[The following is a report that is representative of the practice of completely random detentions and kidnappings common in the Soviet Union, by its government, in the early 1930s.]
So many elderly people, usually alone and invalids, could be explained, the head of the OGPU concluded, only by the practice of massive roundups carried out not only in public places such as train stations and markets, but also in hospices, with a view to “relieving themselves of burdens by sending them as far away as possible.” The memo Alexeviev sent Iagoda included an unusual appendix: a whole album of photographs taken in the Tomsk transit camp, showing invalids and decrepit old people who had been deported from the cities of Sochi, Tuapse, Piatigorsk, Kislovodsk, and Mineralnye Vody. Some of the most emblematic cases mentioned in the file and summed up in a few short annotations or explanations accompanying the photographs are the following:
Mark Perevalov, 103, “deported in the convoy from Piatigorsk. It proved impossible to determine his biography and the circumstances in which he had been taken away. Unable to stand up. Completely decrepit. Does not speak.” (Photo)
Evdokia Kotelnikova, 85, “without family, cannot stand up, half-naked, bedridden. A decomposing smi-cadaver. Unable to speak or move.” (Photo)
Elizabeta Zolotareva, 85, “without family, unable to move about on her own. Was expelled from Kislovodsk on the pretext that she was the former owner of a factory and a prostitute.” (Photo)
Tatiana Stariskaia, 78, without family, “expelled from Sochi as the owner of a revenue-producing building and a person with income not derived from labor.” (Photo)
Matriona Eremenko, 71, “deported from Tuapse as a parasitical element; invalid unable to walk.”
Nina Kirch, 74, “invalid deported from Sochi with her son, who is mentally retarded and completely dependent.”
Grigorii Chikov, 53, “blind, a beggar. Says he comes from a family of poor peasants, deported from the spa town of Essentuki as a parasitical element.” (Photo)
Alexei Ostrovenko, 69, “invalid, expelled from Piatogorsk with his wife, also an invalid. Says he works as a caretaker. He and his wife can move about only on crutches.” (Photo)
Elizaveta Chelepova, 91, “invalid, deported from Minerainye Vody with her daughter, aged 63, also an invalid. Reason: ex-merchant who had always lived on income derived from the exploitation of others.” (Photo)
Iouvelina Pelefalian, 75, “deported from Sochi with her deaf-mute son. Reason: merchant, living on income derived from the sale of milk from her cow.” (Photo). Deported with a neighbor who shared the same room in a communal apartment. The neighbor was mistaken for a member of her family.
Miron Korotenko, 76, and his wife, 75, “deported from Mineralnye Vody, 90 percent invalid. Reason: deprived of their civil rights, simulator-parasites refusing to work on a collective farm.” (Photo)
Source:
Werth, Nicolas. “In the Tomsk Transit Camp.” Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag. Princeton University Press, 2007. 96-8. Print.
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