Ina Bertulytė Bray

The Siberian Experience Televised

Ina Bertulytė Bray is a current member of the Board of Directors of the Lithuanian American Community Inc.

During March and April of this year, a number of Public Broadcasting television stations in various regions of the U.S. aired the profoundly moving documentary, "Stolen Years." We in the Seattle/Puget Sound area were among the fortunate to see it -- thanks to public pressure.

In this documentary, eleven survivors of the Arctic Soviet Gulags, mostly Russian, but also Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Austrian, relive those years of banishment to that physically and morally dehumanizing hell. Robert Conquest, the well-known historian and author, currently the senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, provides the historic background. We briefly see Joseph Stalin, smiling to his minions parading before him. And then, we the viewers, descend into the stories that we have heard repeated since childhood; stories whose genesis has forever changed the lives of so many of us.

We enter into the memories of the aging men and women on the screen as they return to their youth "stolen" from them by their brutal arrests and incarcerations. We experience along with them their nightmarish transports to their final destinations and their unbearable existence in the frozen hell, where a chunk of bread becomes currency, where the depth of human depravity has no bounds, where each day survived becomes a miracle.

It will be difficult to forget the recounting of the brutality of the male criminal prisoners towards the female political prisoners on that final boat voyage across the Sea of Okhotsk to Magadan. In the extant literature on the Gulags, rape is rarely alluded to. These incredible women give proof of its vicious existence. Photographed from helicopters, stark images of crumbling gold, uranium, or tin mines in the permafrost region of Kolyma provide some backdrops.

The visual images that most powerfully echo the memories of the survivors, however, are Nicolai Gutman's renditions on canvas. Mr. Gutman is one of the survivors featured in the documentary. After his release from the Gulag in 1954, for more than forty years, Mr. Gutman's paint brushes secretly recorded what he had witnessed and experienced during his imprisonment -- a feat, which if discovered, quite easily could have meant a return to Siberia or worse. Considering that the Soviet regime had made every possible effort to suppress any record or even recollection of the Gulags, this visual legacy and its partial inclusion in "Stolen Years", is truly invaluable. (The collection of 50 of Gutman’s paintings can be seen at<www.jamestown.org/htm/gulag-ltr.htm>.)

In the Seattle area, the University of Washington was the first to preview this documentary for the general public. Major credit for the televised airing in this region and organizing the preview activities at the University goes to the Center for Civil Society International and its director, Holt Ruffin, a long-time friend and supporter of Baltic causes. Additional sponsors of the University event were the Jackson School of International Studies of the U. of W., the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the U. of W.

A reception before the preview attracted an impressively broad segment of the Seattle community who had professional or emotional interests in Eastern Europe. Our Baltic community representatives were included. Mr. Ruffin, as well as the University, considered the presentation of this documentary of such significance, that all three individuals responsible for the production of the film, director Bruce Young, producer Jennifer Law Young, and script writer Vladimir Klimenko, and one of the survivors featured in the documentary, Semyon Vilenski, were flown here from various parts of the globe, specifically for the evening.

The lively interaction among the guests in the reception hall had a counterbalance. However, a photographic exhibit on the walls enveloped us: graphically depicting what we were about to see on the screen. The viewing of the documentary, which followed, was open to the public, and although it was mid-week, the auditorium of the University's Henry Art Gallery was packed, and people had to be turned away.

The film lasted an hour and stunned the audience. The almost grotesque subject matter, contrasted with the simplicity, dignity, and straightforwardness of its presentation, visibly moved the viewers. Following the showing, members of the panel engaged the audience in what became an emotion-filled dialogue.

Holt Ruffin, Professor Herbert Ellison, and world renowned specialist on Soviet history, Semyon Vilenski (the just seen survivor), and the originators of the film -- Bruce Young, Jennifer Law Young, and Vladimir Klimenko, and Vlad Raskin of the Jackson School, all spoke, reacted, amplified, explained, and reminisced, providing a poignant dimension.

For us Lithuanians, a high point came when a member of the audience, Vytautas Svagzdys, himself and his wife survivors of the Gulags of Norilsk, stood up and with breaking voice expressed gratitude to all responsible for this film and for its presentation. For this was his story as well, he said, his and that of millions who never came back. Perhaps Vytautas Svagzdys reaffirmed what on the screen the survivors had alluded to or stated in various ways: their mission in their remaining years is not to let the horrors of the Gulags or their victims be forgotten. The documentary "Stolen Years" is a fitting memorial to those victims.

For decades, the Western press, the media, and the filmmakers only gingerly touched upon Soviet participation in World War II and the aftermath that raged in the USSR. Western governments, in the interests of "détente", officially ignored the Gulags. Academics, claiming objectivity or neutrality, frequently accepted the Soviet line of the non-existence of the Gulags. To this day, any coverage of this holocaust in Siberia remains scant. When the makers of this film approached funding sources expecting to hear that they are competing with a long line of others interested in this subject, they were surprised that they stood alone!

At the time of this writing (mid-May), Public Broadcasting Stations in a number of areas of the United States have not yet aired "Stolen Years" and in all likelihood will not do so unless they feel public pressure from their viewers. Fortunately, in Los Angeles, the Sacramento area, possibly Cleveland, and other cities, as well as in Canada and Australia, Lithuanians as well as Hungarians and perhaps others, are already making such efforts.

The video "Stolen Years" is available for purchase from:

The Blackwell Corp.
1000 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22209
tel. 703 524-2300

The price is $39.95 including shipping and handling; MasterCard and VISA accepted. (It does not exist in PAL format)

The companion volume to the documentary is just appearing in major bookstores. The price is $29.95 but <www.Amazon.com> and <www.Barnesandnoble.com> offers a 30% discount.

The makers of the film, Bruce Young, the director; Jennifer Law Young, the producer; and Vladimir Klimenko, the scriptwriter, have given us back our story. Now it is our task to promote "Stolen Years." It must be aired wherever the English language is spoken; we must inform the public of its existence; and we must get the video and its companion volume into libraries. After fifty years of virtual silence, the window to the holocaust in the Siberian Gulags is finally coming ajar.

Ina Bertulytė Bray