2020-2023
Installation
Installation
Sorting
Railroad maps, acrylic paint (36x54 cm, 8 sheets), artist's book
This project began when the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art asked me to curate an exhibition at the railway station in Perm.
The administration of the railway station asked to make an exhibition of the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The exhibition was to illustrate the achievements of the railroad during the Great Patriotic War,
When I began to think about the idea of the exhibition, I decided to find other different aspects of the railroad's activities.
Having started searching, I found a collection of documents edited by the Russian historian and culturologist Oleg Leibovich. The collection contains about 200 declassified filtration cases of former prisoners of war who returned from German captivity to Perm region (Molotov region during the war).
The filtration process involved checking prisoners of war for connections with the enemy after their liberation from captivity.
Because about 2 million people were returning home after the end of the war, filtration checks were also delegated to the NKVD departments on the railroads.
In my work, I used questions that were asked of former prisoners of war. Having sorted them in order of increasing line length, I placed them on schemes of USSR railroad tracks.
The interrogation followed a strict methodology:
- including a life history with civilian and military parts
- details of captivity
- conditions of detention
Questions checked
- background
- education
- contacts with German services
- work in captivity
Any mention of interaction with the enemy raises suspicions of possible recruitment.
Most of the former POWs who passed the filtering process returned to their places of residence and were under constant scrutiny by the omnipresent government authorities. It was only in 1956 that those of them who were still convicted of surrendering to the enemy were amnestied. Full rehabilitation came almost four decades later.
After presenting our works to the administration of the railway station, my work failed to pass the censorship of the main railroad administration in Moscow, while the railway administration in Perm and Yekaterinburg approved it.
The administration of the railway station asked to make an exhibition of the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The exhibition was to illustrate the achievements of the railroad during the Great Patriotic War,
When I began to think about the idea of the exhibition, I decided to find other different aspects of the railroad's activities.
Having started searching, I found a collection of documents edited by the Russian historian and culturologist Oleg Leibovich. The collection contains about 200 declassified filtration cases of former prisoners of war who returned from German captivity to Perm region (Molotov region during the war).
The filtration process involved checking prisoners of war for connections with the enemy after their liberation from captivity.
Because about 2 million people were returning home after the end of the war, filtration checks were also delegated to the NKVD departments on the railroads.
In my work, I used questions that were asked of former prisoners of war. Having sorted them in order of increasing line length, I placed them on schemes of USSR railroad tracks.
The interrogation followed a strict methodology:
- including a life history with civilian and military parts
- details of captivity
- conditions of detention
Questions checked
- background
- education
- contacts with German services
- work in captivity
Any mention of interaction with the enemy raises suspicions of possible recruitment.
Most of the former POWs who passed the filtering process returned to their places of residence and were under constant scrutiny by the omnipresent government authorities. It was only in 1956 that those of them who were still convicted of surrendering to the enemy were amnestied. Full rehabilitation came almost four decades later.
After presenting our works to the administration of the railway station, my work failed to pass the censorship of the main railroad administration in Moscow, while the railway administration in Perm and Yekaterinburg approved it.
