The compelling story of Gulag 113: documentary on DVD
Gulag 113 tells the story of a young Estonian, Eduard Kolga, who was mobilized by the retreating Red Army and transported to a distant Soviet labor camp in Siberia in July, 1941. He survived three punishing years in the labor camp system and, against all odds, escaped to Estonia by slipping through the Soviet lines at the battle of Velikie Luki.
Eduard’s grandson Marcus, who produced the documentary, says “that he aimed not only to raise awareness of Stalin’s brutality but to humanize the “statistics” his totalitarian regime saw simply as a consequence of war”. Eduard’s journey of some 60 years earlier is retraced from his home in Canada to northern Russia
Marcus Kolga responded to several of my questions about the production. His comments are as follows:
“First and foremost, the film is a tale of one man’s survival in conditions that were generally impossible for any human being to remain alive in. The hope for me is that viewers will be able to identify with Eduard and his experience, so as to break down the unfathomable statistics associated with Stalin’s death camps”.
“The second goal of the film is to raise awareness of Stalin’s criminal actions in 1940-45. Few westerners know that between 1940-41 a quarter of the entire population of the Baltic Sates disappeared as a result of Stalin’s program of ethnic cleansing in the Baltic States”.
“ The people we met with in Russia were incredibly gracious and very open. They were as interested in meeting with Eduard as we were in meeting and speaking with them”.
“One of the activists who met with us, Tatjana Melnik, had, in fact, researched the Estonians who had been sent to the Archangel Oblast in 1941 and published an article in the Russian journal “Karta” a few years ago!”
“Eduard also met with some local Kotlas school children who had, with the help of a $300 grant from the Ford Foundation, set up a GULAG museum in one of the classrooms in their school. Eduard was quite moved by the 13-14 year olds who showed him artifacts, photos and other items that they had gathered from around the area”.
“There were few restrictions if any on access to materials and locations. In the Kotlas region, any potential obstructions were cleared with a small gift to the city’s mayor. Any other potential barriers were lifted by one of the local activists, Irina Dubrovina, who is known in the Archangel Oblast as a tough human rights advocate (she and her parents were interned at the camp in Vorkuta in the early 1950s). Her crusades to record and build awareness of Soviet crimes in the region are legendary, as are her ongoing campaigns to improve living conditions for residents of the region”.
“The only other trouble we had was obtaining footage from the State Archives in Moscow. Prices for westerners looking for footage are outlandish and the process for researching the material is an impossible bureaucratic maze. Most of the historic material came from the Estonian State Archives, where my research was facilitated by the incredibly helpful staff and a good collection of historic photos and film from the period.
I’m currently working on a documentary about the 1945 sinking of a German refugee ship –The Wilhelm Gustloff – and the flight of East Prussian refugees to the West. The film focuses on survivors and the present day politics of memory in Germany and here in North America.
Currently I’m negotiating another documentary about Stalin’s GULAG system: one that will encompass the entire territory and history of the camps”.
Gulag 113 and the upcoming documentary were made possible with 100% funding from OMNI’s Independent Producer’s Initiative.
Additional information about the production is available on the OMNI website: http://www.omnitv.ca/ontario/tv/docs/episodes/gulag113/ and www.realworldpictures.ca
Dave Kiil
