Sergey Zagraevsky
My XX century
Chapter
6. Lenin, Party, Komsomol
Chapter
7. “Scientific career”
Chapter
8. Euphoria of epochs changing
Chapter
11. The loss of the bank
Published in Russian: Çàãðàåâñêèé Ñ.Â. Ìîé ÕÕ âåê. Ì.: Àëåâ-Â, 2001. ISBN 5-94025-009-2
Chapter 2. Vorkuta
Attention!
The following text
was translated from the Russian original by the computer program
and has not yet been
edited.
So it can be used only
for general introduction.
What do you know about the wind?
Have you heard of it,
When, back from Arctic
From the beginnings of white Dali,
He rushes zlopyhaya,
Destroyer pristine,
And hell tremble ripples
All the seas and oceans,
And in anguish tremble peaks
From Tien-Shan to the AI-Petri?
Have you heard this?
What do you know about the wind?
What do you know about snow?
Is it familiar to you
This white silence
This life without a roof, without a home?
Snow... Not that that shadow lace
Ice roller was trimmed.
No, our snow as white terror
Went into the darkness of polar night.
This snow will not cut
On steel knives Norway,
Under howling and gnashing of
He would fall asleep you forever.
You have not followed the barking of a dog,
Wild as the Pechenegs,
Falling, screaming and crying...
What do you know about snow?
What do you know about the anger?
Is an hour of dawn, clean,
As you pierced like a spotlight,
Molten gaze sadistic?
Have you broken hand?
Did you spit in the soul?
Have you thrown into the cellar,
No dawn, no holes?
No, you do not snatch
From the embrace baby son,
You never called, you never called
In the unequal fight.
No, your life may seem
Black as the Gobi desert,
The day you don't seem night...
What do you know about the anger?
What do you know about death?
Have you been dreaming about it,
How about a friend that will come
From the expanse of the blue distance?
Did you she looked
Delicate fairy Maeterlinck
What will catch up, you suffer
And twirl as dust,
And fill your heart
Tissue sweet Nirvana
And pull black crepe
World - empty and cursed?
You did not know this dream?
You didn't know? So believe me:
You don't know about life...
You do not know about the death...
Evgenia
Ginzburg
“Imitation
Longfellow”
I
Children thought of my father: “Parents are
sitting, I will grow up and I will be” long and hung over me. But about all
under the order.
“Paternal” line of my family, as the “mother”,
let's start from the beginning of the twentieth century, and specifically from
Her father was an accountant of the Moscow
Merchant Bank, a hereditary honorary citizen Alexander kolobashkin (1876-1924).
He was married to Alexandra Vasilievna, nee Rudneva (1879-1965).
Alexander Nikolaevich was a younger son of a
merchant of the second Guild Nicholas G. Kolobashkin, the inheritance was
miserable and, as we said, he worked as a clerk in a Bank.
He had several brothers and sisters (grandmother
mentioned about Sergei, Peter, Olga and Tatiana), but they all expressed the
same grandmother, “perished in the revolution”. However, some of their children
survived and “vanished” in 1937. The only one who supposedly survived the final
- Shorin, children Olga Nikolaevna, like in the seventies lived somewhere in
Belgium.
Some are not, and those far away...
Alexandra was the daughter of Vasily Rudnev, the
rector of the Church “Trinity” in the Shabolovka street, 25. Rudnev died
somewhere in the beginning of the century, before they “attain” to
Archimandrite Daniel monastery is now the exemplary residence of the Patriarch.
My father was very carefully studied the life of
his grandfather, and I hope someday you details will write. As far as I have
understood from his words, Rudnev was a typical “new Russian” priest of the end
of XIX century, that is strongly reminiscent of modern analogues. Commerce
prospered in architecture was fashionable “pseudo-Russian style”, even
resembles the present-day Moscow region cottage towns of red brick. Rudnev and
his Church on Shabolovka rebuilt in formless “new Russian” style.
Lived Kolobashkin First Meshchansky (Prospect
Mira) in the apartment of a few rooms. However, immediately after the
revolution of “condensed”, but they are lucky, they lived a wealthy life,
“surplus” living space was small, and it moved not strangers, and their former
maid, who treated them with respect and not particularly affected “complex
Sharikov”. And among the victorious proletariat came across quite decent
people.
To finish high school grandmother had time,
although it was not a gymnasium, a “unified labour school”. It was terrible
time even to Moscow - 1919.
The famine was threatening everyone, and
salvation was one - ration. We had to work. In the end, my grandmother after
school job at the state Bank as a typist.
Her father died in 1924, even in the twentieth ill chronically malnourished, and her mother, my great-grandmother Alexandra - was the only one of all generations, who I found. Well, the notion of “found”, of course, conditional " she died when I was a year old. But he lived to be 86 years, looked at the great-grandson, and that's fine.
Grandmother worked as a typist in the state Bank until 1937 and, apparently, had the appropriate image “gray mouse”. Small in stature, Rus, stout, with nezapominam facial features, she was a typical representative of the profession. And intellectual level then, apparently, does not stand out from the typing pool of the state Bank”.
