In 2017, the 40th Finno-Ugric expedition of the Estonian Academy of Arts took place, which was an important starting point for the establishment of SLED artist group

The research expedition took place in collaboration with the Museum of Occupations and Freedom (Vabamu), which houses historical materials pertaining to the March deportation and the lives of the deportees in Khakassia and Krasnoyarsk in the 1950s. This is how we got in contact with people who were deported to Siberia as children in 1949 and who were interested in joining the expedition, to see the land of their childhoods 60 years later. This was a perfect opportunity for us to study the March deportation from the perspectives of children. Travelling back to Siberia provided us the opportunity to also observe a journey back in time in the symbiosis between body, landscape and memory:
We climbed a steep slope surprised that we were up to it. At times, it felt like I had shed 60 years somewhere between Tallinn and Siberia and I felt like I was a 12 or 13-year-old girl again tirelessly running up and down slopes. (Quote by Asta Tikerpäe from Triin Kerge's master's thesis "Siberian Children and Memories of Landscape")

Read more about the aspects that affected the memories of children deported to Siberia in Marika Alver's article "Palverännak Siberisse" (Pilgrimage to Siberia)

Research was supported by   Rahvuskaaslaste Programm, Eesti Üliõpilaste Toetusfond USAs   and   Eesti Kultuurkapital
​

The research expedition was divided into three stages:
​​
1)  Field work in the village of Son 11.07–17.07.2017

The research group was joined by Marje Martinson (1941) ja Külli Hiiesaar (1943–2019). We had with us copies of archive materials (diaries, lists, photographs, drawings) from Vabamu pertaining to the lives of the deported Kollist family in the village of Son in 1949–1957. We mapped areas in and around Son that were connected to the Estonians who had been deported there.​

Külli's first glimpse of the village of Son. Külli was 5 years old when she was deported with her mother and 6-year-old sister. The local nature had a permanent effect on her, she reminisces. She returned to Estonia in 1957 when she was 13. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Marje in the village of Son in front of a hill at the back of her childhood home. Marje was deported with her mother when she was 7-years-old. Marje also has fond memories of her home village in Siberia. Marje was liberated in 1956 when she was 15. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Marje's childhood home in Son. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Marje and Külli met their childhood friends; twins who had been deported to Siberia and remained there (born Ollino). Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

From the left Külli, Leili, Leida, Marje ja Feodosja (Khakas) all former residents and schoolchildren in Son. Photograph: Eva Sepping, 2017

Together they looked at photographs and reminisced about their school years. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Külli on the way to the location of a mill 5 km from Son. The mill where the Kollists lived was an important meeting place for Estonians in the 1950s and it holds many positive childhood memories for Külli. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

Marje looking for her childhood friends. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

View of Son high school. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

The welcoming Larissa looked after the group in Son. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Larissa's home in Son. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Those deported to Son were unloaded at Sonskoye railway station, which was located 30 km from Son. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

The deportees remember how they had to get down the hill by themselves when they arrived and how their baggage rolled down the hill. Photograph: Eva Sepping, 2017

The road between Son and Sonskoye. Photograph: Eva Sepping, 2017

The road between Son and Sonskoye. Photograph: Eva Sepping, 2017

View of Son. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

In Son we met Misha and his daughter Olga. Misha's wife, Aino had also been deported in 1949. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Aino dies already at 42, but Misha never married again, because he said he would never find a woman with such a heart of gold. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

In the 1970s Misha's family visited relatives in Estonia every year. There was much Estonian memorabilia in their home. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Aino and her sister Aide remained in Siberia after being liberated, but their mother along with her two sisters decide to return to Estonia. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

The Ollino-twins (born 1946), Leida and Leilli returned to Estonia in 1957 with their mother and grandmother, but some months later they returned to Siberia. Their older brother Albert had decided to stay in Siberia from the beginning. Photograph from a family album, beginning of the 1950s.

Leida lives 6 km from Son in the village of Goldzha. She doesn't speak Estonian, but remember the words for bread, milk, butter from her childhood. Photograph: Marika Alver, 2017.

Leida has an Estonian flag at home. Photograph: Marika Alver, 2017

Leili (first on the right) with her neighbours in front of her home in Shira. Leili's husband is Polish and also suffered repressions. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

We tended to the graves of Estonians at Son cemetery. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017

The grave of Aleksander Rätsepp (1899—1950). He was the first deported Estonian to die in Son. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

Külli had dreamt of her village of Son for years and returning there was a fulfilment of a lifelong dream for her. Whereas at first she did not recognise her village, upon leaving she said, "This is my Son". Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017

2) Field work in Idrinskoye district: Krasnoturansk, Idrinsk, Adrikha (17.07–21.07.2017) 

Since Katarina Meister's grandmother had been deported to the village of Lugavskaya on the other side of the Yenisei River, part of the research group set off to look for it. The precise location of the village was unknown. This was a reconnaissance trip, which led to further research in Estonia and a subsequent trip to Idrinskoye district in 2018.

