44 Lenin Avenue

A researcher's journey to Siberia

Tag: Klyuev

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.

Poem about Klyuev

5 November 2019 / / 0 Comments

Vasilii Khanevich and the staff at the Memorial Museum: NKVD Remand Prison in Tomsk (44 Lenin Avenue) are constantly adding information and material to the museum’s website. While browsing, today, I came across this video of Tomsk singer Pavel Evgrafov singing a poem by Mikhail Andreev about the 1937 execution of Nikolai Klyuev. Evgrafov is singing in the museum itself. Klyuev likely spent some time in the building when it was a remand prison, although available information about his incarceration and execution in Tomsk is sparse.

 

Finding Compelling Stories

27 February 2017 / / 3 Comments

As touched on in several earlier posts (e.g. here and here), the building at 44 Lenin Avenue, from its humble beginnings as a church-parish school to its role as local NKVD headquarters to its transformation into commercial and commemorative space itself provides a compelling story. This story runs parallel to many of the main trends of Siberia and Russia’s tumultuous 20th century. For the early years and the later years of the building, the specific microhistory stories are themselves rather obvious. For example, the construction of the building connects to threads of education, religion, architecture, and Tomsk’s role in the Russian empire. The architect, V. V. Khabarov, was involved in numerous other projects–including the construction of the enormous Trinity Cathedral a stone’s throw from the parish school–that helped make Tomsk Siberia’s capital in the late-Tsarist period. Another compelling story is the 1909 murder of the school headmaster. In more recent years, the founding of the Memorial NKVD Remand Prison Museum, or the visit of Solzhenitsyn to the building in 1994, also make compelling stories related to post-Soviet reckoning with Stalinist repression.

Nikolai Klyuev. Photo via Wikimedia commons. Public domain.

Even though the building’s infamy today largely derives from its role as local NKVD headquarters and remand prison during the height of Stalin-era repression, finding a specific, compelling story is proving somewhat difficult. Several famous prisoners spent time there, including philosopher Gustav Shpet and poet Nikolai Klyuev. It is even quite possible authorities shot Kluev in the basement of the building, or in the underground passageway underneath the building’s small square. So, the story could move to biography at this point. Several NKVD bosses who spent time in Tomsk achieved infamy either there or elsewhere, including Ivan Ovchinnikov (the “local Beria”), Ian Krauze (better known for his NKVD work in Leningrad), and Ivan Maltsev. The stories linked to the building seem so male dominated (the basement murder, Solzhenitsyn’s visit, and so on), and biographical stories related to the building during its NKVD incarnation risk continuing a trend. In any case, as a historian, it is my job to find a story that is both compelling but also representative, or, perhaps, exceptional, but exceptional in a way that leads to important information and analysis of the time in question. I wonder what NKVD stories will fall along these lines?

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