Ukhtpechlag forced labor camp

[Cypress]

By my accounting, at a minimum a couple dozen uncles, great-uncles, uncles-by-marriage, and great-grand uncles were arrested by the NKVD pursuant to Article 58 of the Soviet penal code, and falsely charged with counter-revolutionary activities, agitation, or spying for the Japanese. Remaining available documentation indicates most of them were sentenced to GULAG forced labor camps in the arctic regions of Karelia, Murmansk, and Vorkuta. Great Uncle N.G.K. was released in 1938 from the Ukhtpechlag camp, and while free took a significant risk by petitioning the Prosecutor General to release innocent prisoners continuing to serve sentences in the Vorkuta camps.

Ukhtpechlag forced labor camp

Ukhtpechlag labor camp was part of the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR.

It was created on June 6, 1931 as a result of the reorganization of the Office of the Northern Camps of the OGPU for special purposes. Throughout the history of the camp, its chief was Yakov Moiseevich Moroz , who in 1936 received the title of senior major of state security.

On October 27, 1936, a mass hunger strike began in Ukhtpechlag to protest political prisoners convicted of "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activity." For 132 days, starving people demanded separation of political prisoners from criminals, normal nutrition, working conditions in accordance with the Labor Code , provision of real medical assistance to political prisoners, urgent transportation of seriously ill patients to normal climatic conditions.

From March 1, 1938, mass executions of political prisoners of the Ukhtpechlag in the area of ​​the Yun-Yaga River began. The punitive operation was led by the assistant to the chief of the II division of the III department of the GULAG, Lieutenant E.I. Kashketin. According to the Ukhto-Pechora branch of the Memorial society , based on declassified archival data, in 1937-1938 they shot: 86 prisoners in the village of Chibyu , 1779 in the Ukhtarka river region. In total, they were executed in various ways over these 2 years (without dead people) from hunger and disease) 2614 people.

Such a large number of prisoners could not be quickly destroyed in the “usual way”, and so they staged a pedestrian crossing to another camp and then opened machine-gun fire from an ambush. Then the living were finished off from revolvers. These events became known among prisoners as “Kashketin executions”.




citation: translated from the Russian, source credit Mara B****

Your Last Act Before Arrest

"What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

 

[Cypress]

Leave it to an entity like Aljazeera which still practices actual journalism to publish an interesting, relevant, and compelling story like this.

One of my great-uncles Syoma was a resident of Harbin, arrested by NKVD, and sent to the Vorkuta forced labor camps. My cousin Olga found out he survived and was "rehabilitated" under Khrushchev's liberalization policy.
Huge fans of Kremlin authoritarianism, like Donald Trump and his supporters, naturally believe only in realpolitik, and that human rights are none of our concern.

Stalin's Great Terror: The forgotten Harbin operation
As Great Terror anniversary comes around in Russia, Harbin operation in which 20,000 were executed remains unheard.

Soviet workers, often called Harbiners, were employed on the construction of the China Eastern Railway until it was sold in 1935 to the Manchukuo, a Manchurian state set up by the Japanese.They then returned home to the Soviet Union, welcomed by cheering crowds at train stations throughout Russia. However, sentiment changed in 1937.

That September the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, issued order number 00593, which along with other "national operations" against minorities, instructed agents to begin "a broad operation to arrest and eliminate" all the Harbiners and their families, which accounted for up to 25,000 people.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/f...rgotten-harbin-operation-171111075824868.html