Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“It was impossible to talk about any of this. Only in 1986 did my mother begin telling us
all the details. At eighty years old, my mother starts talking. You know, she was pregnant
when my father was executed.”
It was a baby boy. And after the birth, Angelina's mother and baby brother were sent to
a gulag—a “camp for wives of betrayers of the motherland,” Angelina recalls.
She was two and had a sister who was four. “My sister and I were sent to an orphanage.
My grandmother found us when I was six.”
Angelina and her sister went to live with her grandmother. Other families were there,
including a man from Leningrad who ran a printing house. “And he is the reason I learned
to read.”
She and her sister started receiving letters from their mother, from a gulag in Kazakh-
stan. Finally the two girls were allowed to travel to be with their mother—and they atten-
ded school in the camp settlement.
I can't stop thinking about my morning—my anger at being followed by a few thugs,
my worry about our luggage, my impatience and desire to just get through this layover in
Perm so we could be on our way to Sagra. I never expected to meet this woman and get
such a vivid portrait of tragedy.
After the Allies won World War II—“Victory Day,” as it's remembered in Rus-
sia—Angelina and her family were freed from the gulag and returned to Russia. Her moth-
er's movements were restricted. She wasn't allowed to live in big cities, and the work she
could do was limited. But she took illegal jobs and got by.
“I came to Perm and started school,” Angelina says. “When Stalin died in 1953, my
mother came to Perm and was able to rent an apartment. She received papers confirming
her 'rehabilitation'—she was no longer an enemy of the people.”
She pauses here and shakes her head.
“There were no real crimes. Stalin wanted there to be enemies everywhere. You know
my brother went to the army? He served west of Moscow and studied to work in the Interior
Ministry. He died with a very high rank. What an irony, given that's the agency that arres-
ted his family.”
Angelina worked as an elementary school teacher, then moved to a factory for twenty-
nine years. Then she settled at Memorial, trying to raise awareness about what happened in
Soviet times. Trying to confront the past so Russia can move into a new future.
“For years people have been afraid. Worried about their children, worried that history
could one day repeat itself. The way I talk now? It's difficult to get other people to do that.
They are still afraid.”
She looks directly at me: “There has never been an apology for Stalin's crimes. But the
time will come. The time will come when they apologize.”
Search WWH ::
Custom Search