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00:00:15,067 --> 00:00:18,215
The Gulag, a repressive
and criminal system,

2
00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:21,434
whose sheer size and
longevity are unprecedented,

3
00:00:21,459 --> 00:00:25,020
is a major historical
phenomenon of the 20th century.

4
00:00:26,911 --> 00:00:29,209
Created as early as 1918,

5
00:00:29,234 --> 00:00:33,956
the Soviet camps became a centralized
and organized concentration camp system

6
00:00:33,980 --> 00:00:36,299
in the beginning of the 1930s.

7
00:00:38,877 --> 00:00:41,439
The Gulag is a
penitentiary industry

8
00:00:41,464 --> 00:00:44,135
and an essential part
of the Soviet economy.

9
00:00:44,160 --> 00:00:45,742
Right before the war,

10
00:00:45,766 --> 00:00:50,894
the Great Terror leads to an unprecedented
influx of prisoners in the camps.

11
00:01:00,892 --> 00:01:03,814
The gulag was like a
country within a country,

12
00:01:03,839 --> 00:01:08,569
a lost continent, an independent
civilization difficult to see,

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00:01:08,594 --> 00:01:12,454
and to this day still
unknown and misunderstood.

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00:01:15,133 --> 00:01:19,079
GULAG: THE STORY

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00:01:25,509 --> 00:01:28,742
THE TESTIMONIES USED IN THIS FILM HAVE
BEEN GATHERED BETWEEN 1988 AND 2014,

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00:01:28,767 --> 00:01:32,353
MOSTLY BY "MEMORIAL", A RUSSIAN
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ASSOCIATION

17
00:01:37,603 --> 00:01:41,017
EPISODE 3: PEAK
and DEATH (1945-1957)

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00:01:50,493 --> 00:01:55,525
In Moscow, the 9th of
May 1945 is unforgettable.

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00:01:55,787 --> 00:02:00,433
2 to 3 million people flood the Red
Square and the banks of the Moskva.

20
00:02:00,458 --> 00:02:05,771
This is an incredible event never
before seen in the USSR capital city.

21
00:02:07,740 --> 00:02:12,724
People dance, sing in the streets,
and kiss every soldier and officer.

22
00:02:16,716 --> 00:02:21,849
On this memorable day, the author
Ilya Ehrenburg writes in his journal:

23
00:02:21,990 --> 00:02:25,423
"The past cannot repeat
itself, cannot come back.

24
00:02:25,448 --> 00:02:29,248
People have suffered too
much. Something must happen."

25
00:02:37,646 --> 00:02:39,638
The Soviets want a better life,

26
00:02:39,663 --> 00:02:42,990
want to finally get the
rewards for their sacrifices.

27
00:02:53,637 --> 00:02:56,865
The USSR is at the
height of its strength.

28
00:02:56,890 --> 00:02:59,953
The Red Army
occupies half of Europe.

29
00:02:59,978 --> 00:03:04,906
To the world, Stalin appears
as one of the winners of the war.

30
00:03:08,031 --> 00:03:09,929
A curious paradox

31
00:03:09,954 --> 00:03:14,250
to see the blood-thirsty dictator
sitting side by side with democracies

32
00:03:14,275 --> 00:03:18,718
as partly responsible for the
victory over Nazi totalitarianism.

33
00:03:23,630 --> 00:03:27,732
The gulag prisoners in the
camps have great hopes too.

34
00:03:30,300 --> 00:03:34,458
Unfortunately, peace does
not mean less repression.

35
00:03:34,685 --> 00:03:36,134
Quite the opposite,

36
00:03:36,158 --> 00:03:41,677
the population in the camps has never been
as high as during the years after the war.

37
00:03:43,935 --> 00:03:47,529
A new influx of
prisoners feeds the gulag.

38
00:03:57,544 --> 00:04:02,465
The allies agreed to send to
the USSR all Soviet citizens,

39
00:04:02,490 --> 00:04:04,458
both civilian and military,

40
00:04:04,483 --> 00:04:07,677
living in their country and
the countries they occupy.

41
00:04:08,841 --> 00:04:13,863
Within 9 months, from
May 1945 to February 1946,

42
00:04:13,888 --> 00:04:18,954
4.2 million Soviets, including
1.6 million former war prisoners

43
00:04:18,979 --> 00:04:24,200
and 2.6 million civilians brought
by force to Germany are sent back.

44
00:04:27,371 --> 00:04:30,917
They had to cross
filtration and control camps,

45
00:04:30,942 --> 00:04:35,644
where they undergo extended
interrogations by NKVD agents.

46
00:04:38,036 --> 00:04:40,464
After this filtration process,

47
00:04:40,489 --> 00:04:45,707
360,000 people are sentenced
to forced labor or banishment.

48
00:04:51,894 --> 00:04:56,816
Soviets that were deported or made prisoner
and lived in the west during the war

49
00:04:56,886 --> 00:05:00,346
fall victim to a foreign
contamination phobia

50
00:05:00,371 --> 00:05:04,035
and are the first group of people
joining the gulag after the war.

51
00:05:13,423 --> 00:05:17,953
The second group includes people
from the western regions of the USSR,

52
00:05:17,986 --> 00:05:22,517
Baltic States, Belarus,
West Ukraine, Moldavia.

53
00:05:22,550 --> 00:05:27,454
Regions that starting in summer
1944 are brutally sovietized.

54
00:05:27,479 --> 00:05:30,665
Hundreds of thousands of
people are sent to the gulag.

55
00:05:46,587 --> 00:05:49,439
A new university
is built in Moscow,

56
00:05:49,464 --> 00:05:52,720
welcoming the worthy
children of the Nomenklatura.

57
00:05:52,745 --> 00:05:55,823
Yet many students are part
of the third group of people

58
00:05:55,848 --> 00:05:58,385
sent to the Gulag after the war.

59
00:06:03,991 --> 00:06:07,716
They're suspected of being
dangerous counter-revolutionaries

60
00:06:07,741 --> 00:06:11,529
and thousands of academics
are arrested by the political police

61
00:06:11,554 --> 00:06:15,343
and sentenced to up to
25 years of forced labor.

62
00:06:16,515 --> 00:06:20,511
Often, a simple joke about
Stalin, told among friends,

63
00:06:20,535 --> 00:06:24,373
and reported by one of the
countless spies of the political police,

64
00:06:24,398 --> 00:06:27,351
can lead to heavy
sentences for the joker.

65
00:06:35,546 --> 00:06:38,812
A car comes near me
while I was leaving class.

66
00:06:39,571 --> 00:06:41,307
"Fidelgoltz?" he asks.

67
00:06:41,897 --> 00:06:43,768
"Yeah, that's me."

68
00:06:44,272 --> 00:06:45,772
Follow us.

69
00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:52,038
Iouri Fidelgoltz is
arrested in 1948,

70
00:06:52,063 --> 00:06:54,309
while he is studying fine arts,

71
00:06:54,333 --> 00:06:57,937
on the basis that he gathered a
group of anti-soviet young people.

72
00:07:04,374 --> 00:07:07,264
Without thinking too much,

73
00:07:08,936 --> 00:07:11,194
they put me in
a military vehicle

74
00:07:13,911 --> 00:07:17,264
and drove me to
the Butyrka prison.

75
00:07:22,676 --> 00:07:26,104
The guards bringing me there
were talking among themselves.

76
00:07:27,175 --> 00:07:30,862
One told the other
"who is it we're driving?"

77
00:07:32,181 --> 00:07:34,702
Probably a spy
or an anti-soviet.

78
00:07:34,891 --> 00:07:36,532
He won't last long.

79
00:07:38,430 --> 00:07:40,774
They don't go
easy on these guys.

80
00:07:41,221 --> 00:07:43,096
We just shoot them.

