"The village survives thanks to the mental hospital and the prison."
What happened to the former German colony of Grimm, where only two "city-forming enterprises" remain—a psychiatric hospital and a penal colony. One of them may be closed.
In 2022 in the Saratov region was closed IK-7, a special regime penal colony. Rumors are currently circulating about the closure of IK-23 in the village of Kamenskoye, also in the Krasnoarmeysky District. The penal colony has existed here since the Gulag era and is considered the main source of employment for the villagers. Its only competitor in the local labor market is the psychiatric hospital, which operates the region's only state-run rehabilitation unit for drug addicts. NeMoskva visited Kamenskoye and learned how the once prosperous German colony of Grimm—with its own weaving cooperative, wagon factory, and thousand-person church—has been transformed into a settlement that survives solely on the penal colony and psychiatric hospital. Or rather, it's barely surviving.
At the entrance to Kamenskoye, there are ruins of farms, the buildings reduced to reinforced concrete "ribs." A bearded man in a baseball cap and padded jacket emerges from the ruins and walks heavily toward us. He picks up a long stick from the weeds. Fortunately, the stick isn't intended for visitors—the man uses it to knock down a wire from a transformer. This is how he "turns off" the power to the pigsty.
The pigs live in one of the buildings, which appears slightly less dilapidated: the holes in the walls have been filled with bricks and boards, and the roof is still standing. Five pigs in total roam the yard, which is littered with some kind of reinforced concrete debris.
"You don't need to know my first and last name. My nickname is Pankrat," the bearded man says, placing his hands on his hips.
Pankrat and his pigs. Photo by NeMoskva
Pankrat recounts that Kamenskoye used to be home to the Suvorovsky state farm. It had a sheepfold (sheepshed) for 1500 sheep, a 1200-head shed, rabbits, pigs, and a poultry house—"25 chickens!" The farm, according to Pankrat, fell apart some twenty or thirty years ago. The property was transferred to new owners, who slaughtered the remaining livestock, dismantled the equipment for scrap metal, and used the buildings for building materials.
The surviving pigsty went to the farmer for whom Pankrat works as a herdsman. He lives right there, among the pigs.
After the collapse of the state farm, the penal colony and psychiatric hospital became the village's main employers. Rumors about the colony's closure have been circulating in Kamenskoye for a couple of years now. No one wants to believe the rumors.
“Without a prison, the entire village will disperse,” explains Pankrat.
Colony Grimm: "Dancing Brothers," Riots, and the End of History
Modern Kamenskoye is located on the site of the former Grimm colony. 23 immigrants from Europe settled down in the territory of modern Saratov and Volgograd regions in the 1760s - according to the manifesto of Catherine the Great, inviting foreigners to develop the empty Volga lands. We know their history largely thanks to the research of a Saratov historian. Arkady Herman, in particular, his book “German Autonomy on the Volga”.
Initially, there were 104 colonies; by the beginning of the 20th century, there were already 200. They were home to approximately 400,000 people. They lived "almost uninfluenced by the Russian way of life," preserving their religion and language. Most of the colonists did not speak Russian. Mixed marriages were virtually nonexistent. The colonies were also isolated from each other, as their founders came from various countries that existed on the site of modern-day Germany, as well as from Switzerland and Holland. After a century and a half of living in Russia, the descendants of the emigrants failed to overcome the differences in culture and language.
Grimm Colony they named it that way in honor of the first mayor, Heinrich Grimm, a surgeon from Holland. More than half of the local settlers were urban artisans. In their new homeland, they were all forced to take up farming, but over time, they organized cooperatives producing fabrics and smoking pipes. Since 1876, winnowing machines and horse-drawn carriages have been manufactured here. In 1900, an iron foundry was opened. Some industries offered independent employment opportunities for women and children as young as ten years old—for example, at the beginning of the 20th century, weaving girls at handicraft factories in Grimm earned up to 20-30 kopecks per day.
Political life in the German colonies was almost nonexistent, but religious life was vibrant. For example, Grimm became the center of a sect called the "Dancing Brothers." At their meetings, they sang the same spiritual songs as Lutherans, but to a dance tune, they enthusiastically shouted "Hallelujah!" and danced after the "descent of the Holy Spirit." Priests were not recognized. The pastor and representatives of the volost government regularly attended sect meetings and dispersed the dancers with sticks. The "brothers" were fined and punished with rods. But they were unable to control the believing dancers; the authorities (now Soviet) only dispersed them in the mid-1930s.
