Verigin Apollon Nikolaevich

He was born in 1903 in St. Petersburg to a civil servant and civil engineer who died in 1915. He completed his secondary education in 1918. In early 1919, his mother sent him to live in the Gdovsky district with his aunt, Olga Vladimirovna Kartolinskaya, due to his dire financial situation in Petrograd. In July 1919, the district was occupied by General Yudenich's army, and during its retreat in September 1919, he joined its convoy and retreated with Yudenich's army to Estonia.

In exile in Estonia, he contracted typhus. After recovering two months later, he began working various jobs. In late 1920, he found work as a musician at a Narva cinema. In 1922, he left for Tallinn, where he continued working as a musician in the city's cinemas. In 1925, he joined the music trade union and worked in the symphony orchestra of the Bi-Ba-Ba Theatre. In 1930, he moved to Pärnu, where he became director of the symphony orchestra of the Pallas Theatre. In 1931, he married Lyudmila Ivanovna Avikson, an Estonian woman born in 1903, the daughter of a worker, who took her husband's surname upon marriage. In 1934, he became director of the choir and assistant conductor of the orchestra at the Edla Theatre, continuing to work at the Pallas Theatre despite the change of power in Estonia and its annexation by the USSR.

On June 14, 1941, during a massive NKVD operation, he and his wife were arrested and deported to the USSR. He was separated from his wife en route. His wife, Lyudmila Ivanovna Verigina, was exiled to Siberia and assigned to live in the village of Krasny Yar, Krivosheinsky District (present-day Tomsk Oblast), while Verigin ended up in the "AB" camp of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, located in the village of Sosva, Sverdlovsk Oblast. In 1942, while in camp, he was informed of the decree of the Special Security Service of the NKVD of the USSR dated March 12, 1942, sentencing him to 10 years' imprisonment for participating in the White Guard movement during the Civil War. While in prison, he worked as a translator of letters from Estonian under the censorship of the 1st Directorate of the NKVD. In 1950, he was released early due to merits for good work, but continued to be in the camp as a civilian employee. In 1951, he visited his wife in exile in the Tomsk region during his vacation. Upon returning, he began to lobby for her transfer to his place of work in the Sverdlovsk region. In 1952, he again received permission to return on vacation to his wife's place of exile in the village of Krasny Yar in the Krivosheninsky District of the Tomsk region. However, this time he was not allowed to leave the Tomsk region, having his passport, return tickets, and all other documents confiscated.

Based on the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of March 11, 1952, and Order No. 00219/00374 of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB of April 1, 1952, he was registered in a special settlement at his wife's place of exile and informed that he was being assigned to a permanent settlement in Siberia and that any escape from the settlement would be subject to criminal prosecution under the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 26, 1948. Verigin's appeals to the prosecutor's offices of the Sverdlovsk and Tomsk regions and the Central Committee of the CPSU yielded no results, and Verigin received a new form of punishment: residence and special registration in a settlement in Krasny Yar, Tomsk Region, at his wife's place of exile. He found employment as the manager of the Krasnoyarsk private farm club, organized a brass band at the club, secured expensive musical instruments for it, and traveled to Tomsk to obtain them himself. As the club manager, he was respected not only by his colleagues for his professionalism but also by both the free and supervised residents of the village of Krasny Yar. For his good work, he was even awarded a trip to the "Klyuchi" holiday home, but he had to obtain permission from the village commandant, Volkov, to access it. He and his wife lived in an apartment on Rabochaya Street. His wife worked as a tailor. Only in 1958, based on the Resolution of February 19, 1958, of the Commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR for the Review of Cases of Persons Expelled from the Estonian SSR and Placed in Special Settlement "Due to the Inexpediency of Their Further Detention There," were the Verigins allowed to return to Estonia. By this time, they had no surviving relatives. Verigin's mother died in 1942 during the siege of Leningrad; his wife's parents also died in Estonia, having survived the German occupation.

Upon returning to Pärnu, A. N. Verigin took a job as a music teacher at the Pärnu Russian School (Secondary School No. 3). As one of his students, Natalia Ilyina, recalls, under him, lessons were called "musical education." Thanks to Verigin, many Russian-speaking Pärnu residents still love classical music and know its composers. He also organized a strong choir at the school, which participated in national song festivals, as well as a brass band. He also directed the choir at the local theater. The teachers he worked with spoke of him only with admiration. He was quite open with some of them, and they already knew of his fate. According to them, Apollon Nikolaevich was very proud of having met Lidiya Ruslanova while in prison and of participating with her in the evenings and concerts he organized. He later maintained this relationship. As one of his students wrote, she was already preoccupied with the question: "Why wasn't Verigin an artist, but a teacher? Adults would answer that he'd gotten frostbite on his fingers at the front during the war, and therefore couldn't play professionally anymore. We, of course, believed the adults. But Apollon Nikolaevich never talked about the war; he always tactfully avoided the subject. No one ever mentioned his time in prison or exile. And we, naturally, wouldn't even entertain the thought: surely a man like Apollon Nikolaevich couldn't possibly be bad at anything, much less an 'enemy of the people'! He always smiled, and if someone misbehaved in class, he wouldn't scold them, but would say, 'Guys, you can read, copy homework, play tic-tac-toe, but don't disturb those who want to listen to music with your feet.' And he'd begin recounting the composer's biography (as required by the curriculum) against the backdrop of his own works..."

Music was everything to A.N. Verigin: he simply couldn't live without it. And it accompanied him throughout his life, even during his Siberian exile. Apollon Nikolaevich Verigin and his wife, Lyudmila Ivanovna, lived in Pärnu until the end of their days, where they are buried.

Source: Archive of the memorial museum "Investigative prison of the NKVD".

Khanevich V. A.