I was born and lived in the village of Verkhnaya Kezhma (Mozgovaya), Kezhma district, region of Krasnoyarsk. There were about one-hundred farmsteads, maybe even some more. When in the March of 1930 the Communists started to take measures to dispossess the kulaks, 13 families were expropriated in our village:
The heads of the families were no older than 40-50 years.
The decision about the expropriation proceedings were probably taken by activists in cooperation with the representatives of the district authorities. Then they came into the houses and asked: „Where is the head of the family?“ – Reply: „That’s me!“ – And then they were told: „Get ready to leave your house“. They evacuated the people from their homes and drove away all their cattle. All bigger objects were confiscated: fur-coats, floor coverings, ... The people were embarrassed. They tried to find accomodation somewhere else – if they could only persuade someone to take them in. Two of our Semenov families moved to Nikifor Zakhrapin’s, an impoverished old man.
About 15 days later we were prepared for our departure: each family was assigned one of the confiscated horses. Later, in the place of resettlement, these horses were taken to the stables that belonged to the timber industry enterprises.
They transported us 130 kms away from Mozgovaya – to the banks of the river Angara, not far from the rock of Kosoy Byk. We were discharged somewhere in the open fields near a pine grove. Camp fires were lit. The men began to fell trees and build a barracks, which was completed two or three days later. Inside they lined up three-storey plank beds; the room was heated by iron stoves. It was all damp; water was dripping from the wooden beams.
People were brought to the place of Kosoy Byk from everywhere. I remember the ZABRODIN family from Kansk; in Kansk they had owned a stud farm. I also very well recall their son – Ivan Kirillovich Zabrodin. DOSTALOV also came from Kansk; he had owned fields not far from Kansk, but the family had lived in the town. There were also people from the Irbeysk and Taseevsk districts – Daniel GUK, two families from the Altai region, Rubtsovsk district – Andrey ZHVAKIN, Semyon BARSKIY, people from Yakutia, from Lake Baikal. People of different nationalities: Buryats, Chuvashs, Tatars, Mordvins.
The commandant’s headquarters, organized for up to 10 people, were situated in the village of Dvorets. The first commandant, Martynov, and his assistants Miroshnichenko and Matvienko spread fear and terror among the people for about one year. They behaved like a band of robbers: they appeared entirely unexpected, mounted on horseback, holding riding whips in their hands and started shooting around. Whenever they noticed any golden pieces of jewellery the people were wearing, they made a mockery of them and took everything away. Some time after the new commandant Koslov had arrived, the commandant’s office was closed down, the previously large number of personnel was dissolved and all collaborators were discharged. At our place, in Kosoy Byk, there was a district militia officer. For each barracks they appointed „elders“, who were charged to establish and keep order an to keep a watchful eye on everybody, so that the inhabitants would not run away.
After they had built 10 barracks altogether, they began to erect houses and laid out roads. The new settlement was called Kosoy Byk.
Upon their arrival the young and healthy men were immediately mobilized for work in the timber industry enterprise. At the same time they organized a kolkhoz, which was run by women, old people and juveniles. They rooted out pine groves – the soil there was very fertile. They all went to clear the woodland: women as well as children. They fell centuries-old trees, dug up the wickerworks of roots, climbed up the trees and tied ropes around the trunks, so that they could shake and rock the trees, until they finally dropped to the ground. Suitable stubbing machines (a tractor with a kind of suspension device – so-called „tusks“) only appeared after the war. On the new plowland they started to sow rye. The old people said that this soil would bring about a rich grain crop. For the horses they seeded oats, however, wheat was growing best of all.
„The kulaks“ were an industrious and diligent people, and so the kolkhoz became very rich; all this was called „the way to communism“. The first chairman of the collective farm was Nikolay Tolstobrov, who came from some place in the Krasnoyarsk region; this kind of people were called „activists“.
A school was immediately built in the new settlement, too. Within 2-3 years one could pass the first four grades and then go on with the seven-year school. Once, when the first school-building was destroyed by fire, the erected a new one without delay. The children could attend this school without any restrictions, just as they liked.
Five years after our forced removal from the area of our residence in the year 1935, we took part in a voting. From 1936 all those received passports, who intended to go away to another district. In fact, mainly young people had decided to move to another place; the old people had already settled down once and for all.
The timber industry enterprise sent me to Yenisseysk to take part in special courses for tractorists, motorists, etc. I had finished the seven-year school in Kezhma in 1937 (at that time there had been no seven-year school in Kosoy Byk yet). In 1948 I finished motor-mechanic classes in Yenisseysk.
In 1936 they began to organize Komsomol cells; people came from the district center and canvassed for members into the Young Communist League.
Life was beginning to return to normal. But in the March of 1936 a serious of arrests suddenly set in; even the smallest villages were affected. The NKVD collaborators always came in the night to take the people away from their homes. At that time I stayed in the village of Okunevka. From among the people which they had already previously deported from Mozgovaya, they now arrested:
None of them ever came back.
Recorded in the words of Ivan Afanasevich Semenov
by K.A. Dzyuba, „Memorial“ Society Krasnoyarsk,
March 31, 1990