The Ice Road, Stefan Waydenfeld, memoir

An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom



Sticking with the apparent theme of Stalinist Russia and its aftermath, I found this memoir fascinating. It’s always more interesting to read a historical event in the voice of someone who experienced it, and the author Stefan Waydenfeld describes his experiences with detail and yet without bitterness.

Waydenfeld was the son of a doctor and a biologist, and their small town life south of Warsaw was pleasant and fulfilling. He expected to live as most teenagers, with a future at university, perhaps following in his father’s path as a physician. While they’d heard grumblings of the war, they were taken by surprise when Germany and the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939. Previously, Poland had a non-aggression pact with the USSR, which was ignored as the USSR felt the need to support Germany’s war machine (as it had yet to turn on them). A bombing campaign started over Warsaw on September 17, 1939, one that introduced Warsaw as well as some of the smaller towns outside to the reality of war.

At first, Waydenfeld, at 14, served as a volunteer who worked in shifts with others to stay up at night and warn of the Luftwaffe planes that would randomly attack. They’d use whatever means they could to wake up their neighbors. Then there was the fires to deal with, started by the bombs. At one point, he describes the people fleeing the cities on open rural roads, being specially targeted by German pilots who ‘strafed’ the area with bullets for no apparent reason other than to kill randomly.

For a small time, there was a bit of calm, and then suddenly, his family received deportation orders to return to Warsaw. A kindly officer took them aside, assured them that this ‘short train ride’ would be their chance to return. They were loaded like cattle into a train with their neighbors and what goods they could carry, but he discovered on the train, at dawn, that they were heading east, not west. Never trust a kindly enemy! They were being sent to Siberia.

In Siberia, the Russian officers seemed to stress to them that their new life in Kvasha was going to be a privilege, and that they would never leave. Work in this camp was part of Stalin’s famous Five-Year plan. A major component of this plan was the installation and maintenance of the “Ice Road”, a timber transport road made out of sheets of ice. Waydenfeld and his father worked to build this road by digging holes, retrieving water, and then spreading it in sheets in -40 C temperatures.

From here, we see how his family coped, and how they were able to exist in this environment and maintain hope and unity. Additionally, while at times he admits anger and disappointment, his tone is one of bravery and acceptance…he was not going to give in. Not knowing about the atrocities that had already taken place in Germany may have helped these people keep their positive outlook.

It’s a great story, and well-told. I was particularly impressed by the effort he employed to acknowledge certain families and people that assisted in their journey to help them in various ways. He never implies that it was his bravery alone, but credits those people who were sympathetic and willing to risk their own lives to help them in various circumstances. This is an excellent text for information about the time period, and it would be amazing if high school students had the opportunity to read this first-person account.

Special thanks to Debra Gendal of Aquila Polonica for the Review Copy.

The Anonymous Novel: Sensing the Future Torments, Alessandro Barbero

Translated from the Italian by Allan Cameron


“Every person is complicated, only in novels are characters consistent, while in reality we are all a collection of contradictions, without even realizing it, because man was not made to be summarized in a formula.”

Alessandro Barbero’s novel about Russian life delves deep into the world of Moscow and Baku, yet in an extraordinary way. Rather than build on Russian stereotypes, like the underbelly of crime, excessive vodka, and jars of caviar mixed in with ruthless criminals and historical savagery, Barbero creates an entirely new type of Russian novel. Sure, those elements are present, but they aren’t the focus. The characters are complicated and new. And the provenance of this “anonymous” novel is new too.

The novel begins with a manuscript that manages to survive two literal burials in the ground. No one claims to have written it, and it’s stored an indeterminate amount of time. From then, it finally gets published. The voice of the unknown author introduces the reader to several characters in a rather short amount of time. But rather than simply describe them, he actually gets into their head, and at times we read of them in the first-person, hearing their stream-of-consciousness thoughts and intentions. Each character defies type, and all bear a bit of charm.

First is Viktor Nikolayevich Obilin, a college professor who lives alone, simply, and who makes acerbic comments about politics in Moscow. He takes ironic note of how the citizens of Moscow are insisting on government ‘transparency’ and he is aware of how dangerous transparency and the search into the past may turn out to be. For one thing, he has a student researcher, Tanya, who is doggedly pursuing her thesis about Stalinist party members in Baku in the 1940s. This is a dangerous period in Russian history, as Viktor observes “these were years you hurried over without going too far into details: you just gallop along until you get to Sputnik and Gagarin into space. Then you can breathe freely again.”

Tanya is well aware of the deception and atrocities that occurred, war crimes that have gone unpunished for many. One typical crime was when an informant rats out a colleague, has them sent to the labor camps, and then assumes their identity. Her research into Soviet party cadres has a personal connection, and nothing is going to stop her, not even the ‘old school’ hardliners that pressure her professor, Obliin, to cancel her research. “I need to know what happened, and to understand history you need to follow it through. You can’t just stop at some random moment. You need to go even beyond…” Her boyfriend Oleg, a journalist, thinks she’s going overboard.

Then there’s Mark, a struggling actor who has a bizarre hobby. Besides drinking heavily, he collects old photographs and archived documents from the SS’s files, and is writing a novel based on the connections he’s imagined between the names and dates. Then we are introduced to my favorite character, a honorable judge named Nazar Kallistratovich Lappa who is trying to restore a law and order into daily life in Moscow. At this point, just when I thought maybe I should be taking notes on all these characters, the author speaks directly to the reader: “What do I hear you saying? Yet another character! You bastard, could you try not to get lost in your own plot, and remember: sooner or later you are going to have to gather up all the various threads and make some sense of it. Listen, my impatient masters, the threads will be gathered all in good time…so trust me.”

Throughout the remainder of the novel he does indeed tie up the threads, making the story serious in the historical aspects yet with a bit of humor and irony thrown in. I can’t say enough about the way each character is built; seeing their inner thoughts as they struggle to do what is right as opposed to what is easy gives them far more depth than just describing what they said or did.

On a larger scale, outside of the plot, Barbero comments on the outsider viewpoint of Russian history, and the way it is often revealed only in an interest in the writings of Pushkin or Gogol, “history has simply become a commentary on literature.” He wants to demonstrate that only the famous writers or despicable leaders are what capture interest, rather than this complicated people who have endured decades of hardship. Look into those people, and their lives, to find the answers to the last century, he implies.

Special thanks to Vagabond Voices, Scotland for the Review Copy.