Life in a gulag

I was invited to Moscow earlier this year to give a talk about my latest book. But while I was there, I wanted to see if I could track down a few survivors of the gulags — the prison work camps where millions died during the communist years. I wanted to film interviews with them to be used as exhibits in a museum of communist terror which I hope to help create.

I asked Anne Applebaum, who wrote Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, if she could offer any advice on finding survivors. She gave me tips but added: ‘You’re a bit late.’ The people who were incarcerated in Stalin’s work camps are mostly dead. It was going to be difficult — perhaps impossible.

Fortunately the people who hosted my talk gave me a phone number for one of the staff at Memorial, an organisation which covers human rights abuses in Russia. She agreed to see me, so I walked away from the relatively prosperous centre of Moscow to an unmarked building near a crossroads. The woman and some other staff at Memorial agreed to try to help. A few days later I returned to the offices to do the interview.

Tatiana’s face was lined as if she were ten years older than her real age of 75. She looked nervous but determined. As we talked, she kept looking down at the table. I wanted to ask her to look at the camera but I didn’t because it was clear that she was finding the business of publicly telling her story enough of a strain as it was.