Aleksandr Konstantinovich Sokolenko

Keep Forever (In Russian): Gulag Memoirs Aleksandr Konstantinovich Sokolenko Russian edition

In the freezing nights of a labor camp, fifty prisoners ?settle in like herring in a barrel, tightly nuzzled next to each other, and someone among them would cover the rest with clothing?. And then the night-time storyteller begins his tale.

Aleksandr Sokolenko?s four true stories of life in the Soviet camps detail a world of baffling catch-22s, but also of intense community. From farm work to timber-driving, wrestling marmots to runaway brides, the daily reality captivates.

Vivid characters fill the pages: the aged merchant Semyonov?s rich life history and wry acceptance (?At least here, they can?t arrest you?); the thief-king who tries to break free from his followers; the high-society orphan who turns barbering into an art; and the inept, vicious Captain Ivanov. Stepping back to narrate their stories as well as his own, Sokolenko offers us a broader picture of the USSR and its history, as lived by his fellow inmates.

The human suffering is blunt and clear ? scurvy, starvations, injustice, drownings ? but what lingers is a sense of humans? capacity for kindness and boundless talents.

Keep Forever, they stamped on his prison files, and Keep Forever is what we must do with these stories.