| Edition |
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition. |
| Description |
xxxiv, 249 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Language |
In English, translated from Russian. |
| Note |
Translation of: Sibirskoĭ dal'neĭ storonoĭ. |
|
Original Russian language edition published in 2014. |
| Summary |
"Originally written in a couple of humble exercise books, which were anonymously donated to the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Moscow, this remarkable diary is one of the few first-person accounts to survive the sprawling Soviet prison system. At the back of these exercise books there is a blurred snapshot and a note, "Chistyakov, Ivan Petrovich, repressed in 1937-38. Killed at the front in Tula Province in 1941." This is all that remains of Ivan Chistyakov, a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp. Who was this lost man? How did he end up in the gulag? Though a guard, he is a type of prisoner, too. We learn that he is a cultured and urbane ex-city dweller with a secret nostalgia for pre-Revolutionary Russia. In this diary, Chistyakov does not just record his life in the camp, he narrates it. He is a sharp-eyed witness and a sympathetic, humane, and broken man. From stumblingly poetic musings on the bitter landscape of the taiga to matter-of-fact grumbles about the inefficiency of his stove, from accounts of the brutal conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is an astonishing record--a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia, and modern Europe"--Google Books. |
| Subject |
Chistyakov, Ivan -- Diaries.
|
|
Concentration camp guards -- Soviet Union -- Diaries.
|
|
Internment camps -- Soviet Union.
|
|
Political prisoners -- Soviet Union.
|
|
Soviet Union -- History -- 1925-1953.
|
|
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural Heritage.
|
|
HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union.
|
| Genre/Form |
Diaries.
|
| Added Author |
Tait, A. L., translator.
|
|
Shcherbakova, I. I. (Irina I.), writer of supplementary textual content.
|
| Added Title |
Sibirskoĭ dal'neĭ storonoĭ. English
|
| ISBN |
9781681774602 (hardcover) |
|
1681774607 (hardcover) |
|