81
00:07:45,225 --> 00:07:48,023
On February 2nd,
early in the morning,

82
00:07:49,188 --> 00:07:51,610
A man dressed as a civilian,

83
00:07:53,046 --> 00:07:56,473
who didn't look like
much, kocked on our door.

84
00:07:58,206 --> 00:07:59,546
David Boudennyi

85
00:07:59,570 --> 00:08:03,129
is a member of an underground
communist group opposed to Stalin.

86
00:08:03,154 --> 00:08:07,418
He is arrested when he is 20
and sentenced to 5 years of camp.

87
00:08:09,004 --> 00:08:12,323
He got close to me, leaned
forward and whispered in my ear:

88
00:08:13,379 --> 00:08:16,910
"David Alexandrovich, gather
your things we have to go."

89
00:08:17,684 --> 00:08:20,215
I didn't understand
what he meant.

90
00:08:20,456 --> 00:08:22,739
But my mother did
and started to panic.

91
00:08:22,919 --> 00:08:25,726
"Where? Where
are you taking him?"

92
00:08:26,023 --> 00:08:27,417
Then he said:

93
00:08:27,442 --> 00:08:32,633
"Don't worry, Nadezhda Mikhailovna.
He'll be back in 20 or 30 minutes."

94
00:08:32,765 --> 00:08:34,929
"It's enough if he
takes his passport."

95
00:08:37,557 --> 00:08:41,477
Another day, Major Maksimov
came to see me, he said:

96
00:08:41,642 --> 00:08:45,511
"Listen up. You're but a
louse on the body of our nation.

97
00:08:45,741 --> 00:08:47,243
A parasite.

98
00:08:48,246 --> 00:08:51,313
We're isolating you from
the wrath of the people.

99
00:08:52,019 --> 00:08:54,773
If I let you go now, people
would tear you to pieces

100
00:08:54,798 --> 00:08:57,368
as befits an enemy of
the people that you are.

101
00:08:57,393 --> 00:08:59,426
There'll be nothing left of you.

102
00:09:01,298 --> 00:09:04,377
You can thank us
for protecting you.

103
00:09:05,191 --> 00:09:08,479
We're protecting you from
the wrath of the people."

104
00:09:12,284 --> 00:09:16,369
So in the first couple of weeks it was
just interrogation after interrogation.

105
00:09:16,394 --> 00:09:17,925
During the night.

106
00:09:17,950 --> 00:09:19,737
Precisely during the night.

107
00:09:19,762 --> 00:09:21,748
They had one idea in mind.

108
00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:24,926
To find the right article
in the penal code.

109
00:09:25,137 --> 00:09:28,152
Ours was Nº 58,
paragraph 10 or 11.

110
00:09:28,177 --> 00:09:30,086
Anti-soviet propaganda.

111
00:09:30,293 --> 00:09:33,464
Any form of criticism was
propaganda in their eyes.

112
00:09:34,297 --> 00:09:36,117
Saying that we were too poor,

113
00:09:36,141 --> 00:09:39,753
that farmers in kolkhoz the
didn't get anything for their work.

114
00:09:39,979 --> 00:09:41,901
That the news wasn't objective.

115
00:09:42,389 --> 00:09:45,185
That was all
anti-soviet propaganda.

116
00:09:52,342 --> 00:09:56,350
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an
artillery officer in the Red Army

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00:09:56,375 --> 00:09:58,373
and an ardent communist.

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00:09:59,277 --> 00:10:03,875
In a letter sent to a friend, he
questions Stalin's military genius.

119
00:10:03,900 --> 00:10:08,521
Among other things, he criticizes the
decision to cut off the Red Army's head

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00:10:08,546 --> 00:10:10,836
during the purge before the war.

121
00:10:13,537 --> 00:10:16,617
Solzhenitsyn is arrested in 1945

122
00:10:16,642 --> 00:10:21,054
and sentenced to 8 years in
the camps, following article 58.

123
00:10:35,195 --> 00:10:38,593
But most of the people
joining the gulag after the war

124
00:10:38,618 --> 00:10:42,394
are ordinary citizens
arrested by the NKVD,

125
00:10:42,418 --> 00:10:46,781
renamed MVD in
1946, for minor faults.

126
00:10:51,046 --> 00:10:55,764
The pettiest thefts in a factory,
in the Kolkhoz fields, or in shops,

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00:10:55,789 --> 00:11:00,421
are mercilessly punished by a
law from the 4th of June 1947,

128
00:11:00,446 --> 00:11:04,028
despite being committed
for the first time or by minors

129
00:11:04,052 --> 00:11:07,195
or in a time of scarcity
or even starvation.

130
00:11:10,406 --> 00:11:15,225
From this date on, the number of
long sentences for theft explodes.

131
00:11:15,250 --> 00:11:16,754
Within 6 years,

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00:11:16,779 --> 00:11:21,954
more than 1.5 million Soviets are
sentenced and sent to the gulag.

133
00:11:28,179 --> 00:11:31,019
Among people
incarcerated because of theft

134
00:11:31,043 --> 00:11:35,789
are many women, war widows,
and mothers with young children.

135
00:11:47,570 --> 00:11:51,796
Women represent one quarter
of the prisoners in the camps.

136
00:11:55,454 --> 00:11:58,595
But Zek women get no
preferential treatment.

137
00:11:58,620 --> 00:12:02,755
The same interrogations,
the same exhausting journeys,

138
00:12:02,780 --> 00:12:05,201
the same back breaking work.

139
00:12:07,740 --> 00:12:13,458
Women do the same tiring tasks as men on
the great construction sites of the gulag.

140
00:12:18,660 --> 00:12:20,966
I was sent to work underground.

141
00:12:21,348 --> 00:12:23,406
It was a new kind
of work for me.

142
00:12:23,632 --> 00:12:25,805
I had to load the wagons.

143
00:12:26,132 --> 00:12:30,772
There were no horses in the
mines at that time. Horses came later.

144
00:12:30,844 --> 00:12:35,885
So women had to push the wagons
instead of horses. I was one of them.

145
00:12:43,713 --> 00:12:47,986
Our job was to dig and
carry soil in wheelbarrows.

146
00:12:48,898 --> 00:12:52,369
We brought it to some kind
of dike they were building.

147
00:12:57,157 --> 00:13:02,619
Then on the way back, there were planks and
we had to push the wheelbarrows on them.

148
00:13:06,830 --> 00:13:08,873
We used to work in logging.

149
00:13:09,721 --> 00:13:11,799
The quota was really high.

150
00:13:12,954 --> 00:13:16,832
We had to take down
six tall pine trees a day.

151
00:13:20,664 --> 00:13:23,211
And we had to do that six times.

152
00:13:24,891 --> 00:13:26,555
That was the quota.

153
00:13:36,812 --> 00:13:39,891
In April, we were
sent to cut down trees.

154
00:13:40,032 --> 00:13:42,471
We had snow up to our waist

155
00:13:43,296 --> 00:13:48,116
and we had to walk 5 kilometers
in the dark to our working place.

156
00:13:53,193 --> 00:13:55,306
We were building a railway track

157
00:13:55,330 --> 00:13:58,483
that was getting further and
further away from the camp.

158
00:13:58,508 --> 00:14:03,630
And so everyday we had to walk
further and further to get to the site.

159
00:14:05,589 --> 00:14:08,388
We had to walk 10
kilometers to get there.

160
00:14:08,525 --> 00:14:11,755
Work 10 hours outside
to build the railway tracks

161
00:14:11,780 --> 00:14:13,906
and walk 10 kilometers back.

162
00:14:14,218 --> 00:14:18,187
We just dropped on our bedstead
without even taking our clothes off.

163
00:14:18,402 --> 00:14:20,273
Exhausted.

