Kengir uprising: Bandera and "Forest Brothers" against the Gulag
65 years ago, 16 May 1954, one of the most powerful and tragic uprisings in the Soviet camps flared up. Him story widely known, including thanks to the famous work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn "The GULAG Archipelago". True, Solzhenitsyn was inclined to inflate and dramatize something, but to be silent about something. But, in any case, the uprising, which will be discussed below, forever entered the history of the domestic prison-camp system as one of its most dramatic pages.
As is known, in 1930-1950-s a significant part of the Soviet camps, including camps for political prisoners, was located beyond the Urals - in Siberia and in Kazakhstan. The boundless steppes of Kazakhstan and its harsh climate, unusual for people from the central belt and the south, made its territory, as the Soviet leaders considered, the most suitable for camps.
The Steplag (Steppe Camp), or Special Camp No. 4 for political prisoners, was located in Central Kazakhstan, in the vicinity of the modern city of Zhezkazgan (in Soviet times, Dzhezkazgan). Today it is the Karaganda oblast of Kazakhstan, which Zhezkazgan entered after the abolition of the Zhezkazgan region in 1997.
The center of Steplag was the village of Kengir, where the camp administration was located. Steplag was a young camp created after the war on the basis of the Dzhezkazgan prison camp No. 39. The composition of Steplag to 1954 included 6 camp offices in the villages of Rudnik-Dzhezkazgan, Perevalka, Kengir, Krestovsky, Jezdy and Terekty.
By the year 1953, there were 20 869 prisoners in the Steplag, and by the 1954 year there were 21 090 prisoners. The number of prisoners grew due to the reduction of Ozerlag (Osoblaga No. 7) in the area of Taishet - Bratsk. Prisoners from Ozerlag were transferred to Steplag. Approximately half of the Steplag prisoners were Western Ukrainians, including members of Ukrainian nationalist organizations and the gangster underground. There were many Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Belarusians, Poles and Germans --- participants of collaborationist and nationalist organizations.
But on the whole, practically the entire national palette of the Soviet Union was represented in the camp - there were Chechens with Ingushs, Armenians, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and even Turks, Afghans and Mongols. Russians made up about 10% of the total number of prisoners, among them were persons convicted of collaborating with the Nazi occupation authorities, serving in the Russian Liberation Army and other collaborationist groups.
The prisoners of Steplag were taken out to work on the extraction of copper ore and manganese ore, to build enterprises in the city of Dzhezkazgan (a brick factory, a bakery, a processing plant, residential houses and other objects). The prisoners also worked in the coal mines in Baikonur and Ekibastuz.
The chief of Steplag from 1948 to 1954. He was Colonel Alexander Alexandrovich Chechev, before being appointed to the post of Deputy Minister of the Interior of the Lithuanian SSR, Head of the Prison Department of the Ministry (1945-1948), and before that headed the prisons and camps of the Tajik SSR, Tomsk Special Prison of the NKVD of the USSR.
In 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin passed away. For some citizens of the country, and such was the majority, the death of the leader became a real personal tragedy. But a certain part of the inhabitants of the country and among them, of course, were political prisoners, who relied on the liberalization of the political course. The prisoners hoped for a softer detention. But the easing of the regime took place far from all prisons and camps, especially if we talk about Siberia and Kazakhstan.
In Steplag, orders remained as rigid as possible. Interestingly, innovations in the management of the Soviet prison-camp system following the death of Stalin became one of the reasons for the further deterioration in the attitude of the camp administration and guards to prisoners. Thus, the camp administration officers removed the bonuses for ranks, rumors began to spread about a possible reduction in the number of camps and camp guard staff, which would lead to unemployment among the jailers, many of whom could not but guard the prisoners. Naturally, the guards were angry, and their displeasure vymeschal on prisoners, the benefit of the latter were powerless.
The order in the camps, in which the escort who shot a prisoner or several prisoners while trying to escape, received leave and a bonus, led to an increase in the number of murders of prisoners by the guards. Sometimes the guards used any reason to start shooting at the prisoners. In the Steplage, the killings of prisoners were in the order of things, but in the end there was a case that was the “last straw” for many thousands of convicts. Moreover, the latter were very excited by rumors about future relief of the regime and demanded free access to the women's zone - for carnal pleasures.