Due to anti-German sentiment during the First World War, the tsarist government was preparing the law The deportation of Volga Germans to Siberia was planned for the spring of 1917. Therefore, the colonists welcomed the revolution. But during the Civil War, the Grimm colony, like the entire southern part of today's Krasnoarmeysky District, suffered greatly—both from the White advance and the Red retreat. Semyon Budyonny's cavalry corps, retreating north, plundered the residents of all their supplies.
"The peasants' food is being pulled out of their ovens and taken away along with their pots, potatoes are being dug up from their gardens, orchards are being devastated, trees are being broken, fences are being torn down," complained the executive committee of the Volga German Labor Commune to the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Leon Trotsky.
Preserved German architecture in Kamenskoye. Photo by NeMoskva
In the winter of 1920-1921, a detachment of armed workers from Tula was sent to the German autonomous region to confiscate grain. The food detachment was so vigorous that a few months later, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) was forced to dispatch a special commission to investigate the Tula workers. The commission documented instances of flogging peasants, beatings of pregnant women, and staged executions: 90 villagers were blindfolded, lined up against a wall, and shot over their heads. "This measure produced a certain result," the food detachment commander explained to the commission.
In the spring of 1921, the colonists revolted. Almost all the villages Balzer County, including Grimm, fell into the hands of outraged peasants. Special Forces (CHON) units restored Soviet control only a month later. Twenty villages were fined five thousand poods (over 80 tons) of meat.
In the summer of 1921, due to looting during the Civil War, food requisitioning The Volga German Autonomous Region became the epicenter of the famine after the "meat" fine. Ninety-seven percent of families—almost all of them—were starving. "The population subsists on weeds, onions, garlic, carrion, rats, frogs, gophers, and hedgehogs," the Extraordinary Commission for the Survey of the Starving recorded. International charities came to their aid (the state's contribution was disproportionately smaller), but approximately 97 colonists—almost a quarter of the region's population—still died of starvation. According to the 1911 census, the village of Grimm had a population of almost 100, and by 1922, just over 12 remained.
The forced creation of collective farms in 1931 gave rise to new revolts, although not on such a large scale. Following these, by decision of the NKVD troika in republic Three thousand kulaks were executed, more than two and a half thousand people were sent to camps, and 24 were exiled to the north and Kazakhstan. Famine returned to the region, and the mortality rate in the Balzer Canton, where Grimm was located, increased by 200 percent. Cases of cannibalism were reported in villages. In total, 56 people died of starvation in the republic. The Soviet leadership denied the existence of a state of emergency: in a brochure published for distribution in the West, Soviet Germans spoke of their "prosperous and happy lives."
In 1935, the village church, which seated 1,200 people, was dismantled for building materials. The zinc keys from the two church organs (weighing ten kilograms each) were used to repair tractors at the local machine and tractor station.
During the first year of the Great Patriotic War, the republic saw a record harvest. Even schoolchildren as young as seventh grade were sent to help with the harvest. The start of the school year was postponed until September 15th. Many of these children never went to school again—in their new homes in Siberia, they had no time for studying. In August, 12 NKVD soldiers were brought into the republic. In September, the first trains carrying exiles departed. The deportation began.
This time, the Germans didn't rebel. As German notes, "they moved to their new places of residence without resistance." According to the NKVD, there wasn't a single family in the German ASSR that refused to resettle. In total, nearly 450 people were deported. Traffic jams formed on the region's railway lines.
"This is history, it's hard to avoid sharp corners."
Today, the local museum preserves the settlement's complex history. In 2012, it was given a corner of the village community center. The exhibition on the history of the Grimm colony occupies one room. A second room displays the history of the Great Patriotic War, and a third covers the Soviet period.
The exhibits for the museum were collected by Natalia Kursheva, who came to Kamenskoye in the late 1980s with her husband, who was sent to serve in the local penal colony.
The girl dreamed of becoming an archaeologist and became intrigued by the ruins of red brick houses remaining in the center of the village. Now covered in a thick layer of swamp-colored plaster, the details of the German architecture are barely recognizable. About ten years ago, the village housing and utilities department was located here, and even earlier, an elementary school. A century and a half ago, the building housed a college that trained school teachers for the German colonies on the Volga.
Together with her husband, Natalya scoured numerous abandoned buildings in Kamenskoye. Finds from the attics—bast shoes, oven mitts, rugs, trousers, and a reed bag (woven only by the Volga Germans)—would later become the museum's first exhibits. Before the museum opened, Natalya kept everything at home: "I cleaned it, patched it up... The pots, the spinning wheel, and the samovar stood in the middle of my bedroom."
Nowadays, the museum's main visitors are schoolchildren, who attend local history classes. In the summer, grandmothers bring their grandchildren on vacation. Occasionally, German families from the Krasnoyarsk region and Kazakhstan visit. Previously, the museum was often visited by descendants of Volga Germans from the United States and Germany. Not anymore.