External and internal fracture Elena Alexandrovna occurred only in 1937 and, paradoxically, the better. But this was still far off, but in the late twenties, she met with “eternal student” - Wolfgang Alfredovich Kavelmaher.
II
My grandfather Wolfgang Alfredovich was a German, son of the Manager of one of the distilleries Shtrittera (don't know how this plant is called now). Before the revolution a considerable part of the domestic industry superbly directed “Vikings”, it is a pity that this tradition has gone...
Perhaps
Wolfgang Alfredovich, born in
His family would like all of the above “German” virtues possessed. Father, Alfred F. Kavelmaher, managed the factory, and his mother, Elsa emilevna, ruled a large family: my grandfather were brothers - Frederick, Kurt and Edgar, and sisters - Sigrid and Elsa.
When he died, Alfred F., whether his death is unknown at this time, my father's family was in Vorkuta. Elsa emilevna died (supposedly “safe”, that is age) in the late forties.
Frederick was in the red Army and disappeared in the early twenties, Kurt worked at the CER and disappeared in thirty-eight. However, it later became known that he died in Kotlas camps. Edgar died of tuberculosis either in prison, or in Solovki about 1930.
Aunt of my father, Sigrid and Elsa, survived until the late seventies. More about them do not know anything, because, according to grandmother Elena Alexandrovna, in 1937 they were “denied” (supposedly written in the NKVD, the relevant application) and his brother Wolfgang, and his family. However, most likely, no “official denial” was not, but just afraid to continue communication...
When talking about tens of millions of people killed in the revolution, war and Stalinist terror, I don't doubt that all of it was from three generations of my ancestors on any line easier to name those who survived, because they are a minority.
And it totally different people, city, nationality, social layers!
“Extrapolating” this nightmarish statistics on the size of the country, I understand that if the two hundred million Soviet citizens were killed “only” forty-fifty - so it is the glory of God...
III
But
life somehow went on. Wolfgang Alfredovich “forever” was studied at the
Timiryazev Academy. Higher education, he ultimately did not receive. But it was
impressive externally - tall, thin, blue-eyed, fair-haired, just the “true
Aryan”. Growth was at that time not even the high and very high - about
Unsurprisingly, they are attracted to the typist from the state Bank and they in 1925 he married.
How they lived - I do not know. I think it was a standard “kharkovskaya” family - grandfather somewhere worked, and Elena Alexandrovna was rare in those days dignity - their own living space.
on 22 January 1933 they had a son. He was named after his father - wolf, that is, Wolfgang volfgangovichem Kavelmaher. Who could think, many ordeals awaited person with such NAME in the very near future! And grandmother, Elena Kolobashkin, took the German name of her husband and carried her whole life. Who knew...
In
Father German, that is “unreliable element” - planted almost immediately. Famous 58th article, “letter MRC” (“counter-revolutionary activities”), that is just.
But “just” nothing happens, if not in scale of one person, in the country.
IV
It views the cause of the so-called “mass arrests” a huge number. Often called the Stalinist persecution, strengthening of dictatorship and intimidation of the people.
All these arguments are good when it comes killings and arrests of hundreds, even thousands of people, of which something the state can depend on. This is enough to satisfy the dictatorial ambitions, to destroy the enemies of the regime and to intimidate others.
And tens of millions - sorry, too. And who - okay if only generals and party apparatchiks and all-all-all!
When Hitler killed all the Jews, it really was more or less understandable painful delusions. Stalin, however, Jews were put on a par with “indigenous” Nations of the USSR, no more and no less. In any case, before the war in the Gulag sent quite proportion to the percentage composition of the population. In short, all in a row.
So Stalin was mentally ill, since he destroyed his own people?
In varying degrees, Stalin, of course, the mentally ill was, but not enough to make such obvious mistakes on the way to the selected goal : world domination. After an error, as Talleyrand said, worse than the crime.
We, for example, for many years perceived catastrophe in 1941 as a fatal folly of Stalin. And commanders in 1938 cut off, and the defensive line has bared, and the scouts not believe...
I deeply respected Viktor Suvorov in his series of books quite convincingly showed that Stalin was not such a maniac, that before the war, just destroy command of the red Army.
“Leader” had several practical tasks: first, consolidated his power, secondly, intimidated others, and third, cleared the army from the brazen and unmanaged Amateurs, pushed in the years of revolutionary chaos - the latter included and Yakir, and Tukhachevsky, and Frinovsky, and Dybenko. Indeed, all these people were “up to the elbows in blood, and their Martyr's halo is caused only by the fact that they shared the fate of millions innocent victims. However, their death was not a miscalculation, but a conscious policy of Stalin.
The same applies to the beginning of the war: Stalin was not an idiot.
He was preparing for a global attack and rapid capture of Europe, weakened by the war of 1939-40. Soviet troops were already partially tightened to the border, some were on the March, there was a perfect target. The only reason why preemptive strikes Hitler was so catastrophic.
