The march of the world
The voices of the gulag (5/6)
Audio 48:30
Joseph Stalin, March 8, 1953, in Moscow.
AFP/Archives
By: Valerie Nivelon
2 mins
A look back at a little-known story, a story long overshadowed by the Cold War and the division of Europe into two blocks, that of East and West... While the Allies were celebrating the victory against the Nazis in 1945, the Stalin's Russia continued to deport hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to gulag camps and villages.
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.
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From 1939 until the beginning of the 1950s, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian and Romanian families were uprooted 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 Klara Hartman survivors.
Episode 5: The Death of Stalin
It was on the night of March 5 to 6, 1953 that Stalin's death was announced on Radio Moscow.
When the news falls at two o'clock in the morning, it is picked up by all the international media.
In the eyes of the world, it is the winner of the Second World War who disappears while 200 million Soviets find themselves orphans of their little father of the peoples.
But in this concert of praise, a few dissonant notes rise timidly, in the confines of Siberia and Kazakhstan, those of the families deported to the gulag.
How did they learn of Stalin's death, how did they react, what hope did the dictator's disappearance arouse in them… so many questions to which our archives provide new answers.
* Gulag sound archives
This documentary series is produced as part of the project "EUROPEAN SOUND ARCHIVES-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 of eight different nationalities , coordinated by CERCEC (Centre for the Study of the Russian, Caucasian and Central European Worlds, 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 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 Soviet repression to testify.
To read :
- Deported to the USSR. Stories of Europeans in the gulag
, by Valérie Nivelon, Alain Blum and Marta Craveri, published by Otherwise, 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.
© Otherwise Editions
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