For ten years, the museum's curator worried about the collection's condition due to the building's leaky roof. But last year, renovations were finally completed, and now Natalia is concerned about a different problem.
"I've been working on this topic for two decades, and I want the collected material to end up in good hands. We have young staff, but..." she sighs and trails off, choosing her words carefully. "Will anyone be willing to get involved? It's history, and it's difficult to avoid sharp corners."
Following the deportation of 1941, the republic's territory was divided between the Saratov and Stalingrad regions. Saratov received 15 districts, 11 of which were completely depopulated. Repopulating these lands took a long time. More than 26 Russian families from other districts of the Saratov region were resettled there, both voluntarily and forcibly, along with evacuees from Ukraine, Kursk, and Orel.
Thus began a new history of the settlement.
In 1942, the territory of the former canton was transferred to the NKVD, converting the former villages into camp sites. Prisoners built the railway from Kazan to Stalingrad. After the war, the camp site in Kamenskoye (as the village was now called) became a penal colony, which remains in existence to this day.
In 1954, the Suvorovsky state farm was established in Kamenskoye, but it didn't survive the Soviet era for long. In 1960, a psychiatric hospital opened, which remains the village's most important employer.
The most comfortable corner of Kamenskoye
The kindergarten fence is inscribed with the words "May There Always Be Sunshine" in large yellow tin letters. The gates of the psychiatric hospital, which locals simply call the "madhouse," are almost opposite the kindergarten. Beyond the fence, the hospital park is visible, with its trimmed bushes and deep red asters in autumn flowerbeds. It seems to be the most well-maintained corner of Kamenskoye.
Hospital opened here In 1960, on the site of a maternity hospital, the maternity hospital was built in adobe barracks that had been built as collective farm warehouses during the German occupation. The barracks were demolished only in the 1980s, when Yuri Kalyamin became director (the clinic now bears his name). Under Kalyamin, who also served as a district deputy, four-story buildings were constructed, modern heating and plumbing were installed. Sixty apartments for medical staff were built outside the hospital grounds. In 1990, a subsidiary farm was established on 60 hectares—with a cowshed, pig farm, butter mill, and bakery. In 1997, the region's first drug rehabilitation center, offering fee-based services, opened.
The center was closed in the 2010s. Reductions in drug treatment services were taking place throughout the Saratov region at the time. the fund has decreased by 26 percent (one of the highest rates in the country). But 12 years later, in 2022, everything changed: Kamenskoye launched a comprehensive rehabilitation program for people with chemical dependencies.
— First, patients undergo detoxification in a drug treatment unit for several days. Then, they undergo medical rehabilitation, which takes three to six months. Then, they undergo social rehabilitation, which is paid for by the SFR"Previously, this final stage wasn't included in state aid, and without social rehabilitation, it's difficult for a person to return to normal life," said Alexey Shostak, a clinical psychologist at the hospital.
The psychiatric hospital in Kamenskoye will definitely not be closed anytime soon. According to Shostak, the state is "very interested" in it.
"We have five SVO members undergoing treatment. Some time ago, the military police objected and demanded that they go to the Ministry of Defense hospital. But they don't have that kind of care—rehabilitation for drug addiction," Shostak explained. "I'm a member." "Combat Brotherhood">I know this is a popular topic today. There are appeals from contract soldiers, from relatives of missing persons, and from widows.
In addition to the rehabilitation department, the hospital acts a compulsory treatment unit for the criminally insane, two units for tuberculosis patients, a unit "for patients who have lost social ties" where homeless people are brought - a total of 610 beds.
As stated on on the medical institution's websiteThere are six medical professionals working here (psychiatrists and narcologists), four more doctor positions are vacant, and a paramedic and six nurses are also needed.
"The colony is roads and shops"
The settlement's second key "city-forming enterprise," the penal colony, looks far less prosperous—as if it had already been closed. Beyond the barbed wire, a huge factory building with a broken roof. The brickwork of the fence has dried out. Two men of indeterminate appearance—whether free or not—are patching the fence with cement.
The parcel room is plastered with advertisements. A poster advertises "Services in the pretrial detention center for your family and friends," offering "Zona-Telecom and Zona-Market." Others explain "the purpose" probation [Convicts]" reminds that "you can contact a psychologist" and announces the hours of long-term visiting rooms. It seems there are so many notices that the shabby walls are hidden.
Opposite the room is a children's playground with a gazebo. An officer in a blue uniform is smoking there. He's not allowed to talk to reporters, but you can tell he's fed up. He says he commutes 40 kilometers to work every morning.