Ready to attack and defense - two different things. Beautiful Soviet fast tanks BT were designed for European motorways, but in the Russian mud sank. Stalin had many attack aircraft, but they need at the onset for defense, and useful strategic bombers. And so on - even topographic maps from the Soviet army was not. More precisely, the cards were only Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the USSR, they were absolutely useless.
Stalin was not an idiot, he understood the situation, listened to intelligence reports, but dare - all the resources left on a train strike in Germany, appointed, as is proved by Viktor Suvorov, on July 6, 1941. Little did not have time...
The criminal and the idiot is not the same thing. If Stalin was an idiot in 1941, there is no reason to accuse him of something similar in 1937-38.
The other: Stalin wanted a cheap labor force.
The enthusiasm of the times “industrialization” of the early thirties, did not give any tangible results in the welfare of people, began to fade. Moreover, in 1934 began to affect the demographic decline of the first post-revolutionary years. Let me explain: in the famine and typhus years 1918-20, of course, there was a sharp decline in the birth rate. But those who are not born then, in 1934-38 years just would have been 16-18 years.
So it happened that the young people had very little, and it was immediately taken to the army, to learn to conquer Europe. But to master the Kolyma and Vorkuta was none. Anyway, volunteers clearly not enough, besides they had to pay a lot of “Northern allowance.
And here absolutely free - huge labor army “enemies of the people”, in which the life prisoner was valued even lower than the soldier at the front. Hence the special quota for arrests, and the practice of taking all in a row in a random order, and endeavour, including by torture, quickly finish the investigation and sent to the Gulag.
And we wonder why even the loss of Donbass and Nikopol Russia in the production of military products has surpassed Germany in 1943. No wonder there is not. Women and children at their machines is first, and the masses of slaves, prisoners in the Siberian mining of raw materials is second. Coal, ore, timber, gold...
In Germany was nothing like this. An interesting fact from the memoirs of the Imperial Minister of armaments, albert Speer: Hitler gave his consent to involve compulsory labour German women only... 1944, and then towards the end. And only Jewish place of destruction in Babi Yar and Treblinka force to extract coal - everything would be better for the German industry...
In short, mass repressions of 1937-38 absolutely logical form the General outline of the preparation of Stalin to the global war for world domination.
Terrible preparation for the terrible war. What would have happened if Stalin had attacked Germany first - I do not know, it is difficult even to imagine. In any case, under the socialist yoke would have been not only Eastern Europe.
We will not speculate, “what would have happened if”. Suffice it to say that when in the late eighties repressed equate the benefits to war veterans, intuitively restore historical justice. As always, too late, and still with some unpleasant chill.
“Song of eternal fire” Galich and now quite relevant. Just recall how it starts:
“Unknown”crowned with glory warlike -
The man-well done or grief is the seer?
And bow my knees to the thunder of drums
Before this mystery of heads of government.
Above the silent tombs - cry tombstones,
But sometimes the gravestones are not, and similarity.
But sometimes you're not a pain, but vanity store,
Gilt letters on black granite.
And in the end:
And: where roamed the area “Ka-Era”,
Where the snow looking for rotten roots -
Before this land, no premiere,
Pulling up his pants, not bowed the knee.
And yet: over the Oka, on the Kama, over the Ob
No banners, no wreaths will not put a tombstone,
Just like the eternal flame, like the immortal glory,
Piles, pile, stacks of timber rafting.
“Ka-Era” (“counter-Revolutionaries”) - so was called those “literacy MRC”.
It's good that year that way in 1989 and grandmother Elena, and my father got red books “of the Moscow Association of victims of illegal repression” (by the way, I'm not sure that now they give benefits to disabled war veterans, and then gave). But in 1934, when his grandfather planted Wolfgang Alfredovich, before that it was very, very far away.
V
Wolfgang Alfredovich kavelmaheru gave the usual 1934 term - five years. “Ten” then gave in rare cases, it is not 1937, when it became the standard.
A quiet word - standard, and you can imagine ka, which is ten years removed from life! And it's for “thief in law” prison - house of the mother (and then only in words), and how respectable and law-abiding citizen? And “ten” in those days was rarely limited, then gave either “permanent link”, or another term.
My grandmother was left to work in the state Bank. It was not fired - this, again, was 1934, not 1937, and it was a quiet, homely and non-partisan typist. And Secretary of any head, and employee typing pool. Below nowhere.
From his grandfather, she did not refuse (in the sense of a unilateral divorce), though it is many people advised. As it turned out, still would not help.
In 1935 for the grandmother sounded “second call” - she was arrested. However, just one day. At that time, people chose gold - it was very necessary to the country, as “irresponsible citizens” voluntarily surrender its no hurry.
The story rather anecdotal, but rather terrible. In Alexandra, mother Elena Alexandrovna, there were some oddities, expressed in the details. One such detail was that she was collecting colored glass, put them in a tin can from “Londrina” (were then such sweets) and hid. Neighbors saw her hiding something, and “knock” in the NKVD.
Granny arrested and taken to jail, and the investigator took her to a small room such as a theatre. She was taken to the stage in the hall were some people and hooted, and the investigator threatened to cut its year-old son to pieces if she will not give gold. Just “show”. By the way, something like that described in Bulgakov “Master and Margarita”.
