Moje zeznania
My Testimony

Author(s): Anatolij Marczenko
Subject(s): History, Political history, Social history, Recent History (1900 till today), Post-War period (1950 - 1989)
Published by: Ośrodek KARTA
Keywords: labour camps; dissidents; USSR; Soviets; opposition; political prisoner
Summary/Abstract: A moving testimony of cruelty, anarchy, and overt violence in Soviet political forced-labour camps and prisons in the post-Stalinist period. Anatoly Marchenko, an ordinary worker, was only 20 when he was sent in 1958 to a Soviet prison for taking part in a scuffle in which he did not even participate. He entered the circle of political prisoners, and Mordovia labour camps became his “university”. He got to know true history there, learned the fundamentals of economics, acquired the knowledge of politics, and became a determined opponent of the inhumane system and a true humanist at the same time. He published his experiences from that time in a book which made him one of the best known Russian dissidents. Convicted several times he died in December 1986 after a hunger strike which lasted almost four months. Five days after his funeral Mikhail Gorbaczev called exiled Andrei Sakharov, which initiated the process of freeing political prisoners in the USSR.

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