Drawings from the Gulag

by Fuel, Danzig Baldaev (Artist), Damon Murray (Editor)

Drawings from the Gulag consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev (author of the acclaimed Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series), describing the history, horror and peculiarities of the Gulag system from its inception in 1918. Baldaev's father, a respected ethnographer, taught him techniques to record the tattoos of criminals in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty prison, where Danzig worked as a guard. He was reported to the K.G.B. who unexpectedly offered support for his work, allowing him the opportunity to travel across the former U.S.S.R. Witnessing scenes of everyday life in the Gulag, he chronicled this previously closed world from both sides of the wire. With every vignette, Baldaev brings the characters he depicts to vivid from the lowest "zek" (inmate) to the most violent tattooed "vor" (thief), all the practices and inhabitants of the Gulag system are depicted here in incredible and often shocking detail. In documenting the attitude of the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of these citizens into survivors or victims of the Gulag system, this graphic novel vividly depicts methods of torture and mass murder undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals upon their fellow inmates.

Danzig Baldaev was born in 1925 in Ulan-Ude, Buryatiya, Russia. In 1948, after serving in the army in World War II, he was ordered by the N.K.V.D. to work as a warden in the infamous Leningrad prison, Kresty, where he started drawing the tattoos of criminals. His collection of drawings, which he made in different reformatory settlements for criminals all over the former U.S.S.R. over a period of more than 50 years, have been published by Fuel in three volumes, in the bestselling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels, Art, Russia, Comics, Collections

240 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2010

Reviews

[Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important new book was published earlier this year though I’ve only recently become aware of it by a sketch in one of my history periodicals. It’s called Drawings from the Gulag, containing an extraordinary and disturbing collection of sketches by one Danzig Baladev, a former official in the NKVD, Stalin’s security police. I was fully aware of the horror of the Soviet camp system from the work of people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov among others. But these graphic drawings give the sheer savagery of it all a terrible immediacy.

Baladev himself has an interesting history. The son of a rich Mongolian intellectual, he was born in 1925 in the south-east of the USSR. Like so many others his father disappeared during the Great Terror of the 1930s, while he and his sister were consigned to an NKVD orphanage, set up specifically for the children of ‘enemies of the people.’ One does not have to imagine too hard to conjure up the treatment children received in places like this.

Later, after leaving the orphanage, Baladev was ordered to become a guard in one of the NKVD labour camps. To amuse himself he starred to sketch the various tattoos displayed by the criminal fraternities. On learning of this his superiors encouraged him to continue, believing such designs supplied valuable intelligence on the links between inmates and the criminal underworld outside the camp system. Baladev was therefore given permission to travel from camp to camp, recording tattoos along the way.

Unbeknown to his superiors he was compiling a secret dossier, detailing the various outrages that were such a feature of the whole gulag system. His sketches show scenes of torture, degradation and execution, by the NKVD as well as that practiced by prisoner upon prisoner. There are scenes of sexual torture, of mass rape, of an axe being raised as criminals make ready to decapitate one of their fellows. For once the cliché applies: an image really is worth a thousand words.

Compared with the flood of information about the Nazi camp system, including movies like Schindler’s List, so many people in the west are still comparatively ignorant over the horrors of the gulags. So far as I’m aware the only English-Language film featuring the Soviet camp system is the British adaptation of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch made in the early 1970s. Hollywood has never tackled the subject.

I discovered from a review article by Olrando Figes in The Times that a new movie touching on Stalin’s camps is to be released this month. The Way Back is really about a prison break, a highly improbable one at that, only featuring camp life in a fairly brief slot at the beginning. There is still something lacking here, something revealing about our lack of interest in the mundane horrors of the Soviet camp system compared with the grotesque horrors of the Nazis. Figes makes an excellent point:

We do not feel as close to Russian peasants as we do to Western European Jews. We’re not sure that the Russians are “like us” at all. Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been a film to engage us in the tragedy of the gulag. It is in part a legacy of the Cold War. Perhaps we feel that the Russians brought their suffering on themselves – victims of a revolution that went wrong. Or perhaps, in some former left-wing quarters, we still cling to the old romance about the Soviet Union that puts its victims out of sight – a rose-tinted view of the revolution that can be seen in Reds (1981), Warren Beatty’s love song to Bolshevism, which still colours views in Hollywood. In 2008 it was voted one of the ten best epic US movies by the American Film Institute.

It is, I think, time for a new song, a song to all the victims of Bolshevism, a song that will help us understand the terrible human suffering involved; to understand, unlike Stalin, a repellent man and a moral ignoramus, that a million deaths is a million tragedies.

