Viktor Remizovs Gulag-Roman „Permafrost“ | EUROtoday

“You have to imagine Sisyphos as happy people.” When Albert Camus put this punch line below his “myth of the sisyphos”, he was conscious that he requested for an virtually unattainable. A convict that exhausted his power day-after-day with none view of discharge – completely happy? Can you think about that? Actually not. In order to boost the creativeness required for this, a Russian novelist is required: for instance, one who accompanies such a sisyphos on its countless paths on 1243 textual content websites, in addition to a translator that retains tempo over your complete distance.

Viktor Remizov and Franziska Zwerg succeeded on this feat. Remizov, born in 1958, studied geologist, demonstrated in 2014 together with his novel debut “ash and dust”, how actually he’s within the vastness of the Russian taiga. Remizov grew to become energetic within the Nineteen Eighties. At that point he wrote for the drawer. Some counsel that this apply might be imminent. Because the fabric for his Opus Magnum, “Permafrost”, he compiled in a seven-year profession work from the certificates from former Gulag prisoners and archives of the corporate “Memorial”. 2021, within the yr of publication of “Permafrost”, “Memorial” was then banned. Both, the human rights group resembling Remizov’s novel, have set themselves the objective of coping with the Stalinist crimes.

Although his e-book is formally a piece of fiction, as the primary sentence of the preliminary phrase clarifies, “on real events” relies. Anyone who reads the 89 chapter ought to be “only” confronted with fiction on the newest from the sixtieth chapter, a 23-page torture session, when the want catch. Remizov refuses such calming, and a facet dish of documentary pictures leaves little question: these information are arduous, in two sense of the phrase. Even the actual names of the 2 protagonists are revealed within the foreword.

Remizov’s monumental work fulfills all standards of a historic novel. But quite, as an enormous essay, it may be learn concerning the query of whether or not it may be doable to maintain some genuinely human below inhumane situations. In it, “permafrost” types a counterpart to the “myth of the sisyphos”. The rivers on this realm of the half -dead will not be known as Acheron, Lethe and Styx, however Turuchan, Jenissej and Tunguska; And the Tartaros, during which the damned individuals are serving their punishment right here, contains hundreds of thousands of sq. kilometers. But the absurd factor, which is within the heart of Camus’ new version of the Sisyphos fantasy, additionally positive aspects presence in Remizov’s Siberian epic.

The historic framework is absurd. He seems to be as if a nasty fairy story king had designed him, one of many selection that imposes the topic to take advantage of the ocean. Only the unfulfilled activity right here is actual: “Should. “Thousands of kilometers past the Arctic Circle. We are speaking a couple of challenge with which the getting older Stalin amazed its political workplace in 1947: the thought of ​​a “large Stalinbahn” and a naval hair on 68th latitude. On the tangible objection of the Minister of Navy, “that warships would be frozen in the ice ten months a year”, Stalin had an much more strong reply. The Minister of Navy was sentenced to twenty years of “improvement labor camps” as a British spy, and the development of the railway was capable of start.

In over three years, “tracks in three sections” have been 65, 125 and 23 kilometers. However, the 23 kilometers on nearer look solely measured solely 14 kilometers, the sections weren’t related, the rails led over frozen swamps, within the spring they stood below water, railway dams slipped, left again left within the Taiga. The challenge of the big Stalinbahn fizzled out in nothing. Instead of hundreds of rail kilometers, hundreds of worn -out prisoners stood on the finish. If this put on for Stalin was the actual which means of the train, it was a veritable success: extraordinarily exhausting work of flawless senselessness – even Zeus might hardly have give you Sisyphos.

The relation of offenses and punishments on this hell was additionally absurd. Father Stalin even put the Olympic godfather within the shade. After all, Sisyphos himself knew what he had eaten, he knew his notch. Most of the individuals who labored on the big Stalinbahn, then again, realized that they need to go to demise resulting from a fictitious costs. In any case, this utilized to the political prisoners; And the skilled criminals, which rightly socket, had the political to work for themselves. A former prisoner royages: “A clever person said that Stalin’s black genius would be that he killed innocent people. (..) By killing innocent people, he scared everyone. If someone felt innocent, it did not mean that nothing could be harm.”

Remizov examines this nervousness system in a number of layers: from the peak of the Kremlin all the way down to the “hot penalty cell”, the place you have been saved in solitary confinement at virtually 50 levels Celsius and bought herring however nothing to drink. Others needed to go outdoors and said: “The thermometer on the stake showed minus forty -seven” – temperature variations resembling in Dantes Inferno, solely traditionally documented. The gasoline with which this hell is operated is worry; The phrase seems on common on each fourth facet of the novel. Almost all of them are scared: Stalin of his docs, the Politburo in entrance of Stalin, who’s answerable for the unattainable building challenge earlier than the invention of their Potjomkin villages, the prisoners of the criminals who construct their very own slave system there – and everybody and everybody earlier than denunciation.

It is an animal worry, and an emblematic scene initially of the novel exhibits it because the regulation that prevails right here. How the Trojans within the “Ilias” present an undecided battle between the eagle and snake as an omen dialog, in “permafrost” shooters and prisoners focus on a hunt that takes place in entrance of their eyes: two sea eagles towards a rabbit. Result: “Loaded!” The proper of the stronger applies so unambiguously on this world. They roll collectively towards the weak.

And but! Despite the relentless focus, with which Remizov penetrates the constructions on which the big legal colony known as Stalinism was based mostly, he wrote the other of a bleak e-book, specifically a hymn to the resilience of humanity: “People are powerful.

How does he do that? Its solution is as old, simple and effective as the epic craft itself: he puts two love stories into historical events. Both are exemplary, both apparently have no good forecast: the love of the young, glowing Stalinist Below to a banished French woman and that of geologist Gortschakow, a sisyphos with such an infinite detention period that he stopped contact with his wife in order to put an end to the torture of hope. We follow the meandering, tearing off, crossing, crossing paths of all four from Moscow and from the Baltic States to Siberia – driven by the original question of all romance novels, which is now the original question of existence.

No reunification without the bare survival: that was Homer. But what if survival demands so much that the reunification is emotionally no longer left? This is new territory. Remizov explored this new territory on the rails of the Stalinbahn on the ice of Jenissej. His heroes may not find happiness, but their humanity. This is a miracle and surprisingly one that we believe him.

Viktor Remizov: “Permafrost”. Roman. From the Russian by Franziska Zwerg. Europa Verlag, Munich 2025. 1264 p., Fig., Map, born, 42, – €.