The Museum in Kuchino: The Conscience of Russia
“Where everything was born of human torment…”
Vasyl Stus
“On September 22, 2003, shortly after midnight, the fire department received a report of a fire at the ‘Perm-36’ Museum of the History of Political Repression, located in the village of Kuchino, 29 kilometers from the city of Chusovoy (Perm Oblast). As reported by the press service of the UGSP of Perm Oblast, the special-regime barrack was on fire.
Because the fire was discovered late, firefighters arriving at the scene found the museum building completely engulfed in flames. The fire was extinguished at 1:15 a.m. As a result of the blaze, the wooden museum building, constructed in 1969, burned down completely. An investigation into the cause of the fire has been launched. According to preliminary data, the cause of the fire was a short circuit in the electrical wiring. Repair work was being carried out in the museum, and temporary wiring had been installed.”
This message came from the Perm “Memorial” society. By phone, we learned that the museum exhibits, fortunately, had been moved to other premises due to the renovation. In those places where the plaster was damp, the walls survived. However, the building will have to be rebuilt from scratch. The regional authorities have promised assistance. It can be rebuilt in one season.
The people from Perm dispel our doubts about how a building measuring 12x120 meters could burn to the ground in just one hour from a single short circuit by saying that a potential arsonist would have had a reason to burn the museum with its exhibits, not bare walls.
This barrack is a part of Ukrainian history. It was the last special-regime political camp in the USSR. In the nearly 8 years of its operation as “institution VS-389/36,” from March 1, 1980, to December 8, 1987, 56 prisoners passed through it. According to the calculations of historian and journalist Vakhtang Kipiani, 37 of them were Ukrainians. Namely: members of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords Oles Berdnyk, Mykola Horbal, Mykhailo Horyn, Vitaliy Kalynychenko, Ivan Kandyba, Yuriy Lytvyn (died in a hospital in the city of Chusovoy on September 4, 1984), Levko Lukianenko, Valeriy Marchenko (died in the prison hospital of Leningrad on October 7, 1984), Vasyl Ovsienko, Bohdan Rebryk, Petro Ruban, Ivan Sokulsky, Vasyl Stus (perished in the punishment cell of this barrack on the night of September 3–4, 1985), Oleksa Tykhyi (died in a prison hospital in the city of Perm on May 5, 1984), and Danylo Shumuk; foreign members of the UHG, Estonian Mart Niklus and Lithuanian Viktoras Petkus; as well as Ukrainian political prisoners Mykhailo Alekseiev, Ivan Hel, Mykola Yevhrafov, Vasyl Kurylo, Oleksiy Murzhenko, Hryhoriy Prykhodko, Semen Skalych (Pokutnyk); Russian writer Leonid Borodin; dissident Yuriy Fyodorov; members of the National United Party of Armenia Azat Arshakian and Ashot Navasardian; Lithuanian Balys Gajauskas; Latvian Gunārs Astra, and others.
Starting in 1929, Perm Oblast became particularly densely overgrown with the tumors of concentration camps. In some places, they are more common than villages. The first prisoners were brought here for the construction of the Krasnovishersk pulp and paper mill. It was here that the “state of workers and peasants” first gained experience in the mass use of free prisoner labor on socialist construction projects. Subsequently, a whole series of camp administrations emerged here: VisherLAG, NyrobLAG, SolikamLAG, ShirokLAG, and our own Skalnynske. More people passed through them than currently reside in the oblast.
When evil, though carefully concealed behind barbed wire and high fences, flourished so on this land, it inevitably defiled the souls of the people who lived around. That is why we, the former prisoners of Kuchino, wrote in a letter to the Perm “Memorial” on the occasion of its opening in 1995 that the Memorial they were creating “is not only a tribute of respect and recognition of the value of our struggle for human rights and the independence of Ukraine, but will also serve to educate new generations of Russian citizens in the spirit of respect for universal human values, which are the rights of man and of nations.”
In 1972, the authorities began to move the contingent of political concentration camps (which in the USSR were called by the innocent name “correctional institutions”) from Mordovia, near Moscow, to the Urals. The reason: in the 1960s and 70s, information about political prisoners and their conditions began to leak out from the camps into the “big zone” and abroad. Meanwhile, the KGB was conducting another “purge” of society—this time of “anti-Soviets,” who, in fact, did not hide their moral position, openly declaring their opposition. Since most of them knew each other, if not personally, then through samvydav literature and broadcasts from Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, they needed to be reliably isolated, separated into relatively small zones.
