Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny, a thrilling story of an escape from Stalin's GULAG.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
In my last post (Slavery 2) I argued that the emergence of slavery was the first Great Fall of humankind.
Many slave systems in different parts of the world are well known to the broad public. Most North Americans, hearing the word “slavery”, will immediately recollect early modern slave plantations in both Americas. Those who know world history can also recollect ancient slavery in construction of the Egyptian pyramids (though as recent archeological data show the issue is not straightforward and that pyramids might be built not by slaves but by free professional craftsmen), ancient Greek silver mines, Roman stone quarries, and chained rowers on ancient, medieval or early modern galleys.
People today, when they read about slavery, can’t understand how anyone could do such a gruesome thing to their fellow human beings. To understand how they could, one must know that the notion that every human in the world is a “fellow human being” became the rule only well into the modern age. It was first clearly formulated only in the 18th century Enlightenment. Before that, everybody divided other people into “us” and “them”. Many people still do. From this point of view, a person is a fellow human being only if they are one of “us”. A person who is one of “them” is not quite a fellow human being, but something less. So the norms of behaviour towards a fellow human being fully apply only to those who are one of “us”, while the norms of behaviour towards those who are one of “them” vary with the circumstances: from neighbourly coexistence to fighting in war to treating them like domestic cattle or hunted wild animals.
For a kin-based or tribe-based traditional culture, the division between “us” and “them” is based primarily along kin or tribe lines: to be one of “us”, one must be a relative in the clan or a fellow tribesman, or possibly a member of another tribe related by blood or marriage. Any other human is one of “them”, with lesser status and weaker protection by one’s norms of behaviour. Later, the division between “us” and “them” is based upon ethnic divisions, borders between states, or religious divisions, such as that between Christians and heathens or between Muslims and infidels. For example, in the Middle Ages the Roman papacy explicitly banned enslavement of fellow-Christians and from the time of prophet Muhammad Islamic law similarly banned enslavement of Muslims. From then on, both Christians and Muslims generally enslaved only people of a different faith. Crusaders enslaved captive Muslim Moors, and German knights during their conquest of Slavic and Baltic lands enslaved pagan Slavs and Balts. In fact the word “slave” comes from the French word “Esclaves” (“Slavs”), used as a generic term for ethnic Slavs and Balts who were sold en masse in the late 12th and 13th centuries on European slave-markets. From the 16th century on, Europeans with colonies in the New World viewed “uncivilized” natives, whether Black or Indian, as “lawful” human material for enslavement, especially for use as plantation farm hands.
Only after the European Enlightenment of the 18th century did the most enlightened educated people in Europe and its colonies finally come to the conclusion that keeping fellow human beings of any nationality, race, religion or education in slavery or bondage was abnormal and immoral in principle. Only then did anti-slavery (abolishinism) movements begin. And only well into the 19th century did the anti-slavery movement gain enough momentum to bring about the abolition of slavery by the major European and American powers: 1833 in the British Empire, 1848 in the French colonies, 1865 in the whole United States. By the end of the 19th century slavery became practically extinct throughout Europe and the Americas.
However, it was resurrected later in the 20th century in the form of the Soviet GULAG, Nazi concentration camps, Japanese slave-labour camps and similar systems in totalitarian regimes of one stripe or another.
Though banned throughout the world, this scourge of history is far from extinct. Slavery still exists in many parts of Africa (e.g. Sudan and Mauritania) and Asia (e.g. Burma and parts of Pakistan). It also exists in Russia, in the northern Caucasus, but also in many northern and central regions. Perhaps half of these modern-age Russian slaves are self-enslaved homeless people. Others are illegal migrants and street children, captured by modern slave-traders, who are often police officers. Still others are conscripts in the armed forces, sold into slavery by their commanding officers. Surviving communist regimes like China, Vietnam and especially North Korea still run labour camps. In Russia there is yet another incarnation of slavery; conscript soldiers are reduced to a kind of temporary slavery. Not only are they denied (like any conscript) the right to choose their occupation and place of living during their service, but they are not paid, are rarely if at all allowed leave, usually combine military drill with mandatory labour are perpetually overworked, and are subjected, especially in the first months of their service, to constant physical and moral abuse, which leads many of them to suicide .
Thus slavery, like war and famine, has not yet become history, but remains a problem for humankind today.
Showing posts with label "Against Destiny". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Against Destiny". Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Slavery 2 // The first great fall of humanity
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
In my previous post (Slavery 1), I explained how slavery emerged among human beings as a byproduct of the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies.
Some historians regard the emergence of slavery as progress. In hunter-gatherer societies, some point out, captives in inter-tribal wars were killed and eaten. In agricultural societies, captives were no longer exterminated but were spared–albeit to spend the rest of their lives in slavery.
I can’t agree.
First, slavery was normally so hard and brought so much pain, physical and emotional, and so often ended in violent death by the master’s whim, that quick death could be better–unless the slave had a chance to regain freedom by escape or manumission.
Second, before slavery wars between tribes and clans were quite rare. They were mainly due to blood revenge for a murdered fellow-tribesman or tribeswoman or to rivalry over contested hunting or gathering grounds–the latter especially in periods of scarcity. For decades and centuries, when neither blood revenge nor territorial disputes arose, peace was the norm of life. Probably everyone would agree with me that it would be much better if it had remained the norm of life throughout pre-modern times. Alas, when slavery emerged as a byproduct of the shift to agriculture, very soon there emerged slave markets, at which the captor of a slave was at any time able to sell his living booty for a certain price. Sometimes the price was higher, sometimes lower, but there was hardly a day throughout these many thousands of years when an able-bodied slave of either sex would not attract a buyer ready to pay a market price.
Not surprisingly, the frequency of wars as a result increased ten if not a hundred times. From then on wars between tribes, and later states, became pretty regular events throughout history. Probably in primitive societies before the emergence of slavery a whole century without any war was quite normal, though one certainly cannot say so for sure, considering the absence of written historical sources. In contrast, if you take the history of any nation at any time in the historical period, a century without any war, large or small, would be quite rare, at least in pre-modern and early modern periods. Even in times of peace, almost any person could be kidnapped and sold into slavery by raiders, pirates or random seekers of quick profit. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Plato was captured and sold into slavery, and had to be ransomed by his friend. Thus travelling alone or in a small unarmed group became dangerous. Thus in one Russian historical novel the main character, an ancient Phoenician teenager, when about to embark on a sea voyage into far-away lands, is warned by his mother: “Especially beware of those merchants who trade in human beings.”
Third, the emergence of torture and barbarous executions on a large scale was probably due to the emergence of slavery–a point that to my knowledge no historian or ethnographer has ever made. Not that tortures and barbarous executions were unknown before. But in primitive societies, as ethnographic evidence shows, even an ordinary death penalty was quite rare. Among ancient Slavs, Germanic tribes, most pre-contact American Indians and Siberian aboriginals alike, the normal punishment for murder, even of a fellow-tribesman or tribeswoman, was life-long exile from the clan or tribe. Probably a tribal council would impose the death penalty only for treason, sacrilege or murder of a revered clan member such as a clan elder. If so, executions would be rare.
As for torture, in pre-agricultural times when wars and murders were rare, there were few situations when there was a need to extract some information or confession from somebody or to punish somebody severely. This situation too evidently changed with the emergence of slavery. Most captives understandably resented their enslavement, and their owner could expect from them some form of resistance: escape, murder of the owner or his overseer, even rebellion. To discourage them from such resistance, the threat of a really brutal punishment was necessary. Further, the numerous wars brought about the torture of captives as means of extracting strategically valuable information. And from those prehistoric times until well into the modern period, human societies manifested extreme brutality towards their fellow humans.
All this shows that the emergence of slavery was indeed the first Great Fall of humankind, to use the Biblical term. As a result of the emergence of slavery, the famous Roman saying Homo homini lupus est (A human is a wolf to a human) became the norm for most of humankind for many thousand years to come.
In my next post (Slavery 3) I will talk about the evolution of slavery in pre-modern and modern times and the growing opposition to slavery that eventually resulted in its abolition.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
In my previous post (Slavery 1), I explained how slavery emerged among human beings as a byproduct of the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies.
Some historians regard the emergence of slavery as progress. In hunter-gatherer societies, some point out, captives in inter-tribal wars were killed and eaten. In agricultural societies, captives were no longer exterminated but were spared–albeit to spend the rest of their lives in slavery.
I can’t agree.
First, slavery was normally so hard and brought so much pain, physical and emotional, and so often ended in violent death by the master’s whim, that quick death could be better–unless the slave had a chance to regain freedom by escape or manumission.
Second, before slavery wars between tribes and clans were quite rare. They were mainly due to blood revenge for a murdered fellow-tribesman or tribeswoman or to rivalry over contested hunting or gathering grounds–the latter especially in periods of scarcity. For decades and centuries, when neither blood revenge nor territorial disputes arose, peace was the norm of life. Probably everyone would agree with me that it would be much better if it had remained the norm of life throughout pre-modern times. Alas, when slavery emerged as a byproduct of the shift to agriculture, very soon there emerged slave markets, at which the captor of a slave was at any time able to sell his living booty for a certain price. Sometimes the price was higher, sometimes lower, but there was hardly a day throughout these many thousands of years when an able-bodied slave of either sex would not attract a buyer ready to pay a market price.
Not surprisingly, the frequency of wars as a result increased ten if not a hundred times. From then on wars between tribes, and later states, became pretty regular events throughout history. Probably in primitive societies before the emergence of slavery a whole century without any war was quite normal, though one certainly cannot say so for sure, considering the absence of written historical sources. In contrast, if you take the history of any nation at any time in the historical period, a century without any war, large or small, would be quite rare, at least in pre-modern and early modern periods. Even in times of peace, almost any person could be kidnapped and sold into slavery by raiders, pirates or random seekers of quick profit. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Plato was captured and sold into slavery, and had to be ransomed by his friend. Thus travelling alone or in a small unarmed group became dangerous. Thus in one Russian historical novel the main character, an ancient Phoenician teenager, when about to embark on a sea voyage into far-away lands, is warned by his mother: “Especially beware of those merchants who trade in human beings.”
Third, the emergence of torture and barbarous executions on a large scale was probably due to the emergence of slavery–a point that to my knowledge no historian or ethnographer has ever made. Not that tortures and barbarous executions were unknown before. But in primitive societies, as ethnographic evidence shows, even an ordinary death penalty was quite rare. Among ancient Slavs, Germanic tribes, most pre-contact American Indians and Siberian aboriginals alike, the normal punishment for murder, even of a fellow-tribesman or tribeswoman, was life-long exile from the clan or tribe. Probably a tribal council would impose the death penalty only for treason, sacrilege or murder of a revered clan member such as a clan elder. If so, executions would be rare.
