Translated from Latin, the word "repressio" means "suppression". And suppression is one of the main functions of any state. The absence of mechanisms and institutions of coercion makes society vulnerable to an external enemy. In a State governed by the rule of law, suppression is balanced by legal guarantees, a fair and independent court, and effective public administration.

Today, to find out the true number of those repressed under Stalin, it is enough to get acquainted with declassified documents. The most famous of them is a memo addressed to N.S. Khrushchev dated February 1, 1954:

"To the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade N.S. Khrushchev.

In connection with the signals coming to the Central Committee of the CPSU from a number of persons about the illegal conviction for counterrevolutionary crimes in the past years by the OGPU Collegium, NKVD troika, Special Meeting, Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals and in accordance with your instructions on the need to review the cases of persons convicted of counterrevolutionary crimes and currently held in camps and prisons, we report: According to the data available in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, for the period from 1921 to the present, the OGPU Collegium, the NKVD troika, a Special Meeting, the Military Collegium were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, courts and military tribunals 3,777,380 people. Among them: 642,980 people were sent to prison, 2,369,220 people were detained in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years or less, 765,180 people were sent to exile and expulsion.

Of the total number of those arrested, approximately 2,900,000 people were convicted by the OGPU Collegium, the NKVD troika and a Special Meeting, and 877,000 people were convicted by courts, military tribunals, the Special Collegium and the Military Collegium.

...Prosecutor General R. Rudenko. Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov. Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin".

This document shows that from 1921 to the beginning of 1954, 642,980 people were sentenced to death on political charges, 2,369,220 to imprisonment, 765,180 to exile.

However, there are also more detailed data on the number of people sentenced to the highest degree for counter-revolutionary and other particularly dangerous state crimes. In total, in 1918-1953, 4,308,487 people were brought to criminal responsibility in cases of state security bodies, of which 835,194 were sentenced to capital punishment.

So, the "repressed" turned out to be somewhat more than indicated in the report of February 1, 1954. However, the difference is not too great – the numbers are of the same order. Among those who received sentences on political articles, a fair number of criminals got mixed up.

As I. Pykhalov notes in his work, "Archival documents speak": On one of the certificates stored in the archive, on the basis of which the above table is compiled, there is a pencil litter: "Total convicts for 1921-1938 – 2,944,879 people, of which 30 percent (1,062 thousand) are criminals." As for the Akmola region, many people also suffered from the repression. Prodrazverstka, introduced on January 11, 1919. Among the population of both Kokshetau and Akmola regions, the discontent of peasants was growing, as well as throughout the country. In a telegram dated January 11, 1921 to the gubrevkom, the chairman of the Kokshetau District committee Vasekho reported:

"I confirm once again that all the planned pressures through the sessions of the revolutionary tribunals and foreign troops and confiscations, arrests and everything else does not give what is needed. A strong anger of the masses was noted. There is a loss of authority of the authorities. It is necessary to weaken pressure measures and not bring the population to white heat and outbreaks, otherwise we will lose more than we will gain." (GAAO. F.76.OP.1.D.35.L.126).

Adopted already in 1928, the decree of the CEC and the SNK of Kazakhstan "On the confiscation and eviction of the largest farms and semi-feudal estates" in the future led to a terrifying undermining of the economy of the republic. This date is another tragic page in the sorrowful history of the Kazakh people. By this year, there were no more than 6.9 percent of the total number of cattle-breeding production units. The number of livestock in each of these farms reached 20 or more heads. It was decided to evict the most "large cattle breeders from the indigenous population, who, preserving semi-feudal, patriarchal and tribal relations, with their property and social influence prevents the Sovietization of the village."

Definitely all this was accompanied everywhere with blatant violations of the laws. Repression began, all real estate and movable property were alienated, even food for children was not left. Forcibly taking all the property, the government evicted the owners of livestock from their traditional habitats. Pastoralists and their families have forever lost the right to return to their homeland and engage in habitual farming. The repressed were taken to cities and employed in places where the most basic conditions for a normal life were absent. People were subjected to the grossest humiliations. "About 700 farms were expropriated, from which 144745 heads of cattle were confiscated (translated into large). About 113 thousand heads were immediately redistributed between collective farmers (29 thousand or 26 percent), and poor farm laborers (85 thousand heads or 74 percent)." (Zh.B. Abylgozhin, Doctor of Historical Sciences).

The Petropavlovsk newspaper "Stepnaya Zvezda" published a resolution of the district executive committee on the eviction "from the boundaries of the Petropavlovsk district with the confiscation of the property of 34 families of large cattle breeders."

"During the grain procurements, over 30 thousand peasants were subjected to various repressions, only during 1928-1929 227 peasants were shot." (Horizon No. 9 of March 3, 1993).

The most enlightened, economically-savvy part of the nomads was subjected to repression.

The documents of the Central archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan state that in general, the "Small October" caused enormous damage in the republic, "as a result, about 500 farms of different levels migrated outside Kazakhstan in 1928. 31 thousand peasants were subjected to repression, 277 peasants were shot. In 1929, 56,498 peasants were already brought to justice in the republic, more than 34,000 of them were convicted.

