Posted on 12/05/2014 7:53:03 PM PST by annalex
This flat piece of metal is an ordinary shard of iron on which a missive to the posterity is written in red-brown iron paint:
This inscription is placed inside the wall on 15 March 1954, not with the thunder of orchestras and acclamation of crowds. But it will tell the posterity that this theater is built not by the effort of Komsomol brigades, as the later chronicles will record, -- it is built on the blood and bones of the prison inmates, the slaves of the 20th Century. We salute you, the generations to come! May your life and your epoch not know the slavery and humiliation of man by man.Greetings. Inmates I.L. Kozhin, R.G. Sharipov, Yu.N. Nigmatulin. 15 March 1954.
If you want to be on this right wing, monarchy, paleolibertarianism and nationalism ping list, but are not, please let me know. If you are on it and want to be off, also let me know. This ping list is not used for Catholic-Protestant debates.
This missive from the inmates had lain in the ceiling structures of the niche of the second floor of the spectator hall. It was discovered by accident during renovations in March 2005.
The Tagil residents knew that for the hardest labor that did not call for special skills, the unpaid labor of the inmates of Tagil Labor Camp was used. The old timers tell that early in the morning horse-drawn carts would arrive with slave labor force, and at dusk the same carts would go back -- to the prison colonies of the Brick towhship and Tagil outskirts. Brave souls were found who would throw bread and potatoes over the fence that surrounded the construction zone. According to Lev Samuilovich Libenstein who worked in 1950's in a construction state enterprise and managed the erection of buildings on the Theater Square, the inmates, who had their right to correspondence removed, immured bottles with their letters under one of the columns. What was written in them -- no one knows...
Translation, from Russian, is mine.
Please put me on your list!
Thanks for posting. Few Americans understand the extent of Soviet political imprisonment and forced labor.
I just watched The Way Back, the (supposedly) true story of Siberian gulag prisoners who escaped and walked 4,000 miles to India. You’ll enjoy it.
Done, thank you.
Ivan Solonevitch was an important part of the White Movement in emigration, a monarchist and a prolific author. In the early 1930s he attempted to escape abroad from the USSR using a false passport, was betrayed and jailed by NKVD. Served in Karelian labor camp together with his brother Boris and his son Yuri, from where all three escaped to Finland. That is the subject of Russia in Concentration Camp. Interestingly the term "concentration camp" was used by Solonevich before the Nazi concentration camps were a known phenomenon.
He survived several attempts by KNVD on his life while in emigration and his wife Tamara was killed by a Soviet bomb intended for Ivan.
Sounds fascinating. He must be totally unknown in the West — there must be millions of such stories in the old USSR. I fear the U.S. is headed toward the same arbitrary jurisprudence. The rule of law is breaking down everywhere and it is all choreographed by communists, anti-capitalists, Marxists, and anarchists championing the destruction of the US.
That, too, awaits translation: http://velikoross.org/narodnaya-monarhiya.
To any medium to advanced student of Russian out there: if you wish to leave a permanent mark in the body of translated literature in English, obtain an ironclad credential of your proficiency in Russian, AND commit to your translation becoming available in electronic form as an HTML site, pick any of these two books and attempt a translation. Get in touch with me and I will explain difficult parts and correct as needed.
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