Topography of Memory – Calendar

By the beginning of 2011 the society “Memorial” published a calendar with photographs of Moscow houses, inhabitants of which were executed innocently in 1937-1939. These places silently keep memory about thousands of former political prisoners. Photographs are provided with extracts from memories of «enemies of the people» and their family members about how it feels to leave your home.

You will hardly find a single house among the ones built before 1937 where no «enemies of the people» would have lived. No entire and exact statistic figures were collected yet, nevertheless various records about graves claim that only during the Great Purge in Moscow more than 30,000 people — both inhabitants of the capital and people brought there for the execution of their sentence – were shot dead. During the whole Stalin period about 40,000 people were executed on false political charges. Moreover, almost 100,000 Muscovites were sent to labour camps. Not only people were wiped out, but all memories of them, of their deeds, of places of their death and of their graves. A lot of information is lost forever and graves of numerous terror victims with some minor exceptions still remain nameless mass graves.

Still there are other sites of commemoration around us – these are houses where people had been living before they were arrested. Often they tell us not only about individual people but about the whole abolished communities, united by their belief, ethnicity, profession, place of work, common biography.

It is “sleeping” memory: even if you see a memorial plaque, it keeps silent about the reasons of the people’s deaths; there is still no memorial to the victims of repressions in the capital, while many streets are still named after those who organized the terror.

This calendar depicts only twelve Moscow buildings – out of thousands of those where innocently executed people lived; maybe your ancestors or their relatives happened to be among them.

The information presented in this calendar has been collected as part of the project “Moscow: topography of terror”, which has been carried out by the society “Memorial” for many years.

January. 24 Preobrajensky Val

Susanna Pechuro

On the night of January 17-18 Boris was arrested in Leningrad. On January 18, during the day, Vladik was detaied in Ryazan. On the night of January 18-19 they came for me. The search lasted more than four hours/ Three detectives turned our little room upside down, shaking my textbooks and exercise books…
It was hard to look at my shocked uncomprehending relatives. Dad was having a heart attack. My 4-year old little brother, raised from his bed, was crying in mom’s arms. He was shouting: “Get these men to go away”. Mom was frightened but tried to calm him down. Our yard cleaner as a witness was wobbling sleepily at the door…

They huddled into a sack my textbooks, exercise books, photos of the children, some books at random, caught up my dad’s typewriter and ordered me to pack, recommending my mom to give me warm clothes and some food. Looking around my destroyed home I suddenly understood clearly that I would never return there again. And at this moment I noticed on the floor my small celluloid doll. I suddenly felt a strong desire to take something with me, something to the memory of home and the childhood. And I took this doll. And the chief of the operative group, who had been keeping indifferent silence till that minute, suddenly burst out: “Put it back now,” he yelled. “Look at her! She wants to play with a doll! It is not a kindergarten!” I put the doll back and went to the door…

 

February. 37 Pokrovka

Marina Dushkina

I survived due to my grandmother. Dad was arrested in February 1937 …

I can remember this search, everything that happened, how they were standing with guns and how they were jolting all books, looking for something, shaking every book again and again… All in all it was terrible. And at night when mom got arrested granny suddenly visited us. And they came to arrest mom, they sealed everything, even the wardrobe which I am still possessing, even the wardrobe. I still have the marks of the seal on it. They sealed everything and kicked us out: my nanny Manya, my grandmother and me. The apartment was sealed. For me the word „domouprav“ (manager of the house) meant the worst person in the world, as he expelled us…

And we left; we stayed at some friends' for a few several nights. I can remember how it happened and how madly I was crying the next day. And we went along Sretenka and grandmother bought me a toy: a teddy bear. I felt very unhappy.

 

March. 20 Pokrovka

Valery Bronstein.

They came for my mother in the dead of night, while I was sleeping. I couldn't hear the door ring. I got up because the light was on and a strange woman came in and another search began. My first wish was to hide the popgun which my dad had given me as a present. He bought it abroad. It was manufactured as a browning, had a set-in retainer filled with metal valves and looked like a real one. “They can take it for a real gun,” this idea was drilling inside my mind; I was feverishly searching for a place to hide the popgun. In the hall mom secretly passed me a letter. “It is from Zhenya (a friend of ours, he is an army doctor from Kharkov),” she said quietly. I flushed this letter as soon as I got to the toilet, understanding that I probably saved the life of the person whom I hardly knew. As they took mom with them she asked the convoy: “I beg you, please, bring my son to my mother to Kirovskaya Street (Myasnitskaya Street was in 1934 renamed into the Street of Kirov). He knows the address”. The senior one nodded agreeing. After forty minutes a car arrived for me. They did not let me take anything with me. Accompanied by the convoy I got into the car and we travelled through the sleeping Moscow. The car was strolling along strange streets I had never seen before and stopped in front of some gate in an embattled stone wall. “Where have you brought me?” I asked. “To the Kremlin,” answered one of the convoy and they burst into laughter. As soon as the car entered the yard the gate slammed and some people wearing an army uniform came up to me and took me to a stone small building at the wall, to the left from the gate.

