Daniel Boćkowski
Two ordinary school notebooks containing a dozen pages of tables and statistical summaries turned out to be an invaluable source of knowledge about the functioning rules of the small special poseloks to which Soviet deportees were sent in 1940 and 1941. Professor Daniel Boćkowski, an outstanding expert on the subject of deportation, writes for the portal “Świat Sybiru” about this unique discovery.
When describing the fate of citizens of the Second Polish Republic who were deported into the far depths of the USSR, we are basically dealing either with memoirs written by exiles or with documents produced by civilian authorities, mainly party authorities (at various levels) and Soviet special services, primarily the NKVD, sourced with the efforts of Polish and Russian researchers. In the first case, these are descriptions of the encountered reality preserved in the memories of direct witnesses; in the second case, they are mostly various types of statistical data collected at various levels of the NKVD structures. Sometimes we come across reports in which specific events and people are cited in order to justify a failure to carry out a plan designed by some higher authorities. It is highly probable that the vast archives of the Russian special services contain sources produced by representatives of the lowest level of the apparatus of power, on the basis of which the reports, statements and statistical lists known to us were based. However, these sources were not even made available to researchers during the Russian “thaw” of the 1990s. All this means that attempts to describe history at the level of the reality of a special poselok, a camp, or even a specific region, were and still are very difficult. Huge problems are also posed by the difficulty of verifying statistical data contained in NKVD reports (lack of data on the basis of which they were prepared), the subjectivity of the authors of individual accounts describing the reality of exile in a specific place, and these authors’ ignorance of the realities of the operation of the basic systems of administration of special poseloks.
Therefore, each document, official letter, narrative or any other evidentiary material produced at the lowest level of the Soviet authority system is an extremely valuable comparative source for researchers that makes critical assessment of the credibility of higher-level sources and studies possible. It is very rare for such working material to be deliberately falsified, although this cannot be completely ruled out. All notes, tables and annotations give us insight into Soviet reporting and, indirectly, into the realities of the lives of the deportees.
A commander’s notebook
Many years ago, thanks to the courtesy of Jacek Matecki, who travelled to the areas of the special NKVD poseloks that existed in the 1940s, I received a scan of a dozen or so pages of a notebook kept by the commander of a poselok in the Arkhangelsk region. It is still unknown how the statistical summaries of the exiles subordinate to the commander survived outside the official NKVD archives. It is very possible that when he left his position, this man kept his school notebook full of tables, which most likely were the input data for reports prepared for higher authorities. Interestingly, this person was not a full-time NKVD officer but a teacher who was delegated by the local administration to extraordinary tasks. It is possible that this man also had support from local NKVD structures.
So what are we dealing with in this particular case? These are two ordinary school notebooks joined together, containing a dozen or so pages of tables and statistical summaries. The documentation contained in the first “notebook” concerns special resettlers (spetspereselentsy)/settlers* and special resettlers (spetspereselentsy)/refugees** deported in 1940 to the now non-existent Solvychegodsk district in the Arkhangelsk region. This district, as a result of administrative changes, was merged with the Kotlas district. The second “notebook” is entitled and concerns “Arrivals and Departures of Special Resettlers and Resettlers for the Year 1942” [“Tetrad after the Count of Arrivals and Departures of Special Resettlers and Resettlers for the Year 1942”]. This is the first case I know of in which statistics were kept at the level of an ordinary commandant’s office “on the fly”, continuously, during successive months of work. Knowing the higher-level documents produced by the district and oblast structures of the NKVD, we can see how they were produced and confirm that the statistical data contained therein – concerning, for example, the condition of footwear and clothing – were indeed based on lists “from below”.
The pages preserved in the notebook show that the person who compiled these statistics was in charge of special poselok unit no. 23, which was supposed to contain special poselok refugees deported to the Solvychek district. Another table shows that this person was supposed to supervise the special poselok refugees in the Siemiretsky special poselok unit, which appears in the NKVD data but as the Siemiretsky poselok. It owes its name to the river on which it was most likely founded: Siemiretskaya. The statistical personal data contained in the notebooks match the reports of the USSR NKVD from April 1, 1940, “On the reception and settlement of settlers” and the number of settlers as of January 1, 1940, from another collective document produced at that time. This confirms the authenticity of the document and indicates that this information could have been used by the Arkhangelsk Oblast NVKD to report to higher up the chain of command.