As for torture, in pre-agricultural times when wars and murders were rare, there were few situations when there was a need to extract some information or confession from somebody or to punish somebody severely. This situation too evidently changed with the emergence of slavery. Most captives understandably resented their enslavement, and their owner could expect from them some form of resistance: escape, murder of the owner or his overseer, even rebellion. To discourage them from such resistance, the threat of a really brutal punishment was necessary. Further, the numerous wars brought about the torture of captives as means of extracting strategically valuable information. And from those prehistoric times until well into the modern period, human societies manifested extreme brutality towards their fellow humans.
All this shows that the emergence of slavery was indeed the first Great Fall of humankind, to use the Biblical term. As a result of the emergence of slavery, the famous Roman saying Homo homini lupus est (A human is a wolf to a human) became the norm for most of humankind for many thousand years to come.
In my next post (Slavery 3) I will talk about the evolution of slavery in pre-modern and modern times and the growing opposition to slavery that eventually resulted in its abolition.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Slavery 1 // Q: What brought slavery to humanity? A: Agriculture
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
I have been reading about slavery as part of the research for my second novel.
A slave is the property of another human or group of humans, on the same level as an inanimate object or a domestic animal. A slave’s owner can use the slave for any work; sell the slave; take sexual advantage; or even kill, torture or abuse the slave.
The slave on the other hand can’t choose where to live or what work to do; has no right to any property without permission from the master; cannot enter into trade, business or marital relations without the master’s permission; can travel only with permission; and depends for very survival on the master’s good will and the slave’s value as property
Just imagining oneself as a slave would make most people today tremble. Yet this status was the fate of many millions of our fellow human beings throughout pre-modern and early modern history. In fact, almost all the nations of the world experienced slavery. Even today, although it is banned almost throughout the world, it is far from extinct.
Slavery emerged long ago, in prehistoric times, before humans developed writing. Without written documentation, we will never know exactly when and where slavery first emerged, and who was the world’s first slave and who the first slave-owner. However, both the approximate time and the historical conditions of the emergence of slavery are clear from archaeological evidence.
In early prehistoric times, when most tools, implements and weapons were made of stone and bone, and the people still lived exclusively by hunting, fishing and gathering edible plants, there was no slavery, at least on a large scale. The main reason was that in such societies it was impractical. The primary goal of enslavement is taking advantage of the slave’s labour. It’s pretty risky to send a slave to gather edible plants in deep woods where the slave can escape, let alone send one to hunt with a weapon that the slave could use against the master. Theoretically, one can imagine such a hunter-gatherer society using slave labour for tending skins, processing the spoils of hunting and fishing, working with firewood, or cleaning the master’s dwelling. But that would mean that the tribal community would have to feed such a slave from the spoils of the free tribesmen’s labours, which in most cases were barely enough for their own and their children’s subsistence. So, not surprisingly, people in hunter-gatherer societies did not practice slavery. In particular, they did not make slaves of enemies captured in war. Wars did occasionally break out between hunter-gatherer communities, mainly as blood revenge for a murdered fellow-tribesman or to resolve a dispute over hunting-grounds. But the captives were usually not taken as slaves. Instead, they were killed and eaten.
The situation changed drastically with the emergence of agriculture (“civilization”). Unlike hunting and gathering, agriculture provides ample opportunities for use of forced labour, in terms of both the nature of the work and the creation of a surplus. We know from archaeological evidence of differences in modes of burial that slavery first emerged with agriculture
In intertribal armed conflicts, captives were brought to the victorious community and enslaved, enemy warriors and women and children alike.
In my next post (Slavery 2), I will show how the emergence of slavery had such disastrous consequences that it can rightly be called the first great fall of humankind.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
I have been reading about slavery as part of the research for my second novel.
A slave is the property of another human or group of humans, on the same level as an inanimate object or a domestic animal. A slave’s owner can use the slave for any work; sell the slave; take sexual advantage; or even kill, torture or abuse the slave.
The slave on the other hand can’t choose where to live or what work to do; has no right to any property without permission from the master; cannot enter into trade, business or marital relations without the master’s permission; can travel only with permission; and depends for very survival on the master’s good will and the slave’s value as property
Just imagining oneself as a slave would make most people today tremble. Yet this status was the fate of many millions of our fellow human beings throughout pre-modern and early modern history. In fact, almost all the nations of the world experienced slavery. Even today, although it is banned almost throughout the world, it is far from extinct.
Slavery emerged long ago, in prehistoric times, before humans developed writing. Without written documentation, we will never know exactly when and where slavery first emerged, and who was the world’s first slave and who the first slave-owner. However, both the approximate time and the historical conditions of the emergence of slavery are clear from archaeological evidence.
In early prehistoric times, when most tools, implements and weapons were made of stone and bone, and the people still lived exclusively by hunting, fishing and gathering edible plants, there was no slavery, at least on a large scale. The main reason was that in such societies it was impractical. The primary goal of enslavement is taking advantage of the slave’s labour. It’s pretty risky to send a slave to gather edible plants in deep woods where the slave can escape, let alone send one to hunt with a weapon that the slave could use against the master. Theoretically, one can imagine such a hunter-gatherer society using slave labour for tending skins, processing the spoils of hunting and fishing, working with firewood, or cleaning the master’s dwelling. But that would mean that the tribal community would have to feed such a slave from the spoils of the free tribesmen’s labours, which in most cases were barely enough for their own and their children’s subsistence. So, not surprisingly, people in hunter-gatherer societies did not practice slavery. In particular, they did not make slaves of enemies captured in war. Wars did occasionally break out between hunter-gatherer communities, mainly as blood revenge for a murdered fellow-tribesman or to resolve a dispute over hunting-grounds. But the captives were usually not taken as slaves. Instead, they were killed and eaten.
The situation changed drastically with the emergence of agriculture (“civilization”). Unlike hunting and gathering, agriculture provides ample opportunities for use of forced labour, in terms of both the nature of the work and the creation of a surplus. We know from archaeological evidence of differences in modes of burial that slavery first emerged with agriculture
In intertribal armed conflicts, captives were brought to the victorious community and enslaved, enemy warriors and women and children alike.
In my next post (Slavery 2), I will show how the emergence of slavery had such disastrous consequences that it can rightly be called the first great fall of humankind.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Versailles: The Peace Treaty that Caused a World War
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Not long ago I watched the film “Paris 1919", which depicts quite vividly the process of creating the Versailles Peace Treaty. The events are shown (partly as documentaries, partly as a movie recreation) through the eyes of Canadian diplomat Harold Nicolson, who was attached to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. The conference was to define the conditions of the peace treaty and the fate of post-war Germany. The three major players in the negotiations - British Prime Minister Lloyd George, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, and US President Woodrow Wilson - all blamed Germany for starting the war and for the devastation it caused.
The three allies actually had quite different agendas in these peace negotiations. The British wanted to eliminate Germany’s economic and naval power–well, it’s good to get rid of one’s major competitor. The French, obsessed with revenge and fear going back to their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, wanted to reduce Germany to economic and military non-existence, so that it never became strong again. As for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (Oh! This American idealism!), he just wanted to create a League of Nations, an international body that would ensure that a conflict like World War I would never happen again. But to achieve this goal he needed the support of the British and the French, so he had to compromise and placate his allies in all the absurdity of their outrageous demands. The only sane voice on how much Germany should pay in reparations belonged to John Maynard Keynes , a British economist, who calculated the amount of reparations it could afford to pay–but who listens to the sanity of a normal professional in the face of “high” geopolitical ambitions?
The film is emotionally and rationally difficult to watch, especially from the present-day perspective, when we know how post-treaty events developed. With some kind of malicious satisfaction I learned that all three leaders were “punished “ by history - none of them had a political future. But the world suffered terribly from their short-sightedness (not to say stupidity).
As we know, the Versailles Peace Treaty, whose 90th anniversary was marked last summer, officially ended World War I. Although Allied war propaganda described the “Great War” as “the war to end all wars”, it was only 20 years later that World War II broke out. The harsh terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were ultimately responsible for this, the most devastating war in human history.
Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, the “war guilt” clause, proclaimed Germany solely responsible for the start of the war and therefore solely accountable for all the losses and damages. The western Allies were determined to make Germany weak, not only militarily, but also economically, which they perceived as the best guarantee against future German aggression. The vanquished Germany was deprived of all her overseas colonies and of many territories in Europe. Its military size was severely restricted: a regular army of no more than 100,000 men and a navy of no more than six cruisers, six destroyers and 12 torpedo boats. These conditions were humiliating for a nation used to great power status. However, to my mind it was not these military restrictions, or at least not only they, that prepared such fertile ground for the resurgence of extreme nationalism.
Far more pressing, and unbearable to the average German, were the severe reparation payments imposed by the victorious Allies. The treaty initially required total payments of 269 billion gold marks, equivalent to about 400 billion US dollars today. Though the sum was reduced later to 132 billion marks, it still remained an overwhelming burden on the German people. They paid most of it in the form of heavy surplus taxes, and the rest in the form of coal, steel, agricultural products and even intellectual property (such as the trademark for Aspirin). Thus the nation lost the vast profits it could otherwise have made from exports of these trade items, and it paid higher prices for them on the internal market. This economic squeeze inevitably impoverished the mass of the German people. It brought hyperinflation in the early 1920s and a severe economic crisis during the Great Depression. It was no surprise that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, the most vociferous opponent of “the humiliations of Versailles”, got increasing support, until it finally seized power in 1933, during the Great Depression.
When the Versailles Treaty was signed, Germany’s first democratically elected Chancellor, Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann, resigned in protest, saying: “Which hand, trying to put us in chains like these, would not wither? The treaty is unacceptable.” His words were prophetic: the victorious Allies would eventually pay a heavy price in World War II for putting the German people “in chains like these”.
The “chains” of Versailles were not justified. First, contrary to the statements of French and British politicians, Germany was not solely responsible for the outbreak of the War. Second, and most importantly, whatever the degree of responsibility of the German government, it was the semi-autocratic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II that started the war. The German people overthrew this regime in the November 1918 revolution. The subsequent Liberal-Social-Democratic provisional government, which signed the armistice with the Allies as practically its first step, reflected the will of the majority of the war-weary German people. The heavy Versailles “chains” bound these people, while the kaiser lived comfortably in exile in the Netherlands, even though he had been proclaimed a war criminal. This disparity of treatment inevitably produced nationalist anti-Allies sentiment in many German commoners, who not long before were favouring the end of the war at nearly any cost. This sentiment was exploited by the Nazis, with the final results that we all know.
