Iosas Milautskas: finding a home in exile

Iosas Milautskas was born in 1934 in Vitchus, in the Kaunas region of Lithuania. He was  deported to Zhigalovo, Irkutsk, in March 1949. In 1970 he moved to Bratsk, where he still lives today. He was interviewed there on 26 August 2009, by Emilia Koustova.

CERCEC

After the war, there were Natik tractors with metal cabins and diesel engines. Unbelievable... I drove them, I even managed to get a combine harvester from Irkutsk. That’s 500 kilometres away!

Born into a working-class family in 1934, Iosas Milautskas grew up in a rural area of Lithuania. During the war he witnessed the deportation of Jews and battles between Soviet and Nazi troops, and even after the war was over, violence continued to disturb his daily life. On several occasions, his family was threatened by the so-called "Brothers of the Forest", the Lithuanian resistance movement, and by the new Soviet powers. In March 1949 one of his uncles deserted, and Iosas, his parents, his uncles, his aunts and his cousins were deported to Siberia.

They were taken to Zhigalovo in the Irkutsk region, where Iosas worked on a kolkhoz, or collective farm – first digging the fields, then driving the tractor and combine harvester. Thanks to Iosas’s respected position as a driver, as well as his father’s knowledge of farming, the family were able to overcome the initial difficulties and return to some semblance of their previous life, far from home.

They worked hard, both on the kolkhoz and their own allotment, went hunting and fishing, and exchanged small services with their Russian and Lithuanian neighbours. Hard-working Iosas quickly became an integral member of the village.

In 1957, one year after liberation, his parents returned to Lithuania. Iosas initially went with them, but six months later decided to go back to Zhigalovo, where he resumed his job as a tractor driver. He speaks about the work with enthusiasm even today.

Iosas married and raised his children in Zhigalovo, before moving the family to Bratsk in 1970. He and his wife have lived there ever since. For a long time he hoped to move back to Lithuania after his retirement; but with the collapse of the USSR and resulting economic problems, Iosas eventually had to give up his dream.