Grandma just sobbed and gold, of course, was not issued due to his absence. She was taken to a cell and told to think, and then suddenly released. It turned out that at this time the apartment was searched, Alexandra has shown a box of “Londrina, investigator scary used foul language, and it was all over, like a fairy tale.
And sat Elena in the typing pool, and print until the bell, the third call. This was the beginning of August 1937, when my grandmother received a summons that to her as the wife of an “enemy of the people”used “indefinite administrative exile” in the city of birch. The one where he was Menshikov, although my grandmother hardly been this easy.
At the same time the family was notified of eviction from the apartment. This meant that we had to take an elderly mother and four sons.
However, the choice is still not there. Much later, in 1956, my great-grandmother Alexandra unexpectedly received a certificate of rehabilitation, together with Elena Alexandrovna. Everyone was surprised, but it turned out that great-grandmother also gave “eternal exile, only agenda in 1937 some reason did not get...
Items sent by rail “low speed” (they, oddly enough, received, but more than a year later).
Arriving by train in birch, grandmother learned that too many exiles, and sent all the ships on the Ob river to the North, in Salekhard.
Father says that his first childhood memory is connected with the loading on the ship in fine arts: he remembered the crowd of women on the pier, and among them sobbing Elena Alexandrovna. Allegedly, no one else in the crowd wept.
I do not know. I've seen weeping on several occasions and his mother, and grandmother Lidiya Viktorovna, but Elena Alexandrovna - never. She could something “earned”, but did not cry when more than a year caring for completely paralyzed grandfather, did not cry when he was buried, not cried when she lay for two years after a stroke. Apparently, all the tears wept in 1937...
VI
So, Elena Kavelmaher with his mother and four-year-old son in October 1937 were in Salekhard, the town near the mouth of the Ob river. No farther.
Now, this city - centre Yamalo-Nenets region, there trains, ships sailing the Northern sea route, take out the forest in the district produce oil, and the life is more or less goes. At the same time around Salekhard oil have not yet found, and even felling almost was not - too far was to haul logs: “Sevmorput” have not mastered, the railway has not built, and upstream Ob forest will not fuse. The city was so quiet and provincial, as the town name was difficult.
There was a terrible winter of 1937-38. There was nothing to her grandmother to work will not take - exile, even with non-Russian last name...
The prisoners died from overwork, but they at least had to somehow feed. For exiles turned out the opposite - not found a job, so die of starvation, none of you even care not formally required. But what kind of work could be in Salekhard?
We lived in a hut, and then in the dugout is there at least the temperature was above zero. Four-year-old father became seriously ill from the cold and malnutrition, survived by a miracle - grandmother gave it to death in a crowded, ice hospital and came out herself.
Interestingly arranged the human psyche! When I'm in 2000 talked with his father on the subject of links in Salekhard, first heard something like: “Yes miraculous there was a time in my childhood, everything's fine”... But then it turned out that the father still remembers lying in the barracks under a blanket, and from the ceiling were falling snowflakes.
At this time Elena with Alexandra somehow earned... sawing wood.
In the end, oddly enough, they saved the Church metric grandmother, where it was said that her name Kolobashkin and she baptized into Orthodoxy. Elena Aleksandrovna, the “atypical” document went to the local NKVD and the Prince, seeing that she was Russian, took her to work as a typist. Securities was the sea, and the ability to print was then far more rare than it is now.
About a head of the Salekhard NKVD grandmother told me that from him all the time smelled of Cologne “Red Moscow”, and when she once said officers, as “intelligent” head, humiliating her and explained that he was the Cologne simply... drinking. Whether vodka bored him, whether taste more like Cologne...
However, the typist “intelligent” head treated with respect because of its indispensability - huge flow of exiles in 1937 passed, and qualified personnel in Salekhard never did.
Come 1940. Grandpa Wolfgang Alfredovich freed from the camp and got the “eternal exile in Vorkuta. The centre of the Pechora coal basin of the Komi Republic - do not Sochi, although somewhat closer to Europe than Salekhard. Still, in Vorkuta coal mined, and there exiles easier.
My grandmother, using appeared during the work of the NKVD “useful contacts”, was able to change the place of exile from Salekhard to Vorkuta. My grandfather hired (for the eternal Russian currency - vodka), a Nenets reindeer sleds with and early winter of 1940 moved the family through the Northern Urals. Ironically, this trip was not particularly difficult, in any case, much simpler and cheaper than up the Ob on the boat, and then, with many direct by rail.
VII
In Vorkuta Kavelmahery settled in the village of Rudnik (accent for some reason on the first syllable). Actually, to settle was nowhere more - in fact it's not a village, and the old town district. Then, by the way, and the only one. The first geologists in Vorkuta emerged in the early thirties, and finding coal, established this “settlement”. Since it began, the city of Vorkuta, received its name after the river, which was Mine.
