CHAPTER 12
Над Бабьим Яром памятников нет.
Крутой обрыв, как грубое надгробье.
Мне страшно.1
Not only monuments but also dead bodies decay as they increase in entropy with time. This high-entropy state is also reflected in the wide distribution of the fallen on and around Malaia zemlia. The ongoing task of collecting together their scattered remains in order to pay due respect according to traditional values hence involves an organisational decrease in entropy. Although 37 communal graves have been established in Novorossiisk since 1943, the town still appears anxious to provide a fitting place of rest for all the fallen.2 In 2010 all the war dead from the town cemetery on Myskhakskoe Shosse were transferred to a new burial place across the road with a view over Malaia zemlia.3 New marble plaques list the names of over 2,500 war dead of several nationalities, including Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians and the grandfather of the former president of Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, gathered together in this probably now final resting place.
Not all lie in such salubrious circumstances, however. Sonia has spent her retirement years collecting money to ensure the decent burial of the fallen. This altruistic ‘Mother Teresa’ of Novorossiisk, according to her friends, raised the money for the construction of new crosses on the site of a dozen vandalised graves in Myskhako, testimony that not all show the same respect for memory of the dead. Following her intervention, cadets from the Maritime Academy in Novorossiisk have taken on responsibility for the upkeep of the graves. Similarly, Aleksandr Kamper discovered two metal plaques in a Myskhako school yard, discarded from a nearby monument. Having found temporary wooden boards in their place, with the names of the deceased written in marker pen, he successfully campaigned for the restoration of the original plaques.4 The battle against entropy is apparently not yet over in the outlying areas.
Any high entropy, disorganised pattern of death is disturbing in the Russian tradition, where it is culturally important to bury a soldier near to home in order to complete the grieving process and enable remembrance to be conducted with both humanity and respect.5 Relatives still come to Novorossiisk in search of information about their ancestors. I met Kirill, who had travelled to Myskhako from the Urals in 2010 in search of the final resting place of his father. The Ministry of Defence only started to set up a data-base of war graves after the fall of communism and there is no centralised agency in Russia to compare with the war graves commissions in other countries. However, thanks to the meticulous records of the Myskhako Veterans’ Council, Kirill was shown the communal grave where his father lay and was able for the first time to mourn his death as a result of his pilgrimage. Five years later I encountered another tearful relative in search of a parent – this time an old Georgian woman, who had come to Myskhako with her daughter in search of her father’s grave and who had found similar support from the Veterans’ Council there.
According to local historian Tamara Iurina, it is impossible to quantify the number of dead in the campaign, with estimates ranging up to 30,000. What is undeniable, however, is that bodies continue to be exhumed, in a process lauded by the press, which sees the execution of search work a patriotic duty:6
On the slopes of Mount Koldun and Sakharnaia golova outside Novorossiisk, and the Anonymous Heights around Iuzhnaia Ozereika, our soldiers’ bones lie bleaching . . . It is said that the war will not be considered finally over until the last fallen soldier is buried.7
Recently, over 40 bodies were found on the shore in a hitherto unknown communal grave dating from the first days of the Malaia zemlia campaign.8 Sometimes bodies are found during excavations prior to building or reconstruction work; for example five skeletons were exhumed in 2009 under the auspices of the Novorossiiskii tsentr poiskovykh rabot (Novorossiisk Centre for Search Work) during the laying of foundations for a new school sports hall. Most exhumations, however, follow the location of bodies on Mount Koldun, which is constantly, if not entirely systematically, being searched by small groups of amateurs licensed by the Ministry of Defence. This type of activity has been taking place since the 1960s.9 According to regional and state legislation, teams nowadays must be fully trained and accredited in the appropriate methodology;10 they are financed jointly by the state, the region and the local authorities, with some voluntary contributions. In the wake of various terrorist attacks in Russia, President Putin wishes to introduce military supervision for search work, to ensure that no live ordnance falls into the wrong hands.11 Official statistics show that 83 hand-grenades and 655 mortars were dug up in the area as recently as 2004.12 The head of the Novorossiisk Historical Association confirmed the occasional discovery of 500kg unexploded bombs in outlying suburbs and both Alisa, an accountant, and Elena, a teacher, had heard of children losing limbs to unexploded devices.
