Anton, Salme and Endel Allikveer from Estonia
- Photos Without Families
- vor 5 Minuten
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I found this photo in an antique store in Estonia. I must admit that, besides the fact that the photo was labelled with valuable information about the family, I partly purchased it because of the darling old doggo. He looks bigger than the little boy in the photo, a gentle giant to watch over him, and it made me think of the big dogs I felt safe around and with as a toddler.
This doggo belonged to the Allikveers from Estonia: father Anton, mother Salme, and their only son, Endel.
The Allikveers were from Massu village in western Estonia, today a village of fewer than 40 inhabitants. Anton and Salme-Helene, née Treumann, had both been born in the same region - Anton in February 1892 and Salme in December 1891.
As a matter of fact, the family’s original surname was Mathiesen, given to Anton’s parents, Jaan and Ann Mathiesen. But in the mid-1930s, there was a shift among Estonians to rid themselves of their German-sounding surnames, which had been imposed or adopted under the influence of their Baltic-German masters during a long history of servitude. So, in 1936, the government passed a law allowing anyone who wished to change their German-sounding surname to a more Estonian-sounding one to do so.
In February 1938, Anton and Salme decided that the Mathiesen name belonged in the past, and they chose Allikveer instead, which means something like “at spring (water).” Perhaps they chose this surname after the name of their home farm, Allika-Polli, but I’m not sure.
As a side remark: Estonians love surnames that have a connection to nature - tree names, landscapes, flowers, animals, etc. Interestingly, not everyone in the Mathiesen family decided to change their surname, or chose the same new one. Anton’s brother Otto chose the surname Männilaan, which literally means “pine tree forest” - another homage to Estonian nature. And Anton’s older brother, Madis Mathiesen, a WWI and Estonian War of Independence veteran and a Commissioner for Police in Keila, decided to keep his surname. I actually found a photo of Anton's brother Madis as well:
Our family photo was probably taken in the late 1920s, when Estonia, as a young republic, was booming and developing rapidly. Life was good; life was full of opportunities. The Allikveers lived on the Allika-Polli farm in Hanila County. They had a home, a young son, a farm, and - judging from this photograph - a rather magnificent dog. They were probably doing pretty well.
And then history came crashing into their lives. In 1940, the Soviet Union forcefully annexed Estonia following the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and occupied mainland Estonia by August. Then, in the autumn of 1944, the Soviet Union returned - and this time, it stayed.
Each regime change became bloodier for Estonians who had come to cherish their independence. Just one year after the initial Soviet occupation, the Soviets arrested and deported over 10,000 Estonians in a single night. This wave targeted government officials, military officers, intellectuals, and wealthy business owners. Anton’s brother, Madis Mathiesen, the veteran and former Commissioner for Police, was deported to Siberia in 1941, where he died. Executions, expropriations, and Russification took place during those horrendous years of war - and, sadly, long after.
The largest mass deportation in Baltic history took place in March 1949, when over 20,000 Estonians were deported, alongside 70,000 people from Latvia and Lithuania. This operation aimed to force rural Estonians into collective farms (kolkhozes) and break the support network of the Forest Brothers (metsavennad), the anti-Soviet partisans. Entire families were classified as “kulaks” (wealthy peasants) or “nationalists.” Over 70% of those deported were women and children under the age of 16, as well as elderly people.
Sadly, the Allikveers fell victim to Stalin’s madness. The Allika-Polli farm was expropriated, and the Allikveers were declared “kulaks.” By decision of the Soviet administration in March 1949, Salme, her son Endel with his wife, Miralda, as well as Salme’s first grandchild, Heli-Maie, were deported over 5,000 km east to Krasnoyarsk Krai, in Asian Siberia. Heli-Maie was just one year old.
I wonder if the decision was also influenced by the fact that, instead of joining the Red Army, Endel had served in the German Army in 1942, fighting against the Soviet regime. I also don’t know if Salme and Endel’s family ended up in the same village in Siberia or if they even had contact while out there. Families were torn apart, men often separated from their families.
Life for the deported in Krasnoyarsk Krai was defined by a brutal, daily struggle for survival under the strict Soviet “special settler” (spetsposelentsy) regime. The journey in a cattle wagon lasted for two weeks. In the memoirs of a woman who was 12 years old at the time - and who actually knew Salme in Siberia - she recalls that when the train arrived in Krasnoyarsk Krai in April, it was still snowing and temperatures were as low as -15 to -20°C.
Estonians are tough. They know hard work. They know regimes. And they make the best of the situation. Although stripped of their citizenship, property, and rights, and treated as forced labourers and subhumans in one of the most hostile geographic and climatic zones on Earth, they built a community. They helped and supported one another, kept their language and hope alive. They celebrated birthdays and weddings together. They grieved together at funerals. Salme’s second granddaughter, Anne, was born in 1952 in Siberia. Even snapshots have survived of these communities. I’m in awe that I found Salme in a photograph with other deported Estonians in Siberia from the online newspaper archive, sitting on the very right:
Some could establish contact with loved ones back home. Letters and care packages would take a long time to arrive, if they arrived at all. But at least there was some contact. And I can only hope that Salme was able to stay in contact with her husband, Anton, back in Estonia, who had not been deported. I don’t know why Anton had not been deported. Maybe the regime needed his labour at the kolkhoz.
Salme, her son Endel, his wife, and their children could finally return to Estonia in the course of 1957. Salme was 66 years old. I don’t know much about Salme’s life after she returned. I also don’t know if she and Anton were reunited. I wonder if Salme found her sister Anna, who had managed to flee to Sweden together with her husband Märt Raud. In 1960, Salme placed an ad in the Expats newspaper, searching for her nephew Jaan Raud and niece Aina Raud, who had resettled in Canada. I know that Anton passed away in 1964, and Salme in 1971.
Upon his return from Siberia, Endel worked in a collective grain processing plant. Endel and Miralda had two more children in Estonia. A son, Jaan Allikveer, was born in 1958 and shares a gravesite with his mother, Miralda, who passed away in 2009. Endel passed away in 2001, having witnessed Estonia regain its independence in 1991 which sadly his parents hadn’t.
I found a photograph, and the photograph opened a door into a family's life - and into one of the darkest chapters of Estonia's history.
Such Estonian stories are no exception. And that is heartbreaking.
The deportations carried out by the Soviet regime are an integral part of Estonian history. Stories have been collected and published, memorials have been set up, and the names of those who suffered have been engraved in stone and recorded in history books.
But nothing - nothing - can erase the heartbreak of that horrendous chapter in history and bring back what could have been.
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