I would like to begin with a brief citation from Chilean poet Ariel Dorfman’s poem Vocabulary:
I was looking at them from another country
and I cannot tell their story.
I was calling from another country
and the phone was busy. . . .
Ask them
Even if the phone is busy. . .
Let them speak for themselves.
The title of my paper, "Commemorating Stalin’s Victims" is problematic. It’s not commemorating that’s at issue. "Memorare" as we can all infer refers to memory, to reminding, and even to the Greek "mermera" which means "care"; and of course, the Latin prefix "com" means "together", "jointly". No, the problem is not with the idea of coming together -- as we all have tonight -- to remember, to care; but rather it is with the rest of the title: "Stalin’s victims". As Edith Wyschogrod writes in her recent book, An Ethics of Remembering; this title -- any title -- is a generalization and unavoidbly a denial of the individual proper names, identities, and experiences of each of the victims. Of course, there is no alternative. One can hardly list on the flyer advertising our Commemoration the hundreds of thousands of names of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian women, men, and children who were arrested as enemies of the state, forcibly removed from their homes, transported in cattle cars to the farthest reaches of "Amzino isalo zeme" -- the land of eternal ice -- and condemned to life sentences of exile and hard labor. In a different context, the listing of names, however, would be one way to personalize the numbers; the Viet Nam War memorial in Washington DC is a good example. Another very moving and effective memorial was one that I visited in a gallery in Warsaw in 1990 -- every inch of the gallery’s walls was covered with framed family photographs of each of the victims of the Forest of Katyn: photograph after photograph exhibited the officers of the Polish army as fathers, sons, and members of society, with professions, hobbies, even pets; thus they could be seen as real people who had led real lives, lives which were cut short so suddenly.
Unlike the men killed in the Forest of Katyn, some of Stalin’s other victims, the Siberian deportees, were able to express their own particularity and individuality by writing their memoirs; and, as they do over and over again in their writings, they were able to name the silent others who could not speak for themselves. They were willing to accept what Wyschogrod calls the "historian’s promise" -- the promise to assume the liability for the dead others by naming them (17). This promise to name is taken very seriously by the memoirists, as we see in the following example by Dalia Grinkeviciute:
Man labai lengva kvepuoti nuo minties, kad as, kiek leido mano jegos, protas, sugebejimai, pastaciau sioki toki paminkla Siaures aukoms, pasaulis suzinojo apie tukstancius bevardziu kankiniu broliskuose lediniuose kapuose. To nebegalima nei sunaikinti, nei istrinti. Tai istorija. Tai paminklas ir mano Tevams (Kazukauskaite 143).
I breathe easier knowing that I – as much as my strength, intelligence and abilities allowed me – built a kind of monument for the victims of the North. The world learned about the thousands of nameless victims of torture buried in the icy graves. This cannot be destroyed or erased. It is now history. It is also a monument for my parents.
From Zenonas Juodvirsis’s memoirs Mes islikome (We survived):
Lietuviai tremtiniai, daugiausia is Rokiskio apskrities Juodupes valsciaus, buvo atvezti dirbti i si . . . kombinata ir apgyvendinti ne barakuose, bet senuose istremtu rusu nameliuose. Cia gyveno Skruodiene su sunumi Jonu ir dukromis Aldona ir Danute, Igauniene su dukromis Janina ir Jule, Stasiuliene su dukromis Aldona, Irena ir sunumi Vladu, Kukoriene su dukra Nijole, Kazemekaite, Tarvydiene. Siu seimu vyrai buvo nuteisti ir nuvezti i Krasnojarsko lagerius. Dar kombinate dirbo Raupis su zmona ir penkiais vaikais ir Kaciulis su zmona ir keturiais vaikais (Juodvirsis 35).
