Igor Babailov on the Soviet Terror
My grandmother told me … 1937 by Igor Babailov
Closeup of “My grandmother told me … 1937” by Igor Babailov
Igor Babailov is one of the most celebrated artists alive today. Commissioned to paint official portraits of the last three popes, he is a champion of realism in art and a good friend of StAR editor, Joseph Pearce. In a recent interview, Mr. Pearce asked him about his wonderful painting, “My grandmother told me … 1937”.
Joseph Pearce:
I was deeply moved by the large canvas depicting the moment when your grandfather was arrested and subsequently tortured and executed by the NKVD. Could you please explain what this work depicts, what it means to you, and about your research into the KGB files?
Igor Babailov:
There was a tragic period in Russian history in the mid-twentieth century, known as Stalin’s political repressions, when an estimated 25 Million Soviet citizens were killed without cause, under suspicion of espionage, treason, etc. They were labeled “the enemies of the people” and sentenced to death. Those were terrible times, when one could go to jail simply for telling a joke about Stalin, or expressing a political view somewhat different from the government’s. Although Soviet propaganda portrayed life in the Soviet Union as always prosperous and happy, people lived in fear and everyone kept in mind at all times the unspoken expression that “even walls have ears”.
The large painting “My grandmother told me…1937” was my graduation work from the Surikov Academy that I defended my Master of Fine Arts degree with. It shows the typical aftermath scene of the arrest, when the person would be taken by the NKVD (later called the KGB) in the middle of the night. He/she would never return home, because they would be sent to die in a concentration camp or murdered in prison. That is what also happened to my grandfather. He lived in Moscow and worked in the Ministry of the Soviet Railroads. Upon his arrest in 1937, no one saw him again or knew what exactly had happened to him or his whereabouts. In 2007, I was searching on the internet with the Russian search engine ‘Yandex’ and his name came up from the KGB archives, which were recently made public. There was his personal information, the date of his arrest - 08/08/1937, the date of his being charged with “counter-revolutionary activity” – 10/23/1937, and the date of his execution by shooting – 10/25/37. The secret police of the NKVD were known for their notorious methods of interrogation and tortures, and looking at the time between his arrest and execution, it tells me that he was tortured for two and a half months, before they killed him. As it said in the archive, his place of burial was ‘Butovo’. Having lived in Moscow for many years, I have never heard of such a cemetery, and referred again to the internet for help. I found that Butovo was a field South of Moscow, which was announced to the public by the NKVD, as a restricted area for shooting exercises. At night time, the NKVD would bring people by hundreds (usually in the cube vans marked as “Meat” or “Bread”), let them run into the field and shoot them in the back with machine guns. Today, this mass grave is sometimes called ‘Russia’s Golgotha’.