164
00:14:29,249 --> 00:14:31,765
It felt like we
barely fell asleep,

165
00:14:31,790 --> 00:14:36,164
but it was time to wake up and
go back to work again and again.

166
00:14:38,249 --> 00:14:40,370
We were digging foundations.

167
00:14:40,395 --> 00:14:46,507
With a pickaxe, we would break the
ice, then put the soil in a wooden crate.

168
00:14:46,694 --> 00:14:49,148
Carry it over 300 meters.

169
00:14:49,172 --> 00:14:51,746
Place it and pack the ground.

170
00:14:53,683 --> 00:14:56,965
If the soil was frozen,
we had to bring it back.

171
00:14:56,990 --> 00:14:58,361
Our boss used to say

172
00:14:58,386 --> 00:15:02,442
"I don't give a damn about your work.
I'm only interested in your suffering."

173
00:15:08,551 --> 00:15:13,660
Women prisoners are perceived as sexual
toys from the moment they reach the camp.

174
00:15:17,746 --> 00:15:21,746
Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya
spent a long time in jail,

175
00:15:21,771 --> 00:15:25,441
and once freed, she drew
a chronicle of her journey.

176
00:15:30,806 --> 00:15:35,859
This comic book about the gulag
shows the abuses women had to endure.

177
00:15:35,884 --> 00:15:39,501
They had to face aggressions
by the guards and criminals.

178
00:15:41,329 --> 00:15:44,337
Humiliations and
violence are constant.

179
00:15:44,362 --> 00:15:46,192
Gang rapes are common.

180
00:15:46,217 --> 00:15:49,588
To be pretty in the
gulag is a curse.

181
00:15:53,750 --> 00:15:58,266
The question of relations
between men and women was tricky.

182
00:15:58,653 --> 00:16:00,684
Young women quickly
found themselves

183
00:16:00,709 --> 00:16:05,337
in situations where they
were asked special things.

184
00:16:05,968 --> 00:16:11,943
The rules forced them and if they
refused, they'd go straight to the mine.

185
00:16:19,732 --> 00:16:25,005
One of the guards, Danzig Baldaev,
who worked in the prisons for 40 years,

186
00:16:25,872 --> 00:16:30,396
drew disturbing scenes of everyday
violence women had to endure.

187
00:16:36,974 --> 00:16:39,888
In a world where moral
barriers have fallen,

188
00:16:40,017 --> 00:16:43,810
to accept violence,
prostitution, and forced unions

189
00:16:43,835 --> 00:16:47,333
is a way for many female
prisoners in the gulag to survive

190
00:16:47,358 --> 00:16:49,724
in a life that has
lost all its meaning.

191
00:16:52,595 --> 00:16:56,333
Sexual relations between
inmates, men and women,

192
00:16:56,358 --> 00:16:59,943
is forbidden and sentenced
to several days in the dungeon,

193
00:16:59,968 --> 00:17:03,563
but in such a hopeless
world, the Zeks defy the rule

194
00:17:03,588 --> 00:17:08,907
in one last surge of vital energy as a
challenge to the death surrounding them.

195
00:17:12,047 --> 00:17:16,671
The embraces happen
anywhere, in the snow at -40ºC,

196
00:17:16,696 --> 00:17:19,067
in the barracks, in
front of everyone.

197
00:17:22,071 --> 00:17:25,594
The camp wears down the
bodies and the resistance.

198
00:17:25,619 --> 00:17:29,508
Women in the gulag lose
their youth and their health.

199
00:17:38,788 --> 00:17:43,749
That group of women were
wearing horrible clothes that didn't fit.

200
00:17:44,172 --> 00:17:46,618
They seem to have
lost all humanity.

201
00:17:47,116 --> 00:17:49,129
We could have
thought they were bears.

202
00:17:49,961 --> 00:17:52,532
Anything but human beings.

203
00:17:57,196 --> 00:18:02,649
I shouted "the mirror,
the mirror". And we all ran.

204
00:18:02,912 --> 00:18:06,366
We had spent four years
without seeing our faces.

205
00:18:06,391 --> 00:18:11,210
We were running without any
clothes on, naked, towards the mirror.

206
00:18:12,319 --> 00:18:16,148
There were many of us
and I couldn't find myself.

207
00:18:16,497 --> 00:18:18,954
I remembered myself
as a young woman

208
00:18:18,978 --> 00:18:23,773
and suddenly I was facing my
mother's gaze and gray hairs.

209
00:18:24,741 --> 00:18:27,164
I understood it was me.

210
00:18:39,256 --> 00:18:44,773
In 1952, there were more than 500,000
women held prisoner in the camps.

211
00:18:44,936 --> 00:18:50,250
And around 35,000 children below
3 kept in houses for the newborn.

212
00:18:52,484 --> 00:18:56,936
"These were children of the traitors
to the motherland", to quote Stalin,

213
00:18:56,961 --> 00:19:00,483
whose parents had been
executed during the great terror

214
00:19:00,508 --> 00:19:02,781
or who were born in the camps.

215
00:19:07,546 --> 00:19:10,418
A birth in the camp was a curse.

216
00:19:11,976 --> 00:19:14,164
It was a catastrophe.

217
00:19:16,234 --> 00:19:19,664
Children were taken
away from their mothers.

218
00:19:19,970 --> 00:19:21,649
When they were 2.

219
00:19:23,301 --> 00:19:26,036
But often right
when they were born.

220
00:19:26,334 --> 00:19:30,020
And the mother just didn't know
where her child was while in the camp.

221
00:19:30,212 --> 00:19:34,536
They wouldn't tell us whether
the baby was still alive or not.

222
00:19:40,817 --> 00:19:42,579
I was born in the camp.

223
00:19:43,137 --> 00:19:44,770
I'm a child of the camp.

224
00:19:46,062 --> 00:19:51,692
My mother was sentenced in
1938 to 10 years of forced labor

225
00:19:52,551 --> 00:19:54,567
because of article 58.

226
00:19:56,794 --> 00:19:59,240
I was born in 1941.

227
00:19:59,265 --> 00:20:04,482
Later on, I kept asking her "why did you
keep me? You had to have some reason".

228
00:20:04,507 --> 00:20:09,397
And she say that it wasn't my
fault that I was a child born from love.

229
00:20:13,748 --> 00:20:16,262
We've been sent an old prisoner.

230
00:20:16,544 --> 00:20:19,614
An old carpenter
to fix the fence.

231
00:20:19,807 --> 00:20:23,489
He's working here and
the child is looking at him.

232
00:20:23,919 --> 00:20:28,880
After a while he says "grandpa,
Make me a wooden car."

233
00:20:33,364 --> 00:20:38,762
Old man turns around and shouts
"leave me alone. I'm too busy."

234
00:20:39,231 --> 00:20:43,247
Then the little boy answers
"grandpa, I'm a zek."

235
00:20:43,746 --> 00:20:45,958
And the old man
bursts into tears.

236
00:20:49,559 --> 00:20:53,216
Children's homes in the
gulag are like hospices.

237
00:20:55,738 --> 00:21:03,260
In 1947, more than 6,000 out of 15,000
children under the age of three died there.

238
00:21:07,807 --> 00:21:09,604
Along with young children,

239
00:21:09,629 --> 00:21:12,633
dozens of thousands
of teenagers below 16

240
00:21:12,657 --> 00:21:16,026
are held in the gulag
at the end of the 1940s.

241
00:21:22,538 --> 00:21:24,953
Ticket please.

242
00:21:25,680 --> 00:21:28,344
- How are things in Moscow?
- Very good.

243
00:21:28,369 --> 00:21:30,935
The last mass trials
were a great success.

244
00:21:31,139 --> 00:21:34,115
They're going to be
fewer but better Russians.

245
00:21:36,414 --> 00:21:40,926
The movie Ninotchka, shot right
before the war by Ernst Lubitsch,

246
00:21:40,951 --> 00:21:43,408
is released in 1945.