15 May 1954 of the year in the village of Kengir, watch Kalimulin, who was carrying guard duty to protect the camp, fired a burst from a machine gun at a group of prisoners who tried to break from the male part of the zone into the female part of the camp. As a result of the security shots, an 13 man was killed, an 33 man was injured, and another 5 subsequently died from his injuries. The killings of prisoners by guards have met before, but not with so many victims. Therefore, the sentry of the sentry and caused a natural indignation among the cons.
It should be noted here that the camp mass in Steplag was not so harmless. A significant part of the convicts were former Bandera, "forest brothers", Vlasovites who had experience of participating in hostilities. In essence, they had nothing to lose, since many of them were sentenced to 25 years in prison, which in the harsh conditions of the camps actually meant a death sentence.
The next day, male prisoners destroyed the fences that separated the male and female parts of the camp. In response, the camp administration ordered that firing points be established between these two parts of the zones. But this measure could not help.
The rebellion itself began on May 18 of 1954. More than three thousand prisoners did not go out in the morning for compulsory work. The guards of the camp were forced to flee from residential areas, hiding in administrative buildings. Then the rebels seized food and clothing warehouses, workshops, freed 252 prisoners who were in the penal barracks and in the detention facility.
Thus, the camp was actually under the control of prisoners. The rebels demanded the arrival of a government commission and a thorough investigation of the circumstances of the execution of prisoners by watch Kalimulin and general violations and abuses of the Steplag administration.
On May 19, prisoners formed a commission to lead the uprising, which included Lyubov Bershadskaya and Maria Shimanskaya from the 1 camp item, Semyon Chinchaladze and Vagarshak Batoyan from the 2 camp point and Kapiton Kuznetsov and Alexey from the 3 camp site. Makeev. Kapiton Ivanovich Kuznetsov was elected chairman of the commission.
Liberals try to present the participants of the uprising in the Kengir camp as innocent victims of Stalinist repression. Perhaps there were such. But to get an idea of who led the uprising, just look at the biography of its leader Kapiton Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov, a former lieutenant colonel of the Red Army, received a sentence because he went over to the side of the Nazis during the war and not only began to serve the Nazis, but took the post of commandant of a prisoner of war camp and commanded anti-partisan operations. How many people died at the hands of policeman Kuznetsov and his subordinates? It is possible that no less than during the suppression of the camp uprising.
The insurgent prisoners immediately formed a parallel management structure, in which they did not forget to single out the security department, the detective bureau, the commandant's office and even their own prison. They managed to create their own radio, to make a dynamo that supplied the camp with electricity, as the administration cut off the centralized supply.
The propaganda department was headed by Yuri Knoopmus (pictured) - 39-year-old former collaborator who served in the German field gendarmerie during the war. At the head of the "counterintelligence" put Engels (Gleb) Sluchkinov - a former Vlasovite, a sub-ensign of the POA, and once a lieutenant of the Red Army, who came over to the side of the Nazis. The power units of the uprising were shock troops, formed from relatively young and healthy former Bandera, as well as criminals who joined the uprising.
The only group of prisoners who did not support the uprising were Jehovah's Witnesses from Moldova - about 80 people. As you know, religion prohibits them from any violence, including opposition to the authorities. But the “victims of repression”, which the liberals so vividly recall today, did not spare Jehovah’s Witnesses, did not go into the details of their religion, but drove the faithful pacifists into the last barrack next to the checkpoint so that in the event of an assault, the convoy troops would shoot them first.
As soon as the camp authorities informed the authorities about the uprising, reinforcements from 100 soldiers were sent from Karaganda to Kengir. Lieutenant-General Viktor Bochkov, deputy chief of the GULAG of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Major-General Vladimir Gubin, minister of internal affairs of the Kazakh SSR, left for the negotiations with the rebels. As a result of the negotiations, prisoners promised 20 in May to end the unrest. 21 May order in Steplag was restored, but not for long.
