Siberian farm. Diary of a guard BAM, 1935-1936: Ivan Chistyakov

The diary of Ivan Chistyakov, the platoon commander of the armed security in one of the sections of the BAM, which he led in the Gulag day after day, from 1935 to 1936, is probably the only source of this kind that came to us. Not only the diaries, but also of any memories of those who were on this side of the barbed wire, are known very little, although tens of thousands of people worked in the Gulag system. But they did not have a particular need to keep diaries. Moreover, people from these structures well understood how dangerous it was.
The arrests have always been accompanied by searches and seizure of papers, and not only letters and diaries, but also ordinary note or telephone books – even a simple record in the calendar – could turn into heavy evidence. It can be argued that miraculously the notes of Ivan Chistyakov who have come down to us are unique. The original diary is stored in the archive of the Memorial Society in Moscow. Very little is known about the author himself. Together with the notebooks, only an amateur picture has been preserved, on the back of which there is an inscription: “h …

Author
Chistyakov Ivan Petrovich
Publisher
Corpus, 2014