 

April. 6 and 8 Tishinska Square

Ruth Tamarina

It was about a month before my mom got arrested that she said to me: “You are a grown-up girl, you are sixteen, and you have a passport. You should know that I don't believe at all that your father was guilty and though I don't belong to the party I share all his beliefs. That’s why I am still waiting for him day by day. And as soon as he comes back you must immediately turn on the geyser in the bathroom, give him clean clothes and call me…But you see that they arrest all your father’s friends, old communists and not only them but their wives as well – both party members and nonpartisans. I do not think that I will make an exception even if your dad returns. Be ready to my arrest.” That’s what my strict and reserved mom said to me, my mom who hugged me and broke into tears only once in her life – at dawn after they took my father away…

On April 30, 1938, three weeks after mom was arrested, Nyura, who was our housemaid and my nanny, and I were settled in one common room of 16 square meters in a block of flats near Kursky Railway Station. And another two years — the entire year when I was finishing school and the first year of my studies at the Literature Institute — we all shared this one room: Nyura, her baby, born soon after we moved, her demobilized husband, and I. Besides her relatives from a village near Elez often came to visit Moscow…

 

May. 2 Theater Square

Olga Kuchumova

After my husband was arrested, I was left with my mom and my little daughter (Tanyusha had just turned eight) all alone and I became the only bread-earner of the whole family. I worked as an assistant at the TASS information desk and in the evenings I tried to earn some extra money working at home. Maria Vasilyevna, a neighbor of us, a kind-hearted woman, offered me her typewriter and started to provide me with work – I had to type articles from the Academy of Sciences, where she was worked. That is how I had to divide myself between my main working place, additional evening domestic labor and visiting social institutions in order to get at least some news about my husband, standing huge lines in Butyrskaya prison to send him some money (we were not allowed to pass packages). I always tried to disguise everything from my daughter. My mom and I told her that her father was on a long business trip. When somebody called for Lavrov I also said that he was on a business trip. Still these words gained another sense in that period and were very often used and understood as an arrest.

I assumed that Misha had been arrested because of some “case” at the State Bank where he had been working… But I was firmly convinced that he was not guilty and that it would take a week or two and everything would be clarified and they would let him go back home. My husband whispered to me leaving, accompanied by three soldiers: “Don’t write anywhere, don’t go anywhere!”

 

June. 27 Zemlyanoy Val

Jamma Orlovska

My mom was not even surprised that they came to take her away. She had been expecting it…

Mom was as pale as paper. There was a kind of search, they have looked for something: “Jewelry, money?” She said: “What money, what jewelry, you can see how we are doing”. “Get dressed”. And that was it. My brother was sleeping; he even did not hear anything. Then he woke up: “Where is mom?” And he began to howl. Three of them came to us, two of them left with mom and the third man stayed with us.: “Go to bed and sleep”. But my brother could not sleep, he was crying for mom. Later, at dawn he said: “Get ready, let's go to see your mom”. “Hurray! To see mom!” He helped us to pack our clothes, textbooks and we left. We arrived at Danilovsky orphanage.

 

July. 10 Novaya Basmannaya

Antonina Lavrentyeva

On July 15, 1938 I had to work the second shift. At midday they knocked at the door. I opened it and saw two men in plain clothes. One of them said that they needed some documents of Mr. Shashirin as they were necessary for investigation of his case. “Do you have a search-warrant?” I asked them. He showed me the corresponding paper. I could only see a signature written in blue pencil: “Ezhov”. They opened one of table drawers, took some letters, Sasha’s notes, his merit certificate, some other documents and photographs. They invited me to accompany them on their car to formalize the seizure. I said that I had to go to work right then. They assured me that they would not keep me long and that I would be in time. I wore a summer dress, sneakers and a beret. I took nothing more with me. At Lubyanka where they brought me I was searched through and through in the most humiliating way. Then they took me to the yard, put me into a van where stood “Bread” and brought me to Butyrskaya prison.

 

August. 2 Serafimovich Street

Danuta Stolyarskaya

They came at night… And they began to throw around our belongings… They were searching for something we did not have… Everything was turned upside down… I would only say: “It is not true, my parents are good!”

Certainly these people were impolite, they were rough and cold-hearted. Mom was stroking my head saying: “Everything is going to be all right, they will clarify everything. Just don't worry, don't worry…”, but I just could not believe it. I could not believe that everything was going to be all right because nobody who had ever been arrested from our house came back. No one. The most terrible moment was as they separated me from mom. I clutched mom and nobody could relinquish my grip. I was holding my mom screaming: “Mom, we won’t see each other again!” and mom herself somehow managed to unclasp my hands in order to be taken away. And that was just horrible. I still can hear this shouting: I can still hear it, and it is at the depths of my throat, it will stay there forever – that is what happened to me. Meanwhile, I am rather reserved. And that was the first time in my life when I was yelling. Mom unclasped my fingers; we were put into different cars and taken to different places. They took nothing from us. We had nothing to take.

