(1)
Strange is life, for as much as its misfortunes frighten you, as much as its kindness surprises you, you will find yourself in the midst of your horrors, driven to what you never thought of, and did not plan for, and what relieves you of your affliction.
(2)
The Russian Revolution takes place, and about 3 years later, the hero of our story, Anton Vladimirovich Antonov, is born in Moscow, specifically on February 23, 1920, into a family that believes in the revolution, and whose Lord was part of it.
This seems reassuring at first, for his father, an army officer, to join a revolutionary movement that was able to take power could be a shield to protect that family, but the winds do not always bring what ships desire.
The security men arrest him, charge him with terrorism and sabotage, he is given the choice between admitting that his father was indeed a criminal deserving of execution, or to refuse and bear the punishment, so Anton chooses the second solution, and a death sentence is issued, but his poor sharp eyesight makes the case seem too ridiculous The death sentence is commuted to prison.
The wind is already blowing in 1930, when the Soviet ruler Stalin decides to get rid of the old faces, which he considers a threat to him, and he embarks on a bloody purge within the ruling Communist Party to eliminate what he called the "Old Bolsheviks", including the comrade of the revolution Trotsky, and Anton's father, his supporter.
Anton's mother, who, as the wife of a senior officer in the Soviet army, knows very well the fate of those imprisoned in Stalin's prisons, is shocked by the surprise, so he commits suicide.
(3)
Poor Anton, he is going through the worst years of his life;
A young man with severe visual impairment, and needs someone to take care of him all the time, loses his mother at the age of sixteen, and his father is executed when he is eighteen.
Two years later, he finds himself part of the story. Stalin decided to expand the circle of revenge, to include the relatives of his comrades opponents, even if one of them was a young man who could hardly see.
The security men arrest him, charge him with terrorism and sabotage, he is given the choice between admitting that his father was already a criminal deserving of execution, or to refuse and bear the punishment, so Anton chooses the second solution, and a death sentence is issued, but his poor eyesight makes the case seem too ridiculous The death sentence is commuted to prison.
(4)
Our young friend finds himself in the prisons of Moscow, including Butryka Maximum Prison, and he has to spend many years in it. The days are difficult and painful. He discovers in himself a talent he did not realize that he possessed and did not know that it would be his companion until the end of life, and because of it he became one of the most important and trusted his country's history.
Anton falls in love with storytelling and narration, he seduces tales, and seduces others, and becomes a prison storyteller, weaving stories and tales and repeating them over and over. As it happened to others, but - ironically - his tales do not protect him from being stolen from time to time.
As much as his tales were enjoyable for others, as much as his psychological refuge was to feel alive and continuity. Every time Anton tells a new tale, he feels that he has overcome his weak eyesight once, on prison walls once, and on fear and loneliness over and over again.
He continues to do so throughout the years of his imprisonment until the story becomes a part of himself that he does not leave or neglect, just as she saved him from prison loneliness and alienation and from the harm of his criminals;
I saved him from burning his father's memory.
His years of imprisonment are over. Now is the time for his deportation to the forced labor camp known as the “Gulag” in Siberia. He is forced to work despite his severely poor eyesight. Years pass in which he loses his sight permanently, due to the cold weather and medical neglect, but his memory strengthens as he hoards memories, people and events. .
(5)
In 1953, Stalin dies, Anton is released from the gulag camps and becomes free for the first time after 13 years of imprisonment and blindness.
He spends some time in Russia, then heads to Georgia, and settles there, after which he decides to go on a journey documenting his father's story.
He begins by looking for someone to help him read and write, then he communicates with his relatives who have acquaintances in the Soviet party to start the documentation process, they send him documents and papers that no one had access to, and of course his position as a son of an old Bolshevik family was his help in this.
Anton begins to record the whole history as he lived it, and as witnessed and recorded by those who were part of it, it comes to the fact that someone leads him to some of the products that Stalin was making himself in his spare time, so that Anton turns with time from a mere researcher in the details of his father's life and vindicating his yard, to A historian tells the story of his country during the most cruel years in its history.
In 1960, Anton finishes his important book "The Age of Stalin", but the book - until 1970 - was not allowed to be published in the Soviet Union, but he succeeded in smuggling it out of Russia with his new friend on the quest to read and write to him, who He was a member of the anti-Stalin movement.
(6)
In 2001, Anton establishes a museum for the victims of the Gulag camps, who number in the millions, and becomes its first director. The museum carries inside it documentation of many victims and stories, and the blind young man becomes a documentation icon that tells the Russians years of their lives and their most difficult era.