In March 1949, throughout the Baltic States, the KGB's predecessor rounded up members of the families of those already convicted of crimes against the state and farmers with their families. The aim was to break co-operation with the remaining Forest Brothers and to remove resistance to the introduction of state-run collective farms.
In the case of the Nõmm family, father, mother and daughter Linda fitted into both categories, as family members of a Forest Brother and his helper, and members of the kulak class.
As with the 1941 mass deportation, those rounded up were packed into unheated cattle train cars. When these trains finally began to move, they had the lowest priority on the railways, so their journey to Siberia lasted weeks. Those in the cattle cars had minimal food and water and sanitation probably was a hole in the floor.
Many died under the conditions of the journey, including the still cold weather in late March and into April.
Aleksander Nõmm's father, Jaan, born in January 1886, was already 63 years old when his journey to the Mikhaylovsky region of the Novosibirsk Oblast began. This region was centred on the town of Mikhaylovka, in the southwest of the Oblast, bordering the Kulunda Steppe which, in turn, stretches into Kazakhstan.
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| Jaan Nõmm's record in the digital version of Estonia's victims of Communism 1940-1991 |
The climate there definitely is continental. The winters are long, with temperatures dropping below -40°C and fierce blizzards. In the short summers, daytime temperature typically reach the high 20's, but heatwaves can reach the high 30's. In addition, summers brought the same mosquitoes, midges and blackflies experienced by Jaan's sons, Heimar and Artur, in their more northerly exiles.
The family knew all 3 of these potentially lethal pests from Saaremaa, but not in the same density as experienced inland. Along the coasts (Saaremaa does mean "Island land") breezes keep them at bay. Even inland on Saaremaa though, they breed in the wetlands, lakes or in juniper stands. Back in the 1940s, cheesecloth could be used to screen the insect outs, smoke pots kept them away from outdoor workers and native plants like wild mint or wormwood could be rubbed on the skin for a repellant. Another repellant was tar water, made by leaving pine or birch tar in to soak in water for several days.
In the Novosibirsk Oblast, another biting insect repellant was juice from some of the local Allium species. Allium is the name for the group of plants which includes well known edibles such as chives, various onions, leeks and garlics. Around the world, there now are some 1,000 separate species of Allium known. Totals differ because apparently new, wild species are discovered frequently, especially in Central Asia, near where Jaan was.
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| Novosibirsk Oblast is the area coloured red, while the remainder of Russia is a pale yellow colour Source: Stasyan117 on Wikipedia |
Indeed, the Kulunda Steppe in southern Russia is a continuous extension of the Kazakh Steppe, which geographers agree is in Central Asia. The Kulunda Steppe hosts 10-15 wild Allium species, of which those with volatile sulphur compounds were the most used for masking the smell of humans.
The repellents were also known to the inhabitants of the Mikhaylovsky region who suddenly found themselves sharing their lives and, sometimes, even their housing — such as it was — with the "Special Settlers". Whether their supervisors allowed the workers to stop for long enough to protect themselves is another matter.
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| The red smudge marks the urban centre of Mikhaylovsky relative to the much larger city of Novosibirisk in the top centre of this map Source: City-facts |
And if the workers did stop, they might miss their quota for the day, their "norm" and so receive less food as a result. It was a lose-lose situation.
The principal economic activity on the Kulunda Steppe was farming, an activity in which Jaan had life-long experience. His experience was in completely different climatic conditions, however. The best teachers were gone, as the kulaks of Russia were arrested, deported or "liquidated" in the 1930s, under Stalin's orders. Those peasants who remained were doing what they were told to do by their brigade leaders, whether it made sense or not.
As well as growing food in the short summer, the workers were expected to engage in tree-felling during the winter. Although they were further away from the Arctic Circle from the camps in which Heimar and Artur had laboured, the Kulunda Steppe's winter weather was every bit as brutal due to its location in the middle of the largest land mass in the world. And though the definition of a steppe is a grassy plain, sometimes its topography permits pockets of forests to develop.
We've seen already how dangerous tree-felling could be in the Soviet era, especially if the weather conditions allow biting insects to breed. An alternative winter occupation was stripping the farm machinery down and rebuilding it to have it ready for summer-time operation. As an older, skilled farmer, who maybe had his own machinery, perhaps Jaan was found to be more useful in this area.
Jaan survived this chaotic situation until released on 20 June 1956. Someone as smart and skilled as Jaan might have made extra money as a tractor driver, perhaps had his own plot with produce he sold to his neighbours, and sold everything he was not taking with him in order to purchase the multiple train tickets to get from Mikhaylovka to Novosibirsk, then to Moscow, to Tallinn, and finally by train, bus and ferry from Tallinn to Muhu and Saaremaa.
