How do you tell a story that was never supposed to be told? The Calvert Journal talked to the artists capturing the scale and emotion of the Soviet Union’s notorious repressions for the new journalistic project, Generation Gulag, from Coda Story.

‘This is not ancient history’: meet the artists bringing the devastating stories of Stalin’s repressions to life  https://www.new-east-archive.org/features/show/11542/generation-gulag-coda-story-art-stalin-repressions-oral-history via @calvertjournal

Fast forward from Bolshevik USSR to Zionist Israel …

Netanyahu’s Palestinian genocide is a story that is already being told and documented in so many different ways: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68249962 – Gaza Genocide Case Against Israel Gathers Global Momentum: S. Africa Envoy – Politics news – Tasnim News Agency https://tn.ai/3172790 – Montage gathers Israeli soldiers’ videos of war crimes in Gaza https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240408-montage-gathers-israeli-soldiers-videos-of-war-crimes-in-gaza/ via @middleeastmnt … etc etc etc etc etc

Hundreds of thousands of sources will be collated, one day, as a record of “man’s inhumanity to man” (Primo Levi) in the twenty first century … nay, the Western elite’s inhumanity towards the Palestinian people.

Nadezhda Mandelstam’s book  ‘Hope against Hope’ (1970) is a study of what happens when a society lurches out of control and begins to cannibalize its own citizens. The greatest weapon dictatorial governments have is to make everyone culpable. The ultimate consequence is a society where no one, not even the most powerful despot, has ultimate control.

No one can say “stop” and have order restored; the sickness is, by that point, in every cell of the body political.

It is the national version of original sin.

Nadezhda goes on to write: Anybody who breathes the air of terror is doomed, even if nominally he manages to save his life. Everybody is a victim – not only those who die, but also all the killers, ideologists, accomplices and sycophants who close their eyes or wash their hands – even if they are secretly consumed with remorse at night.

Every section of the population has been through the terrible sickness caused by terror, and none has so far recovered, or become fit for normal civilian life.

If nothing else is left, one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.

Edvard Munch’s Scream 1893

Ode to Stalin (Stalin Epigram) November 1933 by Osip Mandelstam

This poem, which Mandelstam read to a small circle of friends, was reported to the authorities, leading to Mandelstam’s exile in 1934. ‘Been thinking – who is going to write an ‘Ode to Netanyahu 2024‘? Maybe I should have a go. Here is the ode that Osip died for.

We are living, but can’t feel the land where we stay,
 More than ten steps away you can’t hear what we say.
 But if people would talk on occasion,
 They should mention the Kremlin Caucasian.
 
 His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits,
 And his accurate words are as heavy as weights.
 Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming,
 And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming.
 
 But around him a crowd of thin-necked henchmen,
 And he plays with the services of these half-men.
 Some are whistling, some meowing, some sniffing,
 He’s alone booming, poking and whiffing.
 
 He is forging his rules and decrees like horseshoes –
 Into groins, into foreheads, in eyes, and eyebrows.
 Every killing for him is delight,
 And Ossetian torso is wide. (Tr. Dmitri Smirnov)

Another translation