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Sergei Lapenkov on the Important Matter.

The first hero of our project is one of the founders of the 'Immortal Regiment' movement, Sergey Lapenkov. We talked to him about why it is important to preserve family memory and where to start talking about repression with children.

Do you have any relatives who were repressed?

I don't have exact information about whether any of my close or distant relatives were repressed. But I have a grandfather about whom I know nothing. It so happened that no one ever talked about him. I thought my grandfather on my mother's side was my biological grandfather, but he turned out to be just my grandmother's last husband. He was a good person, but not my biological grandfather.

As I found out, my family history sharply changes between 1936 and 1938. During this time, my biological grandfather disappears from my family's life. There is a death certificate from 1940 issued by the NKVD department in the Chelyabinsk region. According to it, my grandfather died from a stomach ulcer. I haven't been able to delve deeper into this story yet to understand what happened. It's all quite strange. In 1936, my mom's sister was born in Tyumen, and they were a happy Soviet family, but by 1938, my grandmother was working on the other end of the Soviet Union. In Central Asia, in the national Ukrainian ensemble and under her maiden name.

Something happened in the family during these two years. This page of the family biography is not very clear to me. I don't rule out the possibility that people could have simply divorced. But considering that 1937 was between these dates, nothing can be ruled out. Nor can anything be said for sure.

My biological grandfather's name was Georgy Veselovsky. He was born in Kiev. According to some data, in 1900, and according to others, if you take the death certificate, in 1898. At the time of his death, he was 42 years old, according to this document. I haven't seen this document myself, but the contents were retold to me by the employees of the MFC, who found the certificate in their database.

I couldn't get this document in hand to further search for additional information about the circumstances of my grandfather's death. Because there was a mistake in my mom's birth certificate. Her last name was spelled with an "o" - Vesolovskaya. It's a scribe error that needs to be corrected, but that's another story.

Sergei Lapenkov

How did you find out about your biological grandfather?

I somehow compared two simple facts. My mother's maiden name is Vesolovskaya, and my grandmother's husband's last name is Zdanovich. It became clear that another man was my mother's father.

In our house, the topic of my grandfather was never discussed. Neither by my mother nor by my grandmother. No one ever talked to me about it.

Why is the theme of repression being eradicated now? On one hand, there's a state-level concept of perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression, there's the Museum of the Gulag, and on the other hand, they're removing plaques of the 'Last Address' initiative, destroying monuments, and persecuting the creators of the "Immortal Barracks."

I wouldn't exclude the closure of the Gulag Museum either. We've been living as if between two stools all this time. On one hand, there's the history inherited from the times of perestroika when archives were opened. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (openness) included bringing to light the historical past. This line continued in the 90s and the 2000s under the current president.

But it was inertia from those times when this history was genuinely important for the state and for people, including myself. I was genuinely interested in the truth about the past, especially as a student of history. Fortunately, there were no problems accessing new sources of information. I remember when I joined the army, my friend's mother subscribed me to the magazine 'Rodina' (Homeland). I went to the neighboring village for it since the magazine published materials from open archives, especially about the Soviet period and the real scale of repression.

The Soviet textbooks mentioned this period very briefly, usually in relation to the 20th Congress and the debunking of Stalin's cult of personality, focusing mainly on intra-party purges. The scale of repression was completely unknown.

But then, publications in 'Rodina,' 'Novy Mir,' and other thick journals started talking about that time. They began publishing works of fiction. Solzhenitsyn's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' was reissued, Shalamov's 'Kolyma Tales' were published. All this painted a much more terrifying and tragic picture than the two paragraphs in the Soviet textbook. As a history student, even though I was in the army, I found it fascinating.

Then this memory was inherited in recent Russian history as part of a certain foundation on which the state relied in various areas. In the field of historical memory, there was an obvious trend for a while — not to ignore recognized historical facts. Then, however, another trend emerged — we're not closing our eyes, of course, but we shouldn't overly focus on the negative. It was there, and that was it.

Between 2014 and 2017, in connection with the 'Immortal Regiment,' we were invited to various round tables. And at one of them, held in Moscow with the participation of people from various research institutions, a woman — an employee of one institute — said: 'Our history is like a family history. Families have different pages. Bright and dark. Why remember everything the same way?'

I think she didn't come up with this idea herself. Rather, she voiced an opinion that already existed and was already visible in the corridors of power: 'Let's not dwell too much on this history. Especially, talk about this history at every step.'

And now everything is heading towards a total revision of our history. And if you're not the leader of a small but proud state within Russia, you probably won't be able to object to anything about it. I'm afraid there's very little time left until not complete denial, but until maximum silence about the Red Terror.

Any projects that are beyond this state policy or run counter to it, people who are engaged in restoring documentary history (the case of Dmitriev is a vivid example) — at the very least, find themselves in a state of alienation. And at most — in a real danger zone if they continue to publicly insist on their point of view.

Why is this happening? I think the current model of historical memory largely stems not from the 90s or perestroika but from deeper times. It is an heir to the Soviet approach: we remember what and who today's authorities need us to remember. By the way, this tradition is even deeper than Soviet power.

How should one talk to children about the repressions?

I'm not sure, I don't have much experience in that regard. Although, at one point, I worked as a teacher in a school. Back then, unlike the present times, no one dictated any ideological concept of teaching history to teachers in any form. I remember what a wonderful time it was — the mid-90s. There were even several history textbooks, and you could choose between them.

When telling the story of the 1930s, I mainly relied not even on textbooks but on published documents that were widely available. I taught this period as a history of a terrible time in our country.

I don't know what my students think now about the past and the present, but back then, children perceived all this, from the teacher's words, like any other information coming from him.

I think the decisive role will be played by what they will be taught in school. It's no coincidence that the 'new' textbooks, in general, appear with ideologically old material. But on the other hand, if there are pages in the family history associated with this tragedy, the most correct decision would be to talk about it to the children at home. What conclusions they will draw, I don't know, I can only suspect that, most likely, these children will hardly grow up to be big fans of Joseph Vissarionovich.

What would you recommend children to read on this topic?

Some of the books I mentioned. The scariest reading imaginable is camp literature. I can't say that it should be read to a child at 12 years old, it's better closer to 15-16 years old. You don't have to read Varlam Shalamov, you can start with 'Children of the Arbat' by Anatoly Rybakov.

And 'Immortal Regiment' and 'Immortal Barracks' are, first and foremost, about preserving family history. Why is it important to preserve it?

We don't have another one. Big history, as we see, depends on big people and the global interests of the current moment. I believe it will be rewritten and refocused many times. Therefore, there is small history, within which people are not inclined to mislead themselves. It's the history that people understand, find interesting, and consider important.

You don't have to go far - in the 'Immortal Regiment' emails, we receive a huge amount of letters asking for help in finding information about their families, about their veterans. This matters to people! They are interested in it. People often brush off big history: 'It's all politics.' But they care about their own. And through the 'small' history, not only the family history is visible, but also the history of the times. It couldn't help but affect the fate of our grandfathers and grandmothers, great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. Through understandable connections between time and the person living through it.

The interview was conducted by Lydia Kuzmenko.