug-out and were prepared to take me in. I found work in the cow-shed and herded the calves. They gave me a horse to transport forage and stable manure. There was an order to organize kolkhoz farms. The director there was called Chausov – he was a very good man. He wrote a letter to my wife, in which he granted her permission to bring the family here. My eldest daughter had already finished the technical college of medicine; she had got a job in the village. And then they finally arrived: Nikolay – 12 years old, Natasha – 15. The family got settled in the hog-pen, ready to live their together. They used reed and straw to heat their home. All the time something was trickling down from the ceiling. The children went to school. My wife started to work. Our son lead the horse to the watering place. The horse kicked out, and hit him seriously. Nobody believed that he would survive. But he returned to life. Natasha had a job. The assisted the army surgeon, drove around and distributed medicine against malaria in the different sections. We managed to get over the winter, and then they forced us to build a dug-out. They gave us an ox. We ploughed up a small piece of grassland and then covered our dug-out with sods. Our children mixed the „cement“ and we did the walling. For some reason or other blood ran from the children’s noses, while they were doing this work. Later we started to buy things necessary for our farmwork: a cow, geese, ducks. The people living around (they had also been sent to this place as internal exiles) were good and friendly. Nobody would steal anything from anybody else.
Later they send a parson to live with us in the hogpen – father Grigoriy from Bogorodsk. From now on he stayed with us. He had served a 20 years’ sentence at that time. There were a lot of nuns from Gorkiy. The parson moved with us to the dug-out, as well. He was even allowed to hold the divine service in a separate dug-out. Father Grigoriy’s family name was Sedov.
We had just been living there for four years, when the Communists passed a decree saying that we had been kept here for nothing, that we were completely innocent. We were declared not guilty in anything at all. This happened in 1956. The sent members of the Young Communists’ League to us, thus exchanging them against others. They turned out to be thieves and crooks. They organized militia troops. The children were not allowed to go to the club. Four people from Yaroslavl were employed here – provide them with food and drink! If you don’t, you will get into trouble. They started blackmailing money out of us, because they wanted to purchase wine. Elsewise, they said, they would burn us off. I turned them out. Father Grigoriy was also released; he held a last divine service for us – then we went away. Father Grigoriy and the nuns, however, stayed behind – there was no other place they could have gone to.
We finally arrive in Vetluga and bought a house in the village. Until 1994 my wife did not receive any pension payment. They paid me 60000 rubels, my wife „five“. When my wife was 80 years old, they began to progressively pay her a pension, for she had brought up children during the war.
She now receives regular, precise pension payments. In all we have 528600 rubels at our disposal – plus State allowances. Life is expensive. We are old and need help. We need to buy firewood, have to have it sawn and chopped. Our son NIkolay is living with us, he is an a bad state of health, as well. Our eldest daughter had to have one of her legs amputated. She is an invalid now being unable to help us with the household. And Natasha died 12 years ago – at the age of 46. All people help us for money. Our Father Nikolay is a good man, sometimes he even takes us to church.
From the book: „GULAG: Its founders, inmates and heros“
Frankfurt/Main – Moscow, 1999