On May 30, the City Historical and Local Lore Museum hosted the dialogue platform “The Tumbled World: Archive Documents Speak”, dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions. Students of KSIU took an active part in the event.

The participants of the dialogue platform demonstrated unique documents with the names of all people of Temirtau  who were subjected to repression and many years later rehabilitated. Previously, no one kept such statistics, so the museum staff had to collect information by bit through the National Security Committee. In a unique list of 189 family names – 42 people were sentenced to be shot (their names were crossed out in red), the rest stayed in Stalin’s camps from 15 to 25 years.

For a small village of Samarkand, from which the city of Temirtau started, the figure 189 is huge. The names of the repressed were consigned to oblivion. So far information about these people is only contained in short dry archival records. The lists have never been published anywhere, so the museum staff suggested that students of the KSIU organize a search circle, with which it would be possible to find at least some information about these people and their loved ones.

A number of issues were voiced within the framework of the dialogue platform, among them:

– Does it make sense after decades of repression to raise and publish archival documents relating to the era of totalitarianism?

– Is it possible to justify repressive measures? the forces of prisoners built many industrial facilities – so maybe the end justifies the means?

– What is the reason for the mass retaliation and the use of capital punishment?

– How are the Stalinist repressions and the ethnic composition of the population in Kazakhstan connected?

– for what kind of actions for you in the years 1937-38 you could have been convicted?

– would you tell us about Stalin’s repressions to your relatives? Is there any repressed in your family?

The students of KSIU took an active part in the discussion and noted the importance of this topic. Representatives of different nationalities Zemfira Atakulova, Saveliy Elefteriadi and Leonid Kim told about the history of their ancestors repressed and relocated to Kazakhstan.

Press-service of KSIU