The town is situated North of the Arctic circle and around the tundra, but we should not be perceived as smooth expanse of the plain. Vorkuta river flows in a deep depression between fairly high hills and houses “run down” to the river terraces.
Now, of course, piles of mines moved far out of town and area disappeared from the eyes. At the same time the city was surrounded by all the camps, each shaft (acting was about twenty-five) was individual camp sites, and it turned out that the whole city was one big area. Trains brought in Vorkutlag prisoners, and took away the coal.
What is coal mines, drifts and slaughter everyone knows, but sees them more often as the type of underground tunnels. In fact, in the bottom is impossible to stand at full height, a narrow passage in the ground with incredibly stale air filled with coal dust. Now the miners at least work in masks and respirators, and then with the protection of labour was still “not very”. Moreover, the cons - what them, enemies of the people, sorry?
However, the spare had when the war was lost Donbass and the Pechora coal basin is the sole supplier of coal, it is extremely necessary for the country. But it was tomorrow, but today...
“Today,” that is, in 1940, grandmother Elena without special problems has a job as a typist in admchast” mine is Mine“, that is, the system of the NKVD. And it is even exile meant good rations, the child - a kindergarten, a family - a decent apartment in a heated hut (with which the coal Vorkuta no interruptions, so it is with fuel). The apartment is of course a strong word, it had two rooms in the “communal”, but still! However, in the dugout had to live, but only for the couple of months after arrival.
My grandfather worked in geological control, and all was good. But tomorrow was, again, the war.
In the autumn of 1941 Wolfgang Alfredovich, as a German, “in administrative procedure”, that is, without trial, sent to the logging in the same Komi, just a little further South. Around Vorkuta, a forest was not...
In his childhood, having read “Russian women” Nekrasov, I do not understand why my grandmother, as the wives of the Decembrists, did not go for my grandfather. Then I was wiser and knew that my grandfather, differing iron Constitution could survive the lumber (which he was), and for Elena Alexandrovna with an eight-year-old son and mother shestidesyatidvuhletney it was certain death.
However, my grandmother just again became “Princess Trubetskaya” Willy - nilly-she, as the wife of a German, in 1941, also was ordered to leave Vorkuta and go to the felling together with a young son.
My father told me that they have collected things, and he burned his toy airplane, because he does not fit in a suitcase. You can imagine the terrible psychological atmosphere for the fine details of an eight-year-old toy is burned. Stress is with your hands. It would seem - and could give them to friends, and leave the apartment with the hope of returning...
Father more than half a century later recalled that the plane was made of cardboard, painted with silver paint, with large red stars.
But the family had saved the same Church metric with which my grandmother, again, went to the head of the local NKVD. The “Orthodox” Kolobashkin left in Vorkuta, and even work in admchasti she ultimately lost. After the war, and “earn” to the head of the typing pool...
As for Orthodoxy, I deliberately took the quotes - grandmother didn't believe and never in my memory did not go to Church. Yes, and great-grandmother, oddly enough, too, although she was the daughter of Archimandrite Vasily Rudnev.
Even taking into account the subordination of the Church in the Russian Empire, it is amazing how quickly trampled Soviet regime Russian Orthodox...
However, grandmother, you can understand - her first husband belonged to the Lutheran religion, the second - to the Jews, and while both were absolute atheist. Not one Orthodoxy trampled Soviet regime.
VIII
Vorkuta... I'm in his “Autobiography of a happy man two years ago he wrote that they “lived hard and hungry, but the masses would not die, it is not the Kolyma.
In General, the way it was, but with one exception - the terrible winter of 1941-42 died masses. Outside the city were dug several trenches, and there was a sleigh pile of corpses.
My father told me that he once met such a sledge, and the carrier became ill from hunger, and he asked the boy of nine to help bring the horse to the ditches. Father helped. All the corpses, of course, were stripped, but no tags on legs were dumped in mass graves, and all. Indeed, no one was going to dig up and to identify - and why more were needed these tags?..
Father said that the driver asked him to help unload these corpses, but he was so tired on the way up the mountain, he refused. There is no fear in respect of dead bodies in the nine-year-old child was no longer, and asked the driver for help was quite in order.
We can now plenty to gasp and moan about the harmful effects on the child's psyche mountains bare of frozen bodies, but they were Vorkuta weekdays. The bodies were taken, they are not concealing anything from above.
And not only dead and not only in 1942. For all the forties in the middle of the city and beat prisoners with rifle butts and shot - both in the air and on the “defeat”. Periodically, house searches took place, including the exiles. Local radio (and through the speakers) consistently reported, whom many days in the box provided and for what offense (up to the fact that the exiles citizen so-and-so was hiding under the bed C/to so-and-so). Before the war were often the message and the shootings, but later they became less - “labor” began to save...
A famine in 1942 was unforgettable. This was the only year when both father and grandmother were crying from hunger - it was so painful. To maintain the life of the soldering missing, but subjectively these sparing grams of fresh bread and slippery (read about the siege of Leningrad?) felt only as “rastrelivali” factor.
Having suffered cruelly from hunger woman typist (with sedentary work) and a small child, and what were the prisoners to work in the mine at a much smaller ration? That killed thousands.
