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THE HIDDEN RUSSIA
My Ten Years as a Slave Laborer
By
N. N. Krasnov, Jr.
The Hidden Russia was originally published in 1960 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York.
Dedication
To the memory of my grandfather General Peter Krasnov, of my father Nikolai Krasnov, of my uncle Semyon Krasnov, and of all those who, together with them, suffered the death of martyrs at the hands of the executioners of our land and our people.
Table of Contents
Contents
Table of Contents
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
Foreword
Like Dantes Inferno this beautifully written account of Krasnovs suffering is fascinating. That the story is true makes the book priceless as documentary proof that all is not as secure in the Soviet Union as Khrushchev and his clique of conspirators would have us think.
The author, N. N. Krasnov, Jr., like Pasternak, is Russian. He thinks as a Russian. He loves Russia. He respects the honesty of the Russian people.
Judged as literature The Hidden Russia can stand on its own. It has the warm feeling of human beings struggling against the cruelty and indifference of the Soviet systema system which works to the death political as well as criminal prisoners for the value of their labor and the patient destruction of its opposition.
Krasnovs experience in Lubyanka, Lefortovo, and Butyrki prisons taught him that there are four types of Soviet oblique pressure...isolation, lack of oxygen, lack of knowledge of time, and quiet.
In the freezing mud huts of the Siberian Correctional Labor Camps Krasnov learned that hunger and brutality can reduce inmates as well as their slave masters to a common denominator of slovenly bestiality where crime in the labor camps exceeds all dimensions. Even so, even under the most brutal conditions the literary eyes of the author were able to see some human decency. Whether jammed in the icebox freight car, tortured in a dreadful prison, or laboring animal-like in the muddy tundra there was for him always the memory of the love of his family. There persisted always his love of Russia. The Russian people are strong and tough...they have survived more than one tempest...the future lies with the people not the government.
Through his torture there yet gleams a poetic appreciation of Mother Russia. Outside my window the spring sun was still smiling, the cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl of brilliant pale blue enamel. Cabbage butterflies fluttered by in pairs...
I, as a military government officer on my way to be commanding general in Berlin, saw the followers of General Vlasov being turned over to the Soviet executioners. Krasnov was one of them. The cries of these men, their attempts to escape, even to kill themselves rather than to be returned to the Soviet Union against which they had fought still plague my memory. Krasnov and his followers consider they were betrayed by the British. Im not sure that betrayal is the correct word but certainly if the British and Americans had at the time twenty-twenty foresight instead of now having twenty-twenty hindsight Vlasovs fighters for freedom, fighters against the Soviet regime, would not have been turned over to the Soviet Union. In that event there would be no story, The Hidden Russia, and we would be deprived of a great book. Through Krasnovs ten-year odyssey we have authentic documentation of the lingering fate of twenty million Russians who constitute the worlds greatest chain gang.
At the end of the book is an appendix giving the nine articles extracted from documents formulated at the Yalta Conference, February 4-11, 1945, and signed by J. Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston S. Churchill. This is typical of documents signed at the ending of World War IIdocuments which sound reasonable in content but which have enabled the Soviet government to do injustice to millions of persons, citizens of Russia as well as non-citizens.
Shown in this remarkable book, The Hidden Russia, the Russian people, not the Russian government, are our only real hope for enduring peace.
FRANK L. HOWLEY
Brig. General USA ret.
Vice-president, New York University
Preface
Let the reader not look in these pages for vivid imagery and polished phrases because I bear the name of Krasnov and am a descendant of Peter Krasnov, bard of the Cossack world and old Russia. What I have tried to do here is to write with sincerity and truthfulness, as a minor chronicler, about the events I witnessed, beginning with Lienz and ending, for me, in a miraculous escape to freedom.
The more than ten years I spent behind the Iron Curtain left indelible, never-to-be-forgotten memories. Indeed, I have no right to forget. It would be criminal to do so. I must remember, and use what human capacity and art I can muster to share my memories with all who wish to know the truth.
I am only one of thousands who passed as prisoners along the line from Lienz to Judenburg to Moscow and the Arctic Circle; but one of very few to return to life in the free world. Those who returned have no right to be silent, for silence can only condone the numberless crimes committed by those in power, the enemies of Russia, at home and abroad.
I shall always remember my grandfathers parting injunction: Do not try to dazzle anyone by the beauty of your language. Do not imagine yourself to be a writer. If ever you get back, back to freedom, speak and write the truth. The truth about communism, the truth about the people. Make every effort to remember, to note, to fix everything in your mind so that you will be able to pass on to future generations the unvarnished truth about the betrayal, the broken promises, the sufferings undergone by Russia.
I beg the reader to accept my book as nothing more than the memories of an ordinary man, without looking for sensational stories, plots, or special heroes. My story is the reflection in a single tear of all the infinite martyrdom through which my country is passing. Its only merit lies in its sincerity, which has not been sacrificed for the sake of literary effect.
It is not the purpose of my book to spread hatred or arouse a spirit of revenge, but rather to act as a warning against the terrible, irreparable consequences of treaties such as those made at Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam.
Russia exists. Her people are alive. Her spirit is alive. And when she awakens she will take to her heart all her children who have longed for her resurrection not for their own sakes but for hers.
N.K.
Prologue From a Diary That Was Never Written
A cart piled high with freshly felled tree trunks creaks along....
Eight ragged slaves, summoning their last strength, haul the cart to the accompaniment of yells from guards and the savage barking of watchdogs. Weary, their legs trembling from strain, they slip and founder in the mud. The hauling strap cuts deep into ones shoulder, the hauling strap of the slave who replaces the beast of burden in the Correctional Labor Camps of the Soviet Union.