On May 25, prisoners again did not go to work, demanding that prisoners be given the right to live freely in their workplaces with their families, to allow free communication with the women's zone, to reduce the sentences for those sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment, to release 2 prisoners once a week to the city.
This time, Deputy Minister of the Interior of the USSR Major-General Sergei Egorov and head of the Main Camp Administration Lieutenant-General Ivan Dolgikh arrived at the talks with the rebels themselves. Representatives of the rebels met with the Moscow delegation and put forward a number of demands, including the arrival of the Central Committee secretary to the camp.
The head of the gulag, General Dolgikh, having gone to meet the prisoners, ordered to remove from office the perpetrators of the weapons administration representatives. Negotiations continued, stretching for more than a month. Since there is a large amount of information in the public domain about the course of negotiations, about the actions of the parties to the conflict, it makes no sense to go into details.
A month after the start of negotiations, 20 June 1954 of the year, the Minister of Construction of Metallurgical Industries of the USSR D.Ya. Raiser and the Minister of Nonferrous Metallurgy of the USSR PF Lomako sent a memo to the Council of Ministers of the USSR, in which they complained about the unrest in the Steplag, because of them the schedule of ore mining in Dzhezkazgan was disrupted. After that, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers G.V. Malenkov appealed to Colonel-General Sergei Kruglov, USSR Minister of Internal Affairs, with demands to bring order to the camp.
On June 24, troops arrived at the zone, including 5 tanks T-34 from the 1st division of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. At 03:30 on June 26, military units were introduced into the camp’s residential area, tanks moved, fighters of the assault units with machine guns ran. The prisoners put up fierce resistance, but the forces of the parties were, of course, unequal. During the storming of the camp and the suppression of the uprising, 37 prisoners died, another 9 died from wounds.
The leaders of the uprising Ivashchenko, "Keller", Knotmus, Kuznetsov, Ryabov, Skiruk and Sluchenkov were sentenced to death, but Skiruk and Kuznetsov, the death penalty was replaced by long prison terms. In the 1960 year, five years after the verdict, Kapiton Kuznetsov was released. This is the question of the "cruelty" of the Soviet government ...
As is known, in 1930-1950-s a significant part of the Soviet camps, including camps for political prisoners, was located beyond the Urals - in Siberia and in Kazakhstan. The boundless steppes of Kazakhstan and its harsh climate, unusual for people from the central belt and the south, made its territory, as the Soviet leaders considered, the most suitable for camps.
Steplag and construction projects Dzhezkazgan
The Steplag (Steppe Camp), or Special Camp No. 4 for political prisoners, was located in Central Kazakhstan, in the vicinity of the modern city of Zhezkazgan (in Soviet times, Dzhezkazgan). Today it is the Karaganda oblast of Kazakhstan, which Zhezkazgan entered after the abolition of the Zhezkazgan region in 1997.
The center of Steplag was the village of Kengir, where the camp administration was located. Steplag was a young camp created after the war on the basis of the Dzhezkazgan prison camp No. 39. The composition of Steplag to 1954 included 6 camp offices in the villages of Rudnik-Dzhezkazgan, Perevalka, Kengir, Krestovsky, Jezdy and Terekty.
By the year 1953, there were 20 869 prisoners in the Steplag, and by the 1954 year there were 21 090 prisoners. The number of prisoners grew due to the reduction of Ozerlag (Osoblaga No. 7) in the area of Taishet - Bratsk. Prisoners from Ozerlag were transferred to Steplag. Approximately half of the Steplag prisoners were Western Ukrainians, including members of Ukrainian nationalist organizations and the gangster underground. There were many Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Belarusians, Poles and Germans --- participants of collaborationist and nationalist organizations.
But on the whole, practically the entire national palette of the Soviet Union was represented in the camp - there were Chechens with Ingushs, Armenians, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and even Turks, Afghans and Mongols. Russians made up about 10% of the total number of prisoners, among them were persons convicted of collaborating with the Nazi occupation authorities, serving in the Russian Liberation Army and other collaborationist groups.
