Life in Soviet Russia 1940-1964 in drawings and text

[vaskidmark]

http://www.gulag.su/album/index.php?eng=1&page=1&list=1

How did this book come into being? Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya, after years in Soviet prison camps and exile to Siberia, rejoined her Mother after a separation of 18 years. They decided not to settle in their homeland Moldavia, but in the city of Essentuki in the South of Russia.

Mother wanted her daughter's life to be full and interesting, but Euphrosinia would not travel because of her mother's failing health. So she began to paint landscapes from memory, and make copies of Russian artwork. While mother would be playing solitaire, Euphrosinia would be painting beside her, and telling her about some of her outstanding life experiences. Mother was so impressed that she urged her daughter to write down her story, and also to promise that she would not stop painting, as she had real talent.

After her Mother's death Euphrosinia tried to live up to these promises. She bought thick school exercise books, ball-point pens, pencils and paints. Beginning in 1964, she wrote down what she had lived through between 1940 and 1960, illustrating the text liberally with coloured sketches.

After her story had been written down in full, Euphrosinia decided to rewrite it in a different format, as a series of drawings with explanatory captions. It is this second version which you have before you. Where the captions are not sufficiently clear we have added extracts from her earlier, more detailed work. We have also added some bridging narrative to maintain the unity of the record.

Found it at The Mudville Gazzette http://www.mudvillegazette.com/034136.html

Euphrosinia (or Eufrosinia) Kersnovskaya didn't know it at that time, but she herself had embarked on a journey that would take her to exile and the Gulag. Over two decades would pass before she could tell her tale in words and pictures - and even then (1964) she would do so only in secret and at tremendous personal risk.

I discovered her work only after I'd completed (at least thought I'd completed) this little tale of the birth of the cold war, which I'd referred to from the beginning as a graphic novel, filled with elements from comic books, science fiction and movies, and concluded with a reference to fairy tales. When I found the web site devoted to her work I knew I wanted to weave a few of these stunning examples of the reality of life in the Soviet Union into the tale. When I read that she "envisioned the text and illustrations as an indivisible whole, a genre that perhaps lies somewhere between traditional Russian lubok engravings and the modern graphic novel" I had no doubt. One cannot consider the impact of the efforts of the many useful idiots of the West (in the Trinity example, atomic spies) without having a true picture of the world they supported and facilitated. Compared to the documentation of the evils of Nazi Germany, very few such first-hand accounts of the Soviet hell exist. (And once he had the atomic bomb at his disposal, no one was going to loosen Stalin's iron grip.)

I'd like to keep this out of POLITICS, but have a premonition that it will quickly be moved over to there.  So I'll just ask for the usual restraint on name-calling and settle for the comparison between then and now if you poo-flingers cannot keep focused on the poignancy of Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya's drawings done after 20 years in the gulags.

stay safe.

[Pharmacology]

Wow, that's powerful stuff

[AJ Dual]

That was powerful stuff.

I spent the better part of an hour looking and reading that, at least up until the translations gave out.

[RevDisk]

Reading about the arbitrary nature of the NKVD and even how bosses were allowed to treat their employees in a Soviet state...

Why in the name of the odd Gods would any person see that as a remotely desirable form of government?

[AJ Dual]

Reading about the arbitrary nature of the NKVD and even how bosses were allowed to treat their employees in a Soviet state...

Why in the name of the odd Gods would any person see that as a remotely desirable form of government?

Because once you believe in collectivism/Communism, you can justify almost anything as long as it's being done for the "greater good". Along with the (former) aristocracy, the intelligentsia, the bourgeois etc., which needed to be "brought down", the peasantry needed to be "brought up", but since there was no clear way to do so, and were an embarrassment to Soviet superiority, it was best to just try and eliminate them through intentional famine, starvation, and the gulag/Siberian system.

Also, there was certainly plenty of not-great stuff that happened under the Tsars too in regards to the lives of the peasantry. (and the fact that there still was an honest-to-God peasantry in the 20th century, something we associate more with Asia, Africa, and South America etc. So some of it was just cultural continuation of what always went on there, but was just thrown into high gear by Communism.

The Cossacks being used as an allied source of Tsarist troops (which got them a great deal of autonomy) sweeping into a village on a raid that wasn't loyal, or conversely, when they were sometimes fighting the Tsars for independence, sweeping into a loyal village etc. Then all the nastiness of the red vs. white Russians etc. then the full on revolution. Then Stalin...

Overall, the region was just a much rougher place than Western Europe, which by the 19th century was providing some sort of social order and stability for the "little people", at least between wars. So I think some of the cultural attitude was one of resignation that we (how to put this delicately) uh... don't always associate with  Caucasian/Western Civ starting around the 19th century.

So the people of the countryside and small villages were always seen as disposable from an elitist/Tsarist/Aristocratic viewpoint, and the advent of Communism didn't really change that.