The Lithuanian exiles, mostly from Juodupe in the Rokiskis region were brought to work in this factory and were housed not in barracks, but rather in the old houses of Russian exiles. Here lived Mrs. Skruodis with her son Jonas and daughters Aldona, Irena, and son Vladas; Mrs. Kukoras with her daughter Nijole, Miss Kazemekas, and Mrs. Tarvydas. The husbands of these families were sentenced and taken to the prison camps of Krasnojarsk. Raupis, his wife and 5 children, and Kaciulis and his wife and their four children also worked in the factory.
Such lists as Juovirsis’s break into the narrative again and again, interrupting what is otherwise a very readable, almost ethnographic account of daily life in the camps. The lists appear whenever the authors are moved to a new location, learn of another group of Lithuanians living in a camp nearby, or bury the dead. This act of naming is significant -- in many cases, this recorded entry of a particular prisoner’s name is the sole trace, the only evidence of their having lived, and died, in Siberia. Grave markers, consisting of flimsy wooden crosses, were more often than not washed away by spring floods or eventually succumbed to the forces of nature. Ironically, in forests where the sentence to hard labor meant chopping down trees, there often was not enough wood available to heat the prisoners’ barracks, much less to build grave markers. Zenonas Juodvirsis as a child discovered just how few markers there were when he and his brother were asked to dig a grave for two of their neighbors, Slamiene and Samiene:
Zabegalkos kapines buvo uzverstos sniegu, tik kur ne kur kysojo pravoslavu kryzeliai. Pasirinkome vieta, kur nebuvo matyti kryzeliu. Atkaseme sniega. Alfa su Jonu pamegino lauztuvais pramusti isalusia zeme, bet lauztuvai atsokdavo kaip nuo gelezies. . . Taip pasikeisdami vargome, prisikaseme iki minkstesnes zemes.. . . . Pakasus dar apie 20 centimetru, pasiekeme minksta smeli. Dabar darbas pajudejo greiciau. Alfos kastuvas atsitrenke i karsta. Teko duoba gilinti i sona nuo jo. Dar kiek pakases brolis iskase zmogaus kaukole. Kol iskaseme duobe, radome 17 kaukoliu. .. . (Juovirsis 61).
The cemetery of Zabegalka was covered in snow, although a few Russian orthodox
crosses peaked out from underneath. We chose a spot where there weren’t too many crosses. We dug up some snow. Alfa and Jonas tried to break the frozen earth with their shovels, but the shovels sprung back as if the ground were made of iron. . . Taking turns, we dug until we reached softer ground. . . Having dug 20 more centimeters, we reached sand. Now we worked at a faster pace. [But when] Alfa’s shovel hit a coffin, we had to dig farther to the side. Then my brother dug up a human skull. By the time we finished, we had found 17. . . .
Dalia Grinkeviciute too comments on the nameless, voiceless dead:
Vel plaukiam. Pamazu nuo gretimos barzos nutolsta laivelis. Juo i kranta veza laidoti kazkieno lavona. Visur tyla. Vidudienis. Ramybe. Ir taip per visa keliones laika. O ji truko menesi. Kiekviena karta, kai sustodavom, palaidodavom viena ar kelis lavonus Lenos saloje ar pakrantese. Pravaziuodami labai daznai matydavom pakrantese sviezio medzio kryzius. As visada atsisukdavau ir ziuredavau, kol nezinomo tremtinio kapas dingdavo sauletam horizonte.. . . Praplauks pro jus retkarciais barzos, garlaiviai, vienas kitas keleivis mes zvilgsni i vienisa kapa -- be geliu, apleista. Pamazu isnyks ir uzrasas, kurio vis tiek niekas sioj negyvenamoj vietoj neskaitys. . .. (122).
We sail once again. Bit by bit the little boat travels further and further away from our barge. It is carrying somebody’s corpse to be buried on the shore. It is silent, Calm, It’s noon. Peaceful. And so passed our entire journey which lasted a month. Each time we would stop, we would bury one or two corpses on the island of Lena or its shores. Quite often while passing by we would spot crosses built of fresh wood. I would always turn and watch until the grave of the unknown exile would disappear into the sunny horizon.. .