The prisoners of Steplag were taken out to work on the extraction of copper ore and manganese ore, to build enterprises in the city of Dzhezkazgan (a brick factory, a bakery, a processing plant, residential houses and other objects). The prisoners also worked in the coal mines in Baikonur and Ekibastuz.
The chief of Steplag from 1948 to 1954. He was Colonel Alexander Alexandrovich Chechev, before being appointed to the post of Deputy Minister of the Interior of the Lithuanian SSR, Head of the Prison Department of the Ministry (1945-1948), and before that headed the prisons and camps of the Tajik SSR, Tomsk Special Prison of the NKVD of the USSR.
Background to the uprising of prisoners
In 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin passed away. For some citizens of the country, and such was the majority, the death of the leader became a real personal tragedy. But a certain part of the inhabitants of the country and among them, of course, were political prisoners, who relied on the liberalization of the political course. The prisoners hoped for a softer detention. But the easing of the regime took place far from all prisons and camps, especially if we talk about Siberia and Kazakhstan.
In Steplag, orders remained as rigid as possible. Interestingly, innovations in the management of the Soviet prison-camp system following the death of Stalin became one of the reasons for the further deterioration in the attitude of the camp administration and guards to prisoners. Thus, the camp administration officers removed the bonuses for ranks, rumors began to spread about a possible reduction in the number of camps and camp guard staff, which would lead to unemployment among the jailers, many of whom could not but guard the prisoners. Naturally, the guards were angry, and their displeasure vymeschal on prisoners, the benefit of the latter were powerless.
The order in the camps, in which the escort who shot a prisoner or several prisoners while trying to escape, received leave and a bonus, led to an increase in the number of murders of prisoners by the guards. Sometimes the guards used any reason to start shooting at the prisoners. In the Steplage, the killings of prisoners were in the order of things, but in the end there was a case that was the “last straw” for many thousands of convicts. Moreover, the latter were very excited by rumors about future relief of the regime and demanded free access to the women's zone - for carnal pleasures.
Shot of watch Kalimulin and its consequences
15 May 1954 of the year in the village of Kengir, watch Kalimulin, who was carrying guard duty to protect the camp, fired a burst from a machine gun at a group of prisoners who tried to break from the male part of the zone into the female part of the camp. As a result of the security shots, an 13 man was killed, an 33 man was injured, and another 5 subsequently died from his injuries. The killings of prisoners by guards have met before, but not with so many victims. Therefore, the sentry of the sentry and caused a natural indignation among the cons.
It should be noted here that the camp mass in Steplag was not so harmless. A significant part of the convicts were former Bandera, "forest brothers", Vlasovites who had experience of participating in hostilities. In essence, they had nothing to lose, since many of them were sentenced to 25 years in prison, which in the harsh conditions of the camps actually meant a death sentence.
The next day, male prisoners destroyed the fences that separated the male and female parts of the camp. In response, the camp administration ordered that firing points be established between these two parts of the zones. But this measure could not help.
The rebellion itself began on May 18 of 1954. More than three thousand prisoners did not go out in the morning for compulsory work. The guards of the camp were forced to flee from residential areas, hiding in administrative buildings. Then the rebels seized food and clothing warehouses, workshops, freed 252 prisoners who were in the penal barracks and in the detention facility.
Thus, the camp was actually under the control of prisoners. The rebels demanded the arrival of a government commission and a thorough investigation of the circumstances of the execution of prisoners by watch Kalimulin and general violations and abuses of the Steplag administration.
The rebels created a parallel power in the camp
On May 19, prisoners formed a commission to lead the uprising, which included Lyubov Bershadskaya and Maria Shimanskaya from the 1 camp item, Semyon Chinchaladze and Vagarshak Batoyan from the 2 camp point and Kapiton Kuznetsov and Alexey from the 3 camp site. Makeev. Kapiton Ivanovich Kuznetsov was elected chairman of the commission.