On July 13, 1972, under conditions of top secrecy (even the guards were dressed in tracksuits), the first echelon with several hundred Mordovian strict-regime prisoners arrived in the Chusovoy district of Perm Oblast. (These were mostly first-time prisoners, who wear black clothing; not to be confused with the special regime, where recidivists, wearing striped clothing, are held). The echelon was on the road for three days, moving at night. During the day, the prisoners suffered in the scorching “Stolypin” cars (that hot summer, forests and peat bogs were burning). They fainted. One died. Many, when unloaded, could not stand on their feet. They were housed in zones VS-389/35 (Vsekhsvyatskaya station, Tsentralnyi settlement), 36 (Kuchino village), and 37 (Polovynka village).
Another large transport of strict-regime prisoners from Mordovia arrived in the Urals in the summer of 1976.
Finally, on March 1, 1980, 32 special-regime prisoners were transported to Kuchino from Sosnovka in Mordovia (again, one died on the way). A wooden building of a former sawmill, a few hundred meters from the strict-regime zone, was adapted for the new “special strict-regime institution VS-389/36.”
Thus began the history of the “institution,” which became known to the world as the “camp of death.” For it was here that 7 prisoners were driven to their deaths: Mykhailo Kurka in 1983; Oleksa Tykhyi, Ivan Mamchych, Yuriy Lytvyn, and Valeriy Marchenko in 1984; and Akper Kerimov and Vasyl Stus in 1985—the latter dying here in a punishment cell on the night of September 3–4, 1985.
In fact, this was not a camp but a prison with an extremely harsh regime. While recidivists in criminal camps were taken to a work zone, we political recidivists worked in our cells. And we were allowed only one hour of exercise per day in a two-by-three-meter yard lined with sheet metal, covered with barbed wire from above, with a guard on a platform. From our cells, we could only see the fence, 5 meters from the window, and a little bit of sky. Our food cost 22–24 rubles a month; the water was rusty and foul-smelling; our heads were shaved. We were allowed one visit a year, one package of up to 5 kg a year after serving half our term, and they tried to deprive us of even those. Some of us went for years without seeing anyone but our cellmates and guards.
On December 8, 1987, the very day Mikhail Gorbachev was negotiating with Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik and needed a lie for just one day (that there were no more political prisoners in Kuchino), a large team of guards descended on the zone. The 18 of us who remained were searched and transported in prison vans to zone No. 35, at Vsekhsvyatskaya station, from where we were released over the next year and a half, having been “pardoned”—Gorbachev did not dare to rehabilitate us immediately and take us as his allies. We were not rehabilitated until after the approval on April 17, 1991, by the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR of the “Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine.”
Although our barrack was left empty, the Ukrainian history of the “institution” did not end there.
Mykhailo Horyn, who was released from here in the summer of 1987, came here with former political prisoner and journalist Pavlo Skochko on April 6–7, 1988, on an assignment from the journal “Ukrainian Herald,” which had been revived by Viacheslav Chornovil. They intended to secure a visit with us, the prisoners, but only met with some of the authorities and listened to their threats. Their report was published in issue 13 of the “Ukrainian Herald.”
In February 1989, Armenians led by former special-regime prisoner Ashot Navasardian visited here. Without asking anyone, they exhumed the mortal remains of Ishkhan Mkrtchian, who had died in the strict-regime camp, from the cemetery in the village of Borysovo and took them home.
In May 1989, Estonian Mart Niklus came to Kuchino with friends. They went into the zone, filmed around it, but the barrack was still locked at that time.
In the summer of 1989, the families of Vasyl Stus, Oleksa Tykhyi, and Yuriy Lytvyn, as well as the newly created All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons and the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, began efforts to bring to Ukraine the mortal remains of Vasyl Stus and Yuriy Lytvyn, buried in Borysovo, and Oleksa Tykhyi, buried in Perm. I was included in the expedition. On August 31, 1989, I walked freely through the achingly familiar cells where I had spent 6 years of my life, recounting what happened here, while Bohdan Pidhirnyi and Valeriy Pavlov filmed. (This account, which I did not censor and thus contains some errors, is now published in the book “Untzetzovurii Stus. A Book in 2 Parts. Part 1. Compiled by Bohdan Pidhirnyi. Ternopil: Pidruchnyky i posibnyky, 2002, pp. 9–38”).
At that time, we were not allowed to carry out the exhumation, citing an “unfavorable sanitary and epidemiological situation.” But we walked through the abandoned and open cells, filmed everything on video and film, including the punishment cell where Stus died (this material can be seen in Stanislav Chernylevsky’s film “A Black Candle for a Bright Road”). It was then that I found scraps of our clothing, the “birka” (chest tag) of Mykhailo Alekseiev, a piece of a kitchen notebook with entries in Mykola Horbal’s hand, parts from our work, and in cell No. 8—three keys to the cells, among them a clean key with the number “3,” possibly from the punishment cell where Vasyl Stus perished.
