March 1937 went down in the history of the country as the beginning of the «great terror», which became the highest point of repressive politics, the peak of political repression in the Soviet Union.

From February 23 to March 5, 1937, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was held, at which Joseph Stalin made a keynote speech «On the Shortcomings of Party Work and Measures to Eliminate Trotsky ist and Other Deceivers». He said: «…the more we move forward, the more success we have, the more the remains of the broken exploiting classes become embittered, the sooner they go to more acute forms of struggle, the more they harm the Soviet state, the more they clutch for the most desperate means of struggle as the last means of the doomed.»

The main enemies of the Soviet state were Trotskyists, who, according to Stalin, turned into «… an unprincipled gang of pests, saboteurs, and spies employed by some intelligence agencies.» «In the fight against modern Trotskyism» he called to use not the old methods, not the methods of discussion, but the new methods, the methods of uprooting and destruction.

The NKVD of the USSR had a clear goal: to destroy «enemies of the people.»

On July 2, 1937, the Politburo Resolution «On Anti-Soviet Elements» was issued.

All repressed people were divided into two categories according to the measure of punishment. Those assigned to the 1st category were expected to be executed, while the 2nd category was left for imprisonment in camps for a period of 8 to 10 years.

The NKVD punishing sword was supposed to hit numerous enemies, regardless of their location. Everyone who continued to «conduct active anti-Soviet subversive work,» wherever they lived: in a village, a city, on collective farms, state farms, were expelled with confiscation of property. All «hostile elements» were recorded and repressed.

Having accepted all their property, livestock and agricultural products on the forms of exchange receipts, they took special settlers to various regions of the Soviet Union for labor settlements as directed by the NKVD, including the Omsk Region, which included the Shuryshkarsky District in 1937. It was renamed from the Ostyak-Vogul to the Yamalo-Nenets National District.

The guards ordered the arrivals to leave the barge ashore. Men, women and children straightened up in hope that they might survive on this unknown land, emerged from the river fog onto the rocky river banks.

«Though it's north, look how beautiful it is!»

Arriving guests admired the cheerful autumn colors of a rare forest. Exhausted by a long road, the settlers studied their new refuge with excitement.

«It's not that bad: if we die on the ground, they will not throw us into the river,» two women talked among themselves. «The river is so wide and fast. So many corpses were thrown on the road. Where did it take them?»

«You won't find them now!»

«Yes. And who's going to search?»

«Look! There are people on the hill!» one of the arrivals shouted. Everyone looked at the hillock, where the girl pointed. Indeed, there were locals, carefully looking at strangers. Their faces, stature and unprecedented clothes embroidered with patterns were very different from the guests.

A little higher, behind a long sandy shore, on a small hillock among the taiga wilderness, the Khanty village of Pitlourkurt hid.

«Maybe we'll survive. After all, people live here.»

«I know,» the boy intervened. «These are the Khanty. I read and they said at school that below the city of Tobolsk, along the river Ob, there were lands of the Khanty people, and the Nenets are closer to the Gulf of Ob.»

«Or maybe they are not Khanty or Nenets at all?» suggested his mother, restlessly holding the talkative boy. «Although you know everything, you are here for the first time.»

«No,» the boy objected. «We were not taken to the ice of the Gulf of Ob, to the tundra. It's the forest tundra, which means we are in the territory where the Khanty live.»

«Stop talking!» shouted the escort.

«Hush, look!» whispered the woman who was just talking animatedly. «I hope they don't hurt her».

A young pregnant Tatar shrank under the cries of the guards wearing the NKVD uniform and hurried to the shore, bent double.

«Look, the girl survived and got to the ground.»

«Everything mixed up in this world! Why are we punished? Why is this girl tormented?»

«I had only one cow and I'm here for it now. They say I'm a kulak…» a woman said, exhausted to the extreme. She became even thinner over the journey, and it seemed that her skeleton was covered with thin skin, which was about to tear. Her eyes shone with kind and quiet light.