Vladimir, an amateur archaeologist for over thirty years, was decorated in 2010 with the Za razminirovanie medal, awarded to those whose search work has led to the destruction of more than 3,000 explosive devices by experts called in when potentially dangerous finds are made. Vladimir is leader of the local branch of the regional search organisation Nabat (a funeral bell), which has several teenage members. He spends his weekends on Koldun searching with a metal detector for the bodies of dead soldiers in order to have them re-interred in a respectful and organised way. According to Vladimir, his sons often accompany him into the forests of Koldun, which he sees as an opportunity to pass on memory, expertise and a love of local history. He regards this activity not only as aiding the propagation and organisation of memory, however. In common with the inventors of Beskozyrka, Vladimir finds the whole adventure ‘romantic’, thanks to the combination of fresh air and nature during a night in the open ‘by a campfire, under the starry sky’. It is this element of romanticism which has become synonymous with genuine and creative war memory from below in Novorossiisk, often to be found on the fringes of society and where young people are involved.
Recently exhumed Soviet bodies are re-interred every year in September, the anniversary of the liberation of Novorossiisk, in a tradition dating from 1998. Sixty-two were buried in the cemetery on Kabakhakha Hill overlooking Novorossiisk in 2012, with a further 25 in 2013, while 35 bodies discovered on Koldun were interred in 2010 in the communal grave in the centre of Myskhako.13 This gradual but substantial decrease in entropy brings together the scattered remains of decaying bodies, so that they may finally be identified, if possible. The details and personal possessions of newly discovered soldiers are passed to the town museum’s archivist, who works meticulously on the identification process, although by no means all are ever identified.14 The names are then entered into a memory capsule inside the red heart which beats at the apex of the triangular Malaia zemlia monument, the pinnacle of centralised memory in Novorossiisk, both spatially and organisationally. In 1982, when the monument was originally dedicated, 5,000 names of the fallen were listed in the capsule. Every year, on 8 May, new names are added in what is called Aktsiia pamiat’ (the Memory Movement). Reflecting the amount of search and identification work carried out recently on the site of Malaia zemlia and the slopes of Mount Koldun, a significant 991 new names were added in May 2012, with a further 23 on 16 September, the thirtieth anniversary of the erection of the monument, making a total of around 23,000 identified dead troops so far.15 However, as it is estimated that up to 30,000 were killed on Malaia zemlia, there remains some way to go until all are found and afforded the official and central respect the town deems due to them.
Following lobbying by groups of amateur searchers, the state has recently committed to recognising the fact that thousands of bodies across Russia still remain where they fell in the war. The remains of the first ‘unknown soldier’ were laid in the Aleksandrovskii Garden alongside the Kremlin wall on 3 December 1966, at the start of the Brezhnev-era war cult. In 2014 the same day was officially named the Day of the Unknown Soldier, one further memorial date in the increasing calendar of special days of the Putin-era war cult.16
The complementary work of the official agencies (the regional planning department in charge of the maintenance of monuments, the town council and the museum) and enthusiastic amateur search workers should ensure, in theory, that each individual soldier may eventually be recognised and afforded due remembrance. However, some of the bodies discovered on Koldun are inevitably those of the enemy. Experienced searchers recognise that German soldiers were usually buried more carefully than the Soviets, and often wore crucifixes. Search organisations try to involve families in the repatriation and burial of their dead: a coachload of German relatives visited Novorossiisk in the 1990s, and a video documentary was made more recently by a further German family travelling to Myskhako to reclaim their ancestor.17 If not repatriated, remains of Wehrmacht soldiers are passed on for re-interment to the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German war graves commission.18 Since 2008, soldiers from the Kuban’ front have been buried in a new German war cemetery outside Apsheronsk, the only one in the south of Russia,19 as there is no German cemetery in Novorossiisk, due apparently to continuing prejudice against the occupiers. Although the searchers themselves claim to care equally for bodies from both sides, they accept that it would be hard for most locals to treat German soldiers with the empathy shown to the Soviets. It seems that the myth of Malaia zemlia is not yet ready to accommodate a German war cemetery in the town: German trees may be welcome in Novorossiisk, but German bodies offer only awkward and unwanted memories of the ‘fascist occupiers’ still popularly depicted with hatred.
