Olga Chaplin: The Man from Talalaivka: A Tale of Love, Life and Loss from Ukraine

Pretence and opportunity were the daily dice Peter tossed and rolled as he played Russian roulette with their lives, picking their way north-eastward through the Oblasts. It was a haphazard and indirect route, yet believable. It reflected the idiosyncrasies of the regime’s own bureaucrats following inexplicable instructions in the blaze of the first Five Year Plan. And his years of national service and subsequent travels beyond his own Sumskaya Oblast prepared him to act ‘nationally’ on this journey. He was the confident senior veterinary practitioner, with an assistant, on an important mission around the countryside. His veterinary’s satchel, with its distinctive insignia on the front, became the immediate foil to anticipated questions from police and officials. The battered bag metamorphosed into a symbol of honour in the urgent need to save livestock at this crucial stage of collectivisation. Using clichés and correct terminology, he was a convincing, loyal bureaucrat. “God help us, if they see the discrepancies,” he warned himself. He flicked again through the forged documents and checked the locked clasp.

He knew he had to be courageous, for both of them. Watchful of Mikhaelo’s trembling state as they approached each searchpoint, he showed his daring and wore the mantle of senior bureaucrat ever more confidently, having encouraged Mikhaelo to act obsequiously as his junior. As each part of their jigsaw journey took them closer to their crossroads destination, Peter’s shoulders tensed taut like steel. He felt with each passing day, and each checkpoint, as if he were in some kind of circus, walking the tightrope, jumping the hoops to the crack of an invisible master’s whip. Reality became almost blurred in the daily charade: the caged creature and its master pitted against each other, in a ruthless contest of wills. It was a wicked reality, and one that could end their lives.

At last, in wan light, Ekaterinburg came into sight. “Ah! We may yet have a chance!” he whispered in relief and gently nudged Mikhaelo. The first part of their journey in their pilgrimage to the labour camp was complete. From this Ural Mountains crossroad, the great Trans-Siberian Railway turned its back on European Russia and looked eastwards to the Siberian and Asian Oblasts. Soft snow was falling; winter was not far from this distant doorstep of the Arctic Circle. Peter and Mikhaelo instinctively drew closer to each other for solace and support. Food was already scarce, and they hadn’t yet begun the Siberian part of their journey. They counted their kopeks carefully for their meagre meal. They huddled in the carriage, and soaked crusts of stale black rye bread in a soup caricatured as Russian borshch. They ate silently, thoughtfully. They were still eating. They dared not dwell on whether their parents were.

Each kilometre that the ancient carriage of the Trans-Siberian Railway gained on the snow-covered tracks to the Siberian outposts gave Peter hope that they might yet reach their destination, and achieve their goal. His calculation that fewer police and officials checked these trains heading in the opposite direction to civilisation was proved right. Omsk was in darkness as the train waited, seemingly endlessly, for orders to continue, but he guessed, rightly, the reason for the delay. “So this is what it is like to be the ‘soldier labourers’ for Stalin’s new Bolshevism!” his mind registered. The grey shapeless forms of prisoners being herded slowly to their graveyard destination outside Omsk were just visible. It was a chilling sight.

“O God!” he despaired, his mind racing to thoughts of his own Yosep and Palasha. This was what they and his young sister Halka had experienced at the end of their own nightmare journey. Only, their icy prison was even more remote and desolate. Most Ukrainian ‘kulaks’ were sent to the farthest labour camps that spread out from Novosibirsk. Stalin’s warped mind saw to it that the disease of independence was cut off at this farthest outpost, to wither in the frozen veins of this vital artery of the Soviet state. There was little need to heavily guard the hapless prisoners there. Icy weather and life-threatening conditions were the Oblast’s natural guards.

Day merged into night, and into day again, as the great train rocked seemingly protectively on its snow-laden tracks. The journey took on a dreamlike quality. Streaks of daylight merged with the horizon as the bleak tundra plains transformed into an eerie world that stretched beyond human comprehension. The countryside was reshaped by the falling snow. Only a dull lamplight, or a smoking chimney, revealed some life in the snow-white huddled villages in the mystical stretch of Oblasts. On one day, at a break in the snow, a child played outside a hut, oblivious of the muted sounds of this distant train. Peter remembered the loved Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s words: “Children my children, children my flowers…” He turned away from this innocent scene. It was too painful. The train moved on towards its destination. The snow began falling again.

Somehow, incredulously, Novosibirsk was there before them. No police guarding the chilly, dishevelled shed posing as a railway station. Not even officials. Only a black muddy track wending its way through waist-high fresh snow gave hint or direction of any life past the life-saving artery of the railway line. Peter tightened his grip on his satchel and touched Mikhaelo’s sleeve reassuringly. They made their way carefully, their long army coats dragging in the muddy snow as they trod. It was still daylight, but the sombre sky put an eerie silver-grey hue on the world. The snow-covered forest hovered about them menacingly. Little wonder the inmates needed few guards to bring them back to camp each day at dusk. Anyone left behind once the gates were locked faced certain death. The natural elements of these distant prisons were as harsh as the masters were ruthless.

Trudging silently, they reached the indistinct gates at the end of the track. Before them, snow-burdened huts appeared like discarded snowdrift mounds. They stood momentarily, hoar-like breath meeting in waning light. Peter grasped his friend’s shoulder in encouragement and pointed to a barely visible hut number. “Go on, Mikhaelo; your elders are located close by.” He watched thoughtfully as Mikhaelo headed towards a marked hut, then sighed in relief as he heard him being welcomed. “Mikhaelo’s parents are much younger… and only recently sentenced,” he reminded himself as he continued his search in the near-dark.

He faced the door of the shabby hut that housed his Yosep and Palasha these past two winters. He dared not think that a stranger might open the door, evidence that his family no longer had use of the hovel. Excited at the prospect of seeing them, yet fearing that he was too late, he paused one more moment. He drew a deep breath, readied his familiar positive smile, and knocked. Muffled sounds from within meant there was life inside. Instantly relieved, he involuntarily sighed, let his guard down.

Whatever he had told himself, all through this treacherous journey, it could not prepare him for what was to come.

Agrotesque figure, rags loosely hanging from the body like a spent banshee in the Siberian mists, hunched before him in the half-light as the door partly opened. Peter’s skin pricked with tension, pain in the pit of his stomach. This figure was unrecognisable. It couldn’t be his mother. He put his arm out to the door to steady himself. The silent rag figure crept back, uncertain of the visitor. “O God,” he cried inwardly, despairing, “I’m too late!” But he had to know. Somehow, he found his voice. “Good people, please tell me if Yosep and Palasha live here,” he softly enquired.