"It makes sense to me because I get a seniority bonus. A junior inspector's salary is 40. And yet you're responsible for everything, you get scolded, you get all sorts of penalties. Why would a young man need that when a salesperson at Krasnoye i Beloye gets 70! It's no wonder young people aren't joining us. The chief has about ten people left at headquarters, girls with children, and there are single mothers who have nowhere else to go. They're not going to shut us down for now, apparently—we've given us another two years. But if we don't recruit enough people—and we won't—we'll join the girls in the SVO to defend our homeland; that's the kind of service we serve."
The FSIN leadership is addressing the problem of personnel shortages recognizesAccording to the service's director, Arkady Gostev, "over the past year, the shortage has increased by almost 4 percent, reaching a significant 19 percent."
"The village survives thanks to the hospital and the prison. People come here to live because there are jobs. Of course, these are state-owned enterprises, and the salaries can't compare to commercial ones. But it's stability," says Alexander, a serious, burly man in a Lada Kalina. We started talking in one of Kamenskoye's courtyards.
Alexander came to the village 20 years ago and works in a psychiatric hospital. "Not as a doctor," he frowns, making it clear that further clarification is inappropriate.
The interviewee admits that if one of the institutions closes, "it will be sad," but he doesn't want to discuss the matter: "The smart people at the top understand everything and won't allow it." Alexander is confident that Kamenskoye has a future; last year, he began building his own private home there.
In the center of the village stands a large two-story school. On the facade are two black memorial plaques with portraits of graduates. They died in the Chechen wars: one in 1995, the other in 2002. To the right is the medical and obstetric station. The metal door is locked. Passersby explain that one medical assistant is on vacation, the other is on sick leave. The nearest hospital is in Krasnoarmeysk. A bus runs there once a week, on Wednesdays.
Behind the first-aid post is the fire station. The garage doors are painted in the colors of the Russian flag. Alexey, a smiling man in white sneakers, explains that there are 12 people and two fire trucks working here.
"Our fires are mostly caused by trash. They burn garden tops and dry grass. I tell everyone: if you're going to start a fire, stand still and watch out for anything to happen. But people immediately have urgent matters to attend to—they set the fire and go off to have some tea. Then they come back and, oh boy, the neighbor's barn is already on fire!" Alexey says cheerfully.
In his opinion, the proximity to the penal colony and the psychiatric hospital is “a benefit for the village, it means roads and shops”: “Try driving into a regular village, will you see asphalt and three grocery stores there?”
Alexey also admits to having two dreams. As a firefighter, he'd like to see three fire hydrants in the village (currently, there's only one for 1,5 residents). And as a "regular resident," he wants to see children's activities open, of which Alexey has three.
"How?.. Just like that. We lug around buckets."
There's another "zone" in Kamenskoye—three-story buildings on Komsomolskaya Street. The locals call them that because the prisoners built them for the prison staff.
A Zhiguli, bouncing over the bumps and blaring Russian rap, rolls up to the entrance. The driver enters the house without locking the car or even removing the key from the ignition.
"Nobody steals from us!" he laughs, tucking his thumbs into the edges of his army pixelated vest.
Alexey says he bought an apartment recently, but has already encountered difficulties: the roof is leaking, the sewer is clogged.
Tatyana Ivanovna sits on a stump next to the three-story building next door. The house is surrounded by windfall.
On my interlocutor's arm is an old tattoo, the name "Tanya" burned in blue. Noticing my glance, Tatyana Ivanovna tucks her hand into the pocket of her warm robe. She came to Kamenskoye in 1975 from the Vinnytsia region with her husband, who served in the penal colony.
"He's in uniform. I worked in accounting for 30 years, outside the prison zone; we didn't interact with the prisoners," the woman recalls. The young family was immediately given a three-room apartment with all the amenities. "We lived well, I was happy with everything. And now what? I have a civilian pension of 19 rubles. Five or six thousand a month goes on medication, and three thousand for rent in the winter. Groceries are more expensive here in Kamenskoye than in Krasnoarmeysk. Bread is 35 rubles there, 41 here, carrots are 40 rubles, potatoes are 43, and that's in the fall! I buy two or three at a time..."
Noticing the journalists, Anatoly, a second-floor resident, comes down into the courtyard. He invites them to take a photo of the crumbling wall on the opposite side of the building. The sight is truly terrifying: a whole chunk of brickwork has fallen out from under the roof.
"We had a very active resident who wrote to the prosecutor's office and encouraged us to go everywhere with complaints. Then she died, and we abandoned her," Anatoly says, waving his hand in exasperation. "So everything's falling apart, and no one lives in that apartment."
