Yevhen Ivanychuk’s gathering of memoirs “Kholodne Nebo Pivnochi” [“Cold Northern Sky”]: The Example of Gulag prose

Non-fiction is one of the most important parts of the Gulag discourse. It helps to develop a more comprehensive impression of camp life and enhance an interpretative frame for understanding the past. Gulag non-fiction allows us to recount the history of the previous century, especially when different national experiences within the Soviet Union are concerned, in particular within the Gulag system, perhaps the most odious part of the Soviet state history. According to Nadia Koloshchuk, the labor camp literature “comprehensively reveals an obvious destruction of utopian projects of the modern age” (Quoted from: Stadnichenko, 2013, p. 188).

Usually, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel (or, according to the author, “an experiment in literary investigation”) “Arkhipelag GULag” [“Archipelago Gulag”] is considered as one of the most prominent representations of the camp life, as well as criticism of the camp system more generally. Nevertheless, according to Ewa Thompson (2006), this novel is not an adequate example of representation and interpretation of camp life, given the author’s narrative and interpretative gaps. Thompson argues that despite the obvious critical mood, the author still maintains the idea of imperialism. Solzhenitsyn ignores the very roots of Gulag, which should be attributed to Russian colonial intentions. Consequently, according to Thompson, Solzhenitsyn does not fight the system but further promotes it, placing Russian experiences at the top of ethnic and political hierarchies. The author is still absolutely ignorant regarding the fates of colonized peoples whose stories are emerging as a background for showing the Russian suffering. According to Ivan Koshelivets (1974), the figure of Solzhenitsyn rises highly over the national Russian frames. But at its core it remains heavily biased towards the Russian perspective. Hence, this text cannot provide a full explanation of the national situation in the Soviet Union since mentions of enslaved peoples and dispersed and have a marginal effect (Quoted from: p. 81 ̶ 82). The prominent feature of Solzhenitsyn’s work is that his “experiment” is written mostly from the account of other people, and not from his own (Hunko 2008, para. 11), in contradistinction to other Gulag memoirs and survivors, such as by Ivan Bahrianyi, Yevhen Ivanychuk, or Nadiia Surovtseva, among others. 

While research on camp memoirs and prose in the West mainly and conventionally focuses on Russian experiences (for instance, 2024 “Gulag Fiction. Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin” by Polly Jones), it generally omits the representation of other experiences, connected to the case of nations that were enslaved by Russians. Some of these experiences were represented by Ukrainians, and they could elucidate certain blind spots that the Russian mentality avoids to confess. 

In this regard, the memoirs by Yevhen Ivanychuk (1927-2003) Kholodne Nebo Pivnochi [“Cold Northern Sky”] clearly stands out. First published in the journal Dzvin [“Bell”] in 1989, the full text of Ivanychuk’s memoirs first appeared only posthumously in 2010 in the “Piramida” Lviv publishing house.  

Born in 1927 near Kosiv, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, when he was 17, Ivanychyk joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which, during the Second World War, fought against the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, and the Polish Resistant Movement. That year, he was captured by the Soviet authorities, and sentenced to 15 years of labor camps. After a decade of being in the Vorkuta camp beyond the Arctic Cycle, he was released in 1955 and rehabilitated only in 1967. (Bichuia, Oliinuk-Ivanychuk, 2011). 

Like many other former political prisoners, Ivanychuk, was deprived of civil rights for another five years after his release. He returned to Ukraine to start a new life. Nonetheless, it was really hard, because of the stamp of the political prisoner in his passport. Ivanychuk decided to return to Vorkuta, where he married and found a job in mining. In his memoirs, he recalled the feeling of being “half-free again”: 

“In my passport, I had a small mark, referring to the certification of my release based on the “passport data regulation”. <…> But in reality, this mark had a quite different meaning. It put me in the place of a disenfranchised, humiliated person, who was not only prohibited from sleeping in a hotel in a bigger city, who was not allowed to reside closer than a hundred kilometers to the big city but who could also be expelled from the train stations, like a scabby dog” (Ivanychuk, 2010, p. 144). 

Or another account: 

“I stood, as if on the neutral stripe between two forms of life  ̶  the prison one, and the free one, and in a minute or two, I had to do that first step forward to leave this dreadful existence forevermore, which is about to stalk me in my dreams over the decades <…> I had to enter into a new, absolutely strange and unaware life for me, however, which I knew did not expect me, and was not about to embrace me like a son. There, in labor camps, we were devoid of all, is only possible to be taken away from a human, except the personal spiritual existence, which is independent on no one regime” (Ivanychuk, 2010, pp.114 ̶ 115).

According to Olha Stadnichenko, labor camp memoirs are united by a common theme of ethical and existential problematics. It contains the issue of personal choice, staying alive, readiness not to obey but to resist the situation, to find the exit, at least for their own consciousness. These problems, which are projected to an awfulness of the camp system and which are revealed by the authors, only strengthen the existential content of the texts (Stadnichenko 2013, p. 188).

The structure of Kholodne Nebo Pivnochi is as follows: 1. “Povist’-spohad” [tale-remembrance] “Zapysky Katorzhanyna” [“Notes of Labor Camp Prisoner”], covering the everyday life in the Vorkuta camp; 2. “Spohady” [remembrances] “Pershi Kroky” [“First Steps”], recalling Ivanychuk’s childhood, his personal formation and that of his brother; 3. Survey “Kryvavyi Serpen` 1953” [“Bloody August 1953”], accounting the 1953 Vorkuta rebellion; 4. the chronicle of the exhumation of the victims of the communist terror “Yablunivski Krynytsi” [“Wells of Yabluniv”]; and 5. “Zapoliarni spohady” [remembrances about the being beyond the Arctic Cycle] “Yamba-To” [as a reference to the lake in the far North, where the author and his friends went fishing]. 