Once in a while barges and steamboats will pass by and the randompassenger will glance at the lonely grave -- without flowers, neglected. Little by little even the plaque will fade, which in this uninhabited land nobody would read anyway.
The memoirists’s obligation to name everyone around them was an attempt to avoid the fate of oblivion encountered in the seventeen skulls that Juodvirsis dug up, and the lonely, neglected grave that Grinkeviciute watched from her barge. Juodvirsis recognizes that the entire Siberian experience that he and so many others suffered is rapidly fading into oblivion as his contemporaries age and die; as years go by, history itself is having to recount more and more new events and experiences, and so this historical event is just becoming one among many others. Juodvirsis explains that he writes so that the young generations would learn the tremendous value of freedom.
TRUTH
The recording of names and experiences in some ways can also be seen as an appeal to or even an enactment of "truth" or "normality", concepts that contemporary literary criticism now typically posits with quotation marks to denote their subjective, non-universal quality. For the deportees in the prison camps of Siberia, however, truth and normality was very real and can be defined quite simply as everything and anything other than what they were experiencing. Everything down to the very language spoken around the memoirists was false and absurd. Communist slogans, the rights guaranteed by the Soviet constitution, the trumped up charges under which the deportees were sentenced, were all written with a language "colonized by the state" as Carolyn Forche writes (41). "All lies" as Grinkeviciute declares: "They lie, they lie, the entire brigade lies, lied and will lie for ever and ever amen; the entire Soviet Union stole, steals and will steal" (Metai X, 135). As Karlis Racevskis writes of Eugenia Ginzburg in his new book, "She had to learn that her world of values had been turned upside down -- the true had become false, right had turned into wrong, the rational had given way to the absurd" (95).
Racevskis describes prisoners reciting memorized poetry as a means of maintaining a sense of reality (96). I would like to add that writing poetry as well as memoirs was another very important way. In such writings, the author could remember home, the past, an easier life; he could describe the absurdity of his imprisonment and living conditions; and hope for the opportunity to return home someday:
Kita diena isvare i darba. I darba susiruose du vyrai -- mokytojas Tilindis ir gydytojas Tenesovas (notice again the use of names). Alfa sesiolikos neturejo, taciau kadangi buvo aukstas ir atrode vyresnis, ir jam teko eiti. Visi tremtiniai is ryto susirinko prie savo baraku, apsirenge gerais drabuziais, kai kurios moterys apsiave bateliais, nes niekas is Lietuvos prastu nesiveze. Misku ukis darbiniu rubu ir net pirstiniu nedave, . . .
[tremtiniu virsininkai] labai nustebo pamate taip apsirengusius misko kirtejus. Patkovirinas net paklause, bene i karnavala susiruose sie zmones (30).
The next day they forced us off to work. Two men -- teacher Tilindis and doctor Tenesovas. . .Alfa was not yet 16, but because he was tall and looked older than his age, he too was sent to work. All the exiles gathered in the morning near their barracks, dressed in their Sunday best, some women even wore high heeled shoes, because everybody had only brought their good clothes with them from Lithuania. The forestry dept. did not provide us with clothes, not even gloves. . .
The overseeers were very surprised to see lumberjacks dressed in this way. Patkovirinas even asked whether these people were dressed for Mardi Gras.
With such carnivalesque reality, it’s hard to distinguish truth from fiction! Indeed I would like to argue that writings such as these (sometimes called "literature of witnessing") demand a very different kind of reading than that advocated by contemporary critical theory. These writings must be taken very seriously and sincerely. It is simply not appropriate to read suspiciously or to question truth, reality, or humanity under these conditions.
THE GIFT OF INNER FREEDOM
In a recent review of the writings of Dalia Grinkeviciute, the reviewer Deimante Kazukauskaite wrote the following:
D. Grinkeviciutes knyga bus ne paminklas, kur uztenka karta per metus padeti geliu, ir net ne paties suskintu . . . o gyvas liudijimas, kuris pades vidines laisves galybei skleistis ir musu gyvenimuose (145).
