(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
A couple of weeks ago, a government-sponsored bronze statue of Josef Stalin was unveiled in Moscow, not exactly a unique event. Russian history books now tell students that the actions of the former Soviet leader were rational, and in January 2016 opened a cultural center in honor of Stalin in the Tver region. The trend toward embellishing the image of the brutal dictator is alarming, and there is a danger that his crimes may be laundered by changing the narrative and reducing the story of a brutal killer to a story of a strong leader who just couldn't do all to the tune.
In keeping with the truth are the stories of the people who remember. Stanislaw Mucha's new documentary Kolyma: Road of Bones, which was shown by DOK Leipzig at the turn of the month, brings out the stories of such witnesses and is a reminder of the hidden suffering Stalin's regime inflicted on the Russian people, disorders that are not accounted for. The film takes audiences on a drive along the Kolyma Highway in the easternmost part of Russia, exploring the region and what remains of the past.
No ambiguities. This documentary questions how people can cope with the memories of a regime that left scars over a whole body of society, but which is now superficially altered for the sake of national pride. In the course of time, numerous stories about Stalin's gulag camps have been told, but the overwhelming extent of their legacy is still confusing and polarizing. Forgiveness can be a way of taking responsibility, but in order for a society to move forward and never return to such times, it must first accept that something that should never have happened, has actually happened, without any ambiguity.
Mucha's film saves life stories from that time from oblivion. The film allows viewers to meet residents along Russia's eastern highway, "The Road of Bones". The region was the heart of Stalin's gulag system, and the 2000-kilometer Kolyma Road was built from the 1930s, by prisoners who used hand tools at work. The exact number of forced laborers is unknown and can only be assumed. The identities of those who perished there will remain largely unknown.
No escape. The scenery along the road is beautiful, deserted and wild. It's easy to see why no one could escape from captivity: the Taiga stretches thousands of miles in all directions, and the ability to get out of here on foot is virtually zero. In winter, the temperature is rarely above 30 min. The area is still rich in coal and valuable minerals, but many of the mines where there used to be activity and working prisoners are now closed down.
The hub of the film is the 2000-kilometer road of lost lives, six decades after Stalin's death; yet, there are still people alive who can tell their stories. There is a sense of dignity in the stories, and it seems that they are capable of accepting what happened, which possibly comes with age. Some ended up in gulag for no reason, others for objecting to Stalin, and some were sent there because they were murderers.
There is a sense of dignity in what they say, and it seems that they have an ability to accept what happened.
Unpredictable and absurd. Mucha runs from one city to the other and talks to Gulag survivors, but also to many others living in the area. We meet a family who was recently relocated to one of the cities during the Crimean War, a mining engineer who admires Putin and recalls that he found remains after humans in the earth as a child, and a skilled ice sculptor who has traveled the world and demonstrated his abilities. There are also many scenes filled with black humor, where the unpredictable and absurd seem to pass as normal, such as the story of a man conducting secret experiments with dangerous high-voltage appliances in search of rejuvenating treatments that he tested out on his blind father, or market sellers who own a diverse collection of nasty animal parts that they proudly display.
The film is dynamic and in its entirety a portrait of the region as it is now. The stories are based on the present and provide insight into how people in Putin's Russia relate to the past. A recurring symbolic motif is the events at community houses where children dance and sing happy songs about the motherland, songs that idealize Russian life. Pride over the country has been and remains part of Russia's social fabric, and Mucha uses these images ironically. When it comes down to it, dysfunctionality and suffering are often hidden behind this artificial sphere of cultivated nationalism that creates the illusion that everyone belongs and that there is nothing to be worried about. The unveiling of the Stalin statue in Moscow recently fits perfectly into such an illusion. In a country that swells with pride, and which has strong leaders who perform heroic and consequently some unpopular acts, there is ultimately not much that can go wrong, and not much one needs to question, either.
