Gulag lovers

JUST SEND ME WORD
By Orlando Figes
Penguin. 300 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 241 955 901

Orlando Figes, when researching the Stalinist gulags, came across a cache of thousands of love letters written between 1946 and 1954 by a couple separated by war and injustice.

He decided to tell their story. I don’t normally review history books — that isn’t my brief. But here is a story as extraordinary as many in fiction and with a capacity to grip the reader to the end.

Un-Soviet activity

The gulag camps absorbed 20 million Soviets, mostly men. Many perished. Lev, whose story we follow, was imprisoned after being forced to translate German orders while he was a prisoner of war. This un-Soviet activity earned him a sentence of ten years in a wood processing camp in Siberia. He wouldn’t have lasted long if his skills as a scientist were not noted and, after three months hauling piles of wood by hand, put to use in the camp’s power plant. There he could at least be warm and have like-minded company. The other thing that kept him alive was the persevering love of Svetlana, his girlfriend in Moscow. Her courage in writing illegal letters, smuggling warm clothing and even in visiting the camp illicitly gave Lev a sense of purpose and worth. The letters described and quoted in the book are full of a steely commitment and a passionate endurance.

What I found remarkable was this couple’s conviction about what is right. In the most horrendous circumstances and without any spiritual beliefs, they remained loyal to each other, open hearted to others and ready to sacrifice themselves for a greater good. They stand as a rebuke to our flabby and self-indulgent secular society, and even to our Christian church. Perhaps Figes has been very selective with his material and surely there are secrets which were never told in the letters, nevertheless we need to take notice. So often we judge our Christian lives by contemporary worldly standards. But this isn’t enough. We need to compare ourselves to the loyalty and open-heartedness and sacrifice of Christ, and then praise God for his immeasurable grace.