The interviewee moved into the building in 1976. He also worked as a security guard at the prison. Sewage fumes emanate from the green spaces near the buildings. Anatoly explains that the runoff from the three-story buildings flows into a ravine, "and then into the river."
"In the 1980s, they were planning to install a proper sewer system, they laid pipes, built a treatment plant. 90 percent complete!" Anatoly indignantly wagged his finger at someone. "And then—perestroika, for crying out loud! I came back from vacation—there was no treatment plant. Half the bricks were sold to Krasnoarmeysk, the other half here."
When asked if law enforcement had been interested in the disappearance of the treatment plant, Anatoly simply dismissed the matter: "What authorities? Stop laughing. There was a good kindergarten across the street. It disappeared too."
Улицы Каменского, застроенные частными домами, выглядят более-менее благоустроено. А вот двух- и трехэтажные многоквартирники напоминают гетто. Двухэтажки на улице Советской, где при совхозе выдавали квартиры сельской интеллигенции, так и зовут в поселке — «ниггерским районом».
"If you walk into our building, you'll get scared," local resident Larisa Pavlovna warns apologetically. She's wearing lilac galoshes, matching her knitted hat. She's 71 and has worked as an elementary school teacher her entire life.
Larisa Pavlovna and the furnishings of the houses on Sovetskaya Street. Photo by NeMoskva
A pensioner struggles to open the crumbling plank door of the building's entrance. The reinforced concrete canopy has crumbled, and rusty rebar protrudes from the wall. The entrance smells of cat urine. Flaked blue paint covers the walls. The heating pipes are only partially covered, in some places with remnants of insulation, in others with old pants.
Larisa Pavlovna explains that two pensioners live in the building—she and a neighbor. The remaining six apartments are abandoned. The building has no management company. "The administration says, 'Do the repairs yourself.' What can we do together?" she shrugs.
Larisa Pavlovna lives on the second floor. About five years ago, her balcony collapsed. Cracks run down the facade of the building. The neighbor's kitchen wall, located in the second building, has practically collapsed—bricks are piled up underneath. The window is covered with film instead of glass.
"He's disabled, he had a stroke," the woman explains. "No one lives above him; everyone's already dead. The owner of this apartment died, and the one in the corner..."
There is also no sewage system in the two-story building.
"How?.. Well, like this. We lug around buckets; there's a cesspool nearby," the former teacher explains, clearly embarrassed.
It was a good thing that last December, a local handyman helped connect the apartments to the street water mains that fed the pumps. Before, they had to haul water from the street, from the neighboring block: "In any weather, on icy roads. Cars rush past, and there are no sidewalks." Larisa Pavlovna went to the pump morning and evening with a five-liter canister, enough for washing and cooking for the day. Bathing was a luxury, once a week. Laundry – once a month.
Larisa Pavlovna soon bids us farewell—her knees are sore, it's hard for her to stand or walk for long periods. Slowly, her galoshes clinging to her feet, she strides across the puddle-soaked courtyard toward her entrance. A female voice, amplified by a loudspeaker, can be heard from across the river, where Correctional Colony No. 23 is located. The radio room is directing the detachments to their assigned areas.
Correctional facilities are becoming city-forming institutions in many towns across the country. But in recent years, they have been closing. official counts The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) closed 24 correctional facilities in 2023 (26 in 2022). This is due to a decrease in the prison population. according to the Federal Penitentiary ServiceAs of January 1, 2024, there were 253,1 people in correctional facilities. The year before, there were 307,8. Statistics for 2022 have not been published. Known, that in 2021, 466 Russians were in prison. Starting in 2022, prisoners will be sent off to war. Today, the law allows both defendants and those under investigation to sign contracts. That is, how explains "This contingent will not reach the penal colony," said Olga Romanova, leader of "Rus' Behind Bars." Those accused and convicted of pedophilia, extremism, terrorism, and treason cannot be sent to the front. The Russian authorities plan to replace some of the already closed and existing penal colonies with super-colonies, which are scheduled to open in Russian regions by 2027–2030. The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) system's facilities will combine pretrial detention centers, courts, prisons, and penal colonies with different security levels. Future neighbors of the "super-prisons" are unhappy with the FSIN's plans. For example, residents of the Kaluga region, where is planned The construction of a waste management facility in close proximity to dachas and land plots allocated to large families. Activists launched a petition on change.org and filed a complaint with the regional ombudsman. recorded video message to Putin. A similar situation is in Ulan-Ude, where a gigantic colony is being built. is planned The felling of 160 hectares of forest – about a hundred local residents came out to protest demanding “not to touch the trees.”
