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By 1937 some sort of vacuum started forming around us. A lot of people around us were arrested. But still life went on. In the summer of 1938 my brother left for summer dacha with his kindergarten, and my sister and I went to a pioneer camp in Siverskaya [Leningrad suburb] for the whole summer. We returned home pleased and happy. And two days after our return our father was arrested. They came to take him at night – as usual – made a search and turned the house upside down. For some reason they took my father’s homeopathic medicine. Of course we had understood earlier that Father would be arrested: in the country, where people were arrested each and all, a man of such destiny as my father couldn’t survive. I was 15 years old, but I understood everything very well.
They put him into the Kresty prison, and we started our long ordeal. Every ten days I went there. Every ten days it was the turn of ‘our letter E.’ It was impossible for me to meet Akhmatova 17 there: she came on the days of letter G, and I on the days of letter Е. [Here the interviewee refers to the fact that in the same period of time Anna Akhmatova went to the Kresty prison to give a parcel to her arrested son – Lev Gumilev.] I used to come to prison by the first tram, and many people had been waiting there since the previous evening. We spent long hours standing in line; I remember well that I was reading ‘Les Misérables’ by Victor Hugo to while away the time. At last I approached the small window and had to say: ‘Elenevich, Iosef Abramovich, born in 1888 in Irkutsk.’ Then I gave them money. If they took the money, it meant that Father was alive and not moved anywhere. One day they refused to take money from me. I was told the following: ‘He is not here.’ – ‘And where is he?’ – ‘Next, please!’ I was a very brave girl and went to Ivanov, the warden. May that Ivanov rest in peace! He listened to me, left for somewhere, came back and said: ‘Your father was sent to the Far East for ten years without the right to be in correspondence with anybody.’ Many years later we got to know that such a verdict meant execution. At that time I didn’t know it, but nevertheless I fainted. They brought me to life, I returned home, and told everything to Mom. Next time she went there herself, and unexpectedly they took money from her.
Later we got to know that right that day, when they told me that my father had been sent away, four hundred prisoners, including him, were taken out to the railway station and put in cars. Suddenly my father was taken off the train and brought back to Kresty. All this he told us after his discharge. And before that a man, a lawyer, visited us at home. He was kept in the same ward as my father. Later he was discharged, and somehow he got to know that my father’s case would be taken up through the legal proceedings [it was something unprecedented for that time]. He informed us about the place and time of hearing of the case. Mom and my sister went to that court. They didn’t let them in, but Father was discharged right in the courtroom – they dismissed his charge. He had been imprisoned for one year. I don’t dare to say only one year, knowing how much he suffered in prison, and how much we suffered at liberty at that time. But in comparison with terms in prison, usual for that time in our country [10-20 years], his term was certainly very short. Possibly the fact that I wrote dozens of letters with a request to discharge my father while he was in prison, had no small part in it. I wrote letters to Stalin, Beriya 18, Molotov 19. I’d like to think that it was my letters that helped Daddy.
They put him into the Kresty prison, and we started our long ordeal. Every ten days I went there. Every ten days it was the turn of ‘our letter E.’ It was impossible for me to meet Akhmatova 17 there: she came on the days of letter G, and I on the days of letter Е. [Here the interviewee refers to the fact that in the same period of time Anna Akhmatova went to the Kresty prison to give a parcel to her arrested son – Lev Gumilev.] I used to come to prison by the first tram, and many people had been waiting there since the previous evening. We spent long hours standing in line; I remember well that I was reading ‘Les Misérables’ by Victor Hugo to while away the time. At last I approached the small window and had to say: ‘Elenevich, Iosef Abramovich, born in 1888 in Irkutsk.’ Then I gave them money. If they took the money, it meant that Father was alive and not moved anywhere. One day they refused to take money from me. I was told the following: ‘He is not here.’ – ‘And where is he?’ – ‘Next, please!’ I was a very brave girl and went to Ivanov, the warden. May that Ivanov rest in peace! He listened to me, left for somewhere, came back and said: ‘Your father was sent to the Far East for ten years without the right to be in correspondence with anybody.’ Many years later we got to know that such a verdict meant execution. At that time I didn’t know it, but nevertheless I fainted. They brought me to life, I returned home, and told everything to Mom. Next time she went there herself, and unexpectedly they took money from her.
Later we got to know that right that day, when they told me that my father had been sent away, four hundred prisoners, including him, were taken out to the railway station and put in cars. Suddenly my father was taken off the train and brought back to Kresty. All this he told us after his discharge. And before that a man, a lawyer, visited us at home. He was kept in the same ward as my father. Later he was discharged, and somehow he got to know that my father’s case would be taken up through the legal proceedings [it was something unprecedented for that time]. He informed us about the place and time of hearing of the case. Mom and my sister went to that court. They didn’t let them in, but Father was discharged right in the courtroom – they dismissed his charge. He had been imprisoned for one year. I don’t dare to say only one year, knowing how much he suffered in prison, and how much we suffered at liberty at that time. But in comparison with terms in prison, usual for that time in our country [10-20 years], his term was certainly very short. Possibly the fact that I wrote dozens of letters with a request to discharge my father while he was in prison, had no small part in it. I wrote letters to Stalin, Beriya 18, Molotov 19. I’d like to think that it was my letters that helped Daddy.
Period
Year
1938
Location
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interview
Klara-Zenta Kanevskaya