On September 9, I asked Mykhailo Horyn, my cellmate who was presiding over the Constituent Congress of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, to let me speak at the rostrum. I jangled those keys:
“In 1985, Stus was buried a few hours before the arrival of his wife and son, and they were not allowed to transport his body to Ukraine. They also cited an unfavorable sanitary and epidemiological situation then. So, there is an epidemic. It is a plague. It is an anti-Ukrainian plague, the carriers of which sit in the KGB and the Central Committee of the CPU!”
The Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU for Ideology, Leonid Kravchuk, was sitting in the hall...
We came to these unforgettable places for a second time on November 17 of that same year, 1989. At that time, a secret instruction was still in effect: a deceased prisoner had to be buried near the place where he died or was imprisoned, and he could only be reburied when his term of imprisonment ended. That is, we, the living, were already free, but the dead remained under arrest. But the authorities had weakened and did not formally forbid us from taking our deceased back to Ukraine, though they tried to interfere. We did not go into the barrack then—there was no time. But we learned that after our first visit, a KGB gang had rampaged through it: they had destroyed the fences (“zapretki”) with a bulldozer, torn the bars and locks from the windows and doors. People began to gradually dismantle the floor, even taking the slate from the roof. At that time, the thought was: let the prison perish!
But, fortunately, there were conscientious people in Russia who understood the historical value of this “object”—the barrack of the last political concentration camp in the USSR that had been preserved (the others—at Vsekhsvyatskaya station and in Polovynka village—had been converted into camps for common criminals). These conscientious people—the founders of the Perm Regional Branch of the International Historical-Enlightenment, Human Rights, and Charitable Society “Memorial,” which emerged in 1988; instructors at Perm State Pedagogical University Viktor Oleksandrovych Shmyrov, Mykhailo Oleksandrovych Cherepanov, Andriy Borysovych Suslov, and Voleslav Karlovych Stening; journalist Oleksandr Mykhailovych Kalikh; journalist Tetiana Heorhiivna Cherepanova (Chursina); Viktor Veniaminovych Zykov; his daughter, university graduate Yana Zykova, and others—spent a good part of their lives here. They even bought an izba in the neighboring village of Tiomnaia and made it their home. They took it upon themselves to restore the zone in its all its unattractive entirety and to exhibit for public view what had so recently been so carefully guarded from the Soviet people who were building communism, and especially from foreigners. They initiated this movement of the Russian people’s conscience. It is one thing to create a museum to the glory of one’s fatherland; it is another thing to expose the negative pages of one’s history to the whole world. Let’s agree that this requires civil courage. These true patriots of Russia were guided by considerations of a higher order: there is no other way for Russia to gain respect in the world community than through catharsis—purification from the filth of totalitarianism.
The existence of this barrack in their very region obliged them to act.
The Perm “Memorial” set itself the goals: 1) to preserve and immortalize the memory of the victims of the totalitarian regime in the USSR, 2) to actively participate in democratic transformations by promoting the development of civic and legal consciousness, restoring the historical truth about the crimes of the totalitarian regime, and about the illegal and terroristic methods of state governance.
Back in 1992, the people of Perm invited a Ukrainian delegation to their conference. I remember that the head of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons, Yevhen Proniuk, went, along with Mykola Kots from Rivne and someone else.
Starting in 1994, “Memorial” began to restore the concentration camp and create in it the “Perm-36” Museum of the History of Political Repression and Totalitarianism. I was invited to its consecration on September 12, 1995. Since then, I have been a member of the Museum’s Council.
Traveling with me were Vasyl Stus’s son Dmytro and the historian and journalist Vakhtang Kipiani. Mart Niklus came from Estonia, former strict-regime prisoner Viktor Pestov from Yekaterinburg, and from Moscow, the Belarusian political prisoner Mikhail Kukobaka. We participated in the work of the IV International Scientific and Practical Conference “Post-Stalinist Totalitarianism: Essence, Opposition, Repressions.”
The Ukrainian films from 1989 and our oral and written consultations were very helpful to the Memorial members. After all, everything here had been destroyed. And then they were also advised by the former guard Ivan Kukushkin, who was hired as a worker in the workshop attached to the zone (he is now the Head of Security at the Museum). It seems he has “firmly embarked on the path of correction,” because he himself had to slurp balanda (prison soup) for four years—for a fight. Journalist Tetiana Heorhiivna Chursina arranged a meeting for me with Ivan Kukushkin right in the camp yard. (Kukushkin did not want to meet with Mart Niklus, because Mart claims that Kukushkin beat him. Vasyl Stus also mentions this in his notes “From a Camp Notebook”).