Thus the “war to end all wars” ended in a peace settlement that brought about a new World War. The main lesson is that a peace settlement that leaves any nation vanquished, humiliated and plundered (in practice if not in theory) inevitably brings about new conflicts and wars, rather than lasting peace.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Not long ago I watched the film “Paris 1919", which depicts quite vividly the process of creating the Versailles Peace Treaty. The events are shown (partly as documentaries, partly as a movie recreation) through the eyes of Canadian diplomat Harold Nicolson, who was attached to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. The conference was to define the conditions of the peace treaty and the fate of post-war Germany. The three major players in the negotiations - British Prime Minister Lloyd George, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, and US President Woodrow Wilson - all blamed Germany for starting the war and for the devastation it caused.
The three allies actually had quite different agendas in these peace negotiations. The British wanted to eliminate Germany’s economic and naval power–well, it’s good to get rid of one’s major competitor. The French, obsessed with revenge and fear going back to their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, wanted to reduce Germany to economic and military non-existence, so that it never became strong again. As for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (Oh! This American idealism!), he just wanted to create a League of Nations, an international body that would ensure that a conflict like World War I would never happen again. But to achieve this goal he needed the support of the British and the French, so he had to compromise and placate his allies in all the absurdity of their outrageous demands. The only sane voice on how much Germany should pay in reparations belonged to John Maynard Keynes , a British economist, who calculated the amount of reparations it could afford to pay–but who listens to the sanity of a normal professional in the face of “high” geopolitical ambitions?
The film is emotionally and rationally difficult to watch, especially from the present-day perspective, when we know how post-treaty events developed. With some kind of malicious satisfaction I learned that all three leaders were “punished “ by history - none of them had a political future. But the world suffered terribly from their short-sightedness (not to say stupidity).
As we know, the Versailles Peace Treaty, whose 90th anniversary was marked last summer, officially ended World War I. Although Allied war propaganda described the “Great War” as “the war to end all wars”, it was only 20 years later that World War II broke out. The harsh terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were ultimately responsible for this, the most devastating war in human history.
Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, the “war guilt” clause, proclaimed Germany solely responsible for the start of the war and therefore solely accountable for all the losses and damages. The western Allies were determined to make Germany weak, not only militarily, but also economically, which they perceived as the best guarantee against future German aggression. The vanquished Germany was deprived of all her overseas colonies and of many territories in Europe. Its military size was severely restricted: a regular army of no more than 100,000 men and a navy of no more than six cruisers, six destroyers and 12 torpedo boats. These conditions were humiliating for a nation used to great power status. However, to my mind it was not these military restrictions, or at least not only they, that prepared such fertile ground for the resurgence of extreme nationalism.
Far more pressing, and unbearable to the average German, were the severe reparation payments imposed by the victorious Allies. The treaty initially required total payments of 269 billion gold marks, equivalent to about 400 billion US dollars today. Though the sum was reduced later to 132 billion marks, it still remained an overwhelming burden on the German people. They paid most of it in the form of heavy surplus taxes, and the rest in the form of coal, steel, agricultural products and even intellectual property (such as the trademark for Aspirin). Thus the nation lost the vast profits it could otherwise have made from exports of these trade items, and it paid higher prices for them on the internal market. This economic squeeze inevitably impoverished the mass of the German people. It brought hyperinflation in the early 1920s and a severe economic crisis during the Great Depression. It was no surprise that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, the most vociferous opponent of “the humiliations of Versailles”, got increasing support, until it finally seized power in 1933, during the Great Depression.
When the Versailles Treaty was signed, Germany’s first democratically elected Chancellor, Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann, resigned in protest, saying: “Which hand, trying to put us in chains like these, would not wither? The treaty is unacceptable.” His words were prophetic: the victorious Allies would eventually pay a heavy price in World War II for putting the German people “in chains like these”.
The “chains” of Versailles were not justified. First, contrary to the statements of French and British politicians, Germany was not solely responsible for the outbreak of the War. Second, and most importantly, whatever the degree of responsibility of the German government, it was the semi-autocratic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II that started the war. The German people overthrew this regime in the November 1918 revolution. The subsequent Liberal-Social-Democratic provisional government, which signed the armistice with the Allies as practically its first step, reflected the will of the majority of the war-weary German people. The heavy Versailles “chains” bound these people, while the kaiser lived comfortably in exile in the Netherlands, even though he had been proclaimed a war criminal. This disparity of treatment inevitably produced nationalist anti-Allies sentiment in many German commoners, who not long before were favouring the end of the war at nearly any cost. This sentiment was exploited by the Nazis, with the final results that we all know.
Thus the “war to end all wars” ended in a peace settlement that brought about a new World War. The main lesson is that a peace settlement that leaves any nation vanquished, humiliated and plundered (in practice if not in theory) inevitably brings about new conflicts and wars, rather than lasting peace.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The rehabilitation of Stalin: how is it possible?
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, SonyISBN 9781601643285)
As I wrote in my previous posting, the process of rehabilitating Stalin is under way in contemporary Russia, despite readily available evidence of his enormous crimes. This trend was detected quite early by such Russian commentators as Vladimir Volkov and Alexander Yakovlev. Now, in preparation for the 65th anniversary of victory in the "Great Patriotic War", Russian officials plan to display images of Stalin on billboards in Moscow. The cult of Stalin continues to divide Russian society.
The fact of rehabilitation may seem absurd. How can a tyrant and mass murderer be rehabilitated when his crimes are well described and well documented?
One clue comes from Arseny Roginsky, head of the Russian human rights organization “Memorial”. He points to a peculiar feature of the memory of the Russian people about Stalin’s terror. With a few notable exceptions like Solzhenitsyn’s The GULAG Archipelago, it was a remembrance of victims, but not of crimes and criminals.
The memory of crime presupposes both a victim and a criminal, both of whom can be named. In the case of Stalin’s terror, naming victims was relatively easy: all those who were executed, died in camps, or were starved to death in the 1933 famine. Naming the criminals was far more complicated, above all because many of the high-positioned perpetrators of collectivization, artificial famine and the 1937 terror later fell victim to a new round of purges. Further, many ordinary survivors and non-survivors of that grim epoch were tainted by being informers or otherwise collaborating with the terror state. For many people, naming the criminals and separating them from the victims becomes nearly impossible. All the more so because, in contrast to the Nazi crimes, where most victims were “others” (Jews, Poles, Russians, etc.) and not German nationals, in Stalin’s terror most victims were fellow Soviet citizens. As a result, somewhere in the mid-1990s many Russians began to think that there is practically no difference between the guilty and the innocent, so that pointing at criminals or perpetrators is a useless and fruitless exercise that only perpetuates hostility and bitterness. I have personally heard this argument from many people.
This uncertainty and doubt about historical memory was aggravated by another factor: the disappointment of many Russians by the mid-1990s in liberal democracy. Most of those who embraced this political ideal in the late 1980s and early 1990s hoped that it would quickly bring prosperity and a good life. But not only did post-Soviet capitalism and the Yeltsin government not bring quick prosperity, but prices rose sharply and most people became impoverished. Quite illuminating in this connection is the widespread condemnation by Russians of the economic policies of the late Yegor Gaidar (so-called "architect of Russian market reforms"), who is widely blamed for bringing economic disaster to Russia.
Beside economic devastation, the collapse of the Soviet system brought a rise in crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and other social vices. Many people felt cheated and started looking back at the Soviet era with nostalgia. This nostalgia spread even to Stalin, the bloodiest of Soviet leaders, who became for many the personification of law and order.
When the Putin government came to power, it took advantage of this nostalgia to promote the cult of Russian national glory throughout history, a cult rooted in the Russian people’s sense of being citizens of a great power in the world. The figure of Stalin became an integral part of this emergent ideology, because it was in his reign that there took place the greatest Russian military triumph of the last century, victory in World War II. The bloody tyrant became, for authorities and people alike, the leader of the forces of ultimate good which gloriously vanquished ultimate evil. For the general public this primitive scheme proved appealing, because it presented history in a simplistic black and white way while facilitating pride in themselves and their country. Not that the terror was completely forgotten, but the memory of it was pushed to the periphery of consciousness.
Most Russians seem to agree with this reappraisal of Stalin. But not all do. Many people in Russia and in the Russian diaspora resent any rehabilitation of Stalin, who along with Ivan the Terrible (who by the way is now considered by some Russians to be a saint) is one of the two bloodiest tyrants in Russian history.
Now, as never before, it is important for the anti-Stalinist minority of Russians to stick to their principles and beliefs, which are completely supported by facts and common sense. They must resist the temptation to conform to the pressure of Russian state ideology and of their compatriots, and must preserve the true historical knowledge of this tragic period, remembering not just the victims but the criminals as well. And they must share this knowledge and memory with the rest of humanity.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, SonyISBN 9781601643285)
As I wrote in my previous posting, the process of rehabilitating Stalin is under way in contemporary Russia, despite readily available evidence of his enormous crimes. This trend was detected quite early by such Russian commentators as Vladimir Volkov and Alexander Yakovlev. Now, in preparation for the 65th anniversary of victory in the "Great Patriotic War", Russian officials plan to display images of Stalin on billboards in Moscow. The cult of Stalin continues to divide Russian society.
The fact of rehabilitation may seem absurd. How can a tyrant and mass murderer be rehabilitated when his crimes are well described and well documented?
One clue comes from Arseny Roginsky, head of the Russian human rights organization “Memorial”. He points to a peculiar feature of the memory of the Russian people about Stalin’s terror. With a few notable exceptions like Solzhenitsyn’s The GULAG Archipelago, it was a remembrance of victims, but not of crimes and criminals.
The memory of crime presupposes both a victim and a criminal, both of whom can be named. In the case of Stalin’s terror, naming victims was relatively easy: all those who were executed, died in camps, or were starved to death in the 1933 famine. Naming the criminals was far more complicated, above all because many of the high-positioned perpetrators of collectivization, artificial famine and the 1937 terror later fell victim to a new round of purges. Further, many ordinary survivors and non-survivors of that grim epoch were tainted by being informers or otherwise collaborating with the terror state. For many people, naming the criminals and separating them from the victims becomes nearly impossible. All the more so because, in contrast to the Nazi crimes, where most victims were “others” (Jews, Poles, Russians, etc.) and not German nationals, in Stalin’s terror most victims were fellow Soviet citizens. As a result, somewhere in the mid-1990s many Russians began to think that there is practically no difference between the guilty and the innocent, so that pointing at criminals or perpetrators is a useless and fruitless exercise that only perpetuates hostility and bitterness. I have personally heard this argument from many people.
This uncertainty and doubt about historical memory was aggravated by another factor: the disappointment of many Russians by the mid-1990s in liberal democracy. Most of those who embraced this political ideal in the late 1980s and early 1990s hoped that it would quickly bring prosperity and a good life. But not only did post-Soviet capitalism and the Yeltsin government not bring quick prosperity, but prices rose sharply and most people became impoverished. Quite illuminating in this connection is the widespread condemnation by Russians of the economic policies of the late Yegor Gaidar (so-called "architect of Russian market reforms"), who is widely blamed for bringing economic disaster to Russia.
