Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.

by Володимир Шабля

Stone. Book Two.
Difficult roads to hell. (Ukrainian Edition)
by Volodymyr Shablia

Set against the background of Soviet Ukraine, the novel follows ordinary people caught between war, collectivization, and state terror. The narrative moves through the early years of the Second World War on Ukrainian territory, revealing the military defeats of the Red Army, chaotic retreats, and the human cost hidden behind official reports and propaganda.
Parallel to the war narrative runs another line of violence — forced collectivization, dispossession, and the destruction of independent peasant life. Families are faced into impossible choices as the Soviet state tightens its control, branding farmers as “kulaks,” deporting them to Siberia or the Urals, and erasing entire ways of life.
Yet this is not only a story of oppression. Written in Ukrainian, the novel preserves the emotional texture of childhood, family memory, and rural life, capturing voices shaped by love, fear, endurance, and moral responsibility. These moments of humanity form a quiet counterpoint to the brutality of the era.
Stone is a biographical, historically grounded novel based on real lives, archival materials, and personal testimonies. Book Two deepens the exploration of how totalitarian power enters everyday life — not abstractly, but through hunger, fear, war, and the slow erosion of human dignity.
This Ukrainian-language edition of Stone, Book Two presents the story in the original cultural and linguistic context in which it was conceived. It is essential for readers interested in:
Ukrainian history and memory
World War II in Eastern Europe
Soviet collectivization and repression
Historical fiction rooted in real experience
Literature written from within Ukrainian cultural tradition

Language: Ukrainian.

Genres: Ukraine

95 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 2020

About the author

Volodymyr Shablia is a Ukrainian writer and researcher whose work focuses on the lived experience of people inside the Soviet totalitarian system.
His multi-volume biographical novel Stone is based on real lives, archival materials, and personal testimonies. Through individual human stories, Shablia explores how repression, fear, and ideological pressure shaped everyday existence in the USSR from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Rather than heroic myths or political abstractions, his writing concentrates on ordinary people — their moral choices, compromises, resilience, and the quiet struggle to remain human under inhuman conditions.
Stone is both a literary narrative and a historical testimony, examining how totalitarianism enters daily life gradually, long before it becomes visible through prisons and camps.
Official page: facebook.com/Volodymyr.Shablia

Reviews

[Володимир Шабля · Rating 5 out of 5]

The childhood and teenage years of the main character, as well as the vicissitudes of survival of his family members in conditions of violence and state pressure in the early 1930s and during the hostilities of the Second World War are described. The second book of the novel continues the two storylines started in the first book: 1). Description of the difficult life of the citizens in the USSR during the periods of Stalin's dispossession, collectivization and industrialization of the early 1930s. 2). A depiction of the course of military operations and the functioning of the Gulag system in the conditions of the 1941 war. The events of the novel are based on the stories of the participants, eyewitnesses and witnesses, as well as on official documents. The teenage development of the main character, even under the conditions of the communist system, produces the best human qualities in him thanks to the influence of family values, humanistic traditions of Ukrainian civil society and the indestructible spirit of freedom. These virtues, cultivated at a young age, come in handy when resisting the inhuman disagreements of the Gulag. Equally difficult trials fall on the fate of the main character's father and mother, who are forced to constantly adapt in order not to fall under the rink of the state repressive machine. However, they do not manage to avoid repression and robbery either. In the end, all the characters of the novel are captured by the millstones of the Second World War.

[Володимир Шабля · Rating 5 out of 5]

Описано дитинство, підлітковий вік головного героя, а також перипетії виживання членів його сім’ї в умовах насильства й тиску держави на початку 1930-х років і під час воєнних дій Другої світової війни. Книга друга роману продовжує започатковані в книзі першій дві сюжетні лінії: 1). Опис тяжкого життя громадян СРСР у періоди сталінських розкуркулювання, колективізації та індустріалізації початку 1930-х років. 2). Зображення перебігу воєнних дій і функціонування системи ГУЛАГ в умовах війни 1941 року. Події роману базуються на розповідях учасників, очевидців та свідків, а також на офіційних документах. Підліткове становлення головного героя навіть в умовах комуністичного ладу виробляє у ньому найкращі людські якості завдяки впливу сімейних цінностей, гуманістичних традицій українського громадянського суспільства й незнищенного духу свободи. Ці виховані замолоду достоїнства стають в нагоді при супротиві нелюдським незгодам ГУЛАГу. Не менш тяжкі випробування випадають і на долю батька та матері головного героя, котрі вимушені постійно підлаштовуватися, аби не потрапити під каток державної репресивної машини. Проте уникнути репресій та грабунку не вдається і їм. Врешті-решт усіх персонажів роману захоплюють жорна Другої світової війни.