D. Grinkeviciute’s book will not be a monument, upon which it suffices to place flowers once a year -- and not even flowers that you’ve picked yourself , . . . but rather a living testimony which will allow the power of inner freedom to flourish in our lives.
Kazukauskaite, however, quoting novelist Vanda Juknaite, reminds us that this "inner freedom" which Dalia Grinkeviciute gives to us is a gift, but like all gifts, it is also a burden or responsibility that the recipient must know how to accept. Juknaite claims that what she calls the provincial Lithuanian mentality and inhibited consciousness resulting from so many years of soviet occupation and isolation from the world and its opportunities, (this mentality) is not ready for the inner freedom which the writings of Grinkeviciute and others promise. The sublimity of human potential which manifested itself amongst such wretchedness and suffering is not something that Lithuanians, according to Juknaite are ready to understand.
The recipient of this gift must also be willing to reciprocate -- to repay this gift of inner freedom. For a gift necessarily requires two participants. So how can it ever be repayed? It is the simple, but yet excruciatingly difficult task of reading these narratives. The memoirist seeks nothing other than to dignify those countless bodies with individual, human identities. She (or he) only asks that we witness this event, that we read her words.
According to Maris Caklais, we must learn to understand and appreciate the genre of Siberian narratives both as testimony for an era and as literature. These writings document a genocide that is not often enough discussed -- these writings are perhaps the only evidence we have, for as we know, photography of work and living conditions in the camps was not allowed -- families and communities were able to take and keep pictures of funerals and weddings -- but all were posed, group portraits. All we know, we know by virtue of the memories and the writings of the survivors.
But who should be charged with these crimes against humanity? And would it make a difference? Latvian literary critic Karlis Racevckis writes that:
There is no satisfying solution. . . to the situation of the victim, no restitution to compensate for the losses incurred. However, as Laclau points out, it is the acceptance of this non-solution that ‘is the very precondition of democracy’, because it ‘burdens concrete social agents with that impossible task that makes democratic interaction achievable.’ It is a burden symptomatic of our times... part of the task of reconstructing a reason for our age (126).
It is not restitution or punishment that these writings appeal to -- but rather, our recognition and empathy for the writers and their subjects; and discussion about and appreciation of our privilege of freedom. This is the only repayment the memoirist seeks.
CONCLUSION
I have spoken about the obligation of the author to name the nameless and to describe the indescribable; as well as the responsibility of the reader to take seriously the truths offered by the memoirists, each in his or her individual and particular situation. And this returns us to the original problem I posed at the beginning of my talk. How can the writer and the reader avoid generalizing? Is it even possible to escape the tendency to assimilate proper names into common nouns? What is the appropriate way of approaching literature of witnessing (this title itself is a generalization)? Lithuanian-born philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who is now enjoying posthumous superstardom as the preeminent French philosopher of ethics, would explain the problem as follows: My encounter with the other must occur face-to-face as absolutely other and new. It is a non-reciprocal relationship, because my duty to the other is always prior to and greater than his duty to me. It is a duty that can never be fully met, yet it must be continuously attempted. I am reminded of this duty every time I see the face of the other. When I speak to the other, I must try to avoid assimilating all that he says to me to what "I think" or what "I know". The latter for Levinas is not dialogue, but rather ego-logue.
Of course, our encounter with the Siberian deportees is not face-to-face. Rather we hear stories, encounter memoirs, perhaps photos, or documents. Nevertheless we must always attempt to behave as if this were a face-to-face encounter, acting as though there is not a safe distance of time and space in which to hide, but rather an urgent duty to respond to what the other has to tell us.
Speaking, telling one’s story, is a way of giving everything, as Levinas told his interviewer Richard Kearney (64). And therefore listening is the obligation to accept what is being given or told, but also to recognize that what is being said is incomprehensible. As Dorfman’s poem referred to at the beginning, states, "I was looking at them from another country and I cannot tell their story." We may not be able to tell their story, but we can allow them to tell it themselves.
Jura Avizienis
Unviersity of Washington