Beside economic devastation, the collapse of the Soviet system brought a rise in crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and other social vices. Many people felt cheated and started looking back at the Soviet era with nostalgia. This nostalgia spread even to Stalin, the bloodiest of Soviet leaders, who became for many the personification of law and order.
When the Putin government came to power, it took advantage of this nostalgia to promote the cult of Russian national glory throughout history, a cult rooted in the Russian people’s sense of being citizens of a great power in the world. The figure of Stalin became an integral part of this emergent ideology, because it was in his reign that there took place the greatest Russian military triumph of the last century, victory in World War II. The bloody tyrant became, for authorities and people alike, the leader of the forces of ultimate good which gloriously vanquished ultimate evil. For the general public this primitive scheme proved appealing, because it presented history in a simplistic black and white way while facilitating pride in themselves and their country. Not that the terror was completely forgotten, but the memory of it was pushed to the periphery of consciousness.
Most Russians seem to agree with this reappraisal of Stalin. But not all do. Many people in Russia and in the Russian diaspora resent any rehabilitation of Stalin, who along with Ivan the Terrible (who by the way is now considered by some Russians to be a saint) is one of the two bloodiest tyrants in Russian history.
Now, as never before, it is important for the anti-Stalinist minority of Russians to stick to their principles and beliefs, which are completely supported by facts and common sense. They must resist the temptation to conform to the pressure of Russian state ideology and of their compatriots, and must preserve the true historical knowledge of this tragic period, remembering not just the victims but the criminals as well. And they must share this knowledge and memory with the rest of humanity.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Stalin in contemporary Russia
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
The end of the Soviet Union was preceded by a flood of materials that portrayed in graphic detail the bloodiest period of the Soviet era, Stalin’s rule from 1924 to 1953. Because of these revelations, the Soviet state and the Communist Party lost whatever legitimacy they had. It seemed that the Soviet system, or at least its Stalinist period, was so discredited that it could never be rehabilitated.
This conclusion turned out to be premature. A mere 15 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the moustached tyrant was again favoured by both the authorities and much of the population. Stalin’s approval rate among the general public went as high as 53%. In a recent contest on the Internet, in which the authorities invited the people to choose the historical figure that would personify for them “the name of Russia”, i.e. be Russia’s national symbol, Stalin came third. For a while he even ranked first.
In a recent Russian high school history textbook, covering the period from 1945 to 2006, Stalin is proclaimed “the most effective”of Soviet leaders. His reign of terror, in which at least 20 million people died, is described as a necessary means for running the country effectively.
Monuments and bas-reliefs to this monstrous dictator have been built or restored. Unbelievable as it is, an icon depicting this persecutor of religion together with a woman saint was painted and put up in a church near St. Petersburg.
Russia’s leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself, while recognizing the terror and occasionally paying tribute to its victims, mostly stresses his achievements as an effective leader, builder of a superpower, and victor in World War II.
This rehabilitation is happening while Russians have ready access to many volumes on Stalin’s terror and repression, his forced collectivization, and the artificially created Ukranian famine. The human rights organization “Memorial” is preserving and promoting the memory of Stalinist terror. Paradoxically its historical documentation shares the bookstore shelves with numerous newly published apologies for Stalin, some of which deny terror and repression under Stalin altogether, while others shift the blame for terror to Stalin’s enemies while reducing the number of terror victims to between half a million and a million and a half, compared to the real number of 20 million to 25 million. Most of the people prefer the apologetic works to the documentation of Stalin’s terror.
How can this be happening? In my next post, I will propose an explanation.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
The end of the Soviet Union was preceded by a flood of materials that portrayed in graphic detail the bloodiest period of the Soviet era, Stalin’s rule from 1924 to 1953. Because of these revelations, the Soviet state and the Communist Party lost whatever legitimacy they had. It seemed that the Soviet system, or at least its Stalinist period, was so discredited that it could never be rehabilitated.
This conclusion turned out to be premature. A mere 15 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the moustached tyrant was again favoured by both the authorities and much of the population. Stalin’s approval rate among the general public went as high as 53%. In a recent contest on the Internet, in which the authorities invited the people to choose the historical figure that would personify for them “the name of Russia”, i.e. be Russia’s national symbol, Stalin came third. For a while he even ranked first.
In a recent Russian high school history textbook, covering the period from 1945 to 2006, Stalin is proclaimed “the most effective”of Soviet leaders. His reign of terror, in which at least 20 million people died, is described as a necessary means for running the country effectively.
Monuments and bas-reliefs to this monstrous dictator have been built or restored. Unbelievable as it is, an icon depicting this persecutor of religion together with a woman saint was painted and put up in a church near St. Petersburg.
Russia’s leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself, while recognizing the terror and occasionally paying tribute to its victims, mostly stresses his achievements as an effective leader, builder of a superpower, and victor in World War II.
This rehabilitation is happening while Russians have ready access to many volumes on Stalin’s terror and repression, his forced collectivization, and the artificially created Ukranian famine. The human rights organization “Memorial” is preserving and promoting the memory of Stalinist terror. Paradoxically its historical documentation shares the bookstore shelves with numerous newly published apologies for Stalin, some of which deny terror and repression under Stalin altogether, while others shift the blame for terror to Stalin’s enemies while reducing the number of terror victims to between half a million and a million and a half, compared to the real number of 20 million to 25 million. Most of the people prefer the apologetic works to the documentation of Stalin’s terror.
How can this be happening? In my next post, I will propose an explanation.
Monday, January 11, 2010
An interview in Russian Bazaar/ Интервью в Русском Базаре
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Several days ago I was interviewed by a well-known journalist, Natasha Sharymova (Наташа Шарымова), for one of the major Russian-language North American newspapers, Russian Bazaar (Русский Базар), which is based in New York.
The interview has now been published, in Russian. You can access it by clicking here .
If you google “Александр Долинин Вопреки судьбе”, the page will show up in the top 10 listings.
I find one fact about my interviews interesting. So far I have been interviewed three times about Against Destiny (in Russian Вопреки судьбе). The first interview was published in Polish in Australia, and its English original is on my previous post. The second was live on Hamilton radio station CHML on Bob Bratina’s morning show. The third was the present interview by Natasha Sharymova. The three interviewers asked me quite different sets of questions, but independently raised one common question: Is my novel about an escape from Kolyma labour camp to Alaska based on documented information about a real escape? The same question was asked by many of my friends and also by a reader commenting on the novel.
My answer to this question is no. As far as I know, no documents about such an event have come to light, either in Russia or in Alaska. But the topic of an escape fascinated me.
In my last posting I explained that there were some speculations that an escape like this one could have happened. As for my novel, I only explore such a possibility. I develop a fictionalized probability of how this could happen.
Why Alaska? Because it was the closest destination for an escape from the Kolyma region, and the only realistic one. It is actually shorter and less dangerous than other destinations described in memoirs of real escapes. Thus in The Long Walk Slawomir Rawicz describes an escape from a Jakutija labour camp to British India by way of the Gobi desert. In As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me Josef Bauer describes his escape from a camp in Chukotskij peninsular via Siberia proper to the Caspian Sea and to Iran.
As for the characters in my novel, I asked myself a question: Who could carry out such an escape? First, it could be accomplished only by individuals who had a substantial military experience and knew how to fight through the obstacles. Second, in order to cover thousands of kilometers of the subarctic wilderness, there had to be a guide, an aboriginal person, for whom this land is a place of normal habitat.
So the plot of the novel is built around these parameters. The destination is Alaska. The escapees are a group of five, four of them World War II veterans (and there were in reality lots of such people in Stalin’s camps after the war) and one a Chukchi man. To see how events unfold, you have to read Against Destiny. If you read Russian, you can read my Russian translations of excerpts from my novel (entitled in Russian Вопреки судьбе) in Nasha Canada (Наша Канада), in issues 208 (December 2009, already published) and 210 (January 2010, forthcoming at the time of this posting). I plan to post them on my blog “History and Us”.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Several days ago I was interviewed by a well-known journalist, Natasha Sharymova (Наташа Шарымова), for one of the major Russian-language North American newspapers, Russian Bazaar (Русский Базар), which is based in New York.
The interview has now been published, in Russian. You can access it by clicking here .
If you google “Александр Долинин Вопреки судьбе”, the page will show up in the top 10 listings.
I find one fact about my interviews interesting. So far I have been interviewed three times about Against Destiny (in Russian Вопреки судьбе). The first interview was published in Polish in Australia, and its English original is on my previous post. The second was live on Hamilton radio station CHML on Bob Bratina’s morning show. The third was the present interview by Natasha Sharymova. The three interviewers asked me quite different sets of questions, but independently raised one common question: Is my novel about an escape from Kolyma labour camp to Alaska based on documented information about a real escape? The same question was asked by many of my friends and also by a reader commenting on the novel.
My answer to this question is no. As far as I know, no documents about such an event have come to light, either in Russia or in Alaska. But the topic of an escape fascinated me.
In my last posting I explained that there were some speculations that an escape like this one could have happened. As for my novel, I only explore such a possibility. I develop a fictionalized probability of how this could happen.
Why Alaska? Because it was the closest destination for an escape from the Kolyma region, and the only realistic one. It is actually shorter and less dangerous than other destinations described in memoirs of real escapes. Thus in The Long Walk Slawomir Rawicz describes an escape from a Jakutija labour camp to British India by way of the Gobi desert. In As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me Josef Bauer describes his escape from a camp in Chukotskij peninsular via Siberia proper to the Caspian Sea and to Iran.
As for the characters in my novel, I asked myself a question: Who could carry out such an escape? First, it could be accomplished only by individuals who had a substantial military experience and knew how to fight through the obstacles. Second, in order to cover thousands of kilometers of the subarctic wilderness, there had to be a guide, an aboriginal person, for whom this land is a place of normal habitat.
So the plot of the novel is built around these parameters. The destination is Alaska. The escapees are a group of five, four of them World War II veterans (and there were in reality lots of such people in Stalin’s camps after the war) and one a Chukchi man. To see how events unfold, you have to read Against Destiny. If you read Russian, you can read my Russian translations of excerpts from my novel (entitled in Russian Вопреки судьбе) in Nasha Canada (Наша Канада), in issues 208 (December 2009, already published) and 210 (January 2010, forthcoming at the time of this posting). I plan to post them on my blog “History and Us”.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Some questions about Against Destiny: The author responds
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Many questions have been asked about Against Destiny before and after its publication. An interesting set of questions was raised in my very first interview which appeared under unusual circumstances - it appeared before the book was published, and not in the original English, but translated into another language, and on the other side of the Earth.