The meeting was surrounded by video and film cameras and tape recorders and lasted about an hour. Vakhtang Kipiani made a half-hour film from it. I then showed Kukushkin the keys to the cells:
“Do you recognize these?”
“Oh, that’s our work tool!” Kukushkin exclaimed.
I tried to clarify the circumstances of Yuriy Lytvyn’s death, as Kukushkin had guarded him in the civilian hospital in Chusovoy during his surgery and was present at his death.* (*See more about this in the essay on Yu. Lytvyn). As for Stus, Kukushkin’s version does not match ours, and he recounts what he heard from other guards, as he was no longer working in our zone at that time. And his colleagues, of course, had taken an oath to keep “official secrets.” Later, I believe in 2001, the lawyer Levko Lukianenko spoke with him about this. He completely refuted the version that Stus committed suicide in work cell No. 7 on the evening of September 3, 1985. Lukianenko himself had worked the day shift in that cell. Being a shrewd man, he noticed upon coming to work the next day that the parts and tools on the only workbench there had not been disturbed. No one had worked there. And I also remember that one evening, on the second or third of September, Stus asked the guard Inozemtsev to give him his boots for the work cell because his feet were cold in his slippers. He was in work cell No. 8, opposite the duty office, because a voice from the perpendicular corridor where cell seven is located could not have been heard.
Kukushkin also confirmed that the head of the regime, Major Fyodorov, gave orders to “look for compromising material” on the prisoners, to fabricate reports of regime violations, especially when a visit was approaching—in order to deprive them of it. After all, a visit was an outlet for true information, which was the most terrible weapon against the Soviet system.
In September 1996, Oleksa Tykhyi’s son Volodymyr came to the International Conference “Resistance to Totalitarianism in Russia (USSR) 1917–1991” with his sons Anton and Yurko, along with historian Yaroslav Tynchenko, journalist Vakhtang Kipiani, and myself. Once again, former prisoners Mart Niklus and Viktor Pestov were present, and from the St. Petersburg “Memorial,” its chairman Veniamin Viktorovich Iofe and Viacheslav Dolinin came.
In the barrack, the cells had already been restored with all their unattractive requisites: metal bunks, bedding, the striped clothing of especially dangerous recidivists, work cells, and punishment cells. In the large, open-plan section, exhibitions of photographs and materials about the prisoners of the zone were displayed, with “personal” stands, so to speak, dedicated to the deceased Oleksa Tykhyi, Yuriy Lytvyn, Valeriy Marchenko, and Vasyl Stus, a stand for the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, for the founders of the Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union Levko Lukianenko and Ivan Kandyba, and for the journal “Ukrainian Herald.”
In 1998, “Memorial” also took over the former strict-regime zone in the same village of Kuchino. This consists of several barracks. Some of them have been restored, while others have been conserved in a ruined state—as a symbol of the destroyed totalitarian system. One of the barracks is equipped with a classroom with numerous exhibits.
During the summer, several excursions pass through this museum every day, and over the season, several thousand visitors—schoolchildren, students, teachers. For example, on a single day, June 22, 1999, when Mykhailo Horyn and I were there as “living exhibits” and participants in the International Conference “Resistance to Totalitarianism in Russia (USSR) 1917–1991,” 11 buses of schoolchildren arrived—and this is 200 km from the regional center! By noon on June 23, there were 7 buses. We also conducted several tours.
That day, near the workshop next to the zone, we had a conversation with Ivan Kukushkin in the presence of Viktor Zykov. The batteries in my recorder died, and Horyn, instead of recording the conversation, turned on the playback of a blank cassette! A great pity.
I was in the museum once more that year. I was invited by a German television crew. They needed to film a segment with a “living exhibit,” so the administration recommended me. It was December 12, 1999. The segment was shown on television: a German citizen, Michael Wiesermann, saw it, was moved by sympathy, and sent me 1000 Deutschmarks. They went toward the publication of the book that you, the reader, are now holding in your hands.
I was last in the Urals on October 3–6, 2000. The Perm “Memorial” had invited me to participate in the conference “Museums and Exhibitions of ‘Memorial’.” At a hotel in the city of Chusovoy, Perm Oblast, I met with my former cellmate, the Lithuanian Balys Gajauskas, and his wife Irena Gajauskienė.
Partisan Balys Gajauskas served 25 years in prison (1947–1972). He was arrested a second time on April 20, 1977, and on April 12–14, 1978, was sentenced for so-called “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” to another 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile, being designated an especially dangerous recidivist. In captivity, he mastered a great many languages. He can read in practically all European languages. He lamented that he had forgotten Korean, Japanese, and Chinese: he hadn't read anything or spoken to anyone in those languages for a long time. He was released from exile in 1988. He was elected a deputy to the Seimas, headed the commission for investigating the activities of the KGB, and was the Minister of Internal Affairs of Lithuania. This was after 36 years of captivity!
