They Spoke to Us in the Language of Machine Guns: The Memoirs of Yevhen Hrytsiak about the Norilsk Uprising

Illustration: Mariya Krykunenko / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group

“On May 25, 1953, we were heading out to work. Everyone was dejected; we did not start our tasks. Suddenly, near the 5th zone, not far from Gorstroy, an automatic rifle rattled. For some reason, we were sure that this time, too, it would not be without casualties. We finally learned that one person had been killed and six wounded. Some prisoners who had started to work let their hands fall. All work at Gorstroy spontaneously stopped. People began to run around chaotically, in a flurry. The more active prisoners began to shout, ‘They are killing us! We will not work! We demand a commission from Moscow!’”

This is how, 70 years ago in Norilsk, the first and largest uprising of political prisoners in the GULAG’s special camp system began. Among the participants were 17,000 people, 70% of whom were Ukrainians convicted of “nationalism.” The uprising lasted 61 days and forced the Kremlin leadership to make concessions, shaking the worldwide belief in the might and invincibility of the Soviet system. Moreover, of all the camp uprisings, this was the only one that did not involve the use of weapons. Precisely because of its nonviolent nature, as uprising researcher Alla Makarova writes, it was “an uprising of the spirit—the highest manifestation of nonviolent resistance to the inhuman GULAG system.”

The excerpt in the first paragraph, like all others in this article, belongs to Yevhen Hrytsiak—one of the organizers of the Norilsk uprising. He was born in the village of Stetseva in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. During his school years, he began collaborating with a youth nationalist organization that prepared young people for the struggle against occupiers. He later fought in the ranks of the Soviet army, but in 1949 he was arrested for ties with the OUN / UPA and sentenced to death, which was commuted to 25 years in the camps.

Hrytsiak’s eponymous book about the uprising is freely available in the online library of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. For the 70th anniversary of its conclusion, we are publishing a brief chronicle of the uprising based on the memoirs of Yevhen Hrytsiak.

Yevhen Hrytsiak, photo from the website of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial

A Ukrainian Song Over the Yenisei

“After settling into the barracks, we began to gather in small groups. In one group, someone started to sing:

Взяло дівча відра
Та й пішло по воду,
Аж там хлопці-риболовці
Ще й козацького роду.

The song was immediately picked up by others, and the group of singers began to grow rapidly. The number of those who wanted to sing kept increasing, and soon, again spontaneously, another choir group was formed. Over the Yenisei, in defiance of all prohibitions, a Ukrainian song resounded. When one of the singers grew tired, another took his place, and thus the song did not die down until late in the evening.”

This is how Yevhen Hrytsiak describes the transfer of political prisoners from Karaganda to Norilsk. Upon arrival, the prisoners were searched, numbered, and placed in barracks that were separated from the main zone by barbed wire. The prisoners were to work at “Gorstroy”—an area of tundra surrounded by watchtowers, where construction was underway. The construction of the city of Norilsk.

“The cold polar winter set in. We worked two shifts and without days off. We relieved each other at the workplace, so each shift lasted twelve hours. We spent two hours on the road there and back. At least two, and often four or five hours, we stood in line before the checkpoint, waiting to be searched. Here, the cold pierced to the bone and squeezed them painfully. We stood in silence; no one would utter a single word, for every crumb of energy was precious.”

The harsh working conditions and constant violence (not only from the guards but also from other groups of prisoners who worked for the camp administration) fostered insubordination among the prisoners. The incident that occurred on May 25, 1953, was the last straw.

After this, the prisoners refused to work and demanded the arrival of a commission from Moscow. Then the camp authorities stopped even threatening, let alone shooting. But the plan was different—to starve them out.

Situation in the Zones—Unchanged

“As of 6 a.m. on May 30 of this year, the situation in zones 4, 5, and 6 remains unchanged. The prisoners from the three zones, as before, are not showing any active actions and are not accepting food,” reads an archival report by Colonel Mikhail Kuznetsov.

The hunger strike was eventually ended, but the camp leadership could no longer persuade the prisoners to work, so on June 5, a commission from Moscow arrived in Norilsk. The prisoners put forward the following demands:

1. End the shootings and all other manifestations of arbitrary rule in prisons and camps.
2. Replace the entire leadership of Gorlag.
3. Reduce the working day in GULAG camps to 8 hours.
4. Guarantee prisoners days off.
5. Improve prisoners’ food rations.
6. Allow correspondence and visits with relatives.
7. Remove all disabled persons from Norilsk to the mainland.
8. Remove the locks and bars from the barracks, and the number tags from people.
9. Annul the decisions of the so-called Osoboye Soveshchaniye as an unconstitutional body.
10. End torture during interrogations and the practice of closed trials.
11. Organize a review of the personal files of all political prisoners.

Photo from the website of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial

Archive photo from the website of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial

In response to these demands, the commission decided to:

1. Replace the Gorlag leadership.
2. Reduce the working day to 8 hours.
3. Guarantee days off.
4. Allow prisoners to send two letters a month and have visits with relatives.
5. Remove the locks and bars from the barracks and the number tags from prisoners’ clothing.
6. Remove all disabled persons from Norilsk.
7. Review all personal files of the convicts.

But this was only the first stage of the struggle.