How did it happen? The interview (originally in English - below) caught the attention of Rev. Marian Szablewski, CR, a Polish-speaking priest in Adelaide, South Australia, which is more than 10,000 miles from where I live. He had the interview translated into Polish, by Teresa Wilkans, and published, a month before the release of Against Destiny, in the March 2009 issue of the most important publication in Polish in South Australia, the magazine Panorama. If your Polish is good enough, you can read the first page of the Polish translation by clicking here and the second page by clicking here.
Here is the interview:
What is your book about?
--It is about a daring escape of five brave men from a GULAG camp in North-Eastern Siberia to Alaska for a safe haven. More generally it’s about men, destined to seemingly inevitable death in a human hell, who choose to resist their grim fate rather than succumb to it.
Why did you decide to write it?
--In the literature about the GULAG and Stalin’s epoch in general, there was occasional brief mention that probably there were some successful escapes from camps in the Kolyma region to Alaska. There was no detail on the topic, but it somehow inspired me to think how such an escape could have happened and what kind of people could do it. And the novel sort of naturally developed from these considerations with some addition of my own fantasy to fill the gaps in real knowledge.
We already have The Gulag Archipelago. What’s the point of having a work of fiction about the same thing?
--Well, first of all fiction and documentary literature are different things, and one can hardly substitute for another. Documentary literature has the primary task of describing with maximum accuracy what really happened, while in fiction the author is entitled to apply his fantasy and apply it to what and how people think, feel and do in different situations they encounter. And apart from that, the primary topic of The Gulag Archipelago is life in the GULAG, while the primary topic of my novel is escape from it.
Isn’t this just a relic of the Cold War, which ended in 1989? Why should people in 2008 be interested in Stalin’s Gulag?
--For the same reason that they should be interested in Nazi crimes against humanity. Because such tragic periods of history are something that humanity should learn lessons from, at least for the purpose of preventing similar tragedies from happening again.
How would you compare the camps of Stalin’s Gulag to the concentration camps of Hitler? Weren’t Hitler’s camps much worse?
--No, I can’t agree with that. The GULAG camps certainly lacked gas chambers, but there were numerous other no less hideous ways of putting inmates to death, like for example freezing them alive. And above all the number of people who died there is no less, in fact more, than in the Nazi camps–although the GULAG prisoners lived much longer than the inmates of the Nazi concentration camps before they succumbed. In fact, the claim of some historians, that unlike Nazi Germany in Stalinist USSR there were no killing fields, is erroneous: there were a number of places of regular mass executions. Kurapaty in Byelorussia and Butovo Place near Moscow being the most famous. And there were so-called penal camps, in different sections of GULAG, where almost no-one survived, except for those who were lucky enough to be sent there not long before the camps were dissolved.
In general, I find the question inappropriate about who was worse and who was better: Hitler or Stalin. Whatever the intention, recognition of one as worse almost inevitably leads to partial rehabilitation of the other, as happened in the official historiography of Russia in the 2000's. To my mind, the attitude should be that both were extreme evil, which must not be forgiven or forgotten and from whose regimes we should take historic lessons.
Why do you think that there has been so much more written about the Nazi Holocaust than about the Gulag?
--It’s a good question, because so many people see no connection between Hitler and Stalin and, while preserving active memory of the Holocaust, prefer to forget Stalinist terror. I think there are two factors which can explain this situation.
First of all, the Nazi regime was vanquished, completely dismantled, and all its archives and other materials were publicized; as well, Auschwiz and Dachau were taken over by enemy troops. Nothing like that happened in post-Soviet Russia, where for example the KGB archives were opened only partially and some time in the mid-90's were closed again. This was because many people in authority at that time were former Soviet officials, who for understandable reasons were not interested in complete disclosure of the dark parts of Soviet history. And around then the campaign for so-called national reconciliation and concord started under the motto “Not everything was bad”, which reached its peak in recent years under the Putin-Medvedev regime. This regime made it known to the international community that it would regard the mere comparison between Nazism and Communism as an act of hostility towards Russia, which most of the Western public does not want to engage in.
Secondly, there was a difference in the strength of the lobbying to prevent historical amnesia towards the particular tragic events. The Western Jewish community did its best, and is still doing its best, to prevent the Holocaust from being forgiven or forgotten–and rightly so. There is no equally powerful pressure with regard to GULAG.
Do you think that the greater attention to the Holocaust is reasonable?
--No, I firmly disagree with that. Stalin’s terror took at least 20 millions lives, and to my mind that in itself explains why it deserves equal attention with the Holocaust. Above all, if we forget such tragic events, we risk their repetition at some different time in a somewhat different form.
There is a lot in your novel about the Chukchi, an aboriginal people of Northern Siberia. You don’t look Chukchi yourself. How do you know so much about them?
--Well, as I said before, in the beginning I was thinking about what kind of people could manage a successful escape. And I came to the conclusion that one of them had to be a native, who knew both the escape route in that territory and the required survival skills. And Chukchi is the main aboriginal nationality in the extreme North-East of Siberia. So I read several ethnographic reports on them, the main one being the fundamental book Chukchi Material Culture, written by the prominent Russian ethnographer Vladimir Bogoraz in the early 20th century. I also read Russian translations of Chukchi tales and legends. And all that gave a reasonably comprehensive knowledge of this people.
You have five different characters, each with a different type of background, escaping from their labour camp in Northern Siberia and trying to get to Alaska. How did you decide what backgrounds of the prisoners to choose? Do they cover the range of the different types of people who would have been in the camps in the late 1940s?
--Well, again, I started with figuring out what kind of men would be capable of such an escape. This led me to the choice of Trofimov, Bondarenko and Yatta, each of whom were essential for the success of the enterprise. Trofimov is an experienced combat officer, a captain of infantry with a nearly four years of war experience, Bondarenko an equally experienced partizan with expertise in fighting a guerilla war in the woodland, and Yatta a nomadic aboriginal who knows the terrain and all the skills of living in the extreme north in both taiga and tundra. Also, they represented certain types of people who were in GULAG at the time described. The other two were chosen mostly on the ground of representing two distinct groups that were downtrodden and oppressed by Soviet authorities, as they were previously under the tsars: Russian peasants and Jews–Timoshkin being a Russian peasant and Goldberg a Jew. Also, the figure of Goldberg, the most morally reflective of the five, helps to raise the uneasy and controversial issue of whether and to what extent forcible resistance to a reign of terror is justified.
Why do the escapees in your novel head for Alaska rather than for some other place?
--Well, Alaska was the closest foreign safe haven from the point of view of distance as well as availability–being separated from their camp only by land and by a strait which was ice-covered in winter. And the way there lay through wilderness away from populated places and major highways, which made pursuit far more difficult. And, as you can understand, after they killed several camp guards they could not even think of going anywhere within the borders of the Soviet Union.
Was it really possible to escape from the Gulag, or is your novel just an unrealistic fantasy?
--In fact, though official Soviet propaganda claimed that escapes were absolutely impossible, it was not so. There were numerous escapes from GULAG with varying success. A few of them are described in Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG archipelago, volume 2, in the chapter called “Changing one’s fate”. Others are described in one of the Shalamov's Kolyma Tales, “The Green Prosecutor”. As you will read there, some of them were actually successful, although some of the successful escapees were later re-arrested. Also, some successful escapes from GULAG were widely known in the West, and even described by escapees - the most famous accounts being The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz and As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me by Josef Bauer.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Many questions have been asked about Against Destiny before and after its publication. An interesting set of questions was raised in my very first interview which appeared under unusual circumstances - it appeared before the book was published, and not in the original English, but translated into another language, and on the other side of the Earth.
How did it happen? The interview (originally in English - below) caught the attention of Rev. Marian Szablewski, CR, a Polish-speaking priest in Adelaide, South Australia, which is more than 10,000 miles from where I live. He had the interview translated into Polish, by Teresa Wilkans, and published, a month before the release of Against Destiny, in the March 2009 issue of the most important publication in Polish in South Australia, the magazine Panorama. If your Polish is good enough, you can read the first page of the Polish translation by clicking here and the second page by clicking here.
Here is the interview:
What is your book about?
--It is about a daring escape of five brave men from a GULAG camp in North-Eastern Siberia to Alaska for a safe haven. More generally it’s about men, destined to seemingly inevitable death in a human hell, who choose to resist their grim fate rather than succumb to it.
Why did you decide to write it?
--In the literature about the GULAG and Stalin’s epoch in general, there was occasional brief mention that probably there were some successful escapes from camps in the Kolyma region to Alaska. There was no detail on the topic, but it somehow inspired me to think how such an escape could have happened and what kind of people could do it. And the novel sort of naturally developed from these considerations with some addition of my own fantasy to fill the gaps in real knowledge.
We already have The Gulag Archipelago. What’s the point of having a work of fiction about the same thing?
--Well, first of all fiction and documentary literature are different things, and one can hardly substitute for another. Documentary literature has the primary task of describing with maximum accuracy what really happened, while in fiction the author is entitled to apply his fantasy and apply it to what and how people think, feel and do in different situations they encounter. And apart from that, the primary topic of The Gulag Archipelago is life in the GULAG, while the primary topic of my novel is escape from it.
Isn’t this just a relic of the Cold War, which ended in 1989? Why should people in 2008 be interested in Stalin’s Gulag?
--For the same reason that they should be interested in Nazi crimes against humanity. Because such tragic periods of history are something that humanity should learn lessons from, at least for the purpose of preventing similar tragedies from happening again.
How would you compare the camps of Stalin’s Gulag to the concentration camps of Hitler? Weren’t Hitler’s camps much worse?
--No, I can’t agree with that. The GULAG camps certainly lacked gas chambers, but there were numerous other no less hideous ways of putting inmates to death, like for example freezing them alive. And above all the number of people who died there is no less, in fact more, than in the Nazi camps–although the GULAG prisoners lived much longer than the inmates of the Nazi concentration camps before they succumbed. In fact, the claim of some historians, that unlike Nazi Germany in Stalinist USSR there were no killing fields, is erroneous: there were a number of places of regular mass executions. Kurapaty in Byelorussia and Butovo Place near Moscow being the most famous. And there were so-called penal camps, in different sections of GULAG, where almost no-one survived, except for those who were lucky enough to be sent there not long before the camps were dissolved.
In general, I find the question inappropriate about who was worse and who was better: Hitler or Stalin. Whatever the intention, recognition of one as worse almost inevitably leads to partial rehabilitation of the other, as happened in the official historiography of Russia in the 2000's. To my mind, the attitude should be that both were extreme evil, which must not be forgiven or forgotten and from whose regimes we should take historic lessons.
Why do you think that there has been so much more written about the Nazi Holocaust than about the Gulag?
--It’s a good question, because so many people see no connection between Hitler and Stalin and, while preserving active memory of the Holocaust, prefer to forget Stalinist terror. I think there are two factors which can explain this situation.
