Iaroslav Pogarskij: deported with his father for reasons unknown

Iaroslav Pogarskij, born in 1940 in Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi, western Ukraine, was deported to Omsk with his father in 1947. He returned to Kiev in 1967 and moved to Pereiaslav in 1969, where he has remained ever since. He was interviewed there in 2009 by Alain Blum. 

CERCEC

In April there's still a lot of snow on the steppe. The image of silver birches in particular stays with me... I didn’t know that trees with white bark existed.

Iaroslav Petrovič Pogarskij was born in 1940 in western Ukraine. His family saw power change hands first to the Soviets, then to the Nazis, then back to the Soviets. Initially, the political upheaval did not bring any personal sequences for the family; but that changed in October 1947, when the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, came for them.

The family was deported to Omsk, in Siberia. Iaroslav’s father was probably accused of having supported the nationalist Ukrainians, the banderovci or Bandera partisans, but he would never find out the official reason.

Life was very difficult for Iaroslav in Omsk. After two years he was sent to another village, where he started school. He was a good pupil, and eventually obtained a degree from Omsk Technical University – but his status as the son of a deportee meant Iaroslav would always remain an outcast.

By the time his father returned to Ukraine in 1957, Iaroslav had settled in Omsk and decided to stay. But under pressure from his relatives, he went back to Ukraine in 1967. It was difficult for a west Ukrainian to come to the eastern part of the country that had been Sovietised, and where the nationalist Bandera partisans were seen as a foreign movement. Iaroslav had to undergo frequent police checks and was greeted with hostility by locals. He spent a year on the streets of Kiev.

Eventually Iaroslav found a job in a sovkhoz, a state-owned farm, in Pereiaslav. He stayed in the town even after his retirement and still lives there today.