I’ve also published this review on my blog with illustrations taken from the book. Do be warned. Some of them are pretty grim. http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/12...

[Orion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing series of drawings depicting cruelty inside the gulags of Soviet Russia drawn by a prison guard. The original Russian text is translated, and notes are added to explain or verify incidents depicted. Not for the squeamish.

[Veeral · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for the faint-hearted. Baldaev doesn't hold back on the graphic violence of the camps. I have never seen anything like this. And I have read more books on Gulags than I care to remember or to a point, admit.

[Kate]

For some books, it's hard to assign a rating. A scale of 1 to 5 orange stars doesn't capture anything important about it. I leave such books with no stars. Though that's not quite right either.

Drawings from the Gulag depicts horrendous acts of violence, as recorded by a Soviet prison guard in blunt, brutal illustrations. The main theme seems to be prisoners attacking each other, desperate to assert power amid the isolation, cold, and hunger. The prison guards encourage this to happen and contribute to the senseless deaths and torments.

The artist/guard was the son of an ethnographer who had been arrested, and he brings an anthropological sensibility to his work, recording (for example) a glossary of criminal slang. Some of the incidents he portrays seem bizarre, almost unbelievably surreal and lurid in their horror. The editors of the book sometimes footnote the pictures with quotes by other writers/observers who made note of similar incidents, as a kind of cross-referencing.

I don't know if I can "recommend" this book to other readers who might pick it up based on interesting art on the cover without any notion of the mind-curdling tortures they are about to see. But if you want to learn about life in the gulags, this is one perspective that will be burned into your memory forever.

[George Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm- I'm in two minds about this one. It would be amazing to have this kind of personal testimony and insider view on the Soviet atrocities. But my instinct doesn't trust Baldaev as a reporter- he has a strong personal prejudice (entirely justified no doubt), and the drawings suggest that he is also erotically interested in the sadistic aspects of what he shows...these large breasted women being stangled and sodomy and bondage pictures are similar to extreme S&M illustrations. This still makes it interesting as a historical document and, in some ways, makes it even more interesting (if rather nauseating) as a contribution to graphic fiction- but the publishers attempt to provide historical context is so half-hearted that it seems to me like the attempt to provide an educational justification for something that, in their hearts, they know was produced as the titilation for someones who was deeply damaged by the system he produced.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ever see that movie 'man behind the sun', the gonzo exploitation flick about unit 731, the japanese prison camp wherein "experiments" were conducted on chinese WW2 pows? You didnt? Thank goodness! Its absolutely revolting! Well, you might want to miss out on this one as well. Who enjoys looking at this kind of thing? And why? Good grief, aren't some truths just better left unknown? Ever see that mexican magazine, Alarma!? its nuts, its this really explicit crime tabloid thing. Why on earth would people read that? And stop rubbernecking at the car wrecks as you go by! You dont? Good! So stop watching law and order:SVU you sicko!

[Lisa Hayden Espenschade · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not really right to say I "liked" this book -- it's a graphic (in more ways than one) account of the horrors of the Gulag system, making it an uncomfortable book to read. That's part of what makes the book so valuable, though: Baldaev is unsparing in his drawn and written descriptions.

(There's more on my blog here.)

[Stu Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm fascinated by this....a new look at the Gulag, done by a former Soviet prison guard who collected stories and testimony and then drawings based on them. Some might be questionable, but it's eye opening addition to the literature. The drawings are remarkable, they almost play out as old Soviet propaganda posters

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely terrifying book that explains what life in the USSR was like. It covers the beginning of the communists to life within the prisons and to life outside of the prisons. It's a very thorough book that even includes a glossary of terms in the back and first hand quotes from victims. The translated Russian reads well in English.

[Paul John Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrific book that cannot be really described as a good read but powerful and hard to take your eyes off all the same. It is the artwork that speaks for itself in this volume. A nightmare look at the GULAG and the evil that ran it! Not for the squeamish!

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely dark. Some parts of the translations seems questionable, factually, but since I can't read Russian myself they're all there is to work with, so there's no way to tell if the oddness is in the original or came through via the translation.

[Jared Della Rocca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing drawings by Baldaev that truly provide an illustration to the brutal conditions set forth by Solzhenitsyn.

[Crossett Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing drawings by Baldaev that truly provide an illustration to the brutal conditions set forth by Solzhenitsyn.

[Erhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awfully graphic in all senses. Just reading about the horrors doesn't do the Gulag justice.