First of all, the Nazi regime was vanquished, completely dismantled, and all its archives and other materials were publicized; as well, Auschwiz and Dachau were taken over by enemy troops. Nothing like that happened in post-Soviet Russia, where for example the KGB archives were opened only partially and some time in the mid-90's were closed again. This was because many people in authority at that time were former Soviet officials, who for understandable reasons were not interested in complete disclosure of the dark parts of Soviet history. And around then the campaign for so-called national reconciliation and concord started under the motto “Not everything was bad”, which reached its peak in recent years under the Putin-Medvedev regime. This regime made it known to the international community that it would regard the mere comparison between Nazism and Communism as an act of hostility towards Russia, which most of the Western public does not want to engage in.
Secondly, there was a difference in the strength of the lobbying to prevent historical amnesia towards the particular tragic events. The Western Jewish community did its best, and is still doing its best, to prevent the Holocaust from being forgiven or forgotten–and rightly so. There is no equally powerful pressure with regard to GULAG.
Do you think that the greater attention to the Holocaust is reasonable?
--No, I firmly disagree with that. Stalin’s terror took at least 20 millions lives, and to my mind that in itself explains why it deserves equal attention with the Holocaust. Above all, if we forget such tragic events, we risk their repetition at some different time in a somewhat different form.
There is a lot in your novel about the Chukchi, an aboriginal people of Northern Siberia. You don’t look Chukchi yourself. How do you know so much about them?
--Well, as I said before, in the beginning I was thinking about what kind of people could manage a successful escape. And I came to the conclusion that one of them had to be a native, who knew both the escape route in that territory and the required survival skills. And Chukchi is the main aboriginal nationality in the extreme North-East of Siberia. So I read several ethnographic reports on them, the main one being the fundamental book Chukchi Material Culture, written by the prominent Russian ethnographer Vladimir Bogoraz in the early 20th century. I also read Russian translations of Chukchi tales and legends. And all that gave a reasonably comprehensive knowledge of this people.
You have five different characters, each with a different type of background, escaping from their labour camp in Northern Siberia and trying to get to Alaska. How did you decide what backgrounds of the prisoners to choose? Do they cover the range of the different types of people who would have been in the camps in the late 1940s?
--Well, again, I started with figuring out what kind of men would be capable of such an escape. This led me to the choice of Trofimov, Bondarenko and Yatta, each of whom were essential for the success of the enterprise. Trofimov is an experienced combat officer, a captain of infantry with a nearly four years of war experience, Bondarenko an equally experienced partizan with expertise in fighting a guerilla war in the woodland, and Yatta a nomadic aboriginal who knows the terrain and all the skills of living in the extreme north in both taiga and tundra. Also, they represented certain types of people who were in GULAG at the time described. The other two were chosen mostly on the ground of representing two distinct groups that were downtrodden and oppressed by Soviet authorities, as they were previously under the tsars: Russian peasants and Jews–Timoshkin being a Russian peasant and Goldberg a Jew. Also, the figure of Goldberg, the most morally reflective of the five, helps to raise the uneasy and controversial issue of whether and to what extent forcible resistance to a reign of terror is justified.
Why do the escapees in your novel head for Alaska rather than for some other place?
--Well, Alaska was the closest foreign safe haven from the point of view of distance as well as availability–being separated from their camp only by land and by a strait which was ice-covered in winter. And the way there lay through wilderness away from populated places and major highways, which made pursuit far more difficult. And, as you can understand, after they killed several camp guards they could not even think of going anywhere within the borders of the Soviet Union.
Was it really possible to escape from the Gulag, or is your novel just an unrealistic fantasy?
--In fact, though official Soviet propaganda claimed that escapes were absolutely impossible, it was not so. There were numerous escapes from GULAG with varying success. A few of them are described in Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG archipelago, volume 2, in the chapter called “Changing one’s fate”. Others are described in one of the Shalamov's Kolyma Tales, “The Green Prosecutor”. As you will read there, some of them were actually successful, although some of the successful escapees were later re-arrested. Also, some successful escapes from GULAG were widely known in the West, and even described by escapees - the most famous accounts being The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz and As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me by Josef Bauer.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Chukchi: a people who would not submit
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
The colonization of Siberia and North America followed roughly the same pattern: the European settlers built for themselves a better, freer and more prosperous life at the expense of the subjugated aboriginals, who were territorially as well as culturally displaced. There was however one Siberian aboriginal nationality that was not subjugated and fully incorporated into Russia until well into the 20th century: the Chukchi.
This small nationality, which historically numbered between 8,000 and 15,000 people, inhabits the extreme north-east of Siberia, roughly from the lower Kolyma river in the west to the Bering Strait in the east and from the Arctic coast in the north to the Anadyr River valley in the south. The Chukchi belong to the so-called Paleoasiatic peoples, the most ancient population of north Asia, to which probably the ancestors of American natives also belong. In appearance too, the Chukchi resemble North American Indians more than people of Mongolian or Chinese stock. By the time the Russians came, they lived, like most other north Siberian aboriginals, by raising reindeer herds, each of which numbered many hundreds or even thousands of deer.
From the mid-17th century to modern times, the Russians failed to subdue the Chukchi. By using tactics from both conventional and guerilla warfare and by taking advantage of their superior knowledge of their rugged land, they defeated many Russian government units and settlers’ militias. Like the Prairie Indians of the American West, they bothered Russian settlers with raids. Catherine the Great of Russia even signed a decree authorising their total extermination. She sent a military expedition, headed by Major Pavlutsky, remembered in Chukchi folklore as the most cruel of the Russian officers who fought them. Like its predecessors, the Pavlutsky expedition was beaten, and Pavlutsky perished; according to Chukchi narratives, he was captured and brutally executed. The genocidal order of the empress was never implemented, because of the vastness of the mountains, tundra and woodlands, which provided shelter not only to small guerrilla groups but even to whole tribes, and because of the Chukchi’s acquisition of fire-arms, probably from European traders via the North Pacific.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian imperial government was finally forced to make peace with the recalcitrant people. It recognized their independence, and until the very end of the imperial period they, unlike other Siberian aboriginals, did not pay tribute to the imperial treasury and lived by their millennia-old customary laws. In return, Russians got the right to trade and build settlements in Chukotka. This situation persisted not only until the 1917 revolution, but for more than a decade after it. During the Russian civil war (1917-1923), some units of Whites from time to time came to Chukotka and tried to plunder Chukchi, but were repulsed. The Red Army units that arrived later in this period also did not interfere with the traditional Chukchi lifestyle and customary law.
Drastic change came only in the early 1930s with the start of collectivization. The Siberian Soviet authorities successfully imposed collective farms and the Soviet system in general on the previously fiercely independent people. For the first time in history, they could not resist the conquerors. Unlike Russian forces of earlier periods, these invaders were armed with machine guns, armoured vehicles and a few air squadrons. From the 1930s on, the Chukchi shared the fate of other rural Soviet people, Russian and non-Russian alike: forced collectivization, internal exile or labour camps for many, execution of others (particularly all shamans), work on Soviet construction projects. Their children, like many native children in Canada, were forcibly sent to boarding schools, with similar widespread abuse by school authorities. However, a few graduates of these boarding schools rose to prominent positions in Soviet society. The best known is the famous writer Yuri Rytkheu, whose writings are widely read throughout the former USSR and have been translated into European languages.
In the post-Soviet Russia of the 2000s, Chukotka, the most remote region of this country, paradoxically became, under the governorship of the ex-business magnate Roman Abramovich, one of its most prosperous regions, comparable to Moscow and the oil-rich regions of Western Siberia. This prosperity resulted from the successful management of the businessman-governor, who skilfully ran the regional economy and who used his government connections to negotiate a share of profits for the region from its mineral resources. Thus the ancient aboriginal people now enjoy a level of prosperity unknown in any previous period, whether pre-contact, imperial or Soviet.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
The colonization of Siberia and North America followed roughly the same pattern: the European settlers built for themselves a better, freer and more prosperous life at the expense of the subjugated aboriginals, who were territorially as well as culturally displaced. There was however one Siberian aboriginal nationality that was not subjugated and fully incorporated into Russia until well into the 20th century: the Chukchi.
This small nationality, which historically numbered between 8,000 and 15,000 people, inhabits the extreme north-east of Siberia, roughly from the lower Kolyma river in the west to the Bering Strait in the east and from the Arctic coast in the north to the Anadyr River valley in the south. The Chukchi belong to the so-called Paleoasiatic peoples, the most ancient population of north Asia, to which probably the ancestors of American natives also belong. In appearance too, the Chukchi resemble North American Indians more than people of Mongolian or Chinese stock. By the time the Russians came, they lived, like most other north Siberian aboriginals, by raising reindeer herds, each of which numbered many hundreds or even thousands of deer.
From the mid-17th century to modern times, the Russians failed to subdue the Chukchi. By using tactics from both conventional and guerilla warfare and by taking advantage of their superior knowledge of their rugged land, they defeated many Russian government units and settlers’ militias. Like the Prairie Indians of the American West, they bothered Russian settlers with raids. Catherine the Great of Russia even signed a decree authorising their total extermination. She sent a military expedition, headed by Major Pavlutsky, remembered in Chukchi folklore as the most cruel of the Russian officers who fought them. Like its predecessors, the Pavlutsky expedition was beaten, and Pavlutsky perished; according to Chukchi narratives, he was captured and brutally executed. The genocidal order of the empress was never implemented, because of the vastness of the mountains, tundra and woodlands, which provided shelter not only to small guerrilla groups but even to whole tribes, and because of the Chukchi’s acquisition of fire-arms, probably from European traders via the North Pacific.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian imperial government was finally forced to make peace with the recalcitrant people. It recognized their independence, and until the very end of the imperial period they, unlike other Siberian aboriginals, did not pay tribute to the imperial treasury and lived by their millennia-old customary laws. In return, Russians got the right to trade and build settlements in Chukotka. This situation persisted not only until the 1917 revolution, but for more than a decade after it. During the Russian civil war (1917-1923), some units of Whites from time to time came to Chukotka and tried to plunder Chukchi, but were repulsed. The Red Army units that arrived later in this period also did not interfere with the traditional Chukchi lifestyle and customary law.
Drastic change came only in the early 1930s with the start of collectivization. The Siberian Soviet authorities successfully imposed collective farms and the Soviet system in general on the previously fiercely independent people. For the first time in history, they could not resist the conquerors. Unlike Russian forces of earlier periods, these invaders were armed with machine guns, armoured vehicles and a few air squadrons. From the 1930s on, the Chukchi shared the fate of other rural Soviet people, Russian and non-Russian alike: forced collectivization, internal exile or labour camps for many, execution of others (particularly all shamans), work on Soviet construction projects. Their children, like many native children in Canada, were forcibly sent to boarding schools, with similar widespread abuse by school authorities. However, a few graduates of these boarding schools rose to prominent positions in Soviet society. The best known is the famous writer Yuri Rytkheu, whose writings are widely read throughout the former USSR and have been translated into European languages.
