44 Lenin Avenue

A researcher's journey to Siberia

Category: Stalinist repression

The afterlife of Nikolai Klyuev

1 April 2020 / / 0 Comments

As I delve a bit deeper into the life of Nikolai Klyuev (Kliuev), I’ve become fascinated by his afterlife, the way his life and death became used, politically. Yesterday, I came across a newspaper (Za rodinu) in the on-line St. Petersburg archives from Pskov in 1943 (Nazi occupied territory), that discusses Kliuev as a new poet of the peasantry for the 20th century, highlighting him as a key victim of Bolshevism (the paper claims he died from cold and starvation in Siberia sometime after 1934).  I’ve already pointed to the mystery of his death as a key point of discussion during the Glasnost years of the late 1980s. While Kliuev’s death is no longer a mystery, it is fascinating (though not surprising) that one issue not discussed in these pre-1991 accounts of Kliuev was Kliuev’s homosexuality. We now know, as Michael Makin writes, that “Klyuev had fallen victim to Stalinism partly because he was labelled a ‘kulak poet’ and partly because he was denounced as a homosexual.” (p. 58) The timing of his arrest/exile to Siberia couldn’t be clearer, as it occurred just after sodomy was re-criminalized in the Soviet Union.

Anyway, it is very interesting to see how various political actors (the Nazi occupation regime in 1943 and both liberal- and nationalist-leaning groups in the late-1980s) saw in Kliuev a usable past.

Klyuev in Tomsk: A story worth exploring?

19 February 2020 / / 1 Comment

One of the more interesting stories in Tomsk in the 1930s was that of poet Nikolai Kliuev (sometimes spelled Klyuev), discussed earlier in this blog.

While I’m still not fully committed to a focus on Kliuev, he draws together some interesting threads from other subjects I’ve been working on in the 44 Lenin Avenue project.

  • Memory (part 1): Kliuev’s case was one of the first explored by the Tomsk Memorial Society, according to L.F. Pichurin in his short, 1995 book, Poslednie dni Nikolaia Kliueva (Tomsk: Volodei, 1995). It is the Tomsk Memorial Society, of course, that took over basement 44 Lenin Avenue in 1989 with the purpose of creating a museum. Why was this one of the first cases? Aside from being a well-known poet, there had been a mystery surrounding his death. It was well-known that he had been exiled to the Tomsk region in 1934 and had spent time in both Kolpashevo and Tomsk, but his death remained a mystery until there was archival access in the late-1980s. Reports from the 1960s had stated that he died of a heart attack at a train station on the way back to Moscow. Archival documents, however, confirmed his arrest and execution in 1937.

  • Memory (part 2): Kliuev, interestingly, was also subject of an article in the late-1980s in the conservative literary publication, Nash Sovermennik. Iurii Khardikov published some thoughts and re-published some documents pertaining to Kliuev’s time in Tomsk in the 12th issue of the journal from 1989. This publication is noteworthy for the 44 Lenin Avenue project in part because Nash Sovremennik had a slavophile bent, and in some ways fits into some of the ideological debates and discussions that had surrounded the 1909 murder of Ignatii. In Kliuev, we also see early evidence of the memory battles that have played out in post-Soviet Russia, which have seen conservative-nationalist versions of the past pitted against more liberal, human-rights versions (for more on this, see Zuzanna Bogomił’s book, Gulag Memories).
  • Russian Literature: In the 1909 murder of Ignatii Dvernitskii, I have discussed the real or imagined role of Dostoevsky. Kliuev, like Dostoevsky, was in some ways a conservative writer (at least from what I understand – I need to do more research!) who saw something distinct and spiritual about the Russian peasantry. This element to Kliuev’s writings is probably the reason for Nash Sovremennik‘s interest in the writer. But it also links Kliuev to another writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was the first official visitor to the Tomsk Memorial Society’s museum at 44 Lenin Avenue in 1994.

One problem with all of the links to the 44 Lenin Avenue project in the Kliuev story (which is fascinating for a number of other reasons, too, that I won’t explore right now), however, is the lack (so far) of direct evidence that Kliuev spent time at 44 Lenin Avenue. It is likely that he did. The building was, after all, one of two headquarter buildings for the NKVD for the whole period that Kliuev was in Tomsk (1934-37). It also housed an investigative prison in the basement where he could have been incarcerated before his execution. Right now, I’m going through some of these publications pertaining to Kliuev’s time in Tomsk, to see if the building is ever mentioned.

‘Agents of Terror’

6 December 2019 / / 0 Comments

In looking for an interesting angle to explore the history of 44 Lenin Avenue during the building’s time as OGPU/NKVD headquarters, one possible topic is that of the perpetrator.

