Monuments to Stalin versus stones of sorrow
Why has the history of the 1941 deportations again become an “undesirable topic” in Russia? Interview with Latvian director Dzintra Geka
Author: Andrey Filimonov.
June 14 marks the 85th anniversary of the first deportation of residents of the Baltic states to Siberia. In just a few days in June 1941, 43,000 people were deported from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. If not for the German invasion, which forced the NKVD to shift its focus to other tasks, the figure could have been even higher.
Latvian documentary filmmaker Dzintra Geka has been studying the forced deportation of Latvian residents to Siberia for a quarter of a century. She makes films, records interviews, and publishes books collecting the names of people whose fates remained suppressed from public memory for decades.
Geka began working on the film “Children of Siberia” in 2000. Back then, 180 people quickly responded to the newspaper ad. Thus began a multi-year project that has grown into a vast archive of memoirs: nearly a thousand interviews with those deported in 1941 and 1949, as well as those born in Siberia.
NeMoskva spoke with Dzintra Geka about her trips to Siberia and how the history of repression is once again becoming an undesirable topic in Russia amid the invasion of Ukraine.
— Dzintra, is the preservation of the memory of repressions and deportations supported at the state level in Latvia?
— And not only in Latvia. We’re just returning from Tartu, where there was a large conference at the National Museum, held at a high, almost governmental level. There were people from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania: scholars, historians, and those who work on this topic in the same way we do—making films, books, and collecting memoirs.
This year marks 25 years since we began recording these stories. We’ve collected about 900 interviews with people deported in 1941. We’ve published books and made films. Then they continued recording those deported in 1949. And then they began interviewing those born in Siberia after the deportation.
Last year, a book was published: 207 interviews with people born in Magadan, in the Tomsk region, in the far north.
180 calls in three days
— Over the years, you’ve probably already interviewed practically everyone you could find?
— It might seem that way. But it all began very modestly. In 2000, I had the idea to make a film, “Children of Siberia,” about the fates of children deported to Siberia in June 1941. We wrote in the newspaper that we were looking for such people. And within three days, 180 people called us. They were looking for an opportunity to meet with us and tell their stories.
That same summer, we traveled to Krasnoyarsk and the Krasnoyarsk region. In 2001, we traveled to Tomsk and the Tomsk region, to Kargasok.
After that, there was a huge response. People in Latvia wanted to see a new film every year. We filmed different portraits: those who returned, those who remained in Siberia and never returned.
Then came “Diaries from Siberia.” It’s a “talking book,” a two-volume collection of memoirs from people deported in 1941. It weighs eight and a half kilograms and contains 760 interviews. We also made a film to go along with it—about four and a half hours long. You open the book, see a photograph of a person, and hear their voice.
Every story is unique
— Did any stories become more important, more poignant, for you? Most of the stories are very similar: night, the doorbell, half an hour to get ready, a freight car, Siberia, the cold, hunger…
— All the interviews are similar in some ways, but at the same time very different. It’s a vast universe of human destinies, where each story is unique, and all of them are simultaneously tragic. But, for example, the deportation of 1941 was different from 1949, when entire families were deported, and family members supported each other. But in 1941, families were separated, men were sent to camps, and women and children found themselves in exile alone. We’re currently editing a film about Latvian women in Siberia and their children born there. Their fates are very unusual; in exile, families often became international. One of our heroines, for example, has a Chinese father,” says Dzintra.
“Her Boyfriend”
The film’s heroine is Silvia Norvaishi. She was born on February 14, 1950, in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Her family story begins with the deportation of June 14, 1941. That night, soldiers burst into the house of her mother, Velta Adama. Two young daughters—aged four and two—awoke from the knocking and screamed. The mother was told to get ready quickly. In a rush, she threw random items into the sacks: one missing shoe, some lard, and bread.
