JRL NEWSWATCH VIDEO: “New Russian Documentary Brings the Horrors of the Gulag to the YouTube Generation; Yuri Dud’s documentary has garnered millions of views in days. From Global Voices.” – Transitions Online/ Alexey Kovalev
“… former sports reporter … [Yuri Dud] runs his own YouTube interview show …. generat[ing] millions of views … a serious competitor even to state-owned TV. … [T]he subject of Dud’s latest show shocked his … 5 million [subscribers] and the general public: a two-hour documentary about the Kolyma region, in Russia’s far northeast … almost synonymous with Stalin-era repressions. This frozen, mostly impassable Arctic wasteland was home to the most notorious camps of the Gulag, the Soviet network of forced labor compounds into which thousands of petty criminals and political prisoners disappeared. It’s hard to tell exactly how many people perished from extreme cold (temperatures in winter routinely drop below -50 C, or – 58 F), or of hunger and toil in the mines, but even conservative official estimates put the number at 150,000 … in just one of the biggest Kolyma camps from 1932 to 1957. … Dud adds that his parents have always warned him: ‘Don’t attract unnecessary attention. Don’t stand out. We’re simple people, we don’t decide anything,’ even in circumstances of obvious injustice. … [H]e has always wondered about the origins of this fear among older Russians and concludes that ‘it was born in the first half of the 20th century and reached us through generations.’ Kolyma, Dud says, is ‘the birthplace of our fear.’ …”
This frozen, mostly impassable Arctic wasteland was home to the most notorious camps of the Gulag, the Soviet network of forced labor compounds into which thousands of petty criminals and political prisoners disappeared. It’s hard to tell exactly how many people perished from extreme cold (temperatures in winter routinely drop below -50 C, or – 58 F), or of hunger and toil in the mines, but even conservative official estimates put the number at 150,000 … in just one of the biggest Kolyma camps from 1932 to 1957. … Dud adds that his parents have always warned him: ‘Don’t attract unnecessary attention. Don’t stand out. We’re simple people, we don’t decide anything,’ even in circumstances of obvious injustice. … [H]e has always wondered about the origins of this fear among older Russians and concludes that ‘it was born in the first half of the 20th century and reached us through generations.’ Kolyma, Dud says, is ‘the birthplace of our fear.’ …”