1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910807211903321

Autore

Bardach Janusz

Titolo

Surviving freedom : after the Gulag / / Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2003

ISBN

1-282-75919-1

9786612759192

0-520-92984-5

1-59734-926-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (295 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

GleesonKathleen

Disciplina

947.085/092

B

Soggetti

Jews - Soviet Union

Jews, Polish - Soviet Union

Plastic surgeons - Soviet Union

Political prisoners - Soviet Union

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- PROLOGUE -- 1. VIEW FROM THE EMBASSY WINDOW -- 2. WAITING FOR TOMORROW -- 3. JOURNEY TO THE PAST -- 4. THE HOUSE ON THE HILL -- 5. FARNA STREET -- 6. NO MAN'S LAND -- 7. LYING AND CHEATING -- 8. GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD -- 9. MARCHING ON RED SQUARE -- 10. FIRST FINAL EXAMS -- 11. POSTWAR POLAND -- 12. FAMILY OF FRIENDS -- 13. SUMMER 1947 -- 14. FINDING MY WAY -- 15. ENEMIES EVERYWHERE -- 16. COMING INTO MY OWN -- 17. ASPIRANTURA -- 18. LOWER THAN GRASS, QUIETER THAN STILL WATER -- 19. THE END OF TERROR -- EPILOGUE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sommario/riassunto

In 1941, as a Red Army soldier fighting the Nazis on the Belarussian front, Janusz Bardach was arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Twenty-two years old, he had committed no crime. He was one of millions swept up in the reign of terror that Stalin perpetrated on his own people. In the critically acclaimed Man Is Wolf to Man, Bardach recounted his horrific experiences in the Kolyma labor



camps in northeastern Siberia, the deadliest camps in Stalin's gulag system. In this sequel Bardach picks up the narrative in March 1946, when he was released. He traces his thousand-mile journey from the northeastern Siberian gold mines to Moscow in the period after the war, when the country was still in turmoil. He chronicles his reunion with his brother, a high-ranking diplomat in the Polish embassy in Moscow; his experiences as a medical student in the Stalinist Soviet Union; and his trip back to his hometown, where he confronts the shattering realization of the toll the war has taken, including the deaths of his wife, parents, and sister. In a trenchant exploration of loss, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and existential loneliness, Bardach plumbs his ordeal with honesty and compassion, affording a literary window into the soul of a Stalinist gulag survivor. Surviving Freedom is his moving account of how he rebuilt his life after tremendous hardship and personal loss. It is also a unique portrait of postwar Stalinist Moscow as seen through the eyes of a person who is both an insider and outsider. Bardach's journey from prisoner back to citizen and from labor camp to freedom is an inspiring tale of the universal human story of suffering and recovery.