On Saaremaa, he lived for more than another 18 years, but in a collectivised system. He would have needed a local residence permit, but perhaps Linda's managing to stay on the island through having pneumonia when her parents were arrested was a help here. Although aged 70 when released from the Novosibirsk Oblast, he would still have been expected to work on a collective farm, maybe Linda's. At least he would have been offered lighter duties, such as guarding or repairing equipment.
Unlike the two imprisoned sons who died when they were only 60 and 61 years old, Jaan managed to live until one day after his 89th birthday.
Maria was arrested at the same time as her husband and would have endured the same conditions travelling to the Novosibirsk Oblast. The records show that she too was sent to the Mikhaylovsky region and released on the same day as her husband, 20 June 1956. If this means that they were allowed to stay together, that would have been a massive help to both of them.
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| Maria Nõmm's record in the digital version of Estonia's Victim's of Communism 1940-1991 |
A female "Special Settler" would have been expected to work every bit as hard as the men. Cheerful women driving tractors or helping with the harvest were a staple of Soviet propaganda posters. Maria was 56 years old when arrested with her husband, Jaan, in March 1949. At the time of their release in June 1956, she was 63 years old. She managed to live another 9 years in the Soviet system, but mostly back in Estonia with Jaan.
When they managed to reach their home village of Leisi in 1956, the private fields they remembered from the 1940s were gone. They returned to an industrialised landscape dominated by the large fields, communal cattle barns, and heavy machinery operations of the Saare Tööline (a collective farm covering about 12,000 hectares, whose name meant Saare Worker) and the Karja state farm, used for scientific research by the Estonian Institute of Agriculture and Land Improvement.
Their daughter, Linda, seems to have landed on the Karja state farm when she had recovered from her pneumonia, being paid as a state employee. We do not know if she had been allowed back into the family home once it had been seized by the State. She might have been lucky to cover some personal belongings from it.
On 5 October 1952, she had married another Saaremaa resident, Johannes Voksepp. They were to have 2 children. The information recorded on their Geni.com pages does not include their dates of birth, so we do not know if they had been born before their grandparents returned. Artur might have been back on Saaremaa to attend the wedding, but Heimar was still imprisoned in his Arctic labour camp.
Clearly Aleksander, Sass, the first to be captured and imprisoned, did the best of all these 2 generations of the family apart from Linda. The Germans were lenient when compared to the Soviet Union under Stalin (but far from lenient when it came to the Jewish people and other minorities whom Hitler blamed from his nation’s economic problems). Sass was the first to be released from imprisonment, probably in April or May 1945 depending on when the Allies reached his place of imprisonment. Even as his 2 brothers were appearing before a Soviet tribunal, he was exploring a new life in Australia in relative freedom.
While under contract, Sass was paid award or above award wages and could do what he like in the evenings or weekends. (That’s even though what he liked included earning good extra money on some weekends.)
The contrast between Sass’s work and sporting activities for the good of Australia and the conditions under which the remainder of his family worked on collective or state farms and in prison camps for the “good” of the Soviet Union is almost beyond comparison.
SOURCES
Britannica 'Kulunda Steppe' https://www.britannica.com/science/steppe-grassland,accessed 1 September 2026.
Estonia's Victims of Communism 'Jaan Nõmm' https://www.memoriaal.ee/en/search/?q=%22jaan+n%C3%B5mm%22&f=all, accessed 1 September 2026.
Estonia's Victims of Communism 'Maria Nõmm' https://www.memoriaal.ee/en/search/?q=%22maria+n%C3%B5mm%22&f=all, accessed 1 September 2026.
Geni 'Aleksander Nõmm' https://www.geni.com/people/Aleksander-N%C3%B5mm/4825049969700070188, accessed 1 September 2026.
Geni 'Linda Voksepp' https://www.geni.com/people/Linda-Voksepp/4825086260920082330?through=4825049969700070188, accessed 7 September 2026.
Gulag Online 'The history of the Gulag' https://gulag.online/articles/historie-gulagu?locale=en, accessed 2 September 2026.
Gulag Online 'Virtual Museum' https://gulag.online/en, accessed 1 September 2026.
IAMO 'Kulunda' https://www.iamo.de/en/research/research-projects/details/kulunda, accessed 1 September 2026.
Simpson, Silvi, Personal communications, 2016.von Geldern, James (nd) 'Release of Prisoners from the GULAG' Seventeen Moments in Soviet History https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954/prisoners-return/, accessed 2 September 2026.
Wikipedia 'Kulunda Steppe' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulunda_Steppe, accessed 2 September 2026
Wikipedia 'Novosibirsk Oblast' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novosibirsk_Oblast, accessed 2 September 2026.
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