One focus of revulsion for the enemy occupiers is a 20-metre obelisk at Volch’i Vorota, an isolated spot ten kilometres to the north-west of Novorossiisk, which commemorates the many nameless civilians who were taken there by the Gestapo and shot during the occupation of Novorossiisk in an action superficially similar to Holocaust events in Ukraine. Indeed, the very name of the monument, ‘Nepokorennym’ (‘To The Unvanquished’), is reminiscent of the film Nepokorennye (The Unvanquished) about the execution of Kiev’s Jews at Babii Iar in 1941.20
This monument was erected on the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of Novorossiisk in September 1963, one of the first to appear outside the town centre. It was one of two large monuments inaugurated in the same week, the other being the large stele at Stanichka. Both marked for the first time places where hundreds met their death. In contrast to the highly visible monument on the shore, however, it may be concluded that the outlying memorial obelisk did not attract much public attention, as it is not mentioned in the leading article of Novorossiiskii rabochii’s anniversary edition, where other town-centre monuments do feature.21 The difference may be due purely to the location, but also possibly to the fact that the stele commemorates the deaths of service personnel, whereas the obelisk to The Unvanquished is a memorial to civilians. A short article a few days later refers to the thousand ‘Soviet patriots’ who were ‘victims of a mass execution [by firing squad]’.22 Similarly, the official entry in the Novorossiisk museum archives refers to a new monument ‘erected on the place where the German fascist occupiers carried out a mass execution of residents of the town of Novorossiisk’. According to the plaque on the monument, it commemorates the ‘residents of Novorossiisk and the landing troops of the Soviet Army who were tortured and shot on this spot in 1943 by the fascist occupiers’, with no mention of the Jewish population of the town being specifically targeted by the enemy. In both cases the wording about the victims is as generalised as on the Holocaust memorial at Babii Iar, which refers only to the death of ‘citizens of Kiev’, a euphemism used to signify the town’s Jewish population.23
I first heard of the monument’s existence after 12 years of annual visits to Novorossiisk. This long-term silence may reflect its geographical position well outside the town, but also the fact that it is not commonly visited, situated also on the periphery of the war myth. A certain reticence about both the presence of the monument itself and the nature of the dead remains, evidence of some discomfort and possibly even of ongoing anti-Semitism in the town. Only four out of 124 respondents voluntarily mentioned the existence of this monument. The Jewish woman who first alerted me to its presence maintained that all those executed were Jews, while an historian was adamant that the victims were simply representative of all those civilians who stayed in the town during the German occupation: mainly ethnic minorities, including Jews, Greeks, Czechs and Tatars. Eremenko and Podyma claim that at least one member of the underground resistance was executed there, but another historian agreed that most were Jews, although usually given the blanket term of ‘communists’ in a half-hearted official denial of a Holocaust event in Novorossiisk.24
Scholars agree that memory of the war with respect to Jews in the Soviet Union is a troubled area. The lack of certainty about the monument to The Unvanquished is a reflection of widespread silence about the Holocaust and the experience of Jewish citizens in the country for decades after the war alongside a lack of monuments at the site of mass graves. Even during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras public debate about Jewish citizens was often couched in generalisms, with the use of euphemisms and ‘coded’ references. Substantial official anti- Semitism and suppression of information about the Holocaust led to the virtual elimination of specific reference to Jewishness, and many films, plays and poems about the fate of Jews in the war were banned or heavily censored.25 Indeed, only two years after the erection of the Novorossiisk monument, Elie Wiesel observed amongst the Jewish community in the Soviet Union a constant fear of informers, finding Jewishness ‘somewhere between a dirty word and a state secret’.26 During the same period that saw the patriotic foundation of the Beskozyrka movement to commemorate the fallen landing troops of Malaia zemlia, a darker type of Russian nationalism was evident in the country,27 probably partly responsible for the suppression of full details of a Holocaust event outside Novorossiisk. The continuing lack of explicit reference to Jews cannot be explained merely by the relatively small numbers of murdered Jews in comparison with overall Soviet deaths in the war. While it is possible that the Soviet population genuinely considered ethnicity to be irrelevant within an ideology that embraced internationalism, information about the fate of the Jews in the war was suppressed to the extent that it is only in the last two decades that knowledge of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union has become widely disseminated.28 In Novorossiisk lessons on the mass execution of Soviet Jews are sometimes delivered in schools by the local Jewish community,29 but do not feature specifically in the mainstream school curriculum.