 

September. 2 Kalashny lane

Olga Adamova-Sliozberg

On the next day after I arrived in Moscow they came for me. These thoughts make me laugh nowadays, but the first thing I could think about was the following: all documents about the congress are with me, the congress itself cost fifty thousand rubles. The whole work is in sketches, everything will come to pieces, and nobody will understand my notes.

While they were searching my apartment for four hours, I was ordering my papers from the congress. I could not realize and I could not take it seriously that my life was over, I was afraid even to tolerate the idea that they would take my children away. I kept writing and gluing and putting the papers in order and while I was occupied with all that it seemed to me that nothing serious was happening that as soon as I was done I would just hand in my work to the responsible person and the commissar would say: “Well done! Good that you did not get nervous or confused, you were absolutely right not to have taken this misunderstanding seriously!”…

At last the searching investigator took pity on me: “You’d better say good-bye to your children!” he said…

I entered the nursery. My son was sitting on the bed. I said to him:

– I am leaving on business, stay with Marusya, be smart.

His little lips bevelled:

“How strange it is! One day dad went on a business trip, and now you are leaving. And what if Marusya suddenly decides to go – who will stay with us?”

I kissed his thin leg.

 

October. Arbat, 35

Vera Shults

The clock under the lamp showed 4:20. And the bell rang once again. My husband left for Minsk to hold lectures. Putting on my bathrobe I went to open the door. I was absolutely calm. The yard cleaner assured that it was he who had rung and asked me to open the door. But beside him I saw three military men. …

Today looking back I understand that all of them were aware of my not having committed any “crime”… They even did not enter the room where our old nanny and our 6-year old son were sleeping. As soon as they were done with the formalities they showed me the search-warrant. I was mostly impressed by the fact that I saw the facsimile signature of our former Moscow university rector – Andrey Yanuaryevich Vishinsky. My university years were not so far away yet – I studied there in 1920s. No wonder I was surprised.

I left for my Via Dolorosa of 16 years with a little suitcase where I put nothing but a night robe, some underwear, a book of Pushkin’s poems and one volume of Galsworthy’s “The Forsyte Saga” …

 

November. 29 Gogolevsky Boulevard

Sergey Raevsky

On New Year's Eve of 1935 my Lyona came home from work evidently nervous and told me that two colleagues of hers had been arrested. I understood that she was waiting for her own turn.

It did not take them long. One night in the middle of January they rang at the door. We were not asleep yet; there was a weekend the next day, probably January 17. Three people came in: a woman with a disgusting face (I remember having seen such faces among CheKa staff), another agent of a lower rang and a Red Army Man, who stayed in the hall to the very end of the search. I am not going to describe how these two people – the man and the woman – were grubbing about our belongings… How I had to hold in my arms my sleeping (thank goodness) 3-year old son to enable this detestable woman to further search in his bed. The whole procedure was really disgusting. The performance lasted for a long time, almost till the morning.

And afterwards… afterwards there was nothing. It was the last time when I saw the face of my Lyona. We said good bye to each other, she smiled sadly and everybody left. I assume it was about 6 a.m. Tipochka was still asleep; I went to bed but I could not sleep a wink. Our nanny went to the kitchen to make some tea. Slowly other tenants began to show up. One after another oil-cookers and oil stoves were turned on; another Moscow weekend day was up to begin.

 

December. 15/1Mokhovaya street

Ayno Kuusinen

On December 31 I put on my favorite dress. I was extremely depressed but I wanted to celebrate the New Year of 1938 properly. Alexandra and Stanko were glad to see me and the New Year table was gorgeous…

At first we tried to encourage each other, we talked about some harmless things, but we failed: our recent experience was terrible, it loaded on our minds. This last evening of such a dreadful year we could not help remembering our friends and relatives, arrested or missing forever…

Stanko turned on the radio, stood up, smiled stiffly and said: – Dear friends, let’s finish this year of horrors hoping and believing that our next year will be happier and the awful events of 1937 will become a thing of the past …

And at 5 a.m. of the first day of 1938 someone knocked at our door. “Who is there?”. “A housemaid. Open the door. An urgent telegram”. I half opened the door; somebody threw it open from outside. Two men in a uniform came in. They locked the door. One of them shouted out: “Where is your weapon?”. “I have never possessed a weapon,” I answered.

One of them picked my purse, the other ordered me to get dressed quickly. I said that I could not get dressed while they were standing around, but they refused to leave. They silently followed my movements. That’s what they are like, these CheKa men, that’s the way they carry out arrests! Two minutes later we went down and got into a dirty old Ford. Everything happened before I knew. Only at the moment as the car started off, I realized that my turn had come.