In the post-Soviet Russia of the 2000s, Chukotka, the most remote region of this country, paradoxically became, under the governorship of the ex-business magnate Roman Abramovich, one of its most prosperous regions, comparable to Moscow and the oil-rich regions of Western Siberia. This prosperity resulted from the successful management of the businessman-governor, who skilfully ran the regional economy and who used his government connections to negotiate a share of profits for the region from its mineral resources. Thus the ancient aboriginal people now enjoy a level of prosperity unknown in any previous period, whether pre-contact, imperial or Soviet.
Siberia and North America: parallel histories of exploration, conquest and settlement
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
The exploration, conquest and settlement of Siberia by Russians from the late 16th century on was in many respects similar to the exploration, conquest and settlement of North America by West Europeans (Dutch, English, French, Spanish).
Siberia too was explored and conquered by people moving, exploring and settling of their own free will, in search of a better life. Most settlers in Siberia were fleeing from serfdom, which was established in European Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. In much the same way, the British American colonies were settled largely by English ex-peasants who had been dispossessed by the Enclosures.
Like European settlers in North America, Russian settlers in Siberia within a century or so outnumbered the local aboriginal population. As in North America, the progress of Russian colonization meant eventual conquest, subjugation and to a great extent displacement of the aboriginals by various means: outright conquest through warfare, treaties signed by aboriginal chiefs or elders under the strong effects of alcohol, forcing chiefs, elders and their tribes and communities into heavy debts. But colonization also meant coexistence, trade and integration with the aboriginals, including a considerable number of mixed marriages and liaisons, with mixed-race offspring as a result.
In both Siberia and North America, the process of colonization brought about the decline of aboriginal society through wars, European diseases, alcoholism and other causes. At the same time many aboriginals managed to take advantage of such products of the settlers’ civilization as iron tools and firearms. For the settlers, colonization of the new frontiers brought significant improvement in their quality of life, freedom from feudal or bureaucratic oppression, and material prosperity that they could not dream of in their mother country. Siberians even tended to be bigger, stronger and healthier than the peasants of European Russia, who lived in bondage.
In short, the process of colonization of Siberia and North America followed roughly the same pattern: the European settlers built for themselves a better, freer and more prosperous life at the expense of the subjugated aboriginals, who were territorially as well as culturally displaced.
There was however one exception in Siberia to this general pattern. I will talk about this exception in my next posting.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
The exploration, conquest and settlement of Siberia by Russians from the late 16th century on was in many respects similar to the exploration, conquest and settlement of North America by West Europeans (Dutch, English, French, Spanish).
Siberia too was explored and conquered by people moving, exploring and settling of their own free will, in search of a better life. Most settlers in Siberia were fleeing from serfdom, which was established in European Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. In much the same way, the British American colonies were settled largely by English ex-peasants who had been dispossessed by the Enclosures.
Like European settlers in North America, Russian settlers in Siberia within a century or so outnumbered the local aboriginal population. As in North America, the progress of Russian colonization meant eventual conquest, subjugation and to a great extent displacement of the aboriginals by various means: outright conquest through warfare, treaties signed by aboriginal chiefs or elders under the strong effects of alcohol, forcing chiefs, elders and their tribes and communities into heavy debts. But colonization also meant coexistence, trade and integration with the aboriginals, including a considerable number of mixed marriages and liaisons, with mixed-race offspring as a result.
In both Siberia and North America, the process of colonization brought about the decline of aboriginal society through wars, European diseases, alcoholism and other causes. At the same time many aboriginals managed to take advantage of such products of the settlers’ civilization as iron tools and firearms. For the settlers, colonization of the new frontiers brought significant improvement in their quality of life, freedom from feudal or bureaucratic oppression, and material prosperity that they could not dream of in their mother country. Siberians even tended to be bigger, stronger and healthier than the peasants of European Russia, who lived in bondage.
In short, the process of colonization of Siberia and North America followed roughly the same pattern: the European settlers built for themselves a better, freer and more prosperous life at the expense of the subjugated aboriginals, who were territorially as well as culturally displaced.
There was however one exception in Siberia to this general pattern. I will talk about this exception in my next posting.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Escapes: getaways and breakaways
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
In modern English the word ‘escape’ has many meanings. Along with an escape from bondage, imprisonment or captivity, it may mean just a nice vacation somewhere in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands or some other part of the world. There is a Toronto travel agency called “Escape Tours”. And there is even a car model “Ford Escape”. This meaning probably involves the idea of an escape from the hard chores of everyday live, work, etc. The escape is only temporary, with a clear plan to return.
But this is not an original meaning. Initially the term involved a person who was subjected to the ordeal of imprisonment, captivity, slavery or bondage and who chose to challenge his fate rather than submit to it. In this case certainly there is no thought of ever going back, where in the best case the escapee would face punishment and return to the former captivity or bondage. In the worst case the returned escapee would face death, often a very painful one, as with escapees from 20th century Nazi or Soviet concentration camps or, earlier, runaways from especially brutal slave-masters. Reaching the desired destination far beyond the reach of the pursuers was the ultimate goal and desired outcome.
In Russia and in the American South, where for centuries up to half of the population were in bondage, the motive of escaping slavery or serfdom became an integral part of popular culture, oral tradition and much of literature. As we know, in 19th century US there was a whole organization named the “Underground Railway” which provided support for fugitive black slaves on their way to Canada, where they became the ancestors of some present-day Black Canadians. In Russia most of the original colonists of the Don river region, Siberia and other remote regions were actually runaway serfs. The Cossacks of Don, Kuban’, Urals and numerous regions of Siberia are their descendants. In Central America and Caribbean there were also large settlements of runaway slaves known as Maroons. The best documentary work about runaway Black slaves is Daniel Hill’s “The Freedom Seekers”, while the best modern fiction book is Lawrence Hill’s “The Book of Negroes”.
One of the hardest places to escape from is a concentration camp or maximum security prison, where the inmates are under almost constant surveillance. Nevertheless some inmates managed to escape even from there. Thus, Giacomo Casanova, the most famous womanizer in history, was detained in the Venetian doge’s personal dungeon for a year and managed to escape. About 130 Nazi concentration camp inmates also succeeded in escaping from their camps, outsmarting their guards and the camp administration. No one knows how many labour camp inmates in the Stalinist USSR escaped. Such escapes are described in some chapters of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”. So far as far as I know there has been no fiction written about them. My novel Against Destiny seems to be the first piece of fiction about a successful escape from a Soviet labour camp.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
In modern English the word ‘escape’ has many meanings. Along with an escape from bondage, imprisonment or captivity, it may mean just a nice vacation somewhere in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands or some other part of the world. There is a Toronto travel agency called “Escape Tours”. And there is even a car model “Ford Escape”. This meaning probably involves the idea of an escape from the hard chores of everyday live, work, etc. The escape is only temporary, with a clear plan to return.
But this is not an original meaning. Initially the term involved a person who was subjected to the ordeal of imprisonment, captivity, slavery or bondage and who chose to challenge his fate rather than submit to it. In this case certainly there is no thought of ever going back, where in the best case the escapee would face punishment and return to the former captivity or bondage. In the worst case the returned escapee would face death, often a very painful one, as with escapees from 20th century Nazi or Soviet concentration camps or, earlier, runaways from especially brutal slave-masters. Reaching the desired destination far beyond the reach of the pursuers was the ultimate goal and desired outcome.
In Russia and in the American South, where for centuries up to half of the population were in bondage, the motive of escaping slavery or serfdom became an integral part of popular culture, oral tradition and much of literature. As we know, in 19th century US there was a whole organization named the “Underground Railway” which provided support for fugitive black slaves on their way to Canada, where they became the ancestors of some present-day Black Canadians. In Russia most of the original colonists of the Don river region, Siberia and other remote regions were actually runaway serfs. The Cossacks of Don, Kuban’, Urals and numerous regions of Siberia are their descendants. In Central America and Caribbean there were also large settlements of runaway slaves known as Maroons. The best documentary work about runaway Black slaves is Daniel Hill’s “The Freedom Seekers”, while the best modern fiction book is Lawrence Hill’s “The Book of Negroes”.
One of the hardest places to escape from is a concentration camp or maximum security prison, where the inmates are under almost constant surveillance. Nevertheless some inmates managed to escape even from there. Thus, Giacomo Casanova, the most famous womanizer in history, was detained in the Venetian doge’s personal dungeon for a year and managed to escape. About 130 Nazi concentration camp inmates also succeeded in escaping from their camps, outsmarting their guards and the camp administration. No one knows how many labour camp inmates in the Stalinist USSR escaped. Such escapes are described in some chapters of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”. So far as far as I know there has been no fiction written about them. My novel Against Destiny seems to be the first piece of fiction about a successful escape from a Soviet labour camp.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
A few words about cats
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
I love cats. There is certain charm in them that one can hardly deny. I like dogs as well, unlike so many people who like only either one or the other. For me both are our little brothers, or as some call them “our furry friends”. I would not mind having a dog, except that I would have problems getting up at 6:00 a.m. to give my dog a walkout, or having an evening walkout as an absolute must. With cats it is much easier, just giving him/her food and water and cleaning the litter once in a while, and always enjoying stroking the silky fur. One acquaintance of mine, also a writer, used to say that a cat is an ideal pet for a writer, because a cat is less demanding than a dog and eats up your rejection sheets. And there is one thing about cats that few people would deny - all cats are beautiful, there are practically no ugly ones among them (unlike us humans, or dogs). I understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But that is how I feel about cats.
Many people believe that cats, unlike dogs, feel no loyalty and emotional attachment to their masters. I think it’s not just grossly exaggerated, but completely not true - at least all my cats were emotionally attached to me, not less than I to them.
As we know (I mean those of us who still read), cats were considered holy creatures in ancient Egypt. One would immediately assume that it’s probably because of their role in guarding crops from mice and rats. True. But I think there was another reason as well - cats look young throughout their lives. And this for people of traditional cultures might look like a sign of divinity - they imagined their gods perpetually young. The life of a cat was sacred for ancient Egyptians. There was one incident somewhere around the first century A.D., when Egypt was already a province of the Roman Empire. A drunken Roman soldier killed a cat and was beaten to death by a crowd of Egyptians, which was, by Roman law, a terrible crime. But the soldier’s superior was a wise man. While giving his killed subordinate an honourable burial (as was proper for a good and loyal Roman soldier), he told his fellow soldiers that the man paid with his life for insulting the gods of the land, and that others should learn a lesson and avoid sacrilege. No-one was punished for this death.