It is quite plausible that the monument to The Unvanquished outside Novorossiisk does in fact recall a Holocaust event: in the light of an estimated total of 27,000 Jewish citizens exterminated by the Nazis in the Krasnodar Region, it is highly likely that such a massacre happened in Novorossiisk.30 This particular event is not, however, included in The Black Book of mass executions of Jews in the Soviet Union, nor is there any reference to it in Soviet accounts, Iurina’s recent history of the battle for Novorossiisk or the new historical guide to the town.31 According to one informant, a war commission, reported in Novorossiiskii rabochii in January 1945, confirmed the deaths on this spot of 425 Red Army soldiers and some 60 civilian women and children in 1942 and 1943. However, the Novorossiisk library today refers to the deaths of 7,000 ‘peaceful citizens and prisoners of war’, while the research website of the ‘Babi Yars’ organisation has claimed that 1,000 of the prewar population of 1,595 Jews in the town were shot here.32 Although the latter two claims are not incompatible, the death of 1,000 Jews out of a total of 1,595 represents a substantial proportion (63 per cent) of the Jewish population of Novorossiisk, a statistically significant figure hidden in the library’s overall number of 7,000 citizens out of an overall prewar population of over 109,000 (which represents only 6 per cent of the total number).33
If the background of the victims remains uncertain, so too does the date of the mass execution. The Babi Yars organisation has stated that the Jewish population in Novorossiisk was massacred on either 22 September or 16 October 1942,34 shortly after the Germans took the town on 10 September 1942. Witness testimony, however, suggests that any remaining civilians in the town were either shot as partisans or fled the town during the period October 1942 to August 1943,35 which would accord with the date (1943) on the monument’s plaque. It is likely, therefore, that, although the monument is stated to commemorate the deaths of citizens plus some landing troops over a protracted period, it actually stands on the site of one mass execution of mainly Jewish civilians carried out in the early days of the occupation, while the mass grave was used for further non-Jewish victims during 1943.
According to one newspaper article, which as recently as 2005 makes no specific reference to Jews, the thousands who were summarily executed were mainly women and children, as most of the men had already left to join the army or had been dispatched to German forced labour camps.36 In this respect, the monument to The Unvanquished belies the popular myth of Malaia zemlia, while the narrative of the events it recalls is similarly marginalised. Most monuments in Novorossiisk support the popular war myth, which extols individual and collective military heroism and martyrdom, rather than recalling the ignominious defeat and subsequent mass death of civilians. This indicates a myth composed of a comfortable, straightforward narrative around a usable past, from which any potentially embarrassing facts have been omitted, just as incidences of industrial unrest or corruption are often side-lined in Britain’s war myth.37 Indeed, two of the few interviewees who suggested that Novorossiisk did not really deserve its hero city status, young Anton and elderly Dmitrii, gave the reason that no civilians were present or suffered during the fighting, as opposed to the first tranches of ‘genuine’ hero cities.
The Jewish community is unable to commemorate its dead either individually or communally in the central and concrete fashion enjoyed by other ethnic minorities. In contrast, the ethnic Greek residents of Novorossiisk openly remember their own hero, the wartime pilot Vladimir Kokkinaki, whose bust stands in the middle of the town.
According to respondents of Greek ethnicity, on Victory Day they gather around the monument to lay tributes of remembrance, singing and dancing in the shade of the trees, while a plaque on the wall of the side-chapel of the Uspenskii sobor, the main Russian Orthodox church, lists 200 names of those of Greek ethnicity who died in the war.
Remembrance and respect for the dead of the Jewish community, however, exists on the periphery of official memory, evidence of prejudice and discomfort still to be found in certain hidden and sensitive areas of Novorossiisk’s past, despite attempts by the Jewish community to incorporate itself into the mainstream war myth through an exhibition in the central Veterans’ Council and to present itself as part of the town’s rich ethnic heritage in the main children’s library.38 It is probable that the Jewish significance of the monument to The Unvanquished is implicitly acknowledged by many, including possible anti-Semites. It was desecrated in 2003, according to a Jewish information website, which openly accuses the town in general and Novorossiiskii rabochii in particular of racial intolerance, although other monuments with no minority ethnic connotations have been similarly vandalised.39 Unlike the mainstream Soviet troops buried in Novorossiisk, the names of the civilian dead are not remembered. Some key characters in the myth of Malaia zemlia are Jewish, however: Tsezar’ Kunikov, the commander of the landing troops, was of Jewish descent, while soldier and poet Pavel Kogan was certainly admired by the postwar younger generation, although his ethnicity was never overtly mentioned.