In Siberia, the deportees were placed with Russian families. Everything they could take from home was gradually exchanged for food: gold rings, spoons, small items. But hunger still haunted them, and they gathered grass to make “soup.” Shoes were in short supply: in winter, two children shared one pair of felt boots, and they took turns going outside.
For a long time, Velta knew nothing about her husband’s fate. Only in 1943 was she informed that he had died, presumably while working in the peat fields in the Pskov region.
In her Siberian exile, Velta met a Chinese opera singer, Sylvia’s future father. The young man ended up in Russia during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). He was captured by the Japanese and, along with two comrades, decided to flee to the USSR, which was then considered a friend of China. The three men swam across the wide Amur River, with Sylvia’s father in the middle because he couldn’t swim. On the other bank, they were met by Soviet border guards—and immediately sent to prison. That’s how he ended up in Siberia.
He met Velta at a logging camp. The Chinese man didn’t speak Russian, but he was a good helper: he fetched water and chopped firewood. The other women ignored him, so Velta jokingly said he would be “her boyfriend.” And so it happened. For Velta, this union was a difficult decision: she knew a Chinese husband would never be accepted in her homeland. Then he suggested she move to Achinsk, where he found work and built a small house with his own hands, where Sylvia was born.
One day, she visited China with her father. Her mother remained in Siberia with her older daughters. Sylvia remembers a Chinese village near Beijing, a grandmother with her little bound feet, red shoes her father bought her at the local market, and delicious white bread, each slice wrapped in crisp paper with Chinese characters. Her relatives wanted her father and daughter to stay in China, but Sylvia missed her mother, so they returned to Siberia. Life there was hard, but her father taught her that any difficulty could be overcome with work.
“Dad worked a lot,” Sylvia recalls. “I remember how we planted potato peelings with a piece of potato because there weren’t many. Dad would dig a small hole, and my job was to put the peelings in, and then Mom would add a little fertilizer before Dad filled the hole back in.”
I lived in Siberia for 17 years and finished 9th grade. Then my mother retired, and we left. My older sister, Inara, kept calling from Latvia, saying that my grandparents were both sick, and we had to take care of them. Mom didn’t want to leave Siberia. She had a great job at a pedagogical institute. She even once won the grand prize for the largest pumpkin grown for some competition.
And yet, Mom returned home. She and Dad separated. He had Chinese citizenship and was not allowed to settle in Latvia.
“Generals”
— Dzintra, recently in an interview with Latvian television, you told the story of a camp guard’s notes, accidentally found in 1991. They were practically hidden in a bottle. What’s this story?
— It really was the diary of a guard named Sidorov, kept in 1941. The diary was published half a century later in the journal of the Norilsk branch of Memorial. This story is connected with the deportation from Latvia. In May of that year, a group of officers from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were invited to Moscow, supposedly for a meeting. But it was a hoax. They were arrested and sent to Taimyr, to a camp near Lake Lama.
Almost all of them died there. Perhaps five or ten people survived. We learned about this from Ivan Sidorov’s notes. He kept his diary very emotionally. He wrote about how these soldiers were brought in, still in their uniforms, with their medals, and they dug the earth like that.
“One day, two boats—the Sokol and the Norilets—approached the holiday home on Lama, tied together. We stood on the shore and gazed at this unusual vessel. Guard Chupin shooed us fifty meters away from the gangway, down which 41 elderly soldiers were struggling to descend. Foreman Astakhov and prisoner Karabanov (they trusted him more than the others) helped the new arrivals descend the gangway and carry their suitcases.
On the shore, they stood in a strict line, placing their suitcases and good leather briefcases at their feet. Each had quite a lot of belongings. Four generals, then colonels, lieutenant colonels, and two majors brought up the rear. They were soldiers from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
They were magnificently dressed. Their uniforms were made of English wool with insignia, their belts were tightly fastened, and their boots were polished to a shine. The Baltic officers silently awaited orders. It was pleasant to watch them, but also a little scary.