Summer in the Vorkuta hunger was not so terrible, because you could walk into the tundra to set snares for grouse than most “beskonvoynyh and hunted. And in subsequent years was not enough food, so that his father since childhood constantly hunted. And eggs collected.
And in the spring and autumn migration takes place partridges, and nights half Vorkuta appeared under a high-voltage line - in-the-dark birds in a large number of broken wires. My father told me about this spectacle of the night, mass flying partridges, with the camp towers shining the spotlight, under the supports of power transmission - crowds of hungry people under their feet turn not less hungry Fox, grab partridges, people they are selected...
It became easier in 1943, when the Ural somehow earned evacuated industry and it needed coal, and the Pechora coal basin after the loss of Donbass was the only one in the country. Here and supply has improved considerably, and there was an American “lend-lease” stew.
I
think almost everyone has heard the word “lend-lease” and, in General, is its
value. And yet, let me explain: the so-called supplies to the USSR from England
and America, military equipment, raw materials and products. Those most heroic
caravans - “PQ-
Note that it supplies on credit, and even here there was a word game of cards - “American aid”, that is, assistance, which will soon have to pay. However, after Stalin for it refused to pay, but Khrushchev still had. It seems, payable to “lend-lease” was fully repaid only Brezhnev. And can be, and is still not settled...
From the front to Vorkuta sometimes brought jackets for prisoners. Pierced by bullets, covered with blood... “Tutor” father, writer, hero of the war in Spain, “beskonvoynyh prisoner Aleksey Eisner, having such a pea coat with brown spot of blood on her back, told the baby where the bullet hit, the bleeding with a particular hit, and it was also in the order of things.
Eisner, by the way, was excellent “tutor”, and the school where he studied father, was good - it taught exiles and prisoners, that is the color of the Russian intelligentsia. Even the Director was superkulturnaya Jewish lady “permanent link” - the paradox of the Stalinist system, which is driven into camps intelligent people. And despite the abundance of children NKVD-schnick, the atmosphere in the school was such that in ten years my father remembered only one (!) fight between two students, not just so, and because of a girl...
This ultimately bore fruit in terms of education of the father. But the war because of the constant need, and then habit hunting far in tundra (used to go away for a few days), he gave up school and learn is not that bad and very bad.
He was “raised to his feet only Moses Averbach, second husband of my grandmother, the future has become my “real” grandfather.
Time has done an outstanding anyone, but Moses Naumovich stood out even on this background.
IX
Moses
Naumovich was born December 30,
His father Naum Izrailevich Auerbach, died March 8, 1916, 44 years old, is grandfather Moses Naumovich was overscrupulous man and date remembered well. Mother, Khan-DIN israelevna (by passport Anna Davidovna), nee Blumberg, lived until 1968. On her grave, by the way, and written - and Khan-DIN israelevna, and Anna Davidovna. She was the daughter tsadeka (Jewish scribes) from Kovno, i.e. Kaunas.
She had many brothers and sisters (about 13), but the majority remained in Lithuania, and when “our” in 1940 captured the Baltic States, none of each other to find no time. Known only the fate of the two brothers Anna Davidovna trapped in Russia: Abram was shot in 1937, and Boris “lucky” - he died a natural death in the sixties.
But my grandfather had two sisters: Cecilia Naumovna (she had not seen in 1972 because of this, hit by a car) and Eugene Naumovna (she grandfather survived for a few years).
Actually, I could not tell all this: it seems to be my family only indirectly...
But the daughter and granddaughter Eugenia Naumovna after her death left in an unknown foreign direction, location descendants of Moses Naumovich from the first wife is also unknown, and the result was a paradox: from a huge family Averbach I was the only person caring for a large family grave at Vostryakovskoe cemetery. This cemetery is very specific in terms and anti-Semitic vandalism, and the continuous theft.
But, of course, not in the cemetery. I was with Moses Naumovich favorite grandson (his own grandson, my age ten years, he had seen once in life and for some reason did not show willingness to continue communication). My grandfather, exerting tremendous spiritual and psychological impact on grandmother Elena Alexandrovna, and my father had a lot to do for me.
“All so” I feel like a family-related Averbach no less than vested. Moses Naumovich - my grandfather, and another I had never perceived, while in my childhood, I remember, not once explained the difference between the “grandfather wolf” and “uncle Monya. For some reason I had called it “uncle”and not “father”, but it is laid in such infancy that reason does not remember.
Moses Naumovich finished some Commercial Academy, before the revolution are the elite of merchant standards. Excellent education grandfather received and further, ending superprestizhny at the time of the “Institute of national economy named after Plekhanov. By profession he was a mining engineer and in 1933-34 years built the Moscow metro.
At this time the graduates of the student group, where he studied Moses Naumovich, decided to create a kind of “social insurance scheme for mutual assistance to needy classmates. Soon some “well-wisher” hit the NKVD, the money collected for the needs of the Trotskyist movement.
