The Taimyr Museum of Local Lore is famous for its collections. This time we would like to tell personal fund of Alexander Snovsky – a physician, teacher, and a former prisoner of Norillag. The keepers helped their contributor to publish several books. Unfortunately, Alexander Snovsky passed away in May 2020.
According to the exhibitor Elena Shakun, the museum specialists met the man of amazing strength and stamina in 2007: “First, we sent letters to each other, then the museum director Olga Korneeva got acquainted with Alexander in person”.
A year later, Snovsky’s first book, Survive and Remember, was published with the support of the Taimyr Museum. “It is impossible to forget: The country of “Limonia” is a country of camps”, “Executioners and victims ” , “Ashes of Klaas” , “Six years forced travel” and others were released next.
A twenty-year-old student at the Leningrad Veterinary Institute was arrested and convicted in 1949.
“And then there was Liteiny, the internal prison of the Ministry of State Security, interrogations, three months in solitary confinement and a sentence: ten years of forced labor camps for anti-Soviet agitation and another five years of losing rights,” says Elena Shakun. – As it turned out later, the club of official dog breeding, in which Alexander went to train his dog, played a fatal role. Some informant from the club grassed on him and the life of a prosperous Leningrad student turned into a daily struggle for survival”.
Snovsky was serving his sentence in Igarka, Ermakovo, Dudinka, Norilsk. In the camps he worked as a nurse, paramedic, loader, contractor, log carrier in a logging, milling machine operator, driller in a mine. He was released from the camp in 1955. As he lost his rights, he first settled in the Leningrad Region, in Luga. He worked as a veterinarian at a state farm. Having returned to Leningrad, he earned for living as a driver. After rehabilitation, in the late 1960s, he graduated from the institute, became a candidate of pedagogical sciences and gave 45 years to children.
Text: Valentina Vachaeva, Photo: Taimyr Museum of Local Lore