Whereas the press now reports some executions during the occupation,40 evident embarrassment about the monument’s significance was shown by the regional officer in charge of the planning and maintenance of monuments, who, when questioned, refused to discuss with me the event commemorated by the memorial. This type of reaction is confirmed by Stephen Lovell, who deems the topic of occupation awkward in view of ‘current political concerns’ which may imply allegations of collaboration with the enemy within occupied territory in the betrayal of Jewish civilians,41 certainly not a part of the original war myth, but an area coming under increasing popular and academic scrutiny, particularly in western areas of the former Soviet Union, notably Ukraine and the Baltic states.42
During the war, the state placed its emphasis on military heroes rather than moral cowards. Little was said about collaboration in the early postwar years, with the notable exception of the first public war crimes trial, held in Krasnodar in 1943, which resulted in the executions of some Soviet citizens involved in the massacre of Jewish civilians in the town.43 Collaboration during the occupation of Novorossiisk was acknowledged by local historian Anatolii, while young academic Sofiya confirmed that this is a research topic in local universities. My evidence suggests that collaboration with the enemy is suspected amongst some interviewees, if largely unspoken. Three respondents indicated that occupied cities in Ukraine became stigmatised due to an enemy presence which induced collaboration, while Novorossiisk was viewed as above ‘contamination’ thanks to the ‘sacred’ presence of the troops on Malaia zemlia, which placed the town above suspicion and on a par with Leningrad and Stalingrad. Only after several meetings did one female respondent trust me sufficiently to break an implicit taboo and voice the rumour that the Kuban’ Cossacks had assisted enemy forces to enter and occupy Novorossiisk in 1942, in view of the fact that the town was defeated apparently without much opposition. This rumour was backed up by three futher informants, both male and female. It is alleged that the Soviet plans were betrayed to the German Abwehr, which led to the failure of the Iuzhnaia Ozereika landings.44 The implication of Cossacks in the occupation is, however, at odds with the official current stance whereby Cossack forces are invited to take part in ceremonies of remembrance in an apparent political positioning of the identity of the town around its Cossack heritage as well as its maritime status, in what may represent a vying for position with Krasnodar, the regional capital and historically the base of the Kuban’ Cossacks.45 This conservative and potentially nationalistic re-alignment of the identity of the town has, however, provoked questions about the integrity of the inclusion of Cossacks in official ceremonies. Despite the strong development of the Cossack movement in southern Russia, they are not regarded as ‘natives’ of Novorossiisk, evidence of ongoing suspicion amongst some residents.46 Furthermore, the issue of alleged Cossack collaboration has recently resulted in the re-naming of a street in the Cossack area of Borisovka named after General Shkuro, hanged as a war criminal in 1947 for his role alongside the Wehrmacht in Berlin.47
On the whole, however, the memory message in Novorossiisk demonstrates considerable consensus, with a common attitude to history underlined by a common geographical identity with respect to the war.48 This remembrance exhibits the low societal entropy status typical of considerable organisation and centralisation, reflecting the energy expended to promote and maintain rituals and monuments by both state and society. Despite the overall control of the authorities, however, it is clear that there is still room on the fringe for the personalisation of memory, whether it concerns the family of a German soldier or the distant children of a Soviet battle victim. It is also the case that memory seems more personal in Myskhako, on the periphery of the control of the Novorossiisk authorities, but at the very centre of the worst of the battle. This close-knit community appears to care deeply and sincerely about the honour due to its war dead, seeing them as people rather than mere statistics. Away from the centre of Novorossiisk, the villagers retain a close connection with the earth, demonstrating a greater respect for old Russian burial traditions than huge Soviet monuments. Dissent, when it exists, serves only to promote the values of dignity and humanity in death and remembrance, which sometimes risk being forgotten in the official narrative. Official and unofficial interests often complement each other constructively, with a common mnemonic aim; on occasion, however, the tension between so-called ‘designer’ and ‘genuine’ memory is evident in the ongoing local debate over who is the true guardian of myth and memory.