Why did the widow of the writer Alexander Green end up in Stalin's camps: an accomplice of the Nazis or a victim of repression?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The fate of the widow of the famous writer, author of "Scarlet Sails" and "Running on the Waves" by Alexander Green, was dramatic. Nina Green during the fascist occupation of Crimea, she worked in a local newspaper, which published anti-Soviet articles, and in 1944 she left for forced labor in Germany. Upon her return, she was sent to the Stalinist camp on charges of aiding the Nazis and spent 10 years in prison. Until now, historians are debating how fair this accusation was.

The lack of reliable information hinders the understanding of this story: information about the life of Nina Nikolaevna Green cannot be called complete, there are still many blank spots. It is known that after the death of her husband in 1932, Nina, together with her sick mother, remained to live in the village of Stary Krym. Here they were found by the occupation. At first, women sold things, and then Nina was forced to get a job to save herself from hunger.

She managed to get a job first as a proofreader in a printing house, and then as an editor of the "Official Bulletin of the Staro-Krymsky District", where anti-Soviet articles were published. Later, during interrogations, Nina Green pleaded guilty and explained her actions as follows: “The position of the head of the printing house was offered to me in the city government, and I agreed to this, since at that time I had a difficult financial situation. I could not leave the Crimea, that is, evacuate, since I had an old sick mother and had attacks of angina pectoris. I left for Germany in January 1944, fearing responsibility for the fact that I worked as an editor. In Germany, I worked first as a worker and then as a camp nurse. I admit my guilt in everything."

In January 1944, the writer's widow voluntarily left Crimea for Odessa, as she was frightened by rumors that the Bolsheviks shot everyone who worked in the occupied territories. And already from Odessa she was taken to forced labor in Germany, where she performed the duties of a nurse in a camp near Breslau. In 1945, she managed to escape from there, but at home this aroused suspicion, and she was accused of aiding the Nazis and editing a German regional newspaper.

The worst thing was that Nina Green had to leave her mother in Crimea, according to the testimony of the attending physician V. Fanderflyas: “As for the mother of Nina Nikolaevna - Olga Alekseevna Mironova, before the occupation and during the occupation she suffered from mental disorders that manifested themselves in some strange in behavior … When her daughter, Grin Nina Nikolaevna, at the beginning of 1944 left her, and she went to Germany, her mother went crazy. And on April 1, 1944, Olga Mironova died. But according to other sources, Nina Green left the Old Crimea after the death of her mother.

The fact is that Nina Green did not exaggerate the hopelessness of her situation - she found herself in the same difficult situation as thousands of other people who found themselves in the occupied territories, in captivity or in forced labor in Germany. However, it is impossible to call her a traitor to her homeland, if only because back in 1943 she saved the lives of 13 prisoners who were doomed to be shot. The woman asked the mayor to vouch for them. He agreed to vouch for ten, and three from the list were marked as suspects of links with the partisans. The writer's widow changed the list, including all 13 names, and took it to the head of the prison in Sevastopol. Instead of being shot, those arrested were sent to labor camps. For some reason, this fact was not taken into account in the Nina Green case.

The woman spent 10 years in the Pechora and Astrakhan camps. After Stalin's death, many were amnestied, including her. When she returned to Staryi Crimea, it turned out that their house had passed to the chairman of the local executive committee. It took her great efforts to return the house in order to open the Alexander Green Museum there. There she completed a book of memoirs about her husband, which she began to write back in exile.

Nina Green died in 1970 without waiting for her rehabilitation. The authorities of the Old Crimea did not allow the burial of the "Nazi henchman" next to Alexander Green and set aside a place at the edge of the cemetery. According to legend, after a year and a half, the writer's fans made an unauthorized reburial and transferred her coffin to her husband's grave. Only in 1997 was Nina Green posthumously rehabilitated and it was proved that she had never supported the Nazis.

In those terrible times, many cultural figures were subjected to severe trials: famous artists who became victims of Stalinist repressions