ONE OF THE FIFTEEN MILLION

by Nicholas Prychodko ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 10, 1952

Another suffering and escape report from a Communist victim again reveals the terrible punishments of those suspected of freedom of thought or speech as they were pursued and tortured by the NKVD. Seized through internal espionage, he was taken to the Lukianiwska Prison in Kiev, where trumped up charges, false evidence and bestial degradation led the prisoners to sign bogus confessions, where demoralizing techniques could not always subdue the accused and suicide, if possible, was a comforting way out. And since slave labor in mines and camps was necessary, thousands, like the author, after their ""interrogations"" were sentenced to the Corrective Labor Camps. But even the knowledge that he was to spend ten years in Siberia did not kill the tenacity to live in spite of the impossibility of escaping and when his 70 year old mother obtained a pardon by a trip to Moscow and the Kremlin, he was finally headed home to the Ukraine. There his prison sentence hampered him, but a teaching job was found near the Dnieper and with the coming of the Germans in 1941, he not only evaded a second arrest but started on his way to Canada. An unsparing indictment of mass persecution of the innocent, the horrors inflicted on the ""enemies of the people"", this first hand account underscores the dire results of Soviet methods as they relate to human dignity and freedom. A warning signpost, but for a market perhaps already satiated.

Pub Date: July 10, 1952

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1952

Categories: NONFICTION