I showed Balys and Irena a photocopy of Vasyl Stus’s manuscript, which is published in books under the title “From a Camp Notebook.” Mrs. Irena said:
“It was I who brought this out...”
Balys Gajauskas explained. In the first half of 1983, Vasyl Stus and I were in cell No. 20. I was scheduled for a visit. I took these sheets from him, rolled them up with my own papers, and hid them. I didn’t know what was in them. And there was no time or opportunity to look. I assumed they were poems. And together with my own texts, I passed them to my wife during the visit.
Irena Gajauskienė: The packet was as thin as a knitting needle because the paper was very thin. I used to buy such paper for Balys at a pharmacy in Kaunas.
It was in the summer of 1983—in June or July. After the visit, I went to Moscow and gave this packet to Moscow dissidents. When I returned home, I wrote a letter to Balys saying that everything was fine with me. Because they could have searched me on the train. The Moscow women who went for visits were searched both before and after the visit. But for some reason, they didn’t search me.
This, by the way, was our last visit in Kuchino. The following year, in response to my inquiry about when I could have a visit, I received a reply that for a violation of the regime, Balys was deprived of the right to his next visit and to a parcel. Then Balys’s mother fell ill and died a month later. And Balys was in a punishment cell. For three years after that, Balys was not allowed any visits or parcels.
B.G.: I always put my last name under my articles, indicating the date and place. My last article, written in Kuchino, was called “Occupied Lithuania”... No, the last one was “On the Situation of Workers in the Soviet Union.” It was very long: 50 such sheets. I wrote it for a very long time because it was very difficult to write. Sometimes for weeks, there was no opportunity to write anything down. They are always looking through the peephole. And I also had to hide from some cellmates. The whole article was in my head, down to the details. After this article, I thought: “That’s it, I won’t write anymore. I can’t stand this tension anymore. The risk is too great.” Then two KGB agents from Lithuania came and showed me this article, printed in a foreign journal. “Do you know what this is?” “No, I don’t.” “Take a look.” “So what’s special about it?” “You know very well what this means—a new term.”
I did not disown the article, but I did not confirm my authorship either. I barely spoke with them at all. But after that, I finally decided that I would not write until the end of my term. After the publication of this article, I was repeatedly put in a punishment cell, and in March 1986, when I had less than a year left of my sentence, they made an attempt to kill me. My cellmate at the time, a former criminal and now a political prisoner, Borys Romashov, inflicted several wounds on my head and in the heart area with a mechanical screwdriver. I fell under the table, and the screwdriver went in at an angle—it didn’t reach my heart...
If it’s one piece of paper, I can swallow it in case of danger. But sometimes they would unexpectedly move me to another cell, and the papers would be left behind. I still remember where I hid them in the toilet in the open-plan section. I looked yesterday: those holes are already concreted over. They didn’t find my papers; they were probably just doing repairs.
V.O.: And you know, I found one of my own papers. It’s not very important: it’s my handwriting, a copy of Vasyl Stus’s translation of Kipling’s poem “If.” I copied the text from Ivan Polishchuk (he called himself Yevhen). On the morning of December 8, 1987 (I was already in the open-plan section), I saw a whole cloud of guards moving from the checkpoint into the zone. And I had this poem that I wanted to learn by heart. So that they wouldn't take it away, I quickly went around the corner near the entrance to the bathhouse and slipped this piece of paper under the roofing felt that covered the insulation of the heating pipe. It was an extension less than a meter high. That day, a “general search” was conducted in the zone, and the 18 of us, especially dangerous recidivists, were transported in prison vans to another zone, 70 km away, at Vsekhsvyatskaya station. Why? The name “Kuchino death camp” had become too tiresome in the Western media. On that very day, Gorbachev was meeting with Reagan in Reykjavik, and he needed a half-truth, at least for one day: “They are no longer in Kuchino.”
So on August 31, 1989, I was already a free man visiting this zone. We had come to take the mortal remains of Oleksa Tykhyi, Yuriy Lytvyn, and Vasyl and rebury them in Kyiv. They didn't allow the exhumation then, saying: “Unfavorable sanitary and epidemiological situation.” But we went into the zone. It was abandoned: gates and doors were open, local residents were taking whatever they needed: floorboards, glass, slate... I remembered my piece of paper, stuck my hand under the roofing felt, and got it. The text has faded a bit, but it’s still legible. I still have it.
B.G.: Yes, Stus translated Rilke. He threw away the drafts, of course.