[Frank Pleszak]

Excellent book

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's quite funny, the prisoners of the Gulags had a farewell phrase for those who died in the camps of overwork, hunger, murder or illness: "Joyfully arrived at Communism, at the bright dawn of humanity!"

They understood. Once you suffer the realities of this ideology, anyone will understand. Do the Western Marxist professors in universities and leaders of race-baiting organizations understand what they preach? Definitely not, they just hate the rich, despite generally being rich themselves.

[R.K. Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very disturbing, but important to know the history of the Soviet Union and the atrocities that were committed against people. This is the reason why so many people are against big government (socialism/communism). This happens when people are pitted against each other and groups of people are dehumanized. Wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

Wouldn't recommend this book to anyone with a weak stomach. The illustrations are graphic.

When a nation forgets God then everything is permissible.

[Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most disturbing books I've ever read. Really shows how monstrous human beings can be to one another.

[Fin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick read but an unsettling one. A lot of the pictures and descriptions are pretty horrific. I mean I wasn't expecting something different but it's a heavy subject.

[Ming Kahnawake · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a great and horrible book. I never can think human being could be this evil. Especially under a name that make happyness for all human. I pray the terrible and miserable things in the book won't happen again!

Karl Marx Would Never have imagined his diea could be twisted like the things in the book.

[Rafeeq O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drawings from the Gulag, the 2010 collection of Danzig Baldaev's wide-ranging illustrations of the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, with text translated by Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore, is a compelling yet emotionally difficult 5-star read.

Baldaev was born in 1925 and as "[t]he son of an 'enemy of the people'" was "sent to an orphanage for children of political prisoners" (2021 Fuel hardcover, page 5). Rather than being given a 9-gram "ticket to a 'happy childhood'" (page 119)--that is, a round to the back of the head from the Tokarev pistols used by the Soviet security forces at the time--he survived, served in the Red Army during the Second World War, and then "in 1948 was ordered by the NKVD to work...in Kresty--an infamous prison--where he started drawing the tattoos of criminals" (page 5). Although someone reported him for this peculiar predilection, the "KGB...unexpectedly supported him, realising the status of a criminal could be determined by deciphering the meaning of his tattoos," and he was allowed "to visit different reformatory settlements across the former USSR" (page 5). The introductory biographical sketch, by the way, describes Baldaev as "a warden," but the author later relays a story from "two of [his] fellow guards" (page 200; emphasis added), so it seems more likely--if the translation is correct, that is--that he indeed was a guard rather than being an official in charge of a camp.

Regardless of his exact position, however, Baldaev was no Soviet apologist or propagandist, for in addition to cataloging Russian criminal tattoos--which the publishers offer in a separate three-volume encyclopedia--he also cataloged atrocity after atrocity of the gulags. According to the Foreword by Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell, Baldaev's widow reported that "around a fifth of the drawings are from first-hand experience," with the rest being "the result of the artist's meticulous research, speaking to fellow NKVD officers and prisoners about particular incidents, practises and procedures" (page 9). Unlike the research on criminal tattoos, however, these drawings, rather than being encouraged by the authorities, would have been seen as evidence for conviction on an "Article 58," which the editors remind us "dealt with anti-Soviet activities, counter-revolutionary activities, treason, espionage, undermining of state industry and transport (sabotage), terrorism, non-reporting of counter-revolutionary activities, etc." (page 81). The artists thus "spen[t] twenty years working at home, in secret, on these drawings" (page 9).

What Baldaev gives us, then, is a record of state-sanctioned, even encouraged brutality in a system of prison camps that across the decades killed millions--millions. Readers of, say, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago of course already are familiar with the ghastly, sordid tale. Baldaev actually does provide plenty of text, both as accompaniment to each drawing and also in apparatus afterward, but naturally his art is the real meat of the book. The drawings' style is rather reminiscent of that of R. Crumb, I would say, and yet the savagery chronicled is far uglier than any crudity of representation.

Danzig Baldaev's Drawings from the Gulag often can be read and viewed only in smallish doses, for what it recounts is, at best, brutal and horrid, and completely repulsive and disgusting at worst. The book truly should be read, though, for it covers a swath of history--and, indeed, an aspect of human nature--that we dare not ever forget.

[The Elf of the Ostfront Harlot of Eros Hannahlore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A harrowing book, made me cry at many parts. The repression of the Russian people’s is truly a crime against humanity equal if not greater than the German crimes of war . I recommend studies of GUlag and Soviet oppression as a opening up of compassion for all humans

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brutal.

[Daley Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

very disturbing