Enchi Koltsuyevich Tsartsayev

“We were carted off worse than if we were cattle. We steppe people did not even know what coal or iron stoves were. Where they were taking us, we did not know. Chopped a hole in the bottom of the wagon and that’s where we did our business. Women created screens for one another with their skirts. The old folks turned away. For the entire trip, the soldiers gave us two buckets of soup. We rode for 16 days and nights. At every stop they hauled out the corpses. They took us to Lokot, Altai Krai. They distributed us to kolkhozes by sled – no more than two families per kolkhoz. There was no food, and everything we were able to bring with us we exchanged for potatoes. We lived like third-class citizens. In 1957 I returned to my homeland, and took up animal husbandry in Kalmykia. At first I was a shepherd, and, starting in 1959, I was in charge of a farm.”