247
00:21:45,646 --> 00:21:50,756
This lucid and ferocious anti-Stalin
comedy, written by Billy Wilder,

248
00:21:50,781 --> 00:21:55,303
condemns repression in the
USSR for the first time in the cinema.

249
00:21:58,945 --> 00:22:01,210
Hello? Comrade Cazabine?

250
00:22:01,235 --> 00:22:04,827
I am sorry. He hasn't
been with us for 6 months.

251
00:22:04,852 --> 00:22:06,934
He was called back to
Russia and was investigated.

252
00:22:06,958 --> 00:22:09,046
You can get further
details from his widow.

253
00:22:09,296 --> 00:22:10,859
You're very welcome,
very welcome.

254
00:22:19,937 --> 00:22:24,577
The publishing, in French, in
1947, of "I Chose Freedom",

255
00:22:24,602 --> 00:22:27,606
a book by Soviet Defector
Victor Kravchenko,

256
00:22:27,630 --> 00:22:29,584
who escaped to
the United States,

257
00:22:29,609 --> 00:22:31,859
leads to a giant polemic.

258
00:22:36,310 --> 00:22:40,898
Kravchenko reveals forced
collectivization and the camp system.

259
00:22:41,045 --> 00:22:44,280
The book is a massive
international best seller.

260
00:22:44,305 --> 00:22:46,738
It's translated
into 22 languages

261
00:22:46,762 --> 00:22:50,069
and hundreds of thousands
of copies are sold in France.

262
00:22:57,734 --> 00:23:01,023
The communist weekly
magazine, "Les Lettres Françaises",

263
00:23:01,048 --> 00:23:05,515
accuses Kravchenko of being an
agent of the US Secret Services.

264
00:23:05,540 --> 00:23:10,421
Kravchenko files a complaint against
Les Lettres Françaises for defamation.

265
00:23:18,856 --> 00:23:22,321
I assure, my friend
and all my readers,

266
00:23:22,346 --> 00:23:26,490
that I will do my best
with their moral help

267
00:23:26,514 --> 00:23:30,152
in order to show the
truth during the trial

268
00:23:30,177 --> 00:23:32,720
and show to the
world public opinion

269
00:23:32,744 --> 00:23:38,341
the horrors of Soviet reality
and the activities of its agents.

270
00:23:38,533 --> 00:23:45,528
I will fight at this trial with all my
friends for your and our freedom.

271
00:23:50,107 --> 00:23:54,082
The trial begins on the
24th of January 1949,

272
00:23:54,107 --> 00:23:58,269
in front of the criminal court of
the Seine and lasts two months.

273
00:23:58,294 --> 00:24:01,810
For the first time, the gulag
comes to the courtroom.

274
00:24:04,396 --> 00:24:06,895
100 witnesses are heard.

275
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:10,170
The Soviet government sent
former colleagues of Kravchenko,

276
00:24:10,195 --> 00:24:13,513
along with his ex-wife,
in order to abjure him.

277
00:24:16,911 --> 00:24:21,308
Many famous political and academic
people of the left wing are heard.

278
00:24:21,333 --> 00:24:25,582
Frédéric Joliot-Curie, communist
and Nobel Prize winner in physics,

279
00:24:25,607 --> 00:24:29,837
and Elsa Triolet, author of Russian
origin and Louis Aragon's wife,

280
00:24:29,861 --> 00:24:32,364
defend the honor of the USSR.

281
00:24:36,629 --> 00:24:39,560
Kravchenko
counterattacks with vigor.

282
00:24:39,585 --> 00:24:41,521
He refutes and argues.

283
00:24:42,489 --> 00:24:45,211
His lawyers bring in
Margarete Buber-Neumann,

284
00:24:45,235 --> 00:24:48,263
widow of the German
communist leader Heinz Neumann,

285
00:24:48,288 --> 00:24:52,333
who was shot by
the NKVD in 1937.

286
00:24:55,278 --> 00:24:58,028
She had been
deported to a gulag camp

287
00:24:58,053 --> 00:25:01,408
before the NKVD handed
her over to the Gestapo,

288
00:25:01,432 --> 00:25:04,169
after the signature of the
German-Soviet Agreement,

289
00:25:04,194 --> 00:25:08,028
who, in turn, sent her to the
Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

290
00:25:09,692 --> 00:25:13,708
Her undeniable testimony
heavily influenced the audience.

291
00:25:16,466 --> 00:25:19,630
In the end, Kravchenko
wins the trial.

292
00:25:19,914 --> 00:25:23,667
Les Lettres Françaises are
sentenced for defamation.

293
00:25:26,535 --> 00:25:30,746
The court's judgment states
that the Soviet camps exist

294
00:25:30,771 --> 00:25:36,918
and the Soviet Concentration Camp System
is a key element of the USSR economy.

295
00:25:49,267 --> 00:25:52,595
But has the public opinion
in France been convinced?

296
00:25:52,620 --> 00:25:55,853
It's doubtful, especially in
the middle of the Cold War,

297
00:25:55,878 --> 00:26:00,445
at a time when more than 25% of the
French voters support the communists

298
00:26:00,470 --> 00:26:04,056
and hundreds of thousands of
people joined the Festival of Humanity.

299
00:26:12,095 --> 00:26:16,548
The prestige of the USSR,
of the Red Army and of Stalin,

300
00:26:16,573 --> 00:26:18,830
who freed the world
of the Nazi monster,

301
00:26:18,855 --> 00:26:21,077
continued to prevent
the western public

302
00:26:21,101 --> 00:26:23,986
from understanding just
how big the gulag was.

303
00:26:24,673 --> 00:26:28,320
Yet, thanks to such trials,
heavily followed by the media,

304
00:26:28,345 --> 00:26:31,783
the thick veil of lies
was starting to disappear.

305
00:26:39,907 --> 00:26:42,958
At a time when communists
and their allies in the west

306
00:26:42,983 --> 00:26:45,617
denied the existence
of the Soviet camps,

307
00:26:45,642 --> 00:26:48,267
the gulag reached its apex.

308
00:26:48,546 --> 00:26:52,486
Never before had there been that
many prisoners in the labor camps.

309
00:26:52,606 --> 00:26:55,524
2,750,000 people,

310
00:26:55,548 --> 00:26:59,884
along with 2.8 million people
deported to special settlement villages,

311
00:26:59,909 --> 00:27:03,478
and whose fate is only
marginally better than the gulag.

312
00:27:08,018 --> 00:27:13,464
The highest camp densities are found
in the same places as in the 1930s.

313
00:27:13,722 --> 00:27:16,323
In the gigantic
region of the Kolyma,

314
00:27:16,348 --> 00:27:19,016
where 200,000 prisoners struggle

315
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:23,431
in the gold, tin, cobalt,
tungsten and uranium mines,

316
00:27:23,456 --> 00:27:27,518
strategic ores for the armament
industry booming at that time.

317
00:27:31,690 --> 00:27:36,251
The Norilsk region, beyond the
Polar Circle, in the North of Siberia,

318
00:27:36,276 --> 00:27:41,001
contains almost 80,000 prisoners
tasked with extracting nickel,

319
00:27:41,026 --> 00:27:43,057
another strategic awe.

320
00:27:48,854 --> 00:27:51,378
Other regions with
a high camp density

321
00:27:51,403 --> 00:27:56,487
still include the Vorkuta
Pechora area with 200,000 people

322
00:27:56,512 --> 00:28:00,917
working mostly in coal mines
and on railway construction sites.

323
00:28:06,096 --> 00:28:09,561
In Kazakhstan there are
more than 100,000 prisoners

324
00:28:09,586 --> 00:28:12,548
in the Karlag camps,
near Karaganda.