In recent years, we’ve learned a lot more about the NKVD agents and bosses who carried out the Great Terror (1937-38), in part due to the crucially important scholarly work of Lynne Viola (Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial) and Alexander Vatlin (Agents of Terror).

I purchased Vatlin’s book at the recent ASEEES convention in San Francisco, so it is fresh on my mind. Translated and edited by Seth Bernstein, Vatlin’s book presents some fascinating stories, relying mostly on documents related to the arrests and investigations of NKVD agents and bosses arrested in the latter part of the Great Terror, after they themselves had presided over many arrests. Vatlin focuses on the small town of Kuntsevo, near Moscow, to recreate a picture of the mass operations and targeted arrests of this period. Some of the stories are clear corruption, for example Karetnikov’s securing of a central Moscow apartment by arresting the occupants. There are no doubt similar stories related to NKVD operatives in Tomsk (for some on the corrupt behaviour of Gulag personnel, see Chapter 4 of my book).

In any case, one encouraging aspect of Vatlin’s book is that he relies heavily on documents located at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) collection (fond) 10035 («Управление Комитета государственной безопасности СССР по г. Москве и Московской области» … KGB Administration of the USSR for the city of Moscow and Moscow Province). This makes me wonder if there are similar collections for other local administrations. I’ve worked a lot, in the past, with GARF collections 9401 (which includes NKVD operational orders), 9479 (the special settlements), and 9414 (the Gulag), but a collection similar to 10035 (but for Tomsk) would likely include considerable documentation related to the building at 44 Lenin Ave. I’ll need to do a bit of digging.

Architecture of Repression

15 November 2019 / / 0 Comments

The building at 44 Lenin Avenue was of course originally an educational institution. It became a site of repression (*nods to Foucault*), serving as one of two local headquarter buildings for the OGPU/NKVD from 1922-1944. Structurally, this involved converting the basements (of both buildings, if I’m not mistaken) into a remand or investigative prison (следственная тюрьма), and connecting the two buildings via an underground corridor.

According to the Tomsk Memorial Society, the corridor was used for executions and to transport arrestees, unseen, between the two buildings. The director of the museum at 44 Lenin Avenue, Vasilii Khanevich, has a dream of restoring this corridor and making it part of the museum.

In any case, it’s interesting to think about the architecture of repression, in this case: both in the sense of how easily it was to convert a building from an institution of education to an institution of repression, but also how, architecturally, the worst elements of repression were underground, and hidden from view.

Anyway, below are two pictures from the museum’s website, linked here (along with a discussion of the restoration project).

Map of the ‘Monument Square’ outside 44 Lenin Avenue, showing the underground corridor between the two buildings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image of the underground corridor, via the NKVD Remand Prison Museum website

30 Years of the Tomsk Memorial Museum, “NKVD Remand Prison”

18 June 2019 / / 0 Comments

Just a brief post, but I wanted to highlight a recent exhibition at the NKVD Remand Prison Museum in Tomsk (44 Lenin Avenue), on the 30th anniversary of the local authorities’ decision to designate space to help perpetuate the memory of Stalinist repression, a decision that led to the founding of the Museum. Follow the link to the museum’s website for photos of the exhibit. The date was 13 June 1989, a period of intense changes in the Soviet Union. Despite the changes, the Tomsk decision was a bold one, and the Tomsk museum was, along with the Perm’-36 museum, essentially the first in Russia dedicated to issues related to the Gulag and repression. You can find out a bit more about the founding of the museum, and the placing of the “sorrow stone” in the adjacent square, in my chapter in the Russia’s Regional Identities book. Here’s a photo I took of the Museum’s entrance in the summer of 2016.

Museum Entrance (photo by W. Bell)

Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions

30 October 2017 / / 0 Comments

Just a quick note: In Russia, October 30 is officially the “Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions.” As the museum at 44 Lenin Avenue is run by the Tomsk chapter of the Memorial Society, dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of Soviet-era repression, it’s a key day for the museum staff and for the building itself. In the square outside of the building, people gathered and read 1500 names of those repressed under Stalin. Vasilii Khanevich, director of the museum, referred to Tomsk as a key site of Stalinist repression, because the region was such a major centre for exile, and Tomsk itself was the “gateway to Narym.” There are some nice photographs of the event at the link, above.

This particular October 30 is special, too, because it is the official opening of a national monument to the victims of repression, in a prominent Moscow location. Vladimir Putin himself officially opened the monument, stating, as reported by Radio Free Europe, “This horrific past must not be stricken from the national memory”. While some have argued that Russia under Putin has ignored the violent side of Stalinism, including the Gulag, my own sense is that it is much more complicated, a complexity certainly highlighted by this monument and the relatively recently opened Gulag Museum.

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