This time the heroine of our column #important is the journalist from "Vyorstka" and the author of the podcast "Only Pros" about people with HIV, Rita Loginova. We talked to her about repressions in her family, as well as about how such a traumatic experience affects further life.
— Are there any repressed individuals in your family?
— The repressions affected my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. If you visit the website, you can see the name of Sidor Andreevich Borovoy (memorial page), as well as the names of his wife and children. One of his daughters - Ksenia Sidorovna, we called her Baba Sima - is my great-grandmother, and her daughter Nina Ivanovna - my grandmother, my mother's mother, the person who raised me in many ways.
Reflections on the repressions that affected my family emerged when I was already an adult. This topic was not discussed in the family at meetings or celebrations. But in retrospect, much of what happened to my grandmothers and grandfathers, and to me as well, are the consequences of those events.
I became interested in repressions when I had my own children. I was involved in journalism and became mature enough to ask my grandmother about such matters impartially. She already began to perceive me as an individual. A person with my own family.
My grandmother was a tough woman all her life, and I never understood why. Why other classmates and peers could have kind grandmothers, while mine was very demanding, not very affectionate, and sometimes destructive. On one hand, she tried to keep the whole family on a tight leash, controlling both grandpa, daughters, and grandchildren. It seemed that her strictness and composure kept the family in shape. She always had enough food, unlike my mother. She wasn't wealthy, but she always managed somehow to provide for her family. Although it was a peculiar kind of prosperity: they lived in a one-bedroom apartment. Besides grandma and grandpa, my younger aunt lived there with her family - her husband, daughter, and my brother and I. Too many people per square meter, but we stuck together, sometimes suffering, sometimes rejoicing. Grandma's childhood was spent in the "popular" place among exiles - Narym in the Tomsk region. They ended up there after being repressed as kulaks from the Altai Territory, from the village of Pospelikha. And in Pospelikha, as far as I know, they ended up not because they were born there, but because they were exiled there as those who were relatively wealthy. They were exiled from somewhere in the western part. I think it was at the beginning of the formation of the Soviet Union. From Pospelikha to Narym, they were exiled in the 1930s. But unfortunately, I don't have documentary evidence, only oral accounts.
— What did your grandmother tell you?
— She was born right after the war and told, from her mother's words, that they were put on a cart and taken away. It seems very similar to the book by Guzel Yakhina "Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes". The same districts are described, and apparently the same orders. The same way of life, when in a place where there is nothing, you are left in autumn with nothing. No tools. You're left to carry apples in your apron or pick mushrooms. Whatever you managed to dig before winter sets in, like a dugout, is what you live in. That's the story of my grandmother's family, her mother's family accordingly.
From there, as far as I know, some of my distant relatives tried to escape. Someone from my grandmother's uncles. Someone died trying: couldn't survive it all. But overall, the family somehow continued.
It was a story of eternal struggle, in which my grandmother saw nothing good. The way she was raised and grew up directly affected her. I don't pry into my children's souls now, but my relatives didn't have that. Because it couldn't be. It was eternal cold, hunger, and a lack of basic living conditions. My family's history is a post-war and monstrously difficult story of having to walk to school along snow-covered roads, surviving on meager money, living in other people's apartments to avoid freezing on the way home from school.
My great-grandmother Sima had three living daughters. There were others, but they didn't survive. There was also a son who died. Maybe there were other children. And my grandmother, being a child herself, had to take care of the younger ones. She simply never had a childhood.
What struck me the most was when my grandmother told me that when a new baby was born, she cried because she realized it meant another mouth to feed. More hunger, more work for her. And so, burdened with this baby, my grandmother went to play by the river with other children. It started raining, and everyone ran home. And my grandmother ran too. Only at home did she remember that she had left the baby by the river. She returned for him, barely alive. He was severely frozen, developed pneumonia, and died within a week. After these stories of my grandmother's childhood, her retelling of my great-grandmother's childhood in Narym, I have no more questions about why they are all like this.
— Do you or your family have any rehabilitation certificates? Criminal case files?
— We didn't have anything on hand. There are some artifacts from the family's life. All I have are old photographs, on which it's not always clear who is depicted. If my mom and grandma remembered something, they would explain who that person was.
There are also my grandfather's diaries, but he was a Soviet worker. On his side of my ancestors, there were Old Believers who lived in the taiga in the Irkutsk region. I don't know if it was exile or their voluntary choice, again to survive.
— Have you tried to go to Narym and see it for yourself?
