a long journey to hell

ARTE.TV – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

Through their clear and instructive narration, the richness of their archives and the testimonies collected, without forgetting the rigor of the editing and the quality of the soundtrack, certain historical documentaries broadcast on television make an impression. We think in particular of the series on the Civil War (Tea Civil War) or that of Vietnam, the American Ken Burns.

Undoubtedly, this French documentary devoted to the Soviet gulag will soon be one of the classics of the genre. The careful staging, with the voice of Florence Pernel in the commentary, the soundtrack, the editing, everything has been meticulously worked out to make this series in three episodes a great moment in television after having been a reference book, published in November 2019 by Editions du Seuil, under the same title Gulag. A Soviet storyand signed by the same trio Patrick Rotman, Nicolas Werth and François Aymé.

Fascinating to read, this story of an extraordinary concentration camp system is even stronger on screen.

Fascinating to read, this story of an extraordinary concentration camp system, spanning nearly four decades, having more or less directly affected 40 million people and claimed around 4 million victims, is even stronger on screen. . And resonates tragically with the news of the war waged by Russia in Ukraine.

Thanks to exceptional archival documents (clandestine photos, propaganda films, etc.), this long journey to hell comes to life. The subject, it must be emphasized, is conducive to ambitious documentaries. In April 2019, France 2 broadcast the excellent Gulagsby Michaël Prazan and Assia Kovriguina.

“A country within a country”

With this new documentary, much longer because it aims to tell an integral story of what was “a country within a country”, the Rotman-Werth-Aymé trio chose to respect the chronology. This approach proves to be necessary, both the history of the “Archipelago” concentration camp revealed in 1973 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) is complex, closely intertwined with the upheavals that punctuated, between the beginning of the 1920s and the end of the 1950s, the political, economic, social, cultural and military life of the Soviet people.

The gulag (Russian acronym for “central leadership of the camps”) was not only a system of confinement, relegation or liquidation. It was quickly used as an economic system in its own right. For his major industrial expansion projects, Stalin took advantage of free and plentiful labor. Railways, canals, towns, mines, drillings, zeks (abbreviation of “canal detainees”, which has become a generic term designating all the deportees) worked in inhuman conditions on construction sites scattered throughout the country continent. Animated maps show the location of hundreds of camps, from west to east. And to see their proliferation over time.

In addition to the exceptional archives (photos or films) which bring inside the camps, disproportionate and deadly construction sites, hostile expanses, the strength of the testimonies collected from survivors, in particular by the Russian organization Memorial, banned by Vladimir Putin in December 2021, brings flesh, blood and tears to a story that seems to plunge ever deeper into horror. A great moment of television devoted to a major historical phenomenon of the XX^e century.

Gulag. A Soviet story, documentary series by Patrick Rotman, Nicolas Werth and François Aymé (Fr., 2019, 3 × 57-58 min). Available on Arte.tv until December 20.

Alain Constant