Liberals try to present the participants of the uprising in the Kengir camp as innocent victims of Stalinist repression. Perhaps there were such. But to get an idea of who led the uprising, just look at the biography of its leader Kapiton Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov, a former lieutenant colonel of the Red Army, received a sentence because he went over to the side of the Nazis during the war and not only began to serve the Nazis, but took the post of commandant of a prisoner of war camp and commanded anti-partisan operations. How many people died at the hands of policeman Kuznetsov and his subordinates? It is possible that no less than during the suppression of the camp uprising. The insurgent prisoners immediately formed a parallel management structure, in which they did not forget to single out the security department, the detective bureau, the commandant's office and even their own prison. They managed to create their own radio, to make a dynamo that supplied the camp with electricity, as the administration cut off the centralized supply.
The propaganda department was headed by Yuri Knoopmus (pictured) - 39-year-old former collaborator who served in the German field gendarmerie during the war. At the head of the "counterintelligence" put Engels (Gleb) Sluchkinov - a former Vlasovite, a sub-ensign of the POA, and once a lieutenant of the Red Army, who came over to the side of the Nazis. The power units of the uprising were shock troops, formed from relatively young and healthy former Bandera, as well as criminals who joined the uprising.
The only group of prisoners who did not support the uprising were Jehovah's Witnesses from Moldova - about 80 people. As you know, religion prohibits them from any violence, including opposition to the authorities. But the “victims of repression”, which the liberals so vividly recall today, did not spare Jehovah’s Witnesses, did not go into the details of their religion, but drove the faithful pacifists into the last barrack next to the checkpoint so that in the event of an assault, the convoy troops would shoot them first.
As soon as the camp authorities informed the authorities about the uprising, reinforcements from 100 soldiers were sent from Karaganda to Kengir. Lieutenant-General Viktor Bochkov, deputy chief of the GULAG of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Major-General Vladimir Gubin, minister of internal affairs of the Kazakh SSR, left for the negotiations with the rebels. As a result of the negotiations, prisoners promised 20 in May to end the unrest. 21 May order in Steplag was restored, but not for long.
New uprising
On May 25, prisoners again did not go to work, demanding that prisoners be given the right to live freely in their workplaces with their families, to allow free communication with the women's zone, to reduce the sentences for those sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment, to release 2 prisoners once a week to the city.
This time, Deputy Minister of the Interior of the USSR Major-General Sergei Egorov and head of the Main Camp Administration Lieutenant-General Ivan Dolgikh arrived at the talks with the rebels themselves. Representatives of the rebels met with the Moscow delegation and put forward a number of demands, including the arrival of the Central Committee secretary to the camp.
The head of the gulag, General Dolgikh, having gone to meet the prisoners, ordered to remove from office the perpetrators of the weapons administration representatives. Negotiations continued, stretching for more than a month. Since there is a large amount of information in the public domain about the course of negotiations, about the actions of the parties to the conflict, it makes no sense to go into details.
Suppression of the Kengir uprising
A month after the start of negotiations, 20 June 1954 of the year, the Minister of Construction of Metallurgical Industries of the USSR D.Ya. Raiser and the Minister of Nonferrous Metallurgy of the USSR PF Lomako sent a memo to the Council of Ministers of the USSR, in which they complained about the unrest in the Steplag, because of them the schedule of ore mining in Dzhezkazgan was disrupted. After that, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers G.V. Malenkov appealed to Colonel-General Sergei Kruglov, USSR Minister of Internal Affairs, with demands to bring order to the camp.
On June 24, troops arrived at the zone, including 5 tanks T-34 from the 1st division of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. At 03:30 on June 26, military units were introduced into the camp’s residential area, tanks moved, fighters of the assault units with machine guns ran. The prisoners put up fierce resistance, but the forces of the parties were, of course, unequal. During the storming of the camp and the suppression of the uprising, 37 prisoners died, another 9 died from wounds.
The leaders of the uprising Ivashchenko, "Keller", Knotmus, Kuznetsov, Ryabov, Skiruk and Sluchenkov were sentenced to death, but Skiruk and Kuznetsov, the death penalty was replaced by long prison terms. In the 1960 year, five years after the verdict, Kapiton Kuznetsov was released. This is the question of the "cruelty" of the Soviet government ...
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