The ideological basis of Stalin's repressions (the destruction of "class enemies", the fight against nationalism and "great-power chauvinism", etc.). In his speech, I. V. On July 9, 1928, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), Stalin "On industrialization and the grain program" spoke about dekulakization, that during the forced collectivization of agriculture carried out in the USSR in 1928-1932, one of the directions of state policy was the suppression of anti-Soviet peasant protests and the associated "elimination of the kulaks as a class"- "dispossession", which involved the forcible and arbitrary deprivation of well-to-do peasants using wage labor of all means of production, land and civil rights, and eviction to remote areas of the country. Thus, the state destroyed the main social group of the rural population, capable of organizing and financially supporting resistance to the events being held.

Almost any peasant could get into the lists of kulaks compiled locally. The ideological feature of this period was the widespread use of the term "podkulachnik", which made it possible to repress any peasant population in general, up to farmhands. The peasants' protests against collectivization, against high taxes and the forced withdrawal of "surplus" grain were expressed in its concealment, arson and even murder of rural party and Soviet activists, which was regarded by the state as a manifestation of the "Kulak counter-revolution".

According to the order of the OGPU of the USSR No. 44/21, "in order to carry out the liquidation of the kulaks as a class in the most organized manner and resolutely suppress any attempts by the Kulaks to counter the measures of the Soviet government. The socialist reconstruction of agriculture, first of all, in areas of continuous collectivization - in the very near future, the kulak, especially its rich and active counter-revolutionary part, must be dealt a crushing blow." According to this order, priority was provided for the eviction of Kulaks and their families. So, it was planned to deport 10-15 thousand families in Kazakhstan.

And there was also a food tax, in connection with which county food committees were created everywhere. And the so-called theory of a giant leap from patriarchalismism to socialism has brought even more incalculable suffering to the peoples. The so-called dekulakization, as mentioned above, turned out to have serious consequences. The plan was carried out so diligently that it practically exceeded the subjectively established contingent by two or even three times.

For example, according to archival materials, "in 1930, 307 peasants were convicted in the districts of the Kokshetau district at that time for discrediting the collective farm system, "sabotage" committed on the instructions of foreign intelligence services." Already in 1932, 700 peasants were repressed and evicted from our county. The following year, 690 people were repressed, 144 of them were sentenced to 10 years. According to the data of the then KNB for the Kokshetau region, at that time 1101 people were sentenced in this region, 665 of them were sentenced to capital punishment, the rest to different terms of imprisonment. People of different nationalities were repressed: Kazakhs - 211 people, Russians - 246, Poles - 230, Germans - 149, Ukrainians - 199, Koreans - 78, etc. The peasants were 494 people, the workers - 352 people, the intelligentsia - 134 people. In total, 4,978 people were convicted in the then Kokshetau region, 4301 of them were subsequently rehabilitated.

Only from 1929 to 1933, the Troika of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the United State Political Administration (hereinafter OGPu) in Kazakhstan reviewed 9805 cases and made decisions regarding 22933 persons, of which 3386 people were sentenced to death, 13151 people were imprisoned in concentration camps for a period of 3 to 10 years. Over 21 thousand people were arrested in 1933. The protocols of the troika were considered at a closed meeting of the Kazkraikom of the party and signed by one of the secretaries: F. Goloshchekin, I. Kuramysov, and since March 9, 1930 – by the chairman of the Kazkraikom of the CPSU (b) G. Roshal. Stalin's model of collectivization provoked fierce resistance from the peasants. From 1929 to 1931, a wave of 372 armed revolts took place in Kazakhstan, which was suppressed in the most brutal way. The Soviet government repeated the experience of tsarism, which sent a punitive expedition to the steppe to suppress the national liberation movement of 1916. No one negotiated with the rebels. After the suppression of the uprising against forced collectivization, they were considered by extra–judicial bodies - "troika".

An example of a law that is commonly referred to as repressive is also the well-known law "on three spikelets". Formally, the law of August 7, 1932 does not fall into the period of Stalin's repressions of 1934-1953, however, due to the multiple expansion of the very concept of repression during perestroika, the "three spikelets" firmly entered the public consciousness along with Article 58 of the Criminal Code and 1937. "It is becoming a standard measure of punishment for rural residents. Violations that could have resulted in a fine two or three years ago are now punishable by firing squad or 10 years in prison."

In the Akmola region, in farms of 25-30 sheep, for example, it was considered almost "super-wealth, from which it will not decrease." In such farms, animals were confiscated. Following all this, famine broke out. Its victims were "in 1932-1933, 1 million 750 thousand people, or 42 percent of the total Kazakh population in the republic. In Kazakhstan, there has been a sharp decline in the number of the Kazakh population, as well as other ethnic groups: Ukrainians from 859.4 thousand to 658; Uzbeks – from 228.2 thousand to 1036, etc." (Migration statistics. M. 1973. p.222).

