Gulag

INSPIRATIONAL SONG IN RUSSIAN

JAUNTY ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

STRIDENT ORCHESTRAL MARCH

MUSIC: "Macarena" by Del Los Rio

SILENT FILM

ROMANTIC PIANO CONCERTO

MUSIC BUILDS INTO CLIMAX

MUSIC STOPS

LENIN HUMS TO HIMSELF

Da!

THEY SPEAK IN RUSSIAN

CAWING OF SEA BIRDS

MUFFLED PUBLIC ADDRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

TRAIN HORN

SPEECH INAUDIBLE

CLOCK TICKING

KNOCKS ON DOOR

KEY TURNS IN LOCK

Zdraz.

THEY SPEAK IN RUSSIAN

Zdraz.

Da.

Da.

ANDREI: 'You could hear the sirens as the Black Marias picked up the prisoners.

'So we all knew what it meant.'

When they came for my mother, I was asleep. It was the dead of night.

And my mother came in and turned on the light

and said, "You'll have to wake up."

And I straightaway gathered that there was a strange man in the room.

He was already rummaging about my bits of copy books on my desk.

I said, "Have they come for you as well?"

I remember that rather well - the man.

That was the end.

Then my mother told me um...that they'd come to take her away.

And when she's gone,

there is a gold coin that she particularly treasured and her rings,

and she put it the dirty linen basket whilst they were searching.

She said, "Find them and hide them." I remember that very well.

In those days, possession of gold was almost equivalent to a death sentence.

So I did that.

I don't really remember how the rest of the night passed.

'My neighbour came in and I remember

'that they had a ticket to the opera Carmen on that following night.

'Ever since then, I associate Carmen with the arrest of my mother.'

MUSIC: "Prelude (Act 1) From Carmen" by Bizet

MUSIC STOPS

WOMAN SINGS IN RUSSIAN

NEW WOMAN SPEAKER:

MALE SPEAKER: I came out here with my dad. That was back in 1932.

I came out with him just for the adventure of coming out here.

He was a communist in South Africa.

He came out, together with me,

to help the Soviets...

..industrialise their country.

That's the way we came out.

He read a lot about...the Soviet Union.

And he wanted to help the country

There you are, instead of helping, they helped him be put away.

He was arrested for no reason at all. We still don't know why.

You daren't say, "What's wrong with this country?"

You daren't say a word, er...bad about then Stalin.

or in general that things were bad in the Soviet Union.

You had to keep quiet, otherwise you'd be arrested.

And when I was arrested,

they told me a lot of things I'd never said to anybody.

They had to arrest a person.

Of course, you're forced to tell afterwards

that you really did say that and undersign it.

If you didn't, you were sent down to the dark room.

So dark and cold, brrr!

GENRICH GOLTSIN:

JOE GLAZER: They knew perfectly well

that you would sign anything they said,

which I had to do, because I could stand it any more.

It was terrible.

A night in the cellar, a day not being able to sleep,

and the same day, but in the evening,

you were taken again to be interrogated - ten o'clock.

You don't understand what you're talking about.

You hadn't slept. You know what it means not to sleep for 48 hours.

You sign everything they tell you to.

If not, then down in the cold cellar.

So I decided to sign it. That's all.

I had to, nothing could be done about it.

I'm not a hero.

I'm not a coward, but I don't know,

it's the terrible torture that you go through during interrogation.

You'd sign anything they would tell you to.

I don't want to remember those days at all.

I like to remember these days with my family, my wife helping me.

AEROPLANE FLIES OVERHEAD

# Each little dream would take wing and my life would be true

# Besame, besame mucho

# Hold me, my darling, and say that you'll always be mine

# This joy is something you, my arms enfolding you

# Never knew this thrill before

# Who ever thought I'd be holding you close to me?

# Whispering, "It's you that I adore, my dearest one"

# Should you believe me?

# Dum, tara-ta, ta-ta, tum, tara-tum, ta-ta, ta-tum

# Besame, besame mucho

# Hold me, my darling, and say that you'll always be mine. #

-Cha-cha-cha.

-Cha-cha-cha.

MUSIC: "Russian Dance from The Nutcracker Suite" by Tchaikovsky

BIRDSONG

NEW SPEAKER:

HE LAUGHS RUEFULLY

Da.

