The 58th. Unseized: Stories of People Who Survived What We Most Fear

The heroes of this book are people who were in the Gulag, that Stalinist one that we all scare each other with now. Some of them were there under the political Article 58th («Anti-Soviet agitation»). Others worked there—guarding, treating, escorting.

Among our heroes is a pianist who was imprisoned on the day the war began for «performing a fascist hymn» (it was Bach), and an artist sentenced for «attempting to dig a tunnel from Leningrad under Lenin’s mausoleum.»

There’s a story from a priest about his first religious ecstasy and from a Lithuanian partisan about the first Chekist he killed.

There are stories of a Moscow State University professor who picked pearl barley out of someone else’s excrement, and a service dog instructor nicknamed Son, who taught him to catch people and shake hands. There are girls who curled their hair on curlers to sneak out through the barbed wire at night for a date, and a camp nurse fired for falling in love with a prisoner.

This book is full of love. And death. Of «doedagi» scraping dirt from the cafeteria tables, of the beauty of Tchaikovsky’s music from the camp loudspeakers, of the heaviness of uranium ore chunks in a cart, of the taste of the first gingerbread bought in freedom. And pain, and light, and blood, and laughter, and the passion to live.

We started collecting these stories for «Novaya Gazeta» four years ago. All our heroes were between 80 and 100 years old. They let us into their homes, poured tea or vodka, and not so much reminisced as listened to themselves, recreating their own lives, confronting themselves, their pain, and the fear they had run from or come to terms with all their lives, for the last time. The stories sounded like wills, like a last attempt to understand why all this had happened—and with this knowledge to depart.

In Pechora, in a house with windows overlooking the former camp barracks, the stunningly beautiful Ukrainian Olga Goncharuk, crying and not covering her face, spoke about a life mangled by the camp, while her no longer young son looked at his mother with horror and love: he was hearing all this for the first time.

In the suburban village of Klyazma, pianist Vera Gekker lightly touched the piano keys. Long shadows fell on her long dress, wooden floors creaked, Tchaikovsky chords flowed slowly—and it was impossible to imagine that Vera had spent five years in camps in Central Asia, and another five with a piano in exile in Karaganda.

Somewhere on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, strong, tall 101-year-old Pavel Galetsky cheerfully recalled seeing American President Henry Wallace in Magadan, running along an icy winter road under Susuman to meet his wife, arriving after 18 years in exile, teaching three former professors to work with a pickaxe. His deep, low voice filled the apartment, the old man loudly sipped tea—and suddenly shouted: «They all froze to death! Everyone in Kolyma froze…»

It soon turned out that most former prisoners had never spoken about the camp in their lives. Many still fear breaking the non-disclosure agreement they signed in the 1950s, do not distinguish between the USSR and today’s Russia, and do not consider their camp past—past. In every home, the first thing they showed us was a rehabilitation certificate—as if justifying the years lost in the camp.

Most found it painful to remember, some fell silent in the middle of a story. Many cried. But not when talking about hunger or imminent death—but when remembering the overseer who passed some tobacco through the feeder, the nurse who carried prisoners’ letters to the post office, the wife who waited 10 years.

We decided: it is these manifestations of humanity that we need to ask about. Not only about how they were beaten and humiliated, but how they survived, supported each other, and held on. What they hoped for, what they waited for, what they rejoiced in, what they understood about themselves and people. How later, after release, they remembered the camp, what dreams they had.

Almost all the heroes of this book were asked about the most terrifying and the most joyful memory of their life. The most terrifying turned out to be the first days in prison, later—the daily camp routine, the sameness of days, the feeling of immutability and hopelessness that came after several years.

Joys differed. Unexpectedly, we noticed that we laughed a lot during the interviews, heard many bright, life-filled stories: how women embroidered flowers on camp numbers, sewed dresses from pillowcases, and threw love letters over the fence of the men’s zone. How a former Moscow student fell in love with working in a mine («The mine draws you in like the sea. Coal is very beautiful in the light»), a convinced atheist from Yaroslavl became a Catholic priest, and a young Tbilisi journalist, a member of the underground organization «Death to Beria,» met her future husband, a Lithuanian partisan, in Minlag: «The sun, and he’s in a jacket with zippers, they’re shining… When we were arrested, zippers hadn’t been invented yet. I told him, ‘Juzef, you’re just a Christmas ornament!'»

We learned how the camp broke, twisted a person’s life, destroyed all his values—and created them anew. Susanna Pechuro, a girl sentenced to 25 years in the camps at 18, told us that she understood forever: you can’t survive by the principle of «you die today so I can live tomorrow.» You can only survive if there is someone to think about: «better I die today so you can live another day.» We were taught how to survive in the camp: take care of others, not think about the future, not fear death, not allow yourself to physically fall…

It seems these lessons were not about the camp—but about life in general.

In every interview, we were invariably told about the guards. Often with hatred, less often with sympathy. They remembered how Minlag prisoners hid drunk soldiers in their ranks so that the authorities wouldn’t punish them, and how they themselves fed a cruel female guard whose children were also starving. How an elderly overseer let a girl prisoner out of the cold punishment cell at night, fed her bread, and allowed her to warm up in his place until morning.

It became clear: we can’t talk only about those who were imprisoned. Investigators, convoy guards, overseers, letter censors, tower guards, service dog trainers, camp doctors—what happened to them? What did they think about their work, the country, those they guarded? We came to them just as we did to the prisoners: not to judge, not to label, but to listen and understand.

Repressions divided our grandfathers’ generation with barbed wire, but united them with a sense of unfreedom and vulnerability, poverty, hunger, fear. A common sense of misfortune didn’t go away with the years, but was buried deep in memory. Just like at the bottom of our heroes’ cupboards remained camp greatcoats, mugs, postcards, books not seized during searches. A knife gifted by criminals in Kolyma, a bra embroidered with a fish bone in a Kaluga prison. There are photographs and stories of these items here too.

We don’t want this book to become a chronicle of violence and suffering. We hope that from the stories of people will emerge the history of a time and generation, of people and their values, ideals, and relations with power. A history of love, friendship, and mutual aid where everything is aimed at destruction. An abnormal, often unbearable, but still life.

Anna Artemyeva, Elena Racheva

«Interview Hour» with the authors of the book “58th. Unseized”, journalists of «Novaya Gazeta» Elena Racheva and Anna Artemyeva

Parts one and two