— No, I haven't tried. I have some kind of internal fear of those places. I mean, I understand that things might be a little different there. Sure, there's taiga and wonderful nature, you can go hiking with good equipment. But living there, if you weren't born there, if you're not adapted to it... It could be a disaster to suddenly find yourself there, especially without tools, building materials, warm clothing, livestock, or seeds. So I don't have any documents, just a reference on the "Memorial" website and stories.
— Right now, there is an official law on preserving the memory of repression victims, but at the same time, dozens of monuments and memorials have been destroyed in the country, and many researchers of this topic are being persecuted. Why do you think this is happening?
— I think there are several explanations for this. People who are involved in preserving the memory of repressions and their repressed ancestors are in strong conflict with the state. Besides the importance of preserving memory, marking places on the map associated with these terrible and absolutely tragic pages of our common history, they simultaneously advocate for human rights, dignity preservation, and justice. They stand for all the good that the current state and decision-makers try to shake out of our society. So, this conflict has grown from some historical wrestling, whether it happened or not, into a conflict of political structure and attitude towards human and civil rights. And it's all sad.
Secondly, every individual and the collective of these individuals, which constitutes society, burdened with memories of how their parents and great-grandparents lived, in what historical situations they found themselves, are people who can draw parallels and find answers to their questions. Why like this and not otherwise? These are inconvenient people because when they see something in the present that is absolutely similar to the processes happening a hundred years ago, like any normal person, they think: what is this? Probably, if there were more people capable of seeing these parallels, it would be much more difficult to build a totalitarian regime and create a dictatorship.
History is not just what you read in textbooks. If people could draw information not only from textbooks and not only from very popular literature but simply knew what happened to their family, their grandmothers, their great-grandmothers, then the public response to any manifestations of dictatorship would be much harsher. But since this total memory doesn't exist, it's not that penetrating knowledge of our society on which decisions could be made and reactions to current events could be somehow responded to. This doesn't exist. And we have what we have.
— At what age should we talk to children about repression?
— My oldest child is now 13 years old, and the youngest is 5. With the youngest one, it's completely pointless to talk about anything yet. But about the oldest one. It turned out that a person at 11-12 years old is already capable of being shocked by what he sees in the context in which he himself lived and found himself. And for us, probably, it was precisely the scale of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that became the basis for more extended conversations about the structure of Russian society, about some historical processes. Yes, we sit down and discuss: what are repressions, how they affected our family. And this is the age at which it is already interesting to talk about this with your own child. In the early years of middle school, a person is quite capable of perceiving this, even without being emotionally devastated in any way. And he can be very surprised. I think you can talk about it earlier. There are different ways to discuss various complex issues with people of different ages. My son and I read a book about Hiroshima adapted for children. I think there is also such content about repressions.
— Can you recommend a few books that students should read?
— I don't specifically suggest anything to mine. I have such a young man who reads, I think, more than me. He has his own circle of interests. But it looks like this: my son climbs onto Wikipedia to read something about space, an interest in space definitely pushes him to an article about some Soviet realities. For example, about the fate of Korolev.
We'll talk about it now, and I'm more than sure that after our conversation, I'll hang up and discuss it with my son. He was sitting here. And it will be a genuine interest. I believe that this makes him more complex but also more reasonable person.
— Do you think Russia has any chance of ever breaking out of this cycle of violence?
— I think by studying repression as a tool of influence on people, one can understand where violence comes from. Our grandmothers, grandfathers, and their parents found themselves in inhumane conditions, under great pressure from the state, so they grew up to be such people, and our parents - grew up to be such people. Of course, there are many other factors that do not have such deep roots in the past. A lot of violence is born here and now. But the ability to reflect, I think, could significantly reduce this level.
Everything that happened to my family influenced the kind of person my grandmother grew into. And then the kind of person my mother grew into, and the kind of person I grew into. If it weren't for one shock after another in this story: repression, war, perestroika, I would have been a completely different person, less anxious, with a healthier self-esteem. I used to think that this ability to endure, overcome, tolerate was my superpower, which allowed me to do my job well. Now I think I don't want that anymore. I don't want to endure. I want to have normal, healthy boundaries so there is no violence from the state, from the family, close relatives, partners, or anyone else. And there was always violence in one way or another. And where would my personal happiness come from then?
The fact that I don't raise my children and don't treat them the way I was treated is not a reproach to my mother or grandmother. I understand why everything was the way it was. But that doesn't change the fact that I don't want my children to be like that. I want things to be a little different, healthier for them. Is this related to repression? Yes, directly. What kind of person could my grandmother have become if she forgot her younger brother by the river, he died after that, and she was glad because she had less work to do?
The interview was conducted by Lydia Kuzmenko.