V.O.: Stus and I were in the same cell (No. 18) for a month and a half, in February–March 1984. Once he told me: “I had two or three exits from here.” That is, he managed to send information out of Kuchino 2 or 3 times. Now I know that one of those times was through you. This packet ended up in Germany with a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Volodymyr Malynkovych, who was working for Radio Liberty at the time. He passed it to Nadiia Svitlychna in New York. She later told me that she read the text then even without a magnifying glass, although it was very small. Now I know who was instrumental in this matter.
I.G.: In 1978, along with Balys’s documents, I took out Ivan Hel’s text from the Sosnovka zone in Mordovia.
V.O.: He wrote a book there called “Facets of Culture.” Perhaps it was that one.
I.G.: That was the first time. I brought Balys clean, thin paper then. And each time I brought clean paper and took out papers with text.
B.G.: It was easier in Mordovia. Many people got information out from there. But they also moved us from Mordovia because there were channels there. In 1980, when they were moving us from Mordovia to the Urals, someone asked the camp chief Nekrasov where we were being taken. He replied: “You are being taken where you won’t be able to write.”
…So, Stus wrote even where it was already a crime to write. Especially such things as “From a Camp Notebook.” These 16 scraps of paper take up 16 pages in the book, but their explosive power was such that it destroyed Vasyl himself. I believe that one of the reasons for his destruction was the appearance of this text in print in the West. (See: Vasyl Stus. Windows into the Beyond. K.: Veselka, 1992. pp. 208–226; Vasyl Stus. Works. Volume 4. Lviv: Prosvita, 1994. pp. 485–502).
The second reason was the nomination of his work for the 1985 Nobel Prize. The Kremlin gang knew that this prize, according to its statute, is awarded only to the living, so they dealt with the potential laureate in the traditional Russian way: “No person, no problem”...
The theme “Museums and Exhibitions of ‘Memorial’” is most fitting for this very place. Because it was here—and it could only have been through God's providence—that people were found who understood the historical value of this “object.” In 6 years of activity, the Museum has reached a level where it can responsibly state that it can be a resource center, capable of providing assistance to other museums, regional branches of the “Memorial” society, schools, and other educational and enlightenment institutions in identifying materials on totalitarian and repressive history, copying materials of all-Russian significance, creating mock-ups of exhibitions, slide films, methodological and educational aids, and more.
The more than 30 participants of the International Conference from Russia, Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, and Ukraine discussed the following topics:
“The History of 20th-Century Russia, School, and Museum,”
“Active Enlightenment and Educational Activities of the Museum in the Sphere of 20th-Century Russian Political History,”
“‘Memorial,’ Museums, and Youth,”
“The Program ‘Museums and Exhibitions of “Memorial”’.”
Discussions were held in a unique setting: in one of the former strict-regime barracks, a genuine “Lenin room” has been equipped. Its walls are hung with Soviet posters (mostly from the Stalin era) and portraits of the leaders and creators of the totalitarian system. There is a projector for showing films and slides, and some museum exhibits are on display, such as the clothing of an especially dangerous recidivist. It is here that lessons for schoolchildren are conducted. The classroom was opened only this year, 2000—and already about 7,000 schoolchildren have passed through it. On some days, as many as 10 buses arrived. T.G. Chursina, Yu.V. Reshetnikov, and V.A. Shmyrov presented a lesson they give here to secondary school students. They noted that the humanities education in Russian secondary schools has not yet emerged from the crisis caused by the radical change in ideological, moral, and aesthetic orientations that occurred as a result of the collapse of the communist state. Having formally abandoned communist theories, the teaching of humanities disciplines has retained the stereotypes of totalitarian ideology. As a conference participant from Krasnoyarsk, V. Sirotinin, noted, the history course is still 40% based on the “Short Course on the History of the VKP(b).” In the final course on national history from 1917–1991, only 3 hours out of 34 are allocated to the topic of Soviet totalitarianism, although virtually all of Soviet history is the history of a totalitarian state. After all, the economic achievements of the Soviet state were bought with the blood of millions of people forced into almost free labor, especially in labor armies, collective farms, and concentration camps. Seeing that the school needs materials on the history of totalitarianism, the “Perm-36” Museum has organized well-illustrated lessons on the history of totalitarianism not only on its premises but also on the road, using mobile exhibitions, video films, and slides.
