Vol 3 1999 - Review by J. Mitta

Crosses in the Arctic. A Lithuanian woman survives the Gulag

Matilda Strimaityte-Meliene
Translated by Nijole Beleske Grazulis

A small, independent European state located beside one which is not only far more powerful but exhibiting imperialist designs, is rarely a comfortable position to be in. Such was the circumstance of Lithuania, nestled as it was with Estonia and Latvia within easy reach of the paw of the Russian bear. All  three were swallowed up, firstly by czarist Russia during the nineteenth century followed by communist Russia during the twentieth century. Independence was attained with the collapse of czarist forces towards the end of World War I and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks. However the friendship of a new political regime proved intransigent. On the eve of another world war, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany signed a secret pact which nullified the independence of the three states and brought them once again under Russian control. Within Lithuania, a small but dedicated independence movement sprang up, the members of which were ruthlessly hunted down by the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police). Associates and relatives were also deemed suspect and from June 1941 mass deportations from Lithuania to Siberia commenced. The largest wave, comprising three hundred thousand men, women and children was in 1948, were all forced to endure the arduous and often deadly journey via freight trains to Stalin's infamous gulags. Matilda Strimaityte-Meliene, thirty seven years of age in 1941, was one such victim. Whilst successfully attempting to hide her husband from the NKVD, she herself was captured and forced to spend the next fifteen years in a painful battle of survival within Siberian labour camps. 

Although the author herself maintains she was in no way extraordinary, the traumas and deprivations she withstood clearly belie this humility. She describes in vivid detail the harrowing train journey from her beloved country to a Soviet state farm at Kasichinski, approximately 2,500 miles east of  Moscow. The conditions on the farm were appalling, with the most meagre of food rations, bare boards for sleeping and no implements with which to till the fields.  Labourers were expected to plant and weed the hard clay earth with their bare hands and impossibly high daily individual quotas were set by the camp commandant. Working in the fields from 7am until dusk during the harsh Siberian summer led to numerous cases of heat stroke, whereby the unfortunate victim would simply be left lying on the ground until he/she eventually regained consciousness, only to be forced to toil once more. The bitter cold of winter was even worse, creating considerable hardship for those transportees, such as Matilda, who had been unable to bring any warm clothing with them. Arduous treks were necessary to obtain fuel from woods in the area to warm the labourers primitive huts. Initially an old horse was harnessed to a makeshift plough, but after the demise of the animal, women themselves wore the yoke in order to drag firewood back to the camp. 

In addition to these extreme physical hardships, was the mental torment of constant evening radio broadcasts of Soviet propaganda, espousing the merits and benefits of Communism, the ostensible cheerful willingness of those now resident on state farms to support Mother Russia and, following Operation Barbarossa and the demise of the Soviet/German alliance, the dedication of Stalin in saving Lithuania from the oppressive Nazi regime. 

Throughout the fifteen  years of her internment, Matilda was moved throughout Siberia to various state run farms, her health increasingly precarious due to near starvation and extreme labour conditions. On one occasion she recalled waking up some distance away from the labourers' huts, having been dragged there and deposited on some branches and leaves by her fellow prisoners. This was common practice when it appeared an individual was close to death. Once deceased, the numerous lice would immediately desert the corpse for another living specimen and the spectre of harbouring another's vermin, especially in the case of one who had just died, was both repelling and disturbing to those still alive.  Incredibly, after  forty-eight hours lying outside unprotected, Matilda regained enough strength for her to be sent to the farm's primitive hospital where, over five months, her health improved sufficiently for her to be sent to Kresty, on the shores of the Yana River where, although the deprivations were many, the working and living conditions were marginally improved. 

Throughout these years, the deportees could neither send nor receive any communication with the outside world. Newspapers were not permitted and, for much of the time, even endeavouring to keep track of what day, month or year it was proved useless.  More frustratingly, the polar night meant even recognising day from night was virtually impossible and the camp commander would exploit this situation by working the labourers more intensely. 

In 1951 Matilda was transported to Yakutsk, the largest city and capital of Yakutiya (the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), where the Soviets were attempting Russify the territory of the indigenous people, the Yakut. All influential posts, those of officers, civil servants, teachers and physicians, were Russian with the Yakut granted positions of lowly status. Matilda was provided with a teaching position at the local Yakut high school by a sympathetic principal who recognised her intellectual breadth. The Yakut were taught in a rudimentary fashion with teaching of the Russian language the main priority. In quiet defiance, Matilda taught the children both Lithuanian and Russian, and in turn learnt Yakut. She taught in the school for two years and during this period slowly regained some of her health. In 1953, with the death of Stalin and a change in the Party hierarchy a number of deportees, including Matilda, were permitted to return to their native land. Upon returning, however, she was greatly dismayed to discover how arduous life had become for Lithuanians since she had been away. Shortages of every kind were endemic, fear and suspicion permeated all interactions and despondency and inertia flourished in a nation where almost all hope had evaporated that the west would assist in liberating Lithuania from the Soviet interloper. 

The only flicker of hope Matilda retained was to reach her husband, Jonas Melys, who in 1941 had managed to escape the NKVD, flee across Europe and ultimately arrive in the United States. From the late 1950s, they communicated with each other, and on seven separate occasions Matilda applied for the necessary documentation to migrate to America, only to be continually denied an exit visa. This was an extremely protracted experience, and throughout this period, the health of Matilda's husband slowly deteriorated until his death in 1965. Shortly after this, Russian officials finally permitted Matilda to leave Lithuania to join two of her brothers then resident in the United States. Matilda arrived in Chicago in September 1966 to a rapturous family. 

This is a stirring and poignant story of a woman's survival under tremendous hardship, her fierce determination to thwart the Stalinist system by clinging to life, and her ultimate victory in gaining her freedom in the West.