We are the authors of the book Article 58: Witnesses. For it, we gathered about 60 interviews with both survivors and perpetrators of Soviet GULAG. We met the last witnesses of the most frightening Stalin’s times. They all were imprisoned under the 58th paragraph of the Soviet criminal code (“Anti-Soviet Propaganda) in the 1930-1950s (or started working with political prisoners in the same decades) and were scattered across the Soviet empire from Lithuania to Kolyma. Most of the heroes of our books never told their stories to anyone before. We were lucky enough to gain their trust, and to gather the final revelations of the hunting past and the generation which has already gone.
We started our project in the 2010s. We thought we were studying the distant past but while we were conducting interviews about state repressions, violence and the dissidents with our informants, the same type of violence started to emerge in our everyday reality. In Russia, the peaceful assembly started to be restricted, protesters – to be beaten and arrested. Hundreds of religious people were persecuted for their faith; people from the LGBT community could not identify themselves publicly anymore; human rights defenders became targeted via the laws on “foreign agents”, exactly as our respondents; tortures stepped out the pages of books about GULAG and became pervasive. Soon, we realized that we were writing the book not about the past but also the present.
We have watched four first episodes of the ECG Productions project GULAG. Witnesses with great excitement and joy, and tremendous respect towards their authors. While shooting the series, their director asked us all tiny details connected with the heroes of the episodes (our respondents). How they spoke, moved, cried; how their apartments and outfits looked like, how their relatives treated them. The film crew managed to recreate, carefully and cautiously, both characters of people whom we talked to and the spirit of Soviet everyday life. We were thrilled by the way how our respondents (most of whom have already passed away) came alive in the monologues of the great actors, found by the series authors, and how the atmosphere of GULAG was visualized in episodes’ stenography.
We are very interested in the continuation of the project and are sure that new episodes of it would be not only equally brilliantly made but also very important for the wide Russian-speaking audience.
In contemporary Russia, the discussions about the Soviet repressions are more important than ever. The figure of Joseph Stalin is gaining more and more support; his monuments have been erected in many Russian towns. According to opinion polls, more than half of the Russian population (56%) think that Joseph Stalin was “a great leader”. Forced labour is discussed in terms of its effectiveness, and not human rights, the prisoners of the GULAG are almost forgotten. In July 2021, Russian officials proposed the creation of labour camps where prisoners would be forced to work and benefit the economy. In particular, it was proposed to use the prisoners in the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, which the GULAG prisoners began to build in the 1930s. Thus, the government actually offered to revive the GULAG.
Unfortunately, there are very few mass media and non-governmental organizations fighting with the Russian state for the return of the historical truth. A project similar to GULAG. Witnesses hardly could be made by Russian media (due to censorship in governmental ones and lack of finding in independent ones), so its appearance is very timely and important for Russia, and will allow talking about controversial things with a wide audience. We believe that the series could become a powerful statement for Russia, made in Russian cultural tradition.
We also feel confident that the project will get a lot of attention from both critics and viewers, and know that several independent media are already keen to organize the viewings.
However, we are also sure that the project GULAG. Witnesses will be interesting for foreign viewers also. Our book Article 58 have been already published in Ukrainian and Polish; French, British and German editions are forthcoming in print. The first episodes of the project appeal to universal human experience and explore topics of trauma, human independents, resilience, and courage.
Also, we would be more than happy if the series is made in Canada which for many years provides safety, freedom and the hope for a better life for those who are haunted in their home countries, including the former USSR.
Anna Artemyeva,
photojournalist
Elena Racheva,
Oxford University PhD student,
Novaya Gazeta special correspondent
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