Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 28 – Sixty years ago
this week, non-Russian prisoners rose up in Kengir against their Soviet GULAG
jailors. They were crushed by Soviet tanks, with at least 600 losing their
lives in the process. But this rising, despite its defeat, in fact showed the
power of the powerless and forced Moscow to change its methods of rule, according
to a Ukrainian historian.
There had been revolts
in the GULAG before, Oleksandr Zinchenko writes this week on an anniversary the
Putin regime is not interested in recalling, but none in which it was so
clearly the case that “what initially appears to be a hopeless defeat can be
transformed over the longer term into a victory” (istpravda.com.ua/columns/2014/06/26/143440/ reposted by Andrey Illarionov at
echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/1349056-echo/)
echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/1349056-echo/)
The
history of the Kengir revolt,” he continues, “disproves the myth that the
independence of Ukraine was achieved without effort and without blood. Kengir,
a revolt of love, was one of those historical steps which in the end led to
independence. Love destroyed the USSR. Love for freedom.”
The rising in
Kengir, a camp in the Steplag region, began after a murder, Zinchenko
continues. “Shortly after Easter, a
column of Ukrainian lads shouted greetings to a column of young women
prisoners: ‘Christ has Risen!’ ‘He is risen indeed,’ the women responded in the
traditional fashion.”
That those involved were Ukrainians
should not surprise anyone. They formed 46 percent of the prisoners in Steplag,
a share three times their percentage in the Soviet population. Estonians,
Latvians and Lithuanians formed another 22 percent; Belarusians, four percent;
and ethnic Russians just under13 percent (alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/is
The GULAG guards opened fire: 13 of
the prisoners died on the spot, five more died in hospital, and 33 were
seriously wounded. A subsequent investigation found that “there were no bases
for the application of force.” But these killings sparked a broader revolt,
with the prisoners scrawling signs on the walls like “Down with the
Beriya-Murderers” and “Wives of Steplag Officers! Aren’t you ashamed to be the
wives of murderers?”
The Soviet camp authorities decided
to crush this challenge. On June 26, 1953, they sent in 1600 soldiers with 98
dogs, five tanks and other weapons. As Zinchenko notes, “hundreds of Ukrainian
women ... held hands and stood in front of the tanks. The tanks did not stop.”
One prisoner, “Semen Rak and his
beloved held hands and threw themselves under a tank” in hopes of slowing if
not stopping it. Another inmate,
Alphonsas Urbanas, was saved by a Ukrainian woman who threw him out of the way
of a tank. She “saved him at the cost of
her own life.”
By the end of the carnage, 600 to
700 o the prisoners were dead, and the Soviet authorities bean their efforts
first to hide and then to lie about what happened. But even as they did so, the
authorities ultimately bowed to the will of the brave Ukrainian men and women
of Kengir, changing first the camps and then opening the way to freedom for
Ukraine.
As Ukraine continues to fight for
its freedom, those who fought for it out of love at Kengir must not be
forgotten. For more details on the
Kengir uprising, see polit.ru/article/2004/05/18/s
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