The voices of the gulag (2/6)

Audio 48:30

Sound archives - European memories of the gulag.

© CNRS / RFI

By: Valérie Nivelon

52 mins

A look back at a little-known history, a history long obscured by the Cold War and the division of Europe into two blocs, that of the East and the West ... While the Allies celebrated the victory against the Nazis in 1945, the Stalin's Russia continued to deport hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to camps and villages in the gulag.

Europeans for whom Stalin is not a hero, but an executioner.

Europeans for whom the Soviet Union is not the liberating power, but the colonizing power. 

Publicity

From 1939 until the early 1950s, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian and Romanian families were torn from their homes and diverted from their destiny.

With the researchers Alain Blum and Marta Craveri, we undertook to research them, for five years, to record them and create the Sound Archives of the Gulag *.

Stories of survival and resistance to repression, cold and hunger, stories of young adults and children where the greatest sorrows are mixed, but also sometimes the greatest joys ... "A bitter school", according to one of the survivors Klara Hartman.

Episode 2: Facing the Witnesses

In this second episode, we come back to what our investigation has brought to the scientific knowledge of the gulag. From the knowledge of a Soviet history nourished by archives and literature to the human reality of relegation villages and its European dimension. The emotional shock of fieldwork for five with the witnesses ... the obvious themes and those that emerged. With the historian of the gulag Marta Craveri and the demographer of the USSR Alain Blum, we listen to "

The provocation of Adam Chwalinski

", "

The biases of Bogdan Klimtchak

", "

The fraternization of Siegfried Gottschalk

", "

The mine of Andrei Ozerovsky

","

The Exclusion of Yaroslav Pogarsky

", and"

Stella Kowacz's rags

”.

* Gulag sound archives

To read: 

Deported to the USSR.

Stories of Europeans at the Gulag

, by Valérie Nivelon, Alain Blum and Marta Craveri, Autrement editions, in partnership with RFI, CNRS and CERCEC).

“Deported to the USSR”, directed by Alain Blum, Marta Craveri and Valérie Nivelon.

In partnership with RFI, CNRS and CERCEC.

© Éditions Autrement

This documentary series is produced within the framework of the project "SOUND ARCHIVES-EUROPEAN MEMORIES OF THE GOULAG © CNRS / RFI":

 The sound archives of the gulag are the result of an unprecedented investigation, carried out by a team of 13 researchers from eight different nationalities , coordinated by CERCEC (Center for Russian, Caucasian and Central European World Studies, CNRS / EHESS) in collaboration with RFI. More than 160 testimonies, or 300 hours of sound in 11 languages, were collected in Central and Eastern Europe, also in Kazakhstan and in Siberia, between 2008 and 2010. These archives were born from the common will of Alain Blum, Marta Craveri , both researchers at CERCEC and Valérie Nivelon, journalist and producer at RFI to allow European survivors of the Soviet repression to testify.

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