The trud army – the organization of slave work, which was of such a great value to the Communist heart. Not even a year had passed since the takeover of the Bolsheviks, when, in 1918, the very first units of labour soldiers were forming up. The „call-up“ affected people with specific social „characteristics“: clergymen, officers, civil servants, merchants, representatives of the intelligentsia as well as their family members. They were to do the most dirty and hard work. These labour armies existed till 1922. Upon implementation of the New Economic Policy they were liquidated. For some reason or other, probably due to all those very urgent matters which were not to be delayed at all – the destruction of the farming community, collectivization and total terror against the own people – the trud army fell into oblivion. But then the war broke out. Having lost about 3.9 millions of soldiers and officers just as a consequence of war captivity towards the end of the year 1941, the government decided to perform a mass mobilization of sheer enormity. The rear was in lack of manpower. And this was the very moment, when they suddenly recalled the advantages of the trud army.
On the 10 January 1942 the USSR State Comitee of Defence passed the strictly
confidential Order N° 1123 „About the assignment of German resettlers at the
call-up age of 17 to 50 years“. And, with immediate effect, exiled Germans, who
were subject to repressions by the military commissariates were taken by train
to their new workplaces scattered all over the country. In the majority of cases
the conditions of living and work of the trud armists were not distinguishable
at all from the conditions under which common prisoners were detained: the same
barbed wire fences, the same work norms, the same food ration (as fixed by the
GULAG), the same guards and the word „fascists“, which they were permanently
shouting them fair in the face. But there was one point they conceded: they had
no objections to keep alive party and komsomol organizations for the labour
units and gangs, although new members were not accepted. The mobilization did
not furnish the demands of manpower yet;
hence, on the 7 October 1942, the State Committee of Defence passed another
strictly confidential Order – N° 2383 – about the additional mobilization of all
Germans at tge age of 15 to 55, for the purpose of concentrating them into
gangs. The labour armists were to work as lumber jacks, had to build factories
or lay railroad tracks.
Many trudarmist gangs were working in our Krasnoyarsk Territory, as well. One of these colonies was situated at Sorokino station, affiliated to the smelting works (P.O.Box N° 121). The labour armists were working for the timber supply section and the appendant farm and market garden. They lived in a camp zone all surrounded by barbed wire fences. They had to built their dwelling barracks themselves. Many Germans were working for the trudarmist gangs of the „Kraslag“ at that time. On the 1 January 1943 the „Kraslag“ comprised 5352 labour armists. Die to the extremely hard conditions of living and work several inmates decided to escape. In 1942, for example, 72 trud armists attempted to escape from the camp (68 were picked up shortly after). Auxiliaries from among the local population (they made up 68 groups with a total number of 622 individuals) helped the guards with the arrest of the escapees.
In the meantime, a rather straining agitation was carried out among the workers of the different gangs, which required a lot of patience from the part of the 110 agitators, who were from among the trudarmists. They were to explain the Germans living behind barbed wire fences all details about the wise policy of the Communist Party and ist fatherly care for the people. The idyll would not last long. In 1944 almost all party activists and secretaries of the politbureau were arrested. They were charged of having created a counterrevolutionary fascist organisation. They were sentenced to imprisonment in camps for a period of either 10, 15 or 25 years. They were to leave the trudarmy camp and were sent to other camps where they were then kept like adequate prisoners.
The trudarmy was liquidated in 1946. In the aftermath of this liquidation the trudarmists returned to their families. Many of them, however, never came back. Please commemorate them.
Vladimir SIROTININ, chairman of the „Memorial“ organization
Published in: Cooperation N° 4, 1998