Book Review: I. Alinevich, On the Way to Magadan, with three short essays (“The Corporation”; “Self- determination”; “Political Prisoners”); forward by Vaiantsina Alinevich, afterward by Anarchist Black Cross Belarus (Anarchist Black Cross Belarus, 2014)
Abstract
Belarus anarchist Ihar Alinevich’s richly illustrated memoir (drawings by “Dani Dugum” and “Vasiliy Pero”) takes its title from a folk song about a prisoner being transported by train to a forced labour camp in the far east of the Soviet Union. In the case of Alinevich, his journey takes place in a Belarus variation of a ‘Stolypin car’ with three sleeping tiers, no windows, and bars separating the prisoners from the corridor. Alinevich’s recounting of militant activism, abduction, incarceration, interrogation/torture, and show trial (sentence, eight years) ends with the ride to a Belarus penal colony (prison) situated between an oil refinery and a chemical plant.
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