Camel from Kyzylkum

At the time of Perestroika and Glasnost, books that previously had been available only through the underground distribution in the Soviet Union became legal, and excerpts were printed in many publications. I read a lot, and these books opened my eyes to the bloody recent history of our country—from the 1918 Revolution to the present day, on to all of the misleading, hidden truth, hypocrisies of our government, and the Soviet system as a whole. I realized that all of the concepts and ideas that they had taught us from early childhood were mendacious.

I learned about the Red Terror of 1918-1922—a policy of the Soviet state that legalized a complex of extremely cruel, repressive measures outside of the judicial system. The blows were inflicted on the disgruntled workers, peasants, and intelligentsia. In 1922, after the end of the Civil War, there was the last outbreak of the Red Terror, directed against the priests.

Then, from 1930-1950, innocent people were arrested on fabricated charges and tortured in order to force them to confess to crimes they did not commit. Thousands were shot or sent to the GULAG, where they died in the unbearable conditions of the labor camp. “GULAG” is an acronym for General Administration of Camps. It was a system of forced labor camps. Most camps of GULAG were located in the Kolyma, Magadan region of Siberia. The prisoners of GULAG built roads, houses, and bridges, and they mined gold, tin, and uranium. It was the prisoners who created the economy of the Magadan region. Those who survived remained to live in Kolyma after the release; they were not given the right to leave the territory. This terror was unleashed by Joseph Stalin.

There was displacement and deportation of national minorities, as well as mass deportations as part of the re-Sovietization of the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, and Moldavia. It was evidently impossible to give a full account of all of the victims of massacres, punitive treatments, and tortures.

These repressions were a major centralized operation against the civilian population of our country. Millions and millions of people perished. This discovery gave me a feeling of great sadness; it gave me a feeling of having been deceived.