Children of the Great Terror: descendants of the repressed in the USSR still can not return home from expulsion

The Constitutional Court of Russia again received a complaint about the failure to implement the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression. This time it is a class action lawsuit of three women who spent their lives in the places where their parents were exiled and still cannot return to Moscow. Back in 90, the authorities promised the repressed and their children to compensate for the lost housing in their home towns, but a decade later, the law was changed. Correspondent Rtvi Elena Svetikova went to the places where the children of the victims of the Great Terror live, and tried to find out if they had a chance to return home.

Фото: Depositphotos

Two thousand kilometers from Moscow, in the Komi Republic, there was once a settlement for the repressed. Born in these places, Evgenia Shasheva often comes to the edge of the forest, where 65 years ago her father brought her - convicted under the 58 article and exiled Boris Cheboksarov.

Evgenia Shasheva, daughter of the repressed: “Father told me:“ Don't jump, people are buried here ””.
The people about whom Shashev speaks are prisoners of the camp near Ukhta. Today, only a few locals know about these graves.

On the subject: Stalin's terror: Jewish victims and executioners

An experienced camp, to which about 500 prisoners were assigned, appeared on the left bank of Izhma in 1933. One group of exiles built a road through which local people traveled there, they also called it “the road on the bones,” the other dug up mines. Almost no random people got here. The engineers and workers who were referred to this mine knew the production well.

The Soviet newsreels cheerfully told about the shock development of these places by the forces of convicts.

Glavspirt employee Boris Cheboksarov graduated from the Moscow State University Biological Faculty and came under Ukhta after his arrest in 1937. Together with his father he was tried for espionage.

Evgenia Shasheva, daughter of the repressed:“When I read the case of my grandfather and father, it was terrible, goosebumps ran over the skin, it was some kind of oppressive feeling: the father pointed at his son, the son pointed at the father. Knowing your father ... He would never do such a thing in life. So creepy.

In the camp in Komi, Cheboksarov met his future wife, the former prisoner of war Galina Tretyakova. She was brought to the Soviet camp from a Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

Evgenia Shasheva, daughter of the repressed: “When released, she underwent a filtration test. She was accused of serving in the German commandant's office. Who it came to mind is unknown. ”

Evgenia Shasheva grew up in a camp village. There are still barracks where the prisoners lived.

Today, in the old barracks and houses live families of shift workers. In the courtyards their children play with smartphones. Those who are older help with the housework. The same cloudless, at first glance, was her childhood, recalls Eugene.

Evgenia Shasheva, daughter of the repressed:“Actually, I had a very good childhood. Very intelligent people were sitting: there was a small club where they put Shakespeare, „Eugene Onegin‟. They did not just live there, it was their own world. I can't blame that time. See, I can't. ”

Elizaveta Mikhailova, the daughter of the twice repressed Sovnarkom employee Semyon Mikhailova, tells a completely different story about her childhood.

Elizaveta Mikhailova, daughter of the repressed:“Poverty: you have no coat, no shoes, nothing. And all the fault of the state. Broke our family. ”

In a house on the edge of a forest in the Vladimir region, 70-year-old Elizaveta Mikhailova moved from Chisinau. After the first arrest, her father was not allowed to return to his apartment in Veshnyaki. And the family moved to Moldova. During this expulsion, Elizaveta Mikhailova was born.

Elizaveta Mikhailova, daughter of the repressed:“Mom was not even taken to the maternity hospital. They said the wife of the enemy of the people. "
The wife of the enemy of the people could not only go to the doctors, but also find a job. And her daughter was doomed to experience sheer looks, constant condemnation, hunger and eternal fear that at any moment they would come for her mother.

On the subject: How to find out about their repressed and deported relatives

Elizaveta Mikhailova, daughter of the repressed:“She cried:“ I have nothing to feed or treat you with. ” And I was sick all the time. And in the end he said: "Do not feed me." And did not eat. My face came down: face hemiatrophy, nerves, hunger, fear. ”

Prior to the deportation of 1941, Alice Meissner’s relatives lived in the very center of Moscow. A family of German pharmacists who were related to the legendary Ferrreins dynasty, moved to Russia before the revolution. Meissner's metropolitan life ended abruptly.

Alisa Meissner, daughter of the repressed:“They told me to pack up in three days, and that’s all. On a national basis.
Alisa Meissner was born already in exile in the Kirov region, in the village where the Germans were deported from all over the Soviet Union.

Alisa Meissner, daughter of the repressed:“You are always afraid that someone will say this — a fascist, a German.”
Alice Meissner's mother was rehabilitated posthumously in 1993. And only at the end of 90-x Alisa Leonidovna herself received the same certificate in Kirov. But even after so many years of talking about that time, she is afraid to say something wrong.

Alisa Meissner, daughter of the repressed:“A lot of people died who were smart, and probably we would have advanced a lot with them. I think Stalin did it for nothing. Even, probably, not him, but they all together ... I didn’t say too much? "

Having not fully understood the past, these women are trying to find their place in the present. Alisa Meissner, Evgenia Shasheva and Elizaveta Mikhailova appealed to the Constitutional Court with a complaint about the failure to comply with the law on the rehabilitation of the repressed.

Grigory Vaipan, lawyer:“One of the compensations that rely on victims of political repression is the right to return to their hometown. This right includes the opportunity to be taken to housing, to be provided with housing in account of the lost. That is, such a specific compensation, it is not exactly restitution in the sense of returning what was taken away from you, namely, receiving social housing from the state. ”

In 90, the right to social housing was endowed with the rehabilitated themselves and their children, if they lived with their parents in exile and were experiencing the same. And then many people could use this opportunity. But in 2005, the law was rewritten. A new item appeared in it: “Individuals are registered and provided with residential premises in the manner prescribed by the legislation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation”. According to the law of the subject of Russia (in our case, Moscow), the general conditions for housing registration are applied to the rehabilitated.

Grigory Vaipan, lawyer:“They must first live 10 for years in Moscow, it is not clear where and how. At the same time they should be poor: they should not have their own housing and should live on an area smaller than 10 square meters per person. When we all add up, it turns out to be complete absurdity. This is impossible to do.

On the subject: The designer, who has moved the faces of victims of repression to the present, has launched an impressive photo project.

The Constitutional Court is the final authority in Russia that can set a precedent and help applicants to get housing without delay. The processes in the ordinary courts of women lost to the City Property Department of the capital. The city formally follows the letter of the law, the Moscow Government responded to RTVI: "To make decisions on the provision of housing to victims of political repression in a special order, a rather extensive change in the legal framework is necessary."

In the meantime, it is unclear how many preferential apartments Moscow can give and how many such requests will be.

Olga Rakutko, member of the permanent Interdepartmental Commission for the restoration of victims of the rights of political repression of the Government of Moscow:“I cannot say about the quantity, because there is no such statistics. Here we must also understand whether a person wants to leave, whether he is alive at all. I can not say how many people will turn, but I think that not very much. "

Olga Rakutko during five years of work in the Commission under the Moscow government had heard only about one case of such an appeal. Lawyer Grigory Vaipan believes that all potential applicants can fit in one apartment building.

Grigory Vaipan, lawyer:“The further we go from 1991 of the year, the more officials prefer to erect monuments, open memorial plaques, take children on excursions to museums and talk less and less about compensation. Although people are still alive, and there are those who can be helped. ”

Near the forest with the burials of prisoners in Komi there is a cross in memory of the repressed. He appeared there a few years ago. Evgenia Shasheva sees him for the first time. For her, this is a monument to her father and mother and all those places that she finally wants to leave.

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