X
The first term of his grandfather, despite liter krtd “(“counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities, much worse than MRC), was not at all time to three years of exile in Tula. What did the father in Tula - I do not know. In those days every engineer had a very broad specialization.
He married while still in Moscow, and “Tula” times his son Yury was born. Chat with his son Moses Naumovich almost no time is over a link, and he returned to Moscow, where he was immediately arrested. For the former exiles it happens automatically - the yard was in 1937.
Moses Naumovich sat under investigation for more than two years, he was beaten, broken finger, which merged the curve (bus unprofessional laid in the chamber). When I was a child my grandfather told it, I remember, was terrified, and this slightly crooked finger at me still before my eyes.
Santa got eight years, and he visited a few lumbering camps Komi ASSR, in 1943 came to Vorkuta, that saved him. The country was in desperate need of coal, and mining engineer could not be used as intended.
Grandfather was the chief of ventilation 40th mines and on this post worked till 1961. Sounds smooth - “worked”, but actually Naumovich Moses, when he expired, “tried” two times. But under the new investigation, and having regular periods, and then “eternal exile, he remained “beskonvoynyh chief ventilation shaft.
In fairness, we note that “beskonvoynyh prisoner in Vorkuta was set - the whole town was one huge area, around - the green Prosecutor, that is, endless tundra, and running it was still nowhere to go. Even for many prisoner-miners ' movement in the city was relatively free, and for professionals and even more so.
From the commander of ventilation depended on hundreds of lives - and the miners, and staff, and armed guards from the NKVD-schnick also sometimes required to descend into the mine. It is noteworthy that his grandfather was chief of ventilation and after rehabilitation, and in 1961, after the release of his grandfather retired, his successor, was so incompetent that mine methane explosion, and killed several dozen people.
In Stalin's time, loss of life for the NKVD's superiors in itself meant a bit, but emergency on coal mine meant the failure of the plan and the possible demotion, so, apparently, more political “camp” case against Moses Naumovich was only aim tighter grip indispensable specialist. And, of course, periodically to show him who's boss, to have had the upper hand...
Irreplaceable people, as we see, there were then, despite the famous words of comrade Stalin.
Their indispensability grandfather did not hesitate to use, but very specific - saved people. In a literal sense. They were Jews, just intelligent people, for whom work in the pit meant either death or disability.
How much he had saved I don't know. Personally, I remember three or four people, and hearsay - a few more. For example, Professor Elicona of G. Leikin (later known “informal” analysis of the Soviet system) grandfather put “tabakotrusom” - make sure that the shaft was not carry tobacco. It was the responsibility of the head of ventilation - as well as anyone in the pit lit up and everything will explode?
Similar bailout (in the camp-“creepy”) posts were in the mine a lot, but they did not appoint a “thief in law” (as in many other camps), and engineer Auerbach. And “thieves” had a wish to “soak” engineer and deliver to dispose of their rights: the coal mine - no logging, here without a professional can not do...
XI
After the war Moses Naumovich met Elena Alexandrovna Kavelmaher, my grandmother. Wolfgang Alfredovich was not known where, moreover, I think, even if he was there, everything would be the same.
Was it possible to compare the soft, “razguliaievo” Wolfgang Alfredovich with intellectual and unbending Moses Naumovich? Of course, my grandmother last madly attracted to and even on my mind looking at it as an icon.
It is, as they say, “positive” Moses Naumovich was very seriously their responsibilities as head of the family.
My father even against the background of weak Vorkuta school was a poor student, besides he was thirteen years old - so-called “transitional age”. My grandfather, despite the natural resistance of the child (who loves who has entered the apartment stepfather and not jealous of his mother?) immediately took up his “discipline”. In the end, my father received the excellent education, which can only be imagined at that time.
And grandmother Elena, communicated with Vorkuta “team” and Moses Naumovich, became keenly interested in art and literature. And finally became antistalinistkoy. Prior to that, she, although intuitively Stalin and disliked, but repressions in any case not vinyl, just as millions of others, believed that only with her and with several happened fatal mistake...
Moses Naumovich, to her credit, this stupid “ill” during the Tula links and knew perfectly well. Moreover, he was not only a staunch anti-Stalinist, but anti-Leninists. However, not anti-Marxist.
This position was most common among the prisoners, or who thought Lenin perverted the teachings of Marx, or Stalin - perverted the teachings of Lenin. Even, for example, the most serious post-war political science research Professor Lakina were written from a Marxist perspective. Very few went further and raised his hand “to historical materialism, even in poslelagernoe time, and only in the zone - and even more so.
Of course, so for ideological disputes among the camp inmates were many, but they came together in one - a hatred for Stalin. Maybe meet crystal clear Communist soul, designed, “twenty years as a day, exchanging, take through camp faithful beloved leader, but I have not heard of such.
But “loyalty to the party, despite the abuse of the cult of personality”in the Khrushchev era actively cultivated, and the bait, indeed, caught many former camp inmates. Some even after rehabilitation “honored” to recover in the CPSU...
XII
However, my father Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin did not like in school. Wolfgang Volfgangovich and the Komsomol was not the children of exiles there are not particularly expected.
