Siblag of the NKVD: The Last Letters of Pastor Wagner. A Personal Experience of Searching for the Repressed

In the author’s audiobook, the writer doesn’t just describe the fate of a repressed family.

He shares his experience of searching.

The materials for this audiobook about the fate of his great-grandfather, Alexander Makeev—the head of the Documentation Center of the Museum of the History of the GULAG—were gathered over three years.

During that time, an enormous number of requests were made to various archives in Russia and the former Soviet republics; investigative, administrative, and personal files were obtained. A large number of photographs and letters—seemingly lost forever—were found.

Alexander managed to find 38 letters from his great-grandfather from the Siblags camp. These were the last letters of the pastor, in which he tried to support his loved ones during forced separation. His wife and children never got to know what happened and why letters from the Siblags stopped arriving. During the search, the great-grandson discovered the real cause of such silence: Voldemar Wagner was executed on September 24, 1937.

Alexander Makeev also managed to identify the people who were directly involved in the execution of his great-grandfather—all members of the firing squad. Thanks to this research, the author changed his line of work, began working at the Documentation Center of the Museum of the History of the GULAG, and helped those who are looking for information about the repressed.