NEW MALE SPEAKER:

COCKEREL CROWS

I got off the tram and walked along the embankment

to the prison there.

See the arch in the centre? That's where you went in the prison.

You queued there until your turn.

You always remember the dirt and the smell of the prison.

Prisoners, because of the lack of washing facilities

and, at the same time, a liberal use of disinfectant

produces a very specific prison smell.

When you took the parcel there,

they found something that wasn't according to the regulations

and they could refuse the parcel.

But if they accepted the parcel,

then you got the return parcel from the prisoner

with the dirty linen.

And you went home happily.

I had to catch the train back and go to school.

I don't remember what the excuse in school was

why I was late twice a week.

-REPORTER:

-Did you also deliver to your mother?

My mother was in the Syayetnaya Prison on the other side of the river.

So, it was one day - for a fairly short period there were two prisons,

because my mother was arrested on March 8th

and...my father was sent away from that prison there on April 13th.

It was a fairly short period of time when I did both prisons.

You were a very young child, a ten-year-old.

-Was it natural that both parents...

-I knew I wasn't the only one.

Inmates were allowed a visit before going to the concentration camps,

and I took my grandmother to the prison so she could see him.

And they refused.

We stood there on the other side - in those days it was a grass bank -

and she stood by the river and cried into the water. People were passing.

I felt ashamed that a grown-up woman should weep openly in the street.

I still remember her words, "I shall never see him again."

CHURCH CHOIR SINGS: "Maria, Maria, Farewell To Lithuania"

CLICKETY-CLACK OF TRAIN

MAN SINGS IN CRIMEAN TATAR

MAN WHISTLES

HE RECITES KORAN VERSES

WOMEN PRAY

'It's well over 60 years since I've been back.

'I remember it all very well.

'When my father arrived from prison in the camp,

'the prisoners were sorted according to their specialities and abilities.

'My father was a fish scientist.

'He was sent to Kandalashka to establish a fishing camp.

'And because of the success in reaching record figures,

'he was given permission

'of seeing his family on the site of his work for ten days.

'He took this opportunity,

'and planned his escape from his camp.'

So it's somewhere down here?

We started from the little village

about 15 or 20 miles away.

We rowed right across here

and finished up in the base of that bay.

We unloaded the boat, took all the provisions and rucksacks,

and we just marched on.

We had to avoid any possible meeting with humans

because there was a reward on capture of all prisoners escaping -

the price of a sack of flour -

which in those days, was an enormous price.

-So...

-It was somewhere down here that...that the boat was?

In the furthest corner that you can see straight ahead,

not in that little promontory on the right there,

but further still, right at the bottom of that bay.

And we started walking up the hill.

We got about as far as there and I felt very tired.

When did you realise you were escaping?

That would be exactly when I was told.

I thought we would camp for the night or at least have a rest.

That's when my parents said,

"We're not going to rest tonight because we're escaping from Russia."

My mother, perhaps, was a little nostalgic.

She showed me the panorama east over the tops of the mountains.

And she said, "That's your homeland you're leaving."

At which time I felt, shall we say, slightly sick and frightened.

I knew that all prisoners are shot eventually.

And probably Mother would be shot as well.

That much...

It wasn't a question of logic reasoning why I was frightened. I was just frightened.

It took us 22 days from the start.

I knew that we just had to go on till we got to Finland.

We ended up in England.

My mother wrote The Escape From The Soviets,

and my father wrote I Speak For The Silent.

The idea was that my father owed it to the prisoners to tell the world

of the conditions and the repression that was going on at the time.

But if it didn't make any difference, naturally, that was that.

HE SINGS

MELANCHOLIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

HE SPEAKS IN RUSSIAN

HEROIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

JAUNTY ACCORDION FOLK MUSIC

MAN SINGS IN RUSSIAN

NEW SPEAKER:

Zdrazvuitye.

WOMAN SPEAKS

Zdraz.

WOMAN INTERJECTS IN RUSSIAN

WOMAN:

SHE SINGS MELANCHOLIC RUSSIAN SONG

THEY INTERRUPT WITH TUNELESS CHANTS

THEY SCREAM

SONG CONTINUES

SONG FADES AWAY

WIND HOWLS

HE SINGS IN RUSSIAN

Subtitles by Ericsson