BlogShebalino, 1921.
When Aleksey Popov looked out of the window of his study and saw the armed group of members from Shebalino’s Bolsheviks Committee coming toward his house, he did not hesitate for a second. He had expected their visit for some time now.
“Maria, it’s time”, he called the wife of his son, Peter, “Take your kids and provisions and go to the back gates. Tell children to be fast and quiet.”
“Is everything ready?” he turned to his trusted man who oversees one of his Red deer farms. “When this is all over, I’ll send you a message. If you don’t hear from me for more than a week – drive them to Biysk, to my cousin’s house.”
A small horse drawn wagon, already packed with clothes and blankets, was waiting for Maria and the children at the back gates of the large house of Aleksey Popov, one of the richest merchants of the region.
Maria helped her five kids into the wagon and soon they left Shebalino by a side road going to a small village lost in the Altay mountains, where a yurta – a native Altaian’s dwelling – had been prepared for them at Aleksey Popov’s request.
It was a long way, up and up to the Altay Mountains. At a different time Maria would have enjoyed the fabulous scenery of Altay that attracted many Russian artists, but now, being scared herself, she had to calm her kids, the smallest of whom, Zoya, was just two years old. She tried not to think about what might happen in Shebalino with her husband and father-in-law.
Maria was a good looking woman of about thirty years old, with a trim body, not at all damaged by giving birth to her five kids. She was born in the family of Georgy Scherbakov, elected Clerk and Registrar of Volost ‘s Administration, and Marta Shackleina, daughter of one of the Shebalino merchants – you might remember that from our another story – Road to Altay.
Growing up in a privileged family with a staff of servants, she was well educated, played the guitar, sang, read novels, and, what was expected from a young woman at that time, she sewed, crocheted and embroidered. She rather liked to embroider on canvas or in silk.
She was 15 when Peter Popov married her. Peter was the youngest son of Aleksey Popov – a merchant who made his fortune in trading fur, nuts, wool, and leather. But the most important part of Popov’s capital were his farms of Red Deer – marals, as they are called in Altay – which he ran together with his son, Peter.
Red Deer antler velvet was (and still is) extremely popular and very expensive in East Asian markets, now spreading to the Western world as well. Antler velvet is used as a base for many alternative medicine products that claimed to have a spectrum of healing and enforcement effects. It is possible that there is something real in the antler’s magical power – several sports associations forbid using certain products based on Red Deer antler velvet.
Anyway, marals are beautiful animals.
It was those farms that the members of Shebalino’s Committee were about. The head of the committee was one of Popov’s seasonal workers, who knew the value of the property very well.
Excurse to History. After the 1917 Revolution, the first and most urgent problem for Bolsheviks, besides the war, was food – grains, first of all. Farmers did not want to give up their stocks for free, and Bolsheviks named them KULAK – those who kept their grains in their clinched fists. Soviets declared them the enemy of the state and created armed forces to obtain the grain at any cost – killing the owners was the easiest way. After the Civil War, the definition of Kulak was expanded – now it was any person, who used hired workers and sold any products for profit. The condition was – give up your property, or else. Bolsheviks called that policy – razkulachivanie – un-clinching the fist – dispossession of the Kulaks.
As usual, that Bolshevik policy ended in hundreds of thousands dead or sent to labor camps, and – as a result – a significant decline in production volume existed for the next twenty years.
It was a terrible week for Maria in Altaian vilage, but she tried to keep her worries away from her kids’ minds. When Aleksey Popov sent a message that it was safe to come back, she did not know what to expect. When their wagon came to the gates, the house was dark and silent, and it was her father-in-law, not Peter, who was waiting for Maria. He looked ages older and she realized the truth even before he said it. “They killed my son, your husband, after I signed the paper to give up my farms”, he told her, “But they did not take the house”.
Bolsheviks left Aleksey Popov alive that night for a very simple, practical purpose – he was the only one around who knew how to operate red deer antlers. Aleksey Popov could not overcome the death of his son and did not live long after that. The farms that caused those tragedies did not prosper without him.
As for Maria… her life was changed. She continued her life in Shebalino and seven years later she would meet Alexander Yermolaev, Tanya’s grandfather. But that will be another story.
