Books: The discovery of a cache of letters written from a Soviet gulag is a testimony to love and heroism.

Just Send Me Word

Francis Phillips

Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag

By Orlando Figes | Allen Lane (May 2012) 

This book, put together from the love letters of Lev and Svetlana Mischenko, provides a detailed record of life in the Soviet gulag for a political prisoner between 1946 and 1954. The couple had met and fallen in love as science students in Moscow in the 1930s. Separated when Lev was called up in 1941 at the outbreak of war, they were forced to remain apart for a further eight years at the end of the war; Lev, who had been a POW of the Germans, was accused of spying for them and sentenced to ten years hard labour. This was not an unusual way for Stalin to treat his returning soldiers; the camps were full of political prisoners on similar trumped-up charges. Approximately 20 million people, mainly men, endured Stalin’s labour camps.

What was unusual in the case of Lev and “Sveta”, was that a cache of 1500 letters survived their separation, all uncensored due to an elaborate smuggling system devised by Lev at the Pechora wood-combine near the Arctic Circle, where he worked as a slave labourer. Thus they have significant historical value as research material about the post-war regime in camps like Pechora.

The letters describe the appalling living conditions: long work shifts, scarcity of food, unsuitable clothing for winters of minus 45 degrees, sickness, disease and the brutality of the guards. What helped Lev to survive were his own inner integrity and determination; his love for Sveta; his refusal to complain; and his ability to accept his state of life as permanent while it lasted, and thus avoid fruitless longings.

Sveta had her own problems to contend with. Coming from the technical intelligentsia – Lev came from the older world of the Muscovite middle classes – she was well qualified for her work as a scientist in a rubber factory. But as well as this she had to care for her elderly and ailing parents, cope on a meagre salary and to accept that her longing for children and a family life would suffer an indefinite postponement.

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