How three heroes fled from the GULAG

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Without this escape, Ivan Solonevich would not have become what he has become - a brilliant writer and thinker. And he would have remained only a famous Russian athlete. But after the mocking escape committed by him and the same athletes-heroes - his son Yuri and brother Boris - simultaneously from two camps (!), The whole of Europe learned about the Solonevichs. Then there was the book "Russia in a Concentration Camp", which also made a splash in the world. And after that - philosophical works. All this together made Solonevich the largest figure in the Russian emigration. But it was the escape that gave the start to his fame.

• The route of Ivan (1) and Yuri (2) Solonevich. We walked for 16 days.

• Boris (3) Solonevich's route. It went for 14 days.

Without this escape, Ivan Solonevich would not have become what he has become - a brilliant writer and thinker. And he would have remained only a famous Russian athlete. But after the mocking escape committed by him and the same athletes-heroes - his son Yuri and brother Boris - simultaneously from two camps (!), The whole of Europe learned about the Solonevichs.

Then there was the book "Russia in a Concentration Camp", which also made a splash in the world. And after that - philosophical works. All this together made Solonevich the largest figure in the Russian emigration. But it was the escape that gave the start to his fame.

Stolypin chicks

Ivan was born into the family of the journalist-publisher Lukyan Solonevich, who was favored by the Governor of Grodno, the future Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. The young man, like his father, adhered to the right-wing monarchist views. He was actively involved in sports. Like his brothers Boris and Vsevolod.

At the beginning of the last century, they thundered as weightlifters and wrestlers, popularizers of Sokol gymnastics. Boris was also the leader of the scout movement. In 1913, Ivan entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. In 1914 he married, in 1915 he had a son, Yuri, with whom he will be destined to go through many trials.

After the February Revolution, Ivan Solonevich and student athletes organized a police detachment, but they did not share revolutionary ideals. During the Kornilov revolt, Ivan was ready to oppose the Provisional Government. He asked Ataman Dutov to arm his detachment, but was refused.

In the Civil War, Vsevolod died fighting for Wrangel, Boris worked in OSVAG (the Ministry of Information of the White Army), and Ivan, first in Kiev, and then in Odessa, was engaged in intelligence activities in favor of the Whites. I could not evacuate with them - I fell ill with typhus. And Boris even returned to Crimea from Constantinople, when everyone, on the contrary, fled. To feed themselves, the brothers organized a wandering circus, wrestling and boxing fights.

The famous Ivan Poddubny also toured with the troupe.

Great disgust

Thanks to their sports connections, the brothers were able to arrange life in the USSR. Boris became an inspector of the physical training of the fleet, and Ivan headed the weightlifting section of the Supreme Council of Physical Education. He wrote the textbook "Self-Defense and Attack without Weapons" for the NKVD workers, and in fact became one of the founders of sambo.

In parallel, he returned to journalism. But the Solonevichs had no illusions. In the USSR, the persecution of former scouts and Sokol gymnasts began. In 1926 Boris was exiled to Solovki. In 1930, Ivan was fired from his sports job.

As a journalist, he traveled around the country and saw a lot of things. I saw how "the entire flat Dagestan is dying out from malaria," and at the same time, "recruiting organizations are recruiting people there - Kuban and Ukrainians - for approximately certain death." The state could not buy several kilograms of quinine for Dagestan. But at the same time it collected tons of gold for the world revolution: "for the Chinese Red Army, for the British strike, for the German communists, for the fattening of the Comintern punks."

In Kyrgyzstan, Solonevich saw "the unheard-of ruin of Kyrgyz cattle breeding", "concentration camps on the Chu River, gypsy camps of ragged and hungry kulak families evicted here from Ukraine."

"I am forced to develop and praise the project of a gigantic stadium in Moscow … This stadium has only one purpose - to throw dust in the eyes of foreigners, to cheat the foreign public with the scope of Soviet physical culture."

The great disgust that had accumulated over 17 years of his life under Soviet rule, according to Solonevich, pushed him to the Finnish border.

Big game hunting

Believing the Moscow weather bureau, which reported that there was no rain in Karelia in August-September, the Solonevichs got stuck and drowned in swamps for four days - in fact, there were continuous downpours before. The second escape attempt failed due to an attack of appendicitis in his son Yuri. And the third was prevented by the Chekists.

In the company of the Solonevichs, a sex worker from the GPU got in. In the carriage, he gave the fugitives tea with sleeping pills. Ivan woke up from the fact that "someone was hanging on my arm … someone grabbed my knees, some hands convulsively grabbed my throat from behind, and three or four revolver muzzles stared straight into my face."