325
00:28:13,227 --> 00:28:19,188
About 100,000 prisoners work in the
coal basin of Kuzbass, in central Siberia.

326
00:28:22,142 --> 00:28:25,692
And about the same number
work in the Krasnoyarsk region.

327
00:28:28,238 --> 00:28:33,340
About 100,000 prisoners work in
the Ozerlag and Amurlag camps.

328
00:28:45,262 --> 00:28:49,051
Among the new symbolic
projects started after the war

329
00:28:49,076 --> 00:28:52,207
and entirely carried out
by prisoners of the gulag,

330
00:28:52,232 --> 00:28:55,517
there is Stalin's crazy
idea to build a railway

331
00:28:55,541 --> 00:28:58,128
connecting the Ural
with the Yenisei river,

332
00:28:58,153 --> 00:29:00,379
far beyond the Polar circle.

333
00:29:11,422 --> 00:29:14,814
The project is
started in April 1947

334
00:29:14,839 --> 00:29:19,143
and will mobilize almost
100,000 people for 6 years.

335
00:29:20,248 --> 00:29:24,354
The railway is supposed to run through
thousands of kilometers of swamps

336
00:29:24,379 --> 00:29:27,236
and areas devoid
of any living soul,

337
00:29:27,261 --> 00:29:31,088
with temperatures dropping
to 50° below during winter.

338
00:29:36,204 --> 00:29:38,850
Every spring, the
thaw and floods

339
00:29:38,875 --> 00:29:42,424
caused by the rise in the water
level of the great Siberian rivers,

340
00:29:42,449 --> 00:29:44,686
destroy the embankments.

341
00:29:49,969 --> 00:29:52,555
At the end of March 1953,

342
00:29:52,580 --> 00:29:54,902
the whole project is cancelled.

343
00:29:54,927 --> 00:29:59,699
The bits of railway left go down
in history as "the dead way".

344
00:30:05,954 --> 00:30:09,655
The "dead way" is the most
obvious symbol of the complete failure

345
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,689
of a development model
based on forced labor.

346
00:30:21,446 --> 00:30:24,884
The Gulag camps are built
by the Zeks themselves,

347
00:30:24,909 --> 00:30:29,145
just like the new roads leading there,
and some of the towns around them.

348
00:30:30,465 --> 00:30:32,583
While the places
are being built,

349
00:30:32,608 --> 00:30:38,989
the zeks sleep in tents or even in wolves
dens, basically big holes in the snow.

350
00:30:44,665 --> 00:30:49,587
In the camps, the barracks are
basic, poorly heated and overpopulated.

351
00:30:49,612 --> 00:30:52,805
The zeks sleep next to
each other in a long row.

352
00:30:52,830 --> 00:30:55,815
The bunk beds have
two to three levels.

353
00:30:59,807 --> 00:31:05,111
The zeks are often forced to sleep on the
planks directly without even a straw mattress.

354
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:11,041
Alexei Priadilov was
sentenced to 7 years in a camp

355
00:31:11,066 --> 00:31:13,799
for publishing a
clandestine newspaper.

356
00:31:18,313 --> 00:31:20,257
Three big hangers.

357
00:31:20,593 --> 00:31:23,204
About 500 people in each.

358
00:31:23,872 --> 00:31:26,909
Three levels of
bedsteads, no mattresses.

359
00:31:27,612 --> 00:31:30,557
We slept against each
other on these bedsteads.

360
00:31:32,886 --> 00:31:36,928
The stench in the closed
up dormitories is unbearable.

361
00:31:36,953 --> 00:31:41,780
The cold pierces the bones day
and night, freezes limbs and skin.

362
00:31:48,124 --> 00:31:50,443
Abandoned and starved.

363
00:31:50,745 --> 00:31:55,388
We were lying on these cold
bedsteads covered with frost.

364
00:31:55,709 --> 00:31:59,853
One day my hair stuck to
the wall because of the frost.

365
00:32:02,865 --> 00:32:06,341
And I tried to get
up. It was impossible.

366
00:32:08,273 --> 00:32:12,701
All clumps of hair
was sticking to the wall.

367
00:32:17,435 --> 00:32:20,597
The barracks are
aligned in "the zone".

368
00:32:20,622 --> 00:32:26,035
"The zone" is an area bordered by wooden
poles, barbed wires, and watchtowers.

369
00:32:26,060 --> 00:32:29,325
Five meters beyond,
lies the forbidden area.

370
00:32:29,350 --> 00:32:32,028
Crossing it would
mean instant execution.

371
00:32:39,372 --> 00:32:41,935
The streets in the
camp are made of planks

372
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:45,544
to avoid walking in the mud
during spring and autumn.

373
00:32:47,444 --> 00:32:50,755
In the center of the
camp is a big open plaza,

374
00:32:50,780 --> 00:32:53,591
where prisoners are
counted twice a day.

375
00:32:59,028 --> 00:33:08,192
Exhaustion, cold, hunger, violence, theft,
extortion, dehumanization, humiliation.

376
00:33:08,310 --> 00:33:13,910
Daily life conditions for a zek in the
gulag are like a litany of wounds and pain.

377
00:33:18,536 --> 00:33:21,450
Food is every Zek's obsession.

378
00:33:21,475 --> 00:33:26,981
Supply is subject to all kinds of
events and usually happens irregularly.

379
00:33:30,042 --> 00:33:34,426
When food reaches the
camp at last, it's often stolen.

380
00:33:34,451 --> 00:33:38,833
Leaders, guards, criminals, and
pen pushers get their share first.

381
00:33:38,858 --> 00:33:41,466
Theft and corruption
are everywhere.

382
00:33:44,911 --> 00:33:47,154
So what's left for the zeks?

383
00:33:47,179 --> 00:33:51,379
An awful soup called Balanda,
with rubbish floating in it.

384
00:33:56,895 --> 00:34:00,832
We were served some
dirty and stinky dishwater.

385
00:34:01,890 --> 00:34:04,668
In which some
herring bones floated.

386
00:34:05,512 --> 00:34:08,723
Someone had already
eaten the herrings obviously.

387
00:34:09,528 --> 00:34:11,340
We had the bones.

388
00:34:11,473 --> 00:34:14,226
Sometimes we find
cabbage cores in there.

389
00:34:15,859 --> 00:34:20,788
And we got a portion of
bread. A ration of 800 grams.

390
00:34:20,919 --> 00:34:26,851
But inside the bread there was
straw, potato peelings, God knows what.

391
00:34:34,038 --> 00:34:37,827
Vladimir Kantovski is
sentenced to 10 years of camp

392
00:34:37,852 --> 00:34:40,937
for supporting one of his
professors who got arrested.

393
00:34:44,616 --> 00:34:46,905
The thing that the
camp taught me first,

394
00:34:47,293 --> 00:34:48,819
and that was important,

395
00:34:48,844 --> 00:34:52,099
is that you should get food
by any means necessary.

396
00:34:52,986 --> 00:34:56,622
I won't hesitate to say bye to your
clothes from Moscow for a bit of bread.

397
00:34:59,918 --> 00:35:05,512
We were living like... I don't
know wild beasts, insects.

398
00:35:05,881 --> 00:35:11,536
All our thoughts, all our dreams,
were focused on the next event.

399
00:35:12,067 --> 00:35:13,966
We thought about eating.

400
00:35:14,382 --> 00:35:17,344
Getting extra
portion or more crust.

401
00:35:19,633 --> 00:35:23,850
We had our eyes riveted on the plate
that guard brought with bread on it.

402
00:35:25,522 --> 00:35:28,812
And we started to estimate
which piece we'd get.

403
00:35:29,030 --> 00:35:31,547
Depending on the
side he started cutting.

404
00:35:36,898 --> 00:35:40,343
In a camp, extreme
violence reigns supreme.

