Stalinist Cruelty and Absurdity ---- The cover: a black and white photo,
a wooden door that opens onto nothing, a land without relief as far asthe eye can see. A photo that takes on meaning when reading the title of
the book by Alain Blum and Emilia Koustova, Deported for Eternity,
Surviving Stalinist Exile, 1939-1991, published by EHESS in 2024. The
power of the image is reinforced by this quote from Naum Kleiman, a
filmmaker whose grandparents were deported in 1941: "He didn't say we
were exiled for life. He said we were exiled for eternity. They think
they control eternity." All the coldness, the inhumanity of Stalinism in
this quote. "This book is the fruit of a long work that began as part of
a collective project to collect interviews with former deportees sent by
Stalin to the Siberian depths, between 1940 and 1952. This research
program was interested in the fate of people who lived in the western
regions of the USSR and in the countries that entered the Soviet orbit
after the Second World War." They came from Ukraine and Lithuania.
What to call them? Deportees, exiles, special displaced persons, work
settlers, expellees? The difficulty of finding the right term also shows
the Soviet authorities' desire not to see them. They are in "eternity".
More than 400,000 people from these countries are arbitrarily displaced.
The travel conditions are appalling and many of them die on the way. The
living conditions are just as bad: extreme cold, lack of wood, food,
clothing. Of the 7,232 Lithuanians deported to Altai in the summer of
1941, half died during the winter and only 1,157 returned to their
country. The men were sent to the gulag, the women and children were
grouped in sovkhozes near the border between Mongolia and China, others
assigned to fishing further north, without equipment or training. Death
on a daily basis. "The result is a combination of extreme cruelty and
absurdity that characterizes so many Stalinist concentration camp
experiments and that does not escape their witnesses and victims." The
letters of request are eloquent, even reports from the administration
emphasize the impossibility of securing any work.
Repression in a system
Forced displacement is used as a means of repression, against Jews,
opponents, kulaks and all those who had a nationalist fiber in countries
conquered in the war, whose minds and lands had to be "Sovietized". Be
careful, repression does not date from Stalin, it began at the beginning
of the Revolution (see La Terreur sous Lénine by Jacques Baynac reissued
by L'Echappée in 2024) but it reached almost industrial proportions from
1939. Let us recall that Khrushchev was responsible for it in Ukraine
and Suslov in Lithuania. Of course, other people were victims of these
practices, Koreans, Iranians, Finns, Poles, all those whom the Soviet
regime distrusted. It was necessary to increase the labor force, to move
the populations from the West to the East where the mines and raw
materials are.
How to return?
The pages of this book are based on testimonies and photos.
Surprisingly, in the occupied territories in Ukraine for example,
partisans can live in semi-clandestinity particularly in the forests, in
the rural sector with old solidarity. Of course the denunciations exist
and many deportees, returning home, found nothing, their goods had been
plundered. The adaptation of individuals to the Siberian environment is
admirable especially in terms of climate, the solidarity in the host
villages is to be noted. The cultures of origin also allow to maintain
the link by the dances, the languages. The organization of the places,
the permanent surveillance, the officially denied discrimination appear
in the letters reproduced.
And after this sinister period, what to do? How to return home? What
home for these children born in Siberia, nicknamed the children of ice?
The de-Stalinization of minds was slow in the administration and many
local hierarchs were worried about the arrival of the victims. The
bureaucracy therefore acted slowly and with distrust. Such a long wait
for such a difficult return as the authors point out. Some do not have
the resources to return, the confrontation in the villages of origin is
sometimes difficult. How to erase the past? Discrimination is a reality
even for children.
According to Alain Blum and Emilia Koustova, there is a particular need
today for Europe and Russia to "look at and write critically about its
past, without hiding the darkest pages and by asking the question of
responsibility for the violence perpetrated by its State".
* Alain Blum and Emilia Koustova
Déportés pour l'éternité, Survivre à l'exil stalinien, 1939-1991
Ed. EHESS, 2024
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=7945
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