In 1950 he graduated from high school in Vorkuta. Institutions in the Komi Republic was not, and the question arose: what to do next?
Staying in Vorkuta meant waiting landing: all “criminal cases” of his parents were at the local NKVD, and it would not fail to bind to a free extra labor unit.
It was necessary to enter higher educational institution, and all agreed that it should be Moscow. The main thing was to go to Vorkuta, and there does not matter that much, and in the big city was easier to get lost...
As the father has received the passport and escaped from the Komi Republic - this could write a detective novel. Stalin was still alive.
Were raised all communications and Moses Naumovich, and grandmothers, and eventually Wolfgang Volfgangovich Kavelmaher was going to Moscow with a clear response and pure passport, that is nowhere stated that the father and mother of exiles.
It was a chance, but remained very fact of life in Vorkuta. Everyone knew what it was. And except for the entrance exams in all institutions was then “the interview” filter to screen out unreliable.
And here I remembered that Elena does not somewhere, and in the camp admchasti, i.e. in the NKVD! And she got to the wolf is such a statement, in which it was said that his mother works in this system.
Frank oddities, all prisoners also worked in the NKVD, but this information has saved his father's admission to the Building Institute. In the interview he had presented, and no more questions.
And a year later his father moved to the Architecture.
It was difficult father in Moscow at the beginning! He lived first at the high school friend of my grandmother, and family legend has it that he arrived two hours standing at the door, because hesitate to call.
And what was the young man who always lived in the Northern camp zones, be in a huge city with the capital rules and mores? Frankly, from complexes on the subject he recovered only to fifty years, moreover many of them he managed to pass and son.
Complexes... I, a man of a different generation, instinctively expect have a militiaman on the street will check documents (it is on the street, inside the car set disappears). Even in the store do not go out without a passport. I still do all the time subconsciously think that I was poorly dressed, even if I am in a suit and tie. Love of dogs of all breeds, except one - the German shepherd. Sharply negative feelings I have is... black bread, especially in the form of loaves.
“Thank you” Vorkuta, these complexes can I get it more nowhere.
However, the father, on the contrary, only eat black bread, because I'm used to it since childhood. But neither my grandmother or grandfather did not eat black bread - as expressed Elena, “ate”. To explore these paradoxes, sorry I'm not a psychologist...
In my senior year at College, his father started to rent a room, but it was after Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 and rehabilitation of parents in 1956.
XIII
Nikita Khrushchev is still a lot of people remember with a condescending smile - “kukuruznik”, knocked Shoe at the United Nations, threatened to show the Americans gruel (translators are in confusion interpreted as “the mother of Kuzma”)...
Yes, of course, and not only Shoe tapping, even as the artists in Manege, yelling, and the hydrogen bomb threatened the West, and the missiles to Cuba brought. But for me he will always be someone who, as my grandmother Elena, “saving people”.
In 1954, he started the flow of amnesties to 1956 th turned into a massive rehabilitation of millions of innocent victims of Stalin regime. Rehabilitation, in contrast to the Amnesty was not only removing of conviction and restoration of civil rights. She meant the payment of two months ' salary in the old place of work (although it was small, but still money), and the main thing - credit camp years in employment and the right to living space in the city where people lived before his arrest.
Moisey N. and Elena after rehabilitation entered correctly - finalized in Vorkuta until retirement, during this time got itself two utility rooms in Moscow, then traded them for a small, one-bedroom apartment on Gagarin square, then the Kaluga Zastava. Parallel and great-grandmother Alexandra got a room in the “communal”. Slowly and with difficulty, but the government performed its duties.
In Moscow Moses N. and Elena eventually moved only in 1961, but until then, still in Vorkuta, they have a full-employment period and, accordingly, the huge Northern allowance.
They sent my father a decent enough sum to which he bought books, and scholarship paid for the rented room. The landlady had even allowed, as she put it, “led by girls, but not diverse.
Institute father graduated from the specialty of the restorer, decided to remain “free artist”, but live it was necessary, and he settled belokamenschikom - cut stone ornaments for churches.
Simultaneously, he is at the request of friends, in the order of “active rest” went with youth groups guide, and during one of the excursions to Novgorod in 1956 met a charming chemistry graduate student, Inna Mikhailovna Zagraevsky.
My father was a thin, poorly dressed, had a difficult character with a lot of complexes, but was superintellektualnym, independent, tall and strong. And the main thing - Wolfgang Volfgangovich was brilliant and eccentric personality, which, in General, lacked the least intellectual first husband Inna Mikhailovna, which she eventually was “taken away” in 1959.
Not about “Vorkuta” husband for her daughter dreamed Lydia V. and was against her divorce with Yuri Iosifovich, but Inna still insisted.
Not immediately, but was this couple that combines the huge number of different features - both their own and family. Villa At Zagraevsky, Peter, Kavelmahery, Kolobashkin...
© Sergey Zagraevsky
Chapter 6.
Lenin, Party, Komsomol
Chapter 7. “Scientific career”
Chapter
8. Euphoria of epochs changing
Chapter
11. The loss of the bank