Deportees in a special poselok number 23
The Arkhangelsk region was one of the main places of settlement of citizens of the Second Polish Republic who were deported on February 10 and April 13, 1940. According to the report of the NKVD of the USSR of April 1, 1940 “On the reception and placement of settlers”, 41,497 special resettlers-settlers were sent to the region as part of the February deportation. They were delivered in 31 transports. The last of them (no. 4045) arrived on March 4, 1940. The OTP* GULAG NKVD of the USSR report of August 6, 1940 noted 41,354 special resettlers located in special poseloks. This information, as can be seen in the statistical summaries included in the notebook, was already flowing in from the commandants of individual poseloks. In turn, as part of the June deportation, according to the NKVD report of August 6, 1940, 14,154 people were placed in special poseloks. In total, as of August 1, 1940, there were 55,508 people in the region.
In the then-existing Solvychek district, there were 3,769 settlers and 625 bezhentsy (refugees). At least this is what the Karta Center published in the Deported in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (Volume XIV, Part 1) list. The deportees came mostly from Lviv and Lviv Oblast, as well as from Ternopil, Rivne, and Volyn Oblasts. They were placed in special poseloks: Semirechny (605 settlers), which is the subject of our article, Tiesovaya (633 settlers and 98 bezhentsy), Kharitovo (702 settlers and 58 bezhentsy), Kopytovo (1,319 settlers), Zapadny (192 settlers and 148 bezhentsy), and Fedyakovo (318 settlers and 321 bezhentsy). After reaching their destination, the deportees were also transferred from one place of detention to another. This is also confirmed by the statistical data contained in the aforementioned notebook.
Exile Statistics
Let us return to our source. The first record of special resettlers-settlers was probably made at the time of their transfer to the local commandant’s office. The arrival of the deportees at “specposiołek nr 23” took place no later than 28 February 1940. The notebook then recorded the admission of 618 people (123 families). Further on in the table, we have information that 9 people were born, two people arrived as part of family reunification from other regions, and one from a detention centre or prison (из заключения). In total, there were supposedly 123 families in the poselok, consisting of 630 people. Also in the list, there is information that 5 families (a total of 43 people) left the special poselok as part of the rotation system. 37 deaths were also recorded, 3 people were sent outside the poselok as part of family reunification, 9 children were sent to an orphanage, and 3 people were arrested. When we sum up these data, we find that at the end of March 1940, i.e., when the first official reports were submitted (which became the basis for the collective NKVD summaries and which are known to Polish researchers), there were 118 families, numbering 587 people, in special poselok No. 23 in the Solvychek district of the Arkhangelsk region.
However, the notebook does not provide a clear definition of the poselok to which special poselok no. 23 formally belongs. So, how did we manage to determine that this refers to the poselok of Simiriechnaya? Let’s conduct a short investigation together. Based on the known and available lists of the number of exiles in special poseloks, we can state that the poseloks of Tiesovaya and Kharitonowo contained a number of people closest to the given number (587). However, the information about other poseloks recorded in succeeding lists in the notebook itself does not match. Simiriechnaya does not appear in the notebook, but it does appear in the NKVD documents; hence, by deduction, it is the only one that fits these statistics. The common point is the information about the number of people as of January 1, 1941. In both cases (the NKVD report and the table of the commandant’s office) we have 122 families, with a total of 605 people. However, we do not have any sources showing us the movement in the poselok from April to December 1940. We do not know the circumstances in which at least 18 people arrived, nor do we have any information on the scale of deaths, arrests, or further departures.
The tables, which mostly make up the commandant’s notebook, are kept by hand. You can see corrections, expunctions and other changes. Among other things, we have information on the number of families, the number of people, the number of men, women and “adolescents”. There are lists of children studying and not studying, additionally divided by the form of education, and a list of children not yet covered by compulsory schooling. The subsequent columns contain statistical data on people working: men, women and children. We can also find information on places and forms of work, the number of so-called trudodzień (working days), earnings, issued tools (saws, axes), work clothes and even shoes. We also have detailed descriptions of the conditions in which the settlers lived, how many families per room, what the material support looked like (tools, footwear, work clothes issued to the exiles). It is an almost perfect accounting of the everyday life of the exiles: the smallest aspects of their existence are included in columns divided into individual months.