After a brief flash of anti-communist sentiment in the late 80s and early 90s, the topic of totalitarianism is receding to the periphery of public consciousness, and a significant part of Russian society is once again betting on the “iron fist” (following the method of “restoring order” in Chechnya). In this context, museum and exhibition activities should become a serious tool in anti-totalitarian propaganda. The museum is located 200 km from the regional center, so it cannot become a place of mass pilgrimage. Therefore, it must go to the people itself, according to the authors of the project “Active Enlightenment and Educational Activities of the Museum in the Sphere of 20th-Century Russian Political History” R.R. Lapitov, O.A. Nechaev, L.A. Obukhov, and O.P. Trushnikov. They spoke about outreach forms of work and demonstrated mobile stands titled “Prikamye. Repressions of the 30s–50s” and “Power and the People in Russia. An Experience in Satirical Research.” The latter mobile exhibition is in the form of comics, wittily illustrating the most important moments of the history of totalitarianism and repression—from Kievan Rus (which is still traditionally included in Russian history) to the present day. Schoolchildren are offered games along the lines of: what would you have done in the place of this or that historical figure?
Of particular interest was the report by A.M. Kalikh, R.R. Lapitov, and E.A. Shlyakhov on the Museum’s work with youth, particularly with the Kuchino volunteers. The use of such unpaid labor by volunteer assistants is a common practice in the West in public organizations, healthcare, and social protection. The “Perm-36” Museum has been engaging such volunteers for 6 years—initially, mostly German students who had experience working at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, but now—almost exclusively students of the history faculties of Perm Pedagogical and State Universities. Every summer, four shifts of 35–40 young people help to restore and reconstruct the premises of the former camp. In addition to physical labor, they process the database, record interviews for the “Oral History” program, and in winter, they provide social assistance to members of the Association of Victims of Political Repression. About 600 students have passed through the Museum in this way. They are drawn to the Museum by a sense of romance, a thirst for an alternative to the consumerist lifestyle. A special atmosphere of combining the tragic and the youthful reigns here. The young people not only work but also organize their leisure time in an interesting way. And in 6 years, not a single incident has occurred. “Memorial” has achieved that some young men undergo their alternative service here—working in a hospice and in a neuropsychiatric residential facility. A volunteer group of dozens of young people provides social assistance to former political prisoners.
A separate place in the history of the Museum’s formation is occupied by the student brigade “Ural-Service.” About 400 students from all universities in Perm work as passenger car conductors, and during the breaks between trips, they work at the Museum. To earn the honor of working here, they undergo a rigorous competitive selection process. By joining this work, even non-humanities students become imbued with the ideology of the memorial movement.
The presenters Yu.V. Reshetnikov, A.B. Roginsky, and V.A. Shmyrov recalled that back in December 1998, the VI reporting and election conference of the International “Memorial” decided to create a Museum Commission within the Society. Its purpose is to intensify the historical and educational activities of the regional branches of “Memorial”; to draw the attention of state and municipal historical and local history museums to the problems of “Memorial”; to provide assistance to the regional branches of “Memorial” in museum and exhibition activities. To this end, three projects have been developed. The project “International Museum Practicum of ‘Memorial’” provides for internships for activists from the regions at the “Perm-36” Museum (4–5 people at a time), for which accommodation, workspace, meals, office equipment, communication facilities, and expert consultations are provided here. Interns get the opportunity here to prepare for publication and produce in a computer version a booklet, brochure, or book, and to work with the Museum’s database. The project “International Anti-Totalitarian Museum Conferences and Biennales” provides for a series of annual conferences. The project “Summer School of Museology of ‘Memorial’” provides for monthly training seminars on problems of reflecting totalitarian issues in museums according to a specific schedule and programs.
In addition to the reports and lively discussions that continued into the evenings at the hotel in Chusovoy, the conference featured presentations by its participants. The diversity of the forms of work of the regional branches of “Memorial” is impressive. This is truly ascetic work, which is not always supported by the authorities and is mostly unpaid. For example, the Komi-Zyryan Mikhail Ignatov from Syktyvkar demonstrated a seven-meter sheet of Whatman paper on which he had placed his genealogy. It contains 2,000 names, documentarily traced back to the 14th century. Inna Fedushchak from the Lviv society “Poshuk” (Search) spoke about the exhibitions “Repressed Art” and “The Way of the Cross of Ukraine.” Yuriy Samodurov from Moscow announced the creation of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center “Peace, Progress, Human Rights.” The historical competition “Man in History. Russia–20th Century,” in which 1651 people from all regions of Russia participated, gained immense popularity among schoolchildren. I reported on the work of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, the creation of the Museum of the Sixtiers and the Museum of Ukrainian Samvydav in Kyiv, and the computerized Book of Memory of Ukraine, which is being compiled at the All-Ukrainian Society “Memorial” named after V. Stus.
Of course, the conference participants visited the “Perm-36” museum itself. This time, in addition to the Museum’s director, Mikhail Cherepanov, they could hear the stories of a former prisoner of VS-389/36, Balys Gajauskas, and his wife Irena Gajauskienė, my story, and watch video films, including one about the reburial in February 1989 of Ishkhan Mkrtchian, who was buried in the cemetery near Kuchino under number 8, between Yuriy Lytvyn and Vasyl Stus. This reburial was carried out by the late Kuchino prisoner Ashot Navasardian. His video film was shown by his son-in-law, David Alaverdyan. We also visited the ethnographic “Museum of the Chusovaya River.”