Decimation, GULAG-Style

From that moment on, not only the guards but also members of the commission participated in the violence against the prisoners. In particular, the head of the commission, Colonel Kuznetsov, applied a “weeding out” procedure to some of the camp zones (specifically the 4th and 5th) to suppress the instigators and activists of the resistance. It happened like this: from each group of a hundred prisoners, five were separated and led away into the tundra in an unknown direction.

“They will shoot them all!” I addressed the prisoners who had arrived from the 5th zone. “We must save them! Let’s do this: you go to the checkpoint and demand that they all be returned to you. If they are not returned, you will not go to work, and we, as a sign of solidarity with you, will not go out either. We need to make them feel that they cannot do whatever they please with us.”

In addition to refusing to go to work, the prisoners of the 4th and 5th zones hoisted black flags on their barracks in memory of those taken for reprisal. These flags irritated the administration more than the refusal to work.

Archive photo from the website of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial

Surrender or Die

The active suppression of the resistance began. First, they opened machine gun and automatic rifle fire on the prisoners of the 5th zone, killing 27 people. Later, they did the same to the 4th and 1st zones. The women’s 6th zone was doused with water at high pressure from fire trucks, and the 3rd was suppressed by armed soldiers.

The camp leadership forced the prisoners to leave their zone and surrender. Here is how Yevhen Hrytsiak describes this moment:

“People with their bundles were already coming and coming toward me. They walked hastily, as if afraid of being late, and in silence. But suddenly, a fellow countryman of mine blocks my path and asks very anxiously:

—What have you done?

—What else could I have done? There is no other way out!

—There is a way out: to stand to the death!

—But the people do not want to die; they are fleeing.

—How many have fled? Well, let it be a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred. And how many are left? Five thousand! And if out of these five thousand, another four thousand flee, won’t a thousand of us gather who will not move from this spot until we all perish? We will, —he answered himself, —and we will show them how we know how to die!

—No, —I replied to him, —I will not lead anyone to a certain death. You still have to live.”

Hrytsiak makes the decision for the fourth zone to surrender. The last black flag over the camp was torn down on August 4. After that, the prisoners were distributed to different camps, and the activists of the Norilsk uprising, including Yevhen Hrytsiak, were transported to a prison in Krasnoyarsk.

Ukrainian political prisoners at work in a stone quarry, 1955. Photo: Archive of the Center for Research of the Liberation Movement

—Who was your bodyguard? —interrogated Lieutenant Colonel Zavolsky.

—All five thousand prisoners.

—And specifically?

—That is specific.

—A pity, a pity there wasn’t a man to remove you from this world; then none of this would have happened in Norilsk… But this all was bound to happen!

In total, about two hundred prisoners died in clashes with the camp administration. On July 1, 1990, the remains of those who died during the uprising were reburied in a mass grave on Schmidt Hill near Norilsk. The “Memorial” society built a chapel on this site and erected a cross: “Peace to the ashes, honor to the name of the innocently repressed, eternal memory and sorrow for those who passed through the GULAG.”

Hrytsiak’s Persecution After His Release

In 1954, Gorlag was liquidated as a special-regime camp, and a commission came to the city to review the cases of the prisoners, resulting in the release of the absolute majority of Gorlag’s prisoners. And in 1960, the GULAG was liquidated.

In his prison cell, Hrytsiak learned English and also practiced yoga. He later translated *The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga* and *Autobiography of a Yogi* by Paramahansa Yogananda from English into Ukrainian.

He was soon released, but it turned out that Yevhen could no longer live in his home village, as his residence permit was canceled. He began to live in Karaganda.

In 1959, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR canceled the decision of the commission that had released Hrytsiak three years earlier, justifying the cancellation by the “severity of the crime” and thus restoring the 25-year sentence. At first, Hrytsiak did not even know what “severity” was being referred to. Only five years later did Yevhen learn that he “had been accused of not working anywhere after his release, not ceasing his anti-Soviet activities, and creating an organization of Ukrainian nationalists in the Vinnytsia region.”

He was then released because “after a proper check, it turned out that he had worked conscientiously, was not engaged in any anti-Soviet activity, had not created any organization, and no evidence of any of his statements against the Soviet government was recorded; only his dissatisfaction with not being allowed to live in his native village was noted.” He was released again, but immediately subjected to an unbridled newspaper smearing campaign.

In 1978, the 25th anniversary of the uprising, Yevhen wrote “A Short Record of Memoirs” for himself, to record on paper everything that remained in his memory from those events. But due to the threat from the KGB, he sent his manuscript to the West, where Osyp Zinkevych, the director of the “Smoloskyp” publishing house with whom Hrytsiak had studied in school, published it as a separate book. Later, a second edition was released, supplemented with archival documents and the names of active participants in those events.

Although he was released, the harassment and threats continued, so he emigrated from the USSR. But he eventually returned to his native Precarpathia, where he died and was buried.

In his book, Yevhen Hrytsiak recalls a reproach leveled against him by the Sixtiers: “You did something good in your time, but you were broken by the punitive bodies, and you rested on that. But we, the Sixtiers, fought at all times, wrote protests, spoke out in the press.”

“We, the Ukrainian political prisoners of the Karaganda and Norilsk special camps, raised and hardened in the ranks of the OUN-UPA, and then in the camp struggle, made our feasible contribution to the cause of overthrowing the Bolshevik regime, but we do not claim the palm of primacy, because we fought not for a palm branch, but specifically for UKRAINE!” —Hrytsiak replies.