TOMSK, Jan 13 – RIA Tomsk. Employees of Center for the Study of Historical Memory, established at Tomsk Regional Museum of Local Lore (TRMLL), began to publish lists of names of peasant special resettlers, project participant Vasily Khanevich told RIA Tomsk on Monday. One of the project objectives - is to raise the issue of their rehabilitation, follows from the materials.
It was previously reported that in 2019, in the Tomsk Region, with the assistance of the State Museum of the History of the Gulag (Moscow), a Center for the Study of Historical Memory was created, which was headed by Valery Uymanov, doctor of historical sciences, who previously served in law enforcement agencies and the regional administration. He is also the author of the first in the USSR Book of Memory of the repressed residents of the Tomsk region "Human Pain".
"Involuntary Siberians"
According to Khanevich, the Center for the Study of Historical Memory initiated a new large-scale project "Involuntary Siberians" dedicated to special migrants who came to the territory of the Tomsk region in the 1930-1950s. He emphasized that these people - dispossessed peasants, representatives of deported peoples - unlike the "political" exiles convicted under the "58th Article", were never rehabilitated.
“The novelty of the project, in my opinion, is that purposeful systematic work has begun in the archive of the Internal Affairs Directorate, where, finally, with the assistance of Valery Uymanov, access has been obtained. There is a studying of materials, compiling lists - it'is a prototype of future Books of Memory on special settlers ... Today we have about 1,500 biographies of people with documents and photographs", - Khanevich said.
Why the project is necessary?As reported in the introductory article on the website of the Uymanov project, specialists will try, if possible, to list the names of all special settlers. This is necessary for those who do not know where and how to apply for information about their near and dear ones. In addition, historians intend to clarify the number of Tomsk special settlers, which in a number of publications, according to Uymanov, is clearly overstated.
"(One of the objectives of the project) - is to consider the rehabilitation of special settlers, to identify the reasons for not fully deploying this work ... To restore social justice for our compatriots who were repressed in the form of exile and resettlement due to any political goals and intentions of the state, by publishing their names", - writes the director of the Center.
Background
Tomsk has been a place of exile since the time of the Russian Empire. In the 1930-1950s, repressed intellectuals, dispossessed peasants and "politically unreliable elements" were exiled here.
Earlier it was reported that hundreds of thousands of people were exiled to the territory of the modern Tomsk region during the years of Stalinist purges, many of them died in camps or were shot. Repression also affected Tomsk citizens themselves.