They are all that remains of Ivan Chistyakov, a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp (Bamlag) and a cultured and urbane ex-city dweller with a secret nostalgia for pre- Revolutionary Russia. Chistyakov does not just record his life in the camp, but narrates it; he is a sharp-eyed witness and a sympathetic, humane and broken man. From stumblingly poetic musings on the bitter landscape of the taiga to matter-of-fact grumbles about the inefficiency of his stove, from accounts of the brutal conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is an astonishing record - a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia, and modern Europe.
Hardback
Publication Date: 01/12/2016
This is a rare first-person testimony of the hardships of a Soviet labour camp, written up in a couple of exercise books which were anonymously donated to the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Moscow. At the back of the books there is a blurred snapshot and a note, 'Chistyakov, Ivan Petrovich, repressed in 1937-38. Killed at the front in Tula Province in 1941'.
They are all that remains of Ivan Chistyakov, a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp (Bamlag) and a cultured and urbane ex-city dweller with a secret nostalgia for pre- Revolutionary Russia. Chistyakov does not just record his life in the camp, but narrates it; he is a sharp-eyed witness and a sympathetic, humane and broken man. From stumblingly poetic musings on the bitter landscape of the taiga to matter-of-fact grumbles about the inefficiency of his stove, from accounts of the brutal conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is an astonishing record - a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia, and modern Europe.
They are all that remains of Ivan Chistyakov, a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp (Bamlag) and a cultured and urbane ex-city dweller with a secret nostalgia for pre- Revolutionary Russia. Chistyakov does not just record his life in the camp, but narrates it; he is a sharp-eyed witness and a sympathetic, humane and broken man. From stumblingly poetic musings on the bitter landscape of the taiga to matter-of-fact grumbles about the inefficiency of his stove, from accounts of the brutal conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is an astonishing record - a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia, and modern Europe.
- ISBN:
- 9781783782567
- 9781783782567
- Category:
- Diaries
- Format:
- Hardback
- Publication Date:
- 01-12-2016
- Publisher:
- Granta Books
- Country of origin:
- United Kingdom
- Pages:
- 288
- Dimensions (mm):
- 224x146x25mm
- Weight:
- 0.37kg
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