Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In his straightforward and ever-interesting diary, Chistyakov records his existence as a guard at the Baikal-Amur Mainline railroad construction project in eastern Siberia during Stalin's second five-year plan. Chistyakov writes a little about his fellow workers and the ultra-Spartan conditions they endured: "There are bare bunks, gaps everywhere in the walls, snow on the sleeping prisoners, no firewood." But there is comparatively little about their lives and labor compared to his descriptions of his dreary, despairing life as a guard, which involves enduring extreme cold, endless hunts for escapees, and long treks to supervise far-flung phalanxes. A somewhat cultivated man who at times writes lyrically about nature, Chistyakov despises his soul-smothering work and most of his fellow guards, whom he calls "idiots" and "blockheads" with "no interest in anything." He pines for Moscow and dreams of an escape by any means, including getting convicted of a crime or committing suicide. Chistyakov got his wish: perhaps informed on by one of the political officers, he was arrested in 1937 and released the next year. But Chistyakov never again saw his beloved Moscow; he was killed on the front a few weeks after Germany's June 1941 invasion of the U.S.S.R. Photos. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Review by Library Journal Review
Chistyakov lived in Moscow during the 1920s and 1930s when he was removed from the Communist Party and conscripted as a guard in the Gulag for the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railway. The majority of this book consists of Chistyakov's diary as he guards prisoners building the railway in Siberia. He describes horrendous conditions as prisoners worked 18 hours a day with little clothing, slept in the open with no shelter, and were beaten and starved if they refused to work; escape attempts were met with death. To Chistyakov, who died in 1941, these prisoners did not deserve inhuman treatment. However, his own conditions are not much better, and he eventually loses his sympathy for the Zeks (prisoners). An earlier journal, which describes a few days of hunting with hand-drawn images, is added in the appendix. A useful introduction helps readers grasp the content they are about to view. Black-and-white photographs support the author's desperate situation. VERDICT Owing to its relative scarcity, a diary from a guard at a Gulag during Joseph Stalin's Soviet reign will attract readers and researchers seeking primary documents from that era.-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
First published in Russian in 2014, this is the first American edition of a chilling, revealing diary of a reluctant gulag prison guard. Chistyakov, whose last entry appears on Oct. 17, 1936, and whom translator Tait informs us died at the front of Tula Province 1941, during "the first months of the war with Germany," was an educated Muscovite who somehow fell afoul of the Russian secret police and was conscripted in October 1935 to guard prisoners in the Siberian gulag. This was a punitive position in the harsh region of the frozen taiga, and Chistyakov was designated as a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labor Camp, where creature comforts were few, escapes by the zeks (common criminals) frequent, and suspicions among officers rife. In her introduction, Irina Shcherbakova provides an informed sense of what the gulag system was all about: the importance of the strategic Baikal-Amur railway in the wake of Japanese occupation of Manchuria and takeover of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the need for cheap workers (unpaid forced labor) to live and work in these extreme conditions. Chistyakov's diary entries reveal brutal details of his harsh living conditions, a sense of bewilderment at an educated man's being stuck in such a wayward place with few literate people around him, shame at his sordid daily duties such as tracking down escapees, and ultimate despair about trying to find a way out. He even tendered a letter of resignation at one point, which was derided by the other officers, and contemplated suicide. While there are moments he found upliftinga letter arriving, spring erupting, hunting, visiting the baths, editing the "wall newspaper"his sympathy for the battered zeks gave way to his own sense of impending doom. A singular crack inside the gulag system. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