Soon, we all began to call this group of Balts by one word: generals. They would say things like, “Go to the generals’ tent and deliver the order: tomorrow, work in the bakery or the kitchen.”
It was clear that the Balts had spiritually resigned themselves to their fate or were quietly consulting with some religious figure. This was Jomert—tall, strong, and taciturn. I never saw him smile. Everyone bowed respectfully to him. Every day at the same time, he would go to the lake and stand for a long time on the shore. He was chosen as the eldest, even though he wasn’t the oldest.
One cold night in 1942, Yomert died. The entire camp attended his burial—even the sick and weak came. His grave was dug deeper than the others’ in the “Haskin settlement” (as we called the cemetery at Lama). When summer came, Yomert’s friends dragged a heavy, four-sided stone block to his grave, seemingly hewn by nature itself. The other graves were marked with a simple peg with a plaque bearing a name…” Ivan Sidorov. “That was at Lama.”
— Dzintra, have you visited the site of this camp?
— Yes, of course. But the first large international expedition had been there before us: over a hundred people from three countries went. They built a memorial cemetery on the banks of the Lama River: crosses and stones.
They were caught by permafrost
— Was the last time you were in Siberia before the war?
— In 2019. We were on our way to Norilsk. And they wrote to me from there: you shouldn’t come here, you’re enemies of our state, you’re slandering Russia, don’t come. They didn’t even want to let us into the museum in Norilsk. They said the museum was closed, even though we’d announced our arrival in advance.
But we still went there and to Lake Lama, where the camp was. Everything there was already overgrown. We were told there would be reconstruction. But in Russia, they always say that and then do nothing.
They treated us differently before. In 2010, we had warm relations with the local cultural department workers. These women were very helpful. But in 2019, everyone became cold, as if they had been caught in the permafrost.
— You anticipated my question. I remember your visit to Tomsk, when TV2 was filming a documentary about you making your own movie. No one thought of saying you were “slinging mud at great Russia.” But just a few years later, Memorial was declared “extremists,” and monuments to Stalin and Dzerzhinsky appeared in various cities. Now, in Tomsk, a memorial square with stones of sorrow has been destroyed. How did Russia end up like this? Perhaps an outsider can see better?
— I don’t know the answer, I can only share my subjective impressions. I first visited Siberia in the mid-1960s. I was 16 years old. My father had been released from a political prison camp, but he was not allowed to return to Latvia. He sent a telegram from Omsk. I flew there to meet him. What I saw horrified me. Latvia was also occupied, but the difference from Siberia was still enormous.
I’ve always been amazed at how the Russian people can submit, how they can put up with constant violence.
In one of my films, former political prisoner Gunars recalled his time in Vladimir Prison. He was often sent to solitary confinement because he asked “unpleasant” questions during political information sessions. One day he asked a political officer, “If Nazi Germany had won the war, would the Russian people have submitted or resisted?” The political officer replied, “Of course, we wouldn’t have submitted; we would have resisted.” And Gunars replied, “You see, we resisted too. We didn’t want you to occupy us either.” After that, he was sent back to solitary confinement.
This is how Russia has always treated and continues to treat those who speak out.
“The-Day-After-Tomorrow” has arrived
— Unlike Russia, where even stones of sorrow are declared “undesirable objects,” is preserving the memory of the repressions still relevant for residents of the Baltics?
— We, too, have had different periods. When we began traveling and collecting materials in 2000, some fellow filmmakers said, “That time has passed. It’s already history. Why stir it up?” I then jokingly replied, “Maybe it’s not needed today, not needed tomorrow, but urgently needed the day after tomorrow?”
And this “day after tomorrow” came when Russia attacked Ukraine. Putin decided to restore the Soviet Union, Stalin’s monuments. Now they’re returning Dzerzhinsky to Lubyanka. And just like under Stalin, children are being taken out of Ukraine. So the topic of deportation is back.