A local man in Krasnoturansk showing us a forestry map from the 1960s with the exact location of Lugavskaya village marked on it. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

On the way to Adrikha, which is a neighbouring village of Lugavskaja. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

It turned out that the village of Lugavskaya was demolished in the 1960s and some of the houses were moved across the river to the village of Adrikha. Katarina standing in front of the former home of the Määr family who decided to remain in Siberia after being liberated. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

The grave of Valdur Määr (1935—2009) at Adrikha cemetery. In Siberia Valdur married Frida, a Volga-German. Ave Taavet, 2017.

Valdur Määr, in the centre, was a good musician. Those who had the foresight to take musical instruments with them when they were deported became popular and vital focal points of the communities. Making music together and singing were vital to stemming collective tension: when people got together, at first, they cried over their harsh fate and then started to sing. Archive photograph from Eha Linnus' family album.

Handicraft by Valdur Määr: a bear woven from wire. Still from video, camera: Katarina Meister, 2017.

We met Dusya (1939) in Adrikha who remembered the Estonians and found a photograph of her brother among Katarina's collection of photographs. Still from video, camera: Ave Taavet, 2017.

Adrikha street. Pets move around freely in Siberia. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

The fast-flowing Novaya Syda River with Adrikha on one side and the former Lugavskaya on the other. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

3)  Chistoye Pole, Balakhta and Uzhur in Balakhtinsky district, Krasnoyarsk krai (21.07–28.07.2017) 

The research group was joined by Asta Tikerpäe (1944), who had been deported to Chistoye Pole (Balakhta grain sovkhos) as a child, and Karin Nelke (1952) who was born there. Asta had donated her collection of photographs and collected memoires to the Museum of Occupations.
In Balakhta, we managed to meet Heino (1931), who had stayed in Siberia, and his Volga-German wife, Minna.

Karin and Asta. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

Asta was four, when she was deported to Chistoye Pole with her mother and older brother. They returned to Estonia in January 1958 when Asta was 13. Walking around the village landscape Asta felt that she had shed 60 years somewhere along the way from Tallinn to Siberia, "while there, I felt like a 12 or 13-year-old girl again running tirelessly up and down the slopes" Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

The village is located next to Chulym River. The river had whirlpools that the Estonians referred to as gravesites, because they were very dangerous. Asta remembers how she twice pulled her brother out from these. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

Chulym and the river bank as seen from the village. Asta's first home was made from mud into the riverbank. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Searching for signs of mud houses with Asta. Asta's feet seemed to automatically lead her to the right place, "There were no signs of mud houses, until I suddenly felt that the soil under my feet was somehow familiar. Karin was walking a path lower down and I asked her whether she could see a depression or cave below me. She could and it turned out I was walking on the roofs of the former dwellings." Photograph: Marika Alver, 2017.

A street in Chistoye Pole. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

The names of shops in small Siberian villages are surprising in their creativity. For example, in Chistoye Pole there is a shop called Galaktika. Photograph: Ave Taavet, 2017.

Village life in Chistoye Pole. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

As is common in small Siberian villages, pets stroll the village streets. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

A map of Chistoye Pole according to Asta's memories. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.

Asta and Karin's home in Chistoye Pole. Their families lived in one house. Asta had vivid memories of Karin's birth, because little Karin resembled a living doll. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Karin was born in Siberia in 1952. Her mother and half-sister had been deported to Siberia. The family was able to return to Estonia in 1956 when Karin was 4. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Karin's father was a Volga-German with whom Karin's mother had a brief relationship. Karin attempted to find her father as part of the television show "Sind otsides" (Looking for you). She found out that her father had died, but managed to connect with her half-sisters. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Asta and Karin at Chistoye Pole cemetery. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

The grave of Karin's father Aleksandr Auer (1927—1979). Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

Asta had brought a handful of home soil from Estonia, "We tied a blue-black-and-white ribbon to the cross, lit a candle in memory of all the Estonians buried in that cemetery." Asta also told the spirits that they now lived in a free Estonia. Photograph: Eva Sepping, 2017.

Many deportees have fond memories of Siberian creamy strawberries and visitors are often offered creamy strawberry jam, nowadays. Creamy strawberries are larger and sweeter than wild strawberries. They are also found in Estonia, but there are much more of them in Siberia. In the photograph are Asta, Katarina and Ave. Photograph: Marika Alver, 2017.

Asta and Karin met a former schoolmate of Asta's, with whom they reminisced about their youth. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017.

The first breath of Siberian air was enough to remind Asta of her childhood, but something was different in the air. It later turned out that the climate is much softer and more humid now, because of the massive Krasnoyarsk Reservoir, which the locals call a sea. The landscape of Chistoye Pole had also changed a lot for Asta. For one thing, there had been no trees back in the 1950s. Tall trees gave the place a completely different feel.

Uzhur railway station had been the unloading point for deportees. Asta remembers how there had been a slave market there i.e. the representatives of local collectives had turned up to select the workforce they needed. The deportees were taken the 100 km from Uzhur to Chistoye Pole in the back of a truck. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017

Interior of Uzhur railway station. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017

Ticket attendant in the Uzhur bus. Photograph: Triin Kerge, 2017

In Balakhta we met deportee Heino (1931), who had decided to remain in Siberia after being liberated. There are many Estonian books in his bookshelf. Photograph: Marika Alver, 2017.

Heino with his wife Minna. They have been married since 1956. Photograph: Liis Juuse, 2017.