The car where the Solonevichs were traveling in the direction of Murmansk was packed with agents posing as a conductor and passengers - a total of 26 people. Some knew famous athletes. "To hunt such a 'big game' as my brother and I, the GPU, apparently, mobilized half of the weightlifting section of the Leningrad Dynamo."

Ivan was the vice-champion of Russia in kettlebell lifting

Boris and Ivan received 8 years in the camps, Yuri - 3 years. Before leaving for the White Sea Canal, we met in the prison on Shpalernaya. On walks in the prison yard, they went jogging. And already in the camp itself they warmed up in the cold with boxing "shadow boxing".

Ivan made a discovery: since there is not enough intelligentsia in the USSR and it is still needed, it is very rarely imprisoned in vain, in contrast to the absolutely disenfranchised peasants. And in the camps themselves, educated people could always get a job on light "mental" work. And the peasants got hard work, and they died in tens of thousands.

The Solonevichs also settled down at the very least. Ivan was an economist, Boris was a doctor, Yuri typed on a typewriter. Physical data helped a lot. “If it were not for the family solidarity of our“pack”and not our kulaks, then the flock, welded together by its solidarity, would have robbed us to the bone.”

Escape from the "resort"

The Solonevichs continued to make plans for their escape. For this it was by no means possible to separate. But Yuri, along with other prisoners, was almost sent to the construction of the BAM. Boris hid him in the dead room for two days. And Ivan was able to "smear" in the end. But the “flock” was divided anyway. Ivan and Yuri were transferred to Medgora, while Boris remained in Podporozhye. Saying goodbye, they agreed, wherever they were, on July 28, 1934, to escape at the same time.

Ivan and his son worked as loaders, chopped wood, cleaned toilets in the administrative town. And then he came to the Dynamo camp sports community. There, the famous athlete was delighted, deciding with his help to create an exemplary football team. We drew bright prospects: "First, we will play tennis, secondly, we will swim, thirdly, we will drink vodka …" Father and son became instructors. They were attached to the special dining room.

In some 15 versts, entire camps were dying out from scurvy, and they lived almost like a resort life. But they did not abandon the escape plan, even despite the fact that on June 7, 1934, a decree on the death penalty was issued for everyone who tried to illegally leave the USSR. As if it were a sin, they decided to send Ivan on a long business trip.

This threatened his escape. And then he proposed to the head of Belbaltlag Uspensky the idea of an all-camp sports festival of the Belomorkanal, which would refute the bourgeois slander about the Gulag and show the educational effect of the camp system. Ouspensky appointed the sports day for August 15, Ivan was responsible for it, and Yuri was his assistant. They were allowed to travel to the camps, to select athletes, who were transferred to a special barracks, and were heavily fed and treated.

The upcoming Olympics were reported in the capital's newspapers. Thanks to the new status, the Solonevichs also improved their health (they took Charcot's souls in the camp, they were given massage, electrotherapy), got along with their superiors, found out about the location of security posts in the forest, and hid several poods of food in a cache behind the camp.

On July 28, Ivan ordered business trips for himself and his son for several days, so that they would not be missed right away. The first 6 kilometers went by rail, finding out that dogs do not take a trace on it. We turned into the forest. We slept under “blankets” made of cut moss. 8 times overcame water obstacles by swimming. They ran away from the border guards. And after 16 days they came to Finland with faces "swollen like dough" from mosquito bites.

Boris had his own epic. He, the head of the medical unit of the camp in Lodeynom Pole, saved up for the escape "four kilograms of pasta, three kilos of sugar, a piece of bacon and several dried fish." On the 28th he was invited to play for the local Dynamo against the Petrozavodsk team. Boris scored the decisive goal of the match. And he set off on his escape. Went to the border for 14 days. Posing as a land surveyor, drowning in a quagmire, avoiding pursuits, knocking the dogs off the trail with chloropicrin.

Ivan Solonevich

Warning to Hitler

In Finland, the Solonevichs were reunited. In 1935, Ivan wrote a bestseller about his stay at the White Sea Canal "Russia at the end of the camp." The GPU, in revenge, spread a rumor among the emigrants that the Solonevichs were Soviet agents. It was dispelled in 1938, when already in Bulgaria a parcel with a bomb was brought to Ivan's house under the guise of books.

The explosion killed his wife and secretary. The Solonevichs emigrated to Germany. Ivan wrote a memorandum to Hitler, predicting a Napoleonic end for him if he fought not with the Bolsheviks, but with the Russian people. For "defeatist sentiments" he was sent to a camp. After the war, Solonevich left for Argentina.

It was there, in 1951, in the newspaper Nasha Strana, which he published, that the fundamental work of his entire life, The People's Monarchy, began to be published. The last part came out in 1954, after the death of the author. Ivan Solonevich died on April 24, 1953. He left with the hope of a better future for his country - a month and a half before that, news of Stalin's death had come.