People were forced to leave their habitable places and move to areas more prosperous in terms of food, such as Siberia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Karakalpakstan, Iran and Afghanistan, China, Turkey and others. Repressed as traitors to the Motherland is a separate line. It was difficult for the relatives of the repressed to get a job, to enroll in studies. Wherever they went, the words could be heard quietly behind their backs: "His father betrayed the Motherland." All these years, the children and grandchildren of the illegally repressed have been seeking justice. And only in our time, in recent years, many have learned about the bitter fate of their grandfathers and fathers.

Mansur Gataulin, the former first secretary of the Akmola Regional Committee of the Communist Party, also became a victim of the Stalinist regime. His only daughter Aya Mansurovna remembered for the rest of her life a two-story house with a high porch, from where her father was taken away forever.

"... I was a little old, but I still remember the horror that enveloped our family when strangers came for dad," she recalls. - He was arrested in the 37th and almost immediately shot without trial and investigation. He was only 34 years old." His wife Sahipzhamal Mukhamedzhanovna found out that Mansur Gataulin was dead only in 1957 during the "Khrushchev thaw". She was summoned to the authorities and issued a certificate stating that the case against her husband was reviewed, and the resolution of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR of 1937 was canceled for lack of corpus delicti. Despite the 20 years that have passed since her husband's arrest, this news turned out to be fatal for Sahipzhamal Mukhamedzhanovna – she was paralyzed. After all, she hoped to the last that her husband was alive and was waiting for him from prison. S. Seifullin was arrested in 1938 as a "bourgeois nationalist" and shot on February 28 in the dungeons of the Alma-Ata NKVD. Posthumously rehabilitated.

The names of the brave sons of Akmola region who suffered during Stalin's repressions have remained in history: Sabyr Sharipov, Abilkhair Dosov, Arap and Zarap Temirbekov, Asylbek Mustafin, Rabbani Mukhamedyarov and many others.

There were two camps for prisoners in Kazakhstan – KarLAG in Karaganda and ALGIERS in Akmola region. Akmola camp of wives of traitors to the Motherland (A.L.Zh.I.R. - the popular name of the 17th women's camp special branch of the Karaganda ITL, which existed in 1938-1953) is the largest Soviet women's camp, one of the three islands of the "Gulag Archipelago". There was also a second popular name for the camp department - "26 point". The camp was located in the 26th settlement of labor settlements (now the village of Malinovka, Akmola region).

In 1938, there were about 8,000 female prisoners in the camp, including 4,500 CHSIR. About 1,500 more CSIRS were in other branches. Prisoners were used as free labor. It is generally believed that there was no direct intention to destroy people. Germans, Koreans, and Chechens were forcibly resettled in our republic during the years of Stalin's repressions. They settled in the barracks of the state farm, in attics and in other shacks. For many of them, these places then became native.

In the then Kokshetau region, 276 families were resettled from the Far East in the pre-war period, in 1937. On April 28, 1936, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the eviction of the Ukrainian SSR and the economic structure of 15,000 Polish and German farms in the Karaganda region (then the districts of the non-existent Kokshetau region were part of the Karaganda region). On August 28, 1941, the order of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region" was issued. The Germans were settled in 292 settlements of the Kokshetau region, especially in Keller, Ruzaevsky, Krasnoarmeysky and other districts. Kalmyks, Karachays, Balkars, Ingush, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, etc. also shared the same fate during the war. In March 1944, 6,969 families were settled in the Kokshetau region, this is 30,460 people of special settlers from the North Caucasus.

In the documents of the regional state archive, namely, in the report of the Kokshetau resettlement department on the household management of the arrivals, the following data are indicated: 5,445 people were registered from the North Caucasus in the Shchuchinsky district in April 1947, 640 were settled in collective farms, 18 in state farms, 728 in industrial enterprises, 1046 school-age children, of whom were enrolled in studies - 364. (F.22 op.1 d 23).

And in 1944, in the same area, the special settlers were 6044 people, of which Ingush - 3436 people. Chechens - 1104 people. Balkars - 1454 people. All were settled in 38 collective farms and enterprises of the district. (F.3260 op.1 d.12).

The areas of concentration of Chechens in Kazakhstan were Akmola, Kokshetau, Pavlodar, North Kazakhstan, Karaganda, Semipalatinsk, East Kazakhstan and Alma-Ata regions, and in Kyrgyzstan - Frunze and Osh. The Kazakh people, who themselves survived the famine in their history, sacrificing the latter, rendered invaluable assistance to these peoples at the most critical moment of their lives. The deported peoples found in Kazakhstan not only a place where they could survive a difficult time, but also found a second Homeland for themselves and their descendants. They not only survived, preserved as ethnic groups, but also took a worthy place in the community of multinational Kazakhstan.

In Kazakhstan, the number of victims of political repression during the years of Soviet power, according to scientists, amounted to 3.5 million people. The work on the study of archival materials continues.

Many books have been written about the mass repressions of those years, the memoirs of people who went through the hell of the camps have been published. But until now, researchers are calling more and more new names... So this page of history is not closed yet.

(Prepared from archival materials)