405
00:35:40,368 --> 00:35:42,883
All moral rules are forgotten.

406
00:35:42,908 --> 00:35:45,221
It's about the
survival of the fittest.

407
00:35:45,246 --> 00:35:48,179
Absolute evil rules.

408
00:35:51,270 --> 00:35:54,076
The guard hits you,
but it doesn't hurt.

409
00:35:54,787 --> 00:35:57,041
It's as if he was
hitting a table.

410
00:35:57,631 --> 00:35:58,989
Do you understand?

411
00:35:59,014 --> 00:36:00,838
We no longer felt anything.

412
00:36:03,544 --> 00:36:06,232
Savagery means
survival in the gulag

413
00:36:06,257 --> 00:36:08,357
and it excludes solidarity.

414
00:36:08,382 --> 00:36:12,784
Physical strength becomes moral
strength, as Varlam Shalamov wrote,

415
00:36:12,809 --> 00:36:16,864
after being deported and
spending 14 years in the Kolyma.

416
00:36:18,498 --> 00:36:22,411
He introduces the 3 vital
commandments of Zek.

417
00:36:22,436 --> 00:36:26,307
"You shall not trust anyone.
You shall not fear anyone.

418
00:36:26,331 --> 00:36:29,780
You shall not ask
anyone for anything."

419
00:36:32,727 --> 00:36:37,561
One of them could come down her
bedstead and the other couldn't climb up.

420
00:36:37,827 --> 00:36:39,842
How could they have
helped each other?

421
00:36:43,257 --> 00:36:45,983
Julius Margolin
is a Polish writer,

422
00:36:46,008 --> 00:36:48,319
who spent five
years in the gulag.

423
00:36:48,344 --> 00:36:49,371
He wrote:

424
00:36:49,395 --> 00:36:54,952
"In the camp, we had neither the desire
nor the possibility to save those who fell.

425
00:36:57,193 --> 00:36:59,936
Everyone was too
busy with themselves.

426
00:36:59,961 --> 00:37:05,025
Philanthropy in the camp is like
cologne poured in a slaughterhouse."

427
00:37:11,770 --> 00:37:14,824
Civilization stops at
the gate of the camp.

428
00:37:15,225 --> 00:37:18,305
Forgetting others is
the price to survive.

429
00:37:19,931 --> 00:37:23,032
The only well-structured
organization accepted,

430
00:37:23,057 --> 00:37:26,922
something specific to Soviet
camps, was the world of criminals.

431
00:37:26,947 --> 00:37:29,757
Violence, rights,
language, tattoos,

432
00:37:29,782 --> 00:37:32,555
all perceived as
signs of gratitude.

433
00:37:38,943 --> 00:37:41,178
Criminals had a
good life in the camp.

434
00:37:43,110 --> 00:37:45,449
They ate well, drank well.

435
00:37:46,047 --> 00:37:48,399
Nearby was the women's camp.

436
00:37:48,587 --> 00:37:51,375
So sometimes we could
see women on the bedstead.

437
00:37:58,952 --> 00:38:01,508
We're sitting on the
grass with our things.

438
00:38:02,148 --> 00:38:03,873
Then comes a pack.

439
00:38:03,898 --> 00:38:05,883
These weren't people.

440
00:38:06,091 --> 00:38:08,616
But creatures that
didn't speak Russian.

441
00:38:09,327 --> 00:38:11,046
They could only swear.

442
00:38:15,624 --> 00:38:18,609
These were criminals
coming our way.

443
00:38:19,629 --> 00:38:22,609
And here they are,
stealing all our things.

444
00:38:23,149 --> 00:38:27,398
And were completely petrified. We
don't understand who those people are.

445
00:38:28,171 --> 00:38:31,101
Those people who
took everything from us.

446
00:38:37,601 --> 00:38:41,585
In the beginning of the 1950s,
the gulag is no longer profitable.

447
00:38:41,610 --> 00:38:46,488
Investigations in 1951 to
1952 in the main camps,

448
00:38:46,513 --> 00:38:49,085
show the administration
was making a loss.

449
00:38:49,110 --> 00:38:53,389
This demonstrated the rapid
decline of the gulag's profitability.

450
00:38:55,311 --> 00:38:58,663
Many major sites
are very delayed.

451
00:39:13,835 --> 00:39:18,100
Stalin dies on the
5th of March 1953.

452
00:39:18,125 --> 00:39:21,215
A general feeling of shock
sweeps over many Soviets

453
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:24,866
when hearing the news the
next day on radio Moscow.

454
00:39:28,460 --> 00:39:33,667
They realized that Stalin's death,
after 25 years of ruling supreme,

455
00:39:33,691 --> 00:39:35,999
means the end of an era.

456
00:39:44,295 --> 00:39:49,170
However, amid the camps and special
settlement villages, people are happy.

457
00:39:53,303 --> 00:39:54,862
Our reaction?

458
00:39:56,459 --> 00:40:00,467
Most of the old Zeks and
deported just shouted "hooray".

459
00:40:04,716 --> 00:40:08,959
But the officers and the guys
like that, they had a face like this.

460
00:40:12,217 --> 00:40:13,889
It was their reaction.

461
00:40:13,914 --> 00:40:17,865
But we reacted differently.
"Yeah, he's dead!"

462
00:40:18,674 --> 00:40:20,569
And we celebrated.

463
00:40:25,095 --> 00:40:27,040
We all stood up.

464
00:40:27,524 --> 00:40:31,164
We shouted and we all
started to clap our hands.

465
00:40:31,189 --> 00:40:32,884
That's how it happened.

466
00:40:33,048 --> 00:40:36,942
Izrael Mazus was sentenced
to 7 years in the camps,

467
00:40:36,966 --> 00:40:40,642
because he accidentally
knocked a statue of Stalin over.

468
00:40:43,477 --> 00:40:46,923
Guards didn't step inside
the camp for 2 or 3 days.

469
00:40:47,852 --> 00:40:49,727
What a mess it was.

470
00:40:50,050 --> 00:40:52,635
The mustache had finally died.

471
00:40:53,301 --> 00:40:57,260
Everyone said before "goddammit,
Georgians can live 100 years".

472
00:40:57,635 --> 00:41:01,971
I'm talking about it amongst ourselves
we said "no way is this going to happen".

473
00:41:06,557 --> 00:41:09,995
Stalin had always acted
as though he was immortal

474
00:41:10,020 --> 00:41:13,120
and the question of
succession would never arise.

475
00:41:14,591 --> 00:41:16,158
During his last years,

476
00:41:16,183 --> 00:41:19,023
he used to tell his
closest companions, Beria,

477
00:41:19,047 --> 00:41:22,791
Khrushchev, Malenkov,
Bulganin, Kaganovich,

478
00:41:22,824 --> 00:41:25,244
the very people
carrying his coffin,

479
00:41:25,408 --> 00:41:27,040
"What would you do without me?

480
00:41:27,065 --> 00:41:30,181
You are more powerless
than newly born blind kittens."

481
00:41:45,384 --> 00:41:50,086
But soon, the battle for succession
amongst Stalin's heirs begins.

482
00:41:50,111 --> 00:41:54,314
All of them were involved in
the Soviet regime's mass crimes.

483
00:41:55,025 --> 00:41:58,072
Nikita Khrushchev is in control.

484
00:41:58,097 --> 00:42:02,634
He's happy and cunning and
successfully removes his opponents.

485
00:42:13,556 --> 00:42:16,806
Just a couple of weeks
after the dictator's death,

486
00:42:16,831 --> 00:42:19,314
a massive change is underway.

487
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:25,509
A change the Soviet author Ilya Ehrenburg
compared to Thor in a famous text.