Data is entered gradually, every month, but almost no years are identified in the tables. Only one of the cards on the personal status of special resettlers-settlers has the exact daily date marked: February 28, 1940. The fact that the next card may include data for 1941 is evidenced by the fact that personal changes were recorded from January to September. Below is its shortened version.
| Month | Nr of Families | Nr of People | Born | Ammount of arrivalsa | Sent to other places | Arrested | Dead | Amnesty – Nr of Unbind | Sum of dimished | Nr of families left | Nr of people left | Nr of children in orphanage |
| January | 122 | 605 | – | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | – | 5 | 121 | 601 | – |
| February | 121 | 601 | – | – | 1 | – | 4 | – | 5 | 118 | 596 | 4 |
| March | 118 | 596 | – | – | – | – | 3 | – | 3 | 118 | 593 | 9 |
| April | 118 | 593 | – | 2 | – | – | 8 | – | 8 | 118 | 587 | 9 |
| May | 118 | 587 | 2 | 2 | – | – | 7 | – | 7 | 118 | 582 | 9 |
| June | 118 | 582 | 1 | 1 | – | – | 11 | – | 11 | 118 | 572 | 9 |
| July | 118 | 572 | – | – | – | – | 5 | – | 5 | 118 | 567 | 2 |
| August | 118 | 567 | 1 | 3 | – | 1 | 2 | – | 3 | 118 | 566 | 11 |
| September | 118 | 566 | – | 1 | – | – | 1 | 489 | 490 | 13 | 77 | 11 |
a In the table, I did not distinguish internal traffic arrivals/departures
The next card, which is described as a list of “members of the group to combat escape attempts”, contains another summary of the Simieriecznyj special poselok’s personnel: 568 people, of whom 11 are children in the children’s home and 3 are in the hospital. This is consistent with the table. Next to it, the author adds more data, this time according to the status of August 12, 1941. There are 118 families (557 people) in the poselok. Most likely, this summary was made in relation to information published in the Soviet press about the agreement between Poland and the USSR and the amnesty announced by the authorities. One of the last pages of the “first notebook” contains information on the number of people released by decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Out of 118 registered families (556 people), 105 families were released, including 220 people under 16 and 280 people over 16 (500 in total). For reasons unknown to us, 19 families with 66 people remained in the special poselok. However, this does not match the previously reported number of registered people. There must have been at least 5 families (10 people in total) in the poselok who were not subject to amnesty due to their form of exile.
***
So what actually is the commandant’s notebook of the Simieriecznyj special poselok? It is certainly an invaluable source of knowledge about the principles of operation of small special poseloks, where exiles from the February and June deportations were sent. It shows us how thorough the local bookkeeping was and how much data was collected for the needs of NKVD reporting (some of this data was extracted from the archives of the Russian Federation at the turn of 21st century). It gives us insight into everyday life in exile. It also allows us to understand the basis on which the collective NKVD reports were created, and thus to determine their credibility as sources, which has always been the subject of much controversy.
Thanks to these dozen or so cards, we know that on February 28, 1940, 618 special resettlers-settlers deported from the Volyn, Lviv, and Ternopil regions arrived at the Simiriecznyj special poselok in the Solvychek region. When the amnesty was announced, there were 118 families in the poselok, consisting of 566 people, of whom – according to official data – 500 were released. Among these 566 people were 145 men, 152 women, and 269 children (137 children aged 8–14, 47 children aged 3–8, and 18 children up to 3 years old). In 1941, 43 people died (which gives us 7.4%), and 3 children were born. We do not have data for 1940. We only know that at the time the records began, 9 births and 37 deaths were recorded. This means that before the amnesty, no less than 80 people died and 12 children were born.
*OTP – Otdieł Trudowych Posielenij, meaning Labour Settlements Division
Daniel Boćkowski – professor of the University in Białystok
Translated by Katarzyna Remża
* Victims of the first wave of deportations from 10 of February 1940. First wave a the first wave included military, civilian and forest settlers.
** Victims of the third wave of deportations. It mainly concerned a group called Bieżeńcy – refugees from areas occupied by the Third Reich.