The chairman of the International “Memorial,” Sergei Kovalev, took part in the conference.
The work of the Russian branches of “Memorial” is instructive for Ukrainian societies of the memorial type. For Ukraine, which suffered even more severely from repression, has comparatively few examples of proper veneration of the victims of totalitarianism and of enlightenment work.
Anyone who has touched this painful wound, who has been here, will no longer want a restoration of communism. The Museum is doing a huge thing: it is returning historical memory to the Russian people, revealing to the young generation the unknown tragic pages of Russia’s recent history, so that they develop a resistance to the virus of totalitarianism. And this gives hope to us, Ukrainians, because we want to have in the person of the Russian people a good neighbor who will respect universal human values, which are the rights of man and of nations, and us as a separate people and state. That is why we, former political prisoners, actively cooperate with the Perm “Memorial,” with this museum. This is, so to speak, our “hand of Ukraine” in Russia.
What energy feeds this powerful school of anti-communism?
First of all, it is the conscientious people who have linked their fate with this Museum. They work on the reconstruction, create general and personal exhibitions in the Museum, and conduct tours. At the same time, they carry out enormous research and scholarly work (they have come to us in Ukraine for materials several times), replenish the Information and Library Center “Human Rights,” created the Association of Victims of Political Repression and the School of Human Rights, convene international scientific conferences annually, and are writing a Book of Memory of the Victims of Political Repression of Perm Oblast, having published several volumes under the title “Years of Terror.”
Second, its legal status. It was determined by the activism of “Memorial,” which, although a public organization, has in fact become the most powerful political force in Perm Oblast—7,000 members! At one time, “Memorial” helped elect progressively-minded and democratic people, Gennady Igumnov and Viktor Pokhmelkin, to the posts of governor and State Duma deputy, and now it has the support of the authorities. The regional administration adopted resolution No. 235 on August 30, 1994, “On the creation of the Memorial Museum-Archive Complex ‘Memorial to the Victims of Political Repression’” and became a co-founder of the Museum. It is also supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Commission for Especially Valuable Objects of the Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of the Russian Federation under the President of the Russian Federation. This Memorial Museum has the status of an especially valuable object of the historical heritage of the Russian Federation.
Third, funds. No one gives the Perm “Memorial” money just for the sake of it, “for activities.” Only for specific projects. The Permians managed to win a grant to pay for buses for schoolchildren-excursionists. They publish their Information Bulletin, conference materials, and booklets. And they also know how to work and earn money themselves. They have launched a sawmill in the former strict-regime zone, taken a plot of forest, and are cutting and sawing it into boards, which are needed for rebuilding the fence. They have set up a workshop to produce items needed for the Museum. True, they have to buy the barbed wire—50 kilometers of it are needed for the special-regime zone alone...
Let’s hope that the fire in Kuchino was just an unfortunate incident. That the barrack, “where everything was born of human torment” (V. Stus), will somehow be rebuilt and the Museum will continue to work. And what are we doing in Ukraine, which suffered most heavily from Russian totalitarianism, to ensure that our historical memory does not sleep? We are doing little, while the “nannies and uncles of a foreign fatherland,” the latest Little Russian-Muscovites like Kuchma, along with outright occupiers like Azarov, are once again harnessing Ukraine to the Moscow saddle, to once again transport dissidents to the endless expanses of Russia, where tens of millions of Ukrainians have already vanished into historical oblivion. Do they really think that Moscow will be merciful to them and leave them as masters and owners in the Malorossiya [Little Russia] province? Of course not: Ivan wants to be the master here. He is already getting his hands on our economy. As for the traitors, the fate of the Skrypnyks and Lyubchenkos awaits them, and for the conductors of Moscow’s policy—the fate of the Postyshevs and Khatayeviches.
Let us remember that the vast majority of Russians do not think like the Perm “Memorial” members. They don’t want to hear anything about any Ukrainian statehood. And Russian great-power politicians express their sentiments. Even at the scientific conference “Resistance to Totalitarianism in Russia (USSR) 1917–1991,” where M. Horyn and I presented reports on the Ukrainian human rights movement of the 70s–80s, there were such Russian “scholars” who called on us to return to a “Slavic union.” And this was immediately after the Russian Soviet empire had squeezed half of the Ukrainian people to death in its “fraternal embrace”...
Vasyl OVSIENKO, laureate of the Vasyl Stus Prize.
1996; June 1999; October 2000; October 18, 2003.