488
00:42:30,541 --> 00:42:36,266
On March the 27th, 1953, barely
three weeks after Stalin's death,

489
00:42:36,291 --> 00:42:41,076
a major amnesty is decided by
the all powerful head of state security

490
00:42:41,100 --> 00:42:42,572
Lavrentiy Beria.

491
00:42:42,597 --> 00:42:47,048
He wants to skim the fat off the
gulag and make it more profitable.

492
00:42:52,767 --> 00:42:56,423
After Stalin's death, we felt we
were moving towards freedom.

493
00:42:56,939 --> 00:42:58,923
Everything went very fast.

494
00:42:59,466 --> 00:43:00,813
A photographer came,

495
00:43:00,837 --> 00:43:05,158
took a picture of us for the pass that
allowed us to leave the camp without guards.

496
00:43:07,726 --> 00:43:09,431
We left the camp.

497
00:43:12,033 --> 00:43:15,506
And we found some girls
to have a good time with.

498
00:43:20,838 --> 00:43:24,664
All prisoners with a sentence
below 5 years are freed,

499
00:43:24,689 --> 00:43:28,813
along with pregnant women or
women with a child below 10 years old.

500
00:43:28,838 --> 00:43:34,344
Minors, people above 50 and handicapped
people and those who can't work.

501
00:43:36,673 --> 00:43:40,442
Political prisoners sentenced
for counter-revolutionary crimes,

502
00:43:40,466 --> 00:43:45,048
along with repeat offenders aren't
included in the amnesty, however.

503
00:43:47,127 --> 00:43:50,697
In total, that's 1.2
million convicts.

504
00:43:50,722 --> 00:43:53,775
A bit less than half of
all prisoners in the gulag,

505
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:57,095
who are freed during
the summer of 1953.

506
00:44:03,242 --> 00:44:08,676
Among them, there's Varlam Shalamov,
who spent 17 years in the gulag.

507
00:44:08,701 --> 00:44:12,968
He can finally leave the Kolyma
and write his memoirs as a Zek.

508
00:44:15,348 --> 00:44:19,187
Tales of the Kolyma will
be published 30 years later.

509
00:44:26,976 --> 00:44:30,499
Beria is arrested in July 1953.

510
00:44:30,524 --> 00:44:34,763
The master of the political
police and the gulag since 1938.

511
00:44:34,788 --> 00:44:39,718
Stalin's henchmen is charged
with treason and espionage.

512
00:44:40,515 --> 00:44:43,654
The context of his
execution is blurry.

513
00:44:43,679 --> 00:44:46,034
Political prisoners
use Beria's death

514
00:44:46,058 --> 00:44:49,445
as an opportunity to demand
a revision of their sentence

515
00:44:49,470 --> 00:44:52,435
and even to ask for
immediate freedom.

516
00:44:57,569 --> 00:45:02,427
Many political prisoners excluded
from the amnesty go on a strike.

517
00:45:03,337 --> 00:45:05,638
During the summer of 1953,

518
00:45:05,662 --> 00:45:08,759
the major special
camps in Norilsk, Vorkuta

519
00:45:08,783 --> 00:45:12,193
and near Karaganda in
Kazakhstan are on strike.

520
00:45:13,792 --> 00:45:17,469
The rebellions are
unusually well organized.

521
00:45:21,726 --> 00:45:24,266
Inside the camp, we
had our own guards.

522
00:45:26,168 --> 00:45:29,959
It had been created to control
the situation inside the camp.

523
00:45:32,264 --> 00:45:35,795
And we decided to
build our own weapons.

524
00:45:37,083 --> 00:45:38,744
What kind of weapons?

525
00:45:39,217 --> 00:45:42,031
Small knives and daggers.

526
00:45:44,180 --> 00:45:49,140
Lev Netto was arrested in 1948
and charged with espionage.

527
00:45:49,250 --> 00:45:52,685
He is kept in Norilsk
when the rebellion begins.

528
00:45:55,267 --> 00:45:57,778
The authorities negotiate
with the prisoners

529
00:45:57,802 --> 00:46:00,250
and yield to many
of their demands.

530
00:46:04,078 --> 00:46:07,547
One of the first demands
was to remove ID numbers.

531
00:46:07,790 --> 00:46:11,750
And they said "starting now
you can remove the ID numbers".

532
00:46:11,775 --> 00:46:14,964
And that was followed by a
general feeling of enthusiasm.

533
00:46:15,762 --> 00:46:20,158
ID numbers were sewn on our
clothes. We took them off right away.

534
00:46:20,183 --> 00:46:23,347
And threw them onto the
ground shouting hooray.

535
00:46:25,792 --> 00:46:27,774
We didn't go to work.

536
00:46:28,340 --> 00:46:30,426
It wasn't a strike anymore.

537
00:46:33,749 --> 00:46:38,245
It was a revolution. We
had declared a revolution.

538
00:46:39,893 --> 00:46:44,057
And when they came to talk to
us, we answered by screaming.

539
00:46:44,152 --> 00:46:49,776
4,000 women screamed. "Freedom
or death. Freedom or death."

540
00:46:49,801 --> 00:46:52,595
They shouted too,
but we shouted louder.

541
00:46:52,620 --> 00:46:57,721
You know, when 4,000 women
start shouting, that's a lot of noise.

542
00:47:02,352 --> 00:47:06,370
In order to restore order,
the guards open fire.

543
00:47:06,395 --> 00:47:11,571
In Norilsk, Vorkuta, in the Karlag,
hundreds of prisoners are killed

544
00:47:11,596 --> 00:47:13,948
and hundreds of
others are wounded.

545
00:47:19,784 --> 00:47:23,339
When we reached
the camp, it was empty.

546
00:47:23,940 --> 00:47:25,151
Dead.

547
00:47:25,362 --> 00:47:27,081
We were put in a barrack.

548
00:47:27,507 --> 00:47:30,054
The place was covered
with bullet holes.

549
00:47:30,194 --> 00:47:31,827
The place was made of wood.

550
00:47:32,718 --> 00:47:35,171
And there was blood everywhere.

551
00:47:35,429 --> 00:47:37,671
Along with pieces
of human brain.

552
00:47:38,058 --> 00:47:40,128
We didn't understand anything.

553
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:43,265
We were told to clean
up everything quickly.

554
00:47:50,358 --> 00:47:55,405
The 20th Congress of the
Communist Party takes place in 1956.

555
00:47:58,647 --> 00:48:03,958
Nikita Khrushchev gives his famous
secret report speech behind closed doors,

556
00:48:03,983 --> 00:48:06,186
revealing Stalin's crimes.

557
00:48:07,138 --> 00:48:08,407
At this point,

558
00:48:08,431 --> 00:48:13,226
Khrushchev has been a member of the first
circle of leaders since the end of the 1930s.

559
00:48:13,477 --> 00:48:17,335
He frees himself from any
responsibility in these mass crimes

560
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:19,936
on top of revealing
only a fraction of them.

561
00:48:20,131 --> 00:48:23,664
Yet, even if the document
isn't neutral or complete,

562
00:48:23,689 --> 00:48:27,588
it has the effect of a bomb
in the communist world.

563
00:48:29,228 --> 00:48:32,330
That's the beginning
of de-Stalinization.

564
00:48:32,455 --> 00:48:34,869
The Gulag is disassembled.

565
00:48:38,899 --> 00:48:40,918
Almost half a million prisoners

566
00:48:40,943 --> 00:48:45,414
sentenced because of article 58
of the penal code leave the camps.

567
00:48:45,439 --> 00:48:49,220
Yet only a few of them will
receive proper reinstatement.

568
00:48:53,220 --> 00:48:57,156
In Vorkuta, just like elsewhere,
the convicts are freed.

569
00:48:57,181 --> 00:48:58,177
Among them,

570
00:48:58,201 --> 00:49:02,181
Polish people are waiting for an
authorization to go back to their country.