I have had four cats in my life, including the present one, Sonya, whom I inherited from my ex-girlfriend. One prominent general had different periods in his life marked by different horses: from the very first horse with whom he, still a kid, learned to ride, to the last one whom he rode in his old age and who eventually carried his body to the cemetery. I guess periods of my life would be marked by the cats I live with.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
I love cats. There is certain charm in them that one can hardly deny. I like dogs as well, unlike so many people who like only either one or the other. For me both are our little brothers, or as some call them “our furry friends”. I would not mind having a dog, except that I would have problems getting up at 6:00 a.m. to give my dog a walkout, or having an evening walkout as an absolute must. With cats it is much easier, just giving him/her food and water and cleaning the litter once in a while, and always enjoying stroking the silky fur. One acquaintance of mine, also a writer, used to say that a cat is an ideal pet for a writer, because a cat is less demanding than a dog and eats up your rejection sheets. And there is one thing about cats that few people would deny - all cats are beautiful, there are practically no ugly ones among them (unlike us humans, or dogs). I understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But that is how I feel about cats.
Many people believe that cats, unlike dogs, feel no loyalty and emotional attachment to their masters. I think it’s not just grossly exaggerated, but completely not true - at least all my cats were emotionally attached to me, not less than I to them.
As we know (I mean those of us who still read), cats were considered holy creatures in ancient Egypt. One would immediately assume that it’s probably because of their role in guarding crops from mice and rats. True. But I think there was another reason as well - cats look young throughout their lives. And this for people of traditional cultures might look like a sign of divinity - they imagined their gods perpetually young. The life of a cat was sacred for ancient Egyptians. There was one incident somewhere around the first century A.D., when Egypt was already a province of the Roman Empire. A drunken Roman soldier killed a cat and was beaten to death by a crowd of Egyptians, which was, by Roman law, a terrible crime. But the soldier’s superior was a wise man. While giving his killed subordinate an honourable burial (as was proper for a good and loyal Roman soldier), he told his fellow soldiers that the man paid with his life for insulting the gods of the land, and that others should learn a lesson and avoid sacrilege. No-one was punished for this death.
I have had four cats in my life, including the present one, Sonya, whom I inherited from my ex-girlfriend. One prominent general had different periods in his life marked by different horses: from the very first horse with whom he, still a kid, learned to ride, to the last one whom he rode in his old age and who eventually carried his body to the cemetery. I guess periods of my life would be marked by the cats I live with.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Writing about the Nazi Holocaust and about Stalin’s terror
By Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Nazi holocaust and Stalin’s terror are the greatest massive crimes against humanity in the last century. The first took the lives of 6 million Jews within 6 years, the other, by reliable estimates, about 20 million Soviet citizens (and an uncertain number of foreigners) of various national and class background within a quarter of a century. From a logical point of view the second deserves as much historical memory and representation as the first. However in reality that is not the case. More so, most of our contemporaries do not even see a connection between Hitler and Stalin and, while preserving active memory of the Holocaust, prefer to forget Stalinist terror. I think there are two factors which can explain this.
First, the Nazi regime was vanquished and completely dismantled. All its archives and other materials were made publicly available. Besides, Auschwitz and Dachau were taken over by enemy troops, and what was happening there became public terrifying knowledge (though even in this case there are Holocaust deniers). Nothing like that happened in post-Soviet Russia. The KGB archives were opened only partially and in the mid-90's were closed again. No surprise - many people in authority at that time were former Soviet officials, who for understandable reasons were not interested in complete disclosure of the dark parts of Soviet history. Around then the campaign for so-called “national reconciliation and concord” started under the motto “not everything was bad”. This attitude reached its peak in recent years under the Putin-Medvedev government. It made it known to the international community that it would regard the mere comparison between Nazism and Communism as an act of hostility towards Russia, which most of the Western public prefers not to engage in. There are notable exceptions, for example Gulag: a History by Anne Applebaum and Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe by Robert Gallately.
Secondly, there was a difference in the strength of the struggle to prevent historical amnesia towards the particular tragic events. The Western Jewish community, with the support and understanding of the majority of the people, did its best, and is still doing its best, to prevent the Holocaust from being forgiven or forgotten–and rightly so. Alas, there is no equally powerful pressure with regard to the GULAG. The “Memorial” society, which is trying to describe and document Stalin’s terror, is practically marginalized by the contemporary Russian establishment.
It looks like it is proper time for novelists to explore the subject and say their word. I tried to do this in Against Destiny, whose main characters got under the wheel of history in Stalin’s time, but dared to fight back.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
Nazi holocaust and Stalin’s terror are the greatest massive crimes against humanity in the last century. The first took the lives of 6 million Jews within 6 years, the other, by reliable estimates, about 20 million Soviet citizens (and an uncertain number of foreigners) of various national and class background within a quarter of a century. From a logical point of view the second deserves as much historical memory and representation as the first. However in reality that is not the case. More so, most of our contemporaries do not even see a connection between Hitler and Stalin and, while preserving active memory of the Holocaust, prefer to forget Stalinist terror. I think there are two factors which can explain this.
First, the Nazi regime was vanquished and completely dismantled. All its archives and other materials were made publicly available. Besides, Auschwitz and Dachau were taken over by enemy troops, and what was happening there became public terrifying knowledge (though even in this case there are Holocaust deniers). Nothing like that happened in post-Soviet Russia. The KGB archives were opened only partially and in the mid-90's were closed again. No surprise - many people in authority at that time were former Soviet officials, who for understandable reasons were not interested in complete disclosure of the dark parts of Soviet history. Around then the campaign for so-called “national reconciliation and concord” started under the motto “not everything was bad”. This attitude reached its peak in recent years under the Putin-Medvedev government. It made it known to the international community that it would regard the mere comparison between Nazism and Communism as an act of hostility towards Russia, which most of the Western public prefers not to engage in. There are notable exceptions, for example Gulag: a History by Anne Applebaum and Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe by Robert Gallately.
Secondly, there was a difference in the strength of the struggle to prevent historical amnesia towards the particular tragic events. The Western Jewish community, with the support and understanding of the majority of the people, did its best, and is still doing its best, to prevent the Holocaust from being forgiven or forgotten–and rightly so. Alas, there is no equally powerful pressure with regard to the GULAG. The “Memorial” society, which is trying to describe and document Stalin’s terror, is practically marginalized by the contemporary Russian establishment.
It looks like it is proper time for novelists to explore the subject and say their word. I tried to do this in Against Destiny, whose main characters got under the wheel of history in Stalin’s time, but dared to fight back.
Monday, October 26, 2009
History and historical novels
Alexander Dolinin, author of Against Destiny
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
History and historical novels are two different, and at the same time closely linked, ways of describing the past. They have one thing in common: both are attempts (with different degree of success) to describe what happened in the past. But they differ in a lot in ways and methods of doing it.
History deals with the general description of different historical periods and major events that took place in one period or another. In “classical” history, the main characters are rulers, ministers, governors, generals and other “biggies”, who were behind these major events or played important role in them. In newer history , for example in the Annales approach, the emphasis shifts to analysis of social issues of the society, its cultural patterns , and the specifics of life of diverse social groups under certain historical conditions.
Usually history deals either with well-known facts or, in case the truth is not well known or there is contradictory evidence about it, with hypothesizing about what probably happened. Ordinary individuals with their lives, destinies and sentiments rarely get mentioned in history. This is not surprising. There is very little evidence about them (only some parish church records about births, marriages and deaths or court records about sentences passed to this or that person, or in later days memoirs and diaries). Lack of personal information is the inevitable limitation of history.
One thing that can at least to some extent fill this gap is the historical novel. Like history, the historical novel deals with “interesting” historical periods and major historical events. But unlike the former it makes all these events seen through the eyes of individual humans. It portrays the effect of historical events and/or major historical processes on the lives of various individuals of different backgrounds, different ages, different characters and different psychological types. Within historical novels these characters live, trying to build their lives or, in the critical situations, just to survive. Some benefit from historical events and/or processes, while others lose, so to say “get under the wheel of history”, as in the cases of British enclosures or Soviet collectivization. Some of the losers submit, while others choose to fight their fates. Sometimes an important historical figure can be one of the characters of a novel. But even in this case the attention of the novelist is on presenting that person as a human being who, like any other person, faces the big historical event, and feels, thinks and acts in response. In historical novels (unlike history) the author’s fantasy and imagination are completely legitimate. They allow us to fill the gaps in our knowledge about certain period and events. They also allow the author (as an individual) to express his own perception of what was happening and his own interpretation of events.
So I think one can claim that history and historical novels complement each other in the understanding of historical events.
(print ISBN 9781601641731, Adobe ebook ISBN 9781601643261, Kindle ISBN 9781601643278, Sony ISBN 9781601643285)
History and historical novels are two different, and at the same time closely linked, ways of describing the past. They have one thing in common: both are attempts (with different degree of success) to describe what happened in the past. But they differ in a lot in ways and methods of doing it.
History deals with the general description of different historical periods and major events that took place in one period or another. In “classical” history, the main characters are rulers, ministers, governors, generals and other “biggies”, who were behind these major events or played important role in them. In newer history , for example in the Annales approach, the emphasis shifts to analysis of social issues of the society, its cultural patterns , and the specifics of life of diverse social groups under certain historical conditions.
Usually history deals either with well-known facts or, in case the truth is not well known or there is contradictory evidence about it, with hypothesizing about what probably happened. Ordinary individuals with their lives, destinies and sentiments rarely get mentioned in history. This is not surprising. There is very little evidence about them (only some parish church records about births, marriages and deaths or court records about sentences passed to this or that person, or in later days memoirs and diaries). Lack of personal information is the inevitable limitation of history.
One thing that can at least to some extent fill this gap is the historical novel. Like history, the historical novel deals with “interesting” historical periods and major historical events. But unlike the former it makes all these events seen through the eyes of individual humans. It portrays the effect of historical events and/or major historical processes on the lives of various individuals of different backgrounds, different ages, different characters and different psychological types. Within historical novels these characters live, trying to build their lives or, in the critical situations, just to survive. Some benefit from historical events and/or processes, while others lose, so to say “get under the wheel of history”, as in the cases of British enclosures or Soviet collectivization. Some of the losers submit, while others choose to fight their fates. Sometimes an important historical figure can be one of the characters of a novel. But even in this case the attention of the novelist is on presenting that person as a human being who, like any other person, faces the big historical event, and feels, thinks and acts in response. In historical novels (unlike history) the author’s fantasy and imagination are completely legitimate. They allow us to fill the gaps in our knowledge about certain period and events. They also allow the author (as an individual) to express his own perception of what was happening and his own interpretation of events.
So I think one can claim that history and historical novels complement each other in the understanding of historical events.
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