Section “Kryvavyi Serpen’ 1953” deserves special attention. This chapter is based on a survey conducted by Ivanychuk and his son Roman, completed posthumous only in 2008. The essay is based on the witness accounts by former prisoners in Vorkuta, who took part in the uprising in 1953, accompanied by commentaries by Ivanychuk.

Among the witnesses are the workers at the mine №29. They are Mykola Bula from Bolekhiv, Yosyp Ripetskyi and Ivan Vilkos from Kolomyia, Henning Horst and Haini Fritshe from Germany, Nazar Okhrym from village Rudnyky, Lviv region, Myron Zakhriia and B. Mytarchuk from Vorkuta, Oleh Borobskyi from Moscow. Ivanychuk also utilized the materials from “Memorial” in Vorkuta, the collection of memoirs and documents “Pechalnaya Pristan’” [“Refuge of Sadness”]; Henning and Yan Foitsik’s “Vorkutynski Zustrichi” [“Meetings in Vorkuta”] (published in Leipzig in 2003); Henning and Vladyslav Khedeler “Chorni Piramidy  ̶  Chervoni Raby” [“Black Pyramids, Red Slaves”] (published in Leipzig in 2007). 

The resistance in the Vorkuta labor camp took place between 19 July and 1 August 1953. After Stalin’s death,  the Presidia`s Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR regarding the amnesty of criminals was published. Consequently, criminal prisoners were released en mass, yet political prisoners were exempt. (Institute of National Memory n. d., para. 2). This caused daily unrests in the different camp sections (Institute of National Memory n. d., para. 3). It was one of the biggest camp rebellions, involving over 15 thousand participants. Ivanychuk reflects on the origins of the rebellion: “In the spring of 1953, tyrant Stalin died. His death and the arrest of Lavrentii Beria, the second hangman, gave hope to hundreds and thousands of Gulag prisoners that the system was about to decline. This faith was not passive. The strikes and insurgences expanded throughout the Gulag camps, and everywhere they were repressed, with no mercy. In Dzhezkazhan, Kenhir, Norylsk, Mahadan…” (Ivanychuk, 2010, p. 235).

Ivanychuk, himself a witness of the events, added comments to the recollections of the people he interviewed. He writes that Rechlag [= abbreviation of Russian “rechnoi laher`”, “River Camp] of Vorkuta also rebelled with other labor camps of Gulag. Work was stopped everywhere at the coal mines of Vorkuta. The response followed: a commission had arrived from Moscow, executing thousands of unarmed people near the mine №29 on 1 August 1953. The exact number of killed is unknown to this date. Hundreds of prisoners were wounded. (Ivanychuk, 2010, p. 235).  

According to Roksolana Popeliuk (2021), the insurgence also had positive consequences, as in Rechlag, it led to certain relief—locks and bars were eliminated, daily work accounts were established, and prisoners’ complaints were promised to be taken into account. The labor camp in Vorkuta existed up to 1960, when the Gulag was eliminated (Quoted from: para. 42).

The authors also challenged some evidence existing in cultural narratives as unfaithful. For example, they pointed out that, in Vorkuta, there were no tanks or “one thousand executors”, and the number of imprisoned Poles was very low for them to champion this insurgence, as it was reported elsewhere (Ivanychuk, 2010, p. 235).

The authors also agree that some witness accounts should be taken with a pinch of salt. For example, Oleh Borovskyi suggested the regime in the camp was weak. Instead, the authors pointed out that there was no mitigation, and Yevhen Ivanychuk supported this statement with his own evidence. This example shows that the treatment of people of different nationalities was not equal, and Russian prisoners were able to receive more privileges than non-Russians or foreign prisoners. To this end, the German prisoner Henning Horst recalled that “in contradistinction to soviet prisoners, we [Germans] and other foreign civilians had no right for lettering, and our nativity had no evidence which fate we caught there” (Ivanychuk, 2010, p. 248).

In this work, the authors also give examples of camp underground activity and the extremely important capability of a large number of people to hold discipline during the insurgency. This can help answer the question of how the rebels managed to take control of the whole camp. It should be stated that despite its violent ending, the Vorkuta rebellion and that in other Gulag camps became yet another step contributing to the system`s decline.

Ivanychuk’s memoirs should be seen as an important source uncovering the issue of Soviet colonialism also within the Gulag system, which was a creation of the Russian mentality and culture, to which Solzhenitsyn did not want to confess (Kraliuk 2022, para.8). In “The Archipelago GULag”, the state of the camp system is elucidated and criticized only on the level of Russian gaze, basically, on the level of the system creators` optics. The memoirs by Ivanychuk not only criticize Gulag but also explore the state of enslaved nations within this totalitarian system, as the author feels solidarity with them as one of them. 

Overall, Kholodne Nebo Pivnochi presents the Gulag system not only from the Ukrainian perspective as one of the disadvantaged nations, but it can also serve as a testimony about the Russian crimes against humanity, which were not admitted by the International community at the time. This source provokes a better understanding of the Ukrainian motivations and Russian behavior in the period of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The author of this comment is thankful to the team of “Pyramida” Publishing and Vasyl’ Gabor, a writer and the editor of “Pyramida” Publishing, for the idea to create this book and for its emergence, and for permission to open the source access for preparing these project materials.

Literature:

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