571
00:49:05,595 --> 00:49:10,016
Stanislaw Kialka fought in the
clandestine Polish Army during the war

572
00:49:10,041 --> 00:49:12,009
and was arrested by the Germans.

573
00:49:12,034 --> 00:49:16,384
He managed to escape but got
captured by the Russians in 1945

574
00:49:16,409 --> 00:49:18,384
and was deported to Vorkuta.

575
00:49:19,213 --> 00:49:22,775
While being held prisoner,
he managed to build a camera

576
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:25,267
and to take pictures
of the camp secretly.

577
00:49:25,292 --> 00:49:31,064
In 1956, he celebrates his freedom by doing
some ice skating in front of the camp.

578
00:49:53,179 --> 00:49:55,339
Following top level negotiations

579
00:49:55,363 --> 00:49:59,740
between the government of the Federal
Republic of Germany and the Soviet Government,

580
00:49:59,773 --> 00:50:03,519
German war prisoners are freed
and sent back to their country

581
00:50:03,543 --> 00:50:05,867
more than 10
years after the war.

582
00:50:11,124 --> 00:50:15,420
At the same time, more than 1
million Soviet citizens of German origin,

583
00:50:15,445 --> 00:50:19,109
deported during the war,
are allowed to leave their exile.

584
00:50:20,203 --> 00:50:24,857
The decision is extended, during
1956, to other punished people,

585
00:50:24,882 --> 00:50:28,788
such as Chechens who were
collectively deported during the war.

586
00:50:35,945 --> 00:50:38,546
The thaw continues in Moscow.

587
00:50:38,571 --> 00:50:42,468
Khrushchev speeds up the
process of removing the gulags.

588
00:50:44,445 --> 00:50:50,601
In 1957, there are only about 15,000
political prisoners left in the camps.

589
00:50:50,626 --> 00:50:53,324
30 times less than in 1953.

590
00:50:56,421 --> 00:51:00,771
In 1958, the infamous
article 58 of the penal code,

591
00:51:00,803 --> 00:51:05,768
the one defining counter-revolutionary
crimes, at the core of mass repression,

592
00:51:05,792 --> 00:51:06,936
is erased.

593
00:51:07,243 --> 00:51:10,421
The number of political
sentences suddenly drops

594
00:51:10,446 --> 00:51:13,624
and reaches a couple of
hundreds per year maximum.

595
00:51:20,265 --> 00:51:22,413
A symbol indeed.

596
00:51:22,438 --> 00:51:28,578
In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev welcomes
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the Kremlin.

597
00:51:28,603 --> 00:51:32,271
The first Soviet to authorize
the release in the USSR

598
00:51:32,295 --> 00:51:35,795
of "One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich",

599
00:51:35,820 --> 00:51:37,831
the novel written
by the former Zek,

600
00:51:37,855 --> 00:51:42,380
who describes the fate of millions of
Soviets who went through the gulag.

601
00:51:44,896 --> 00:51:48,228
In many ways, the publishing
of Solzhenitsyn's book

602
00:51:48,253 --> 00:51:50,981
is the apex of
Khrushchev's thaw.

603
00:51:54,128 --> 00:51:58,847
Soon after, Khrushchev is
overthrown and replaced by Brezhnev

604
00:51:58,872 --> 00:52:01,699
and a new period
of tensions begins.

605
00:52:05,097 --> 00:52:09,314
The issue of the gulag becomes
taboo once more in the public space.

606
00:52:09,339 --> 00:52:14,518
Only in private environments are memories
of the camps and repressions kept alive,

607
00:52:14,543 --> 00:52:18,842
even if people don't dare talk
about it even to their families.

608
00:52:25,945 --> 00:52:29,087
We thought that when
leaving the camps...

609
00:52:30,281 --> 00:52:34,321
Well, I thought that once freed, I would
tell everyone about what happened.

610
00:52:34,346 --> 00:52:39,046
All our torments and ordeal or
get to complain about my fate.

611
00:52:40,540 --> 00:52:42,036
But after leaving the camp,

612
00:52:42,060 --> 00:52:45,290
we came into a world where it
was actually impossible to talk.

613
00:52:51,110 --> 00:52:55,029
I was holding on. I
didn't say anything.

614
00:52:55,247 --> 00:53:00,021
But I had it all in me.
One day I saw a document.

615
00:53:00,202 --> 00:53:04,338
It was written that my grandfather's
brother, Ivan Tarantiovich,

616
00:53:04,362 --> 00:53:06,365
had been removed
from the kulaks.

617
00:53:09,357 --> 00:53:11,021
I didn't want to know more.

618
00:53:11,470 --> 00:53:13,425
I didn't have the strength.

619
00:53:13,851 --> 00:53:16,390
I didn't want to
reopen the wound.

620
00:53:16,415 --> 00:53:19,618
All of this would go away.

621
00:53:22,597 --> 00:53:24,569
In December 1973,

622
00:53:24,593 --> 00:53:28,460
the Russian version of the Gulag
Archipelago is published in Paris.

623
00:53:28,485 --> 00:53:32,313
The manuscript had secretly
been taken away from the USSR

624
00:53:32,338 --> 00:53:35,170
and described the Soviet
Concentration Camp System

625
00:53:35,194 --> 00:53:38,189
that Solzhenitsyn had
experienced first hand.

626
00:53:39,538 --> 00:53:42,370
This essay in
historical investigation

627
00:53:42,394 --> 00:53:45,979
is based on many testimonies
and reliable documents

628
00:53:46,003 --> 00:53:48,780
and shows the sheer
size of the gulag.

629
00:53:55,554 --> 00:54:00,661
The book is a bestseller and
Solzhenitsyn becomes famous worldwide.

630
00:54:04,489 --> 00:54:08,589
He is arrested in Moscow
on the 12th of February 1974,

631
00:54:08,614 --> 00:54:12,481
loses his Soviet
nationality and is expelled.

632
00:54:19,653 --> 00:54:21,957
Solzhenitsyn reaches
Western Europe,

633
00:54:21,982 --> 00:54:24,259
where his book "The
Gulag Archipelago"

634
00:54:24,283 --> 00:54:27,442
leads to political and
ideological upheaval.

635
00:54:30,151 --> 00:54:33,028
After dozens of books
over half a century

636
00:54:33,053 --> 00:54:35,385
trying to raise awareness
about the repression

637
00:54:35,409 --> 00:54:38,153
in the country of socialism
without much success,

638
00:54:38,363 --> 00:54:40,632
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's work

639
00:54:40,656 --> 00:54:44,682
finally succeeds in breaking
the wall of lies and indifference.

640
00:54:56,705 --> 00:54:58,643
After the fall of communism,

641
00:54:58,668 --> 00:55:01,875
the new Russian state doesn't
try to maintain the places

642
00:55:01,899 --> 00:55:04,336
where millions of
Soviet citizens were held

643
00:55:04,361 --> 00:55:07,455
and executed
during the Stalin era.

644
00:55:13,010 --> 00:55:16,408
Only the non-governmental
association Memorial,

645
00:55:16,433 --> 00:55:20,268
created by dissident Andrei
Sakharov during Perestroika,

646
00:55:20,293 --> 00:55:24,304
is striving to record the memories of
millions of people who were moved,

647
00:55:24,328 --> 00:55:26,322
deported, or held captive,

648
00:55:26,494 --> 00:55:29,025
along with millions of deaths.

649
00:55:31,971 --> 00:55:34,979
The scars of this
tragedy remain today

650
00:55:35,004 --> 00:55:40,002
in the middle of endless
expanses, traces of barracks in ruins,

651
00:55:40,027 --> 00:55:44,236
the ghosts of watchtowers,
twisted barbed wire.

652
00:55:46,001 --> 00:55:51,281
The memory of the gulag is slowly
rising from under a veil of oblivion.