The White Sea Canal: a Hymn of Praise for Forced Labour >From 1932 to 1933, a 227 kilometres long canal was dug to the North of St Petersburg, which connects the Eastern Sea with the White Sea: The White Sea Canal (Belomor Canal). It is one of the largest forced labour projects in history. An estimated 128,000-180,000 convicts had to dig this canal with their own hands, in large part through granite (37 kilometres through hard rock) and along existing lakes where the water level was raised (19 large wooden locks). The prisoners - "enemies of the people" - consisted a mixture of peasants, political prisoners and criminals, who lived in 9 camps along the route. The engineers who made the design were arrested for the occasion, and worked in a studio of the GPU (predecessor of the KGB) in Moscow, where they also slept.
The technical highlight of the task consisted of the bridging of a difference in water levels of 70 meters between the Onega lake and the top of the water barrier, separating this lake and the White Sea. To this end, a ladder of 9 locks was built at Povenets over a length of 12 kilometres. The lock gates and water chambers were constructed out of timber. Although very narrow, the canal continues to function until today in the frost-free period. The area through which the canal leads is called Karelia, it is Finnish-Russian border country. For centuries, it was a haven for especially traditional religious believers, who founded cloisters there, of which the Solovki islands are the most famous. Until the establishment of the White Sea Canal, Stalinism had little influence on this thickly forested region. The opening of the canal, a showpiece in the Soviet Union's first Five Year Plan, was accompanied by a huge propaganda campaign. Newspapers such as Pravda and Izvestija published articles, propaganda cartoons and portraits of 'reforged' workers. A noteworthy fact is that a festive commemorative book was published about the canal, Kanal imeni Stalina (A Canal called Stalin). The first edition was published in 1934 and copies were dished out to members of the 17th Party Congress in Moscow. A brigade of 36 writers led by Maxim Gorky and under the editorship of the GPU was responsible for this hymn of praise on forced labour. The team included Aleksei Tolstoy, Boris Pilniak, Ilf and Petrov, Viktor Shklovsky and Mikhail Zoshchenko. It was Gorky's ideal that writers would work in collectives, just as on Kolkhozes. He elaborated on the idea for the book at a meeting at his own home in the presence of Stalin. Stalin described them at that time as "engineers of the soul". In preparation, the GPU organised a boat trip on the nearly completed canal, in which many writers participated, about 120. The illustrations of the book are among others by photographer Rodchenko. Many pictures are heavily retouched and feature dynamic compositions accompanied by flowery captions such as 'We study nature and obtain freedom', 'By changing nature, man changes himself', 'Last hours on the lock' etc. The chief theme of the book is the redemptive, liberating effect of physical labour. Hacking through the tough, resistant Karelian granite supposedly made model socialists out of criminals and renegades. The writers all had their own motivation to participate in writing the book. Some had no awareness of the extent to which people were destroyed in the Soviet Union in those years, others were perhaps just scared or intimidated. Victor Shklovsky (1893-1984) probably co-operated, because his brother was imprisoned in one of the canal camps. His contribution had an effect, his brother was freed, but arrested again in 1937, and subsequently disappeared. Michael Zoshchenko (1895-1958) was the only one allowed to write a chapter under his own name. His story concerns the prisoner Rottenberg, who, as a petty thief, had lost the thread of his life, but through life in the camp, returned to the path of righteousness. The redeeming effect of forced labour was not only presented to the outside world. In the canal camps themselves, a Cultural-Educative Division (KVO) functioned with a newspaper produced by prisoners, exhibitions. theatre, etc. The camp newspaper was called Perekovka, literally re-casting or re-moulding (of prisoners into good socialists). One of the editors was the writer Sergei Alymov, who as prisoner helped build the canal. He assisted with the book Kanal imeni Stalina and was the only one in the author's collective who knew the situation from the inside. Nobody really knows how many prisoners died in the process of breaking open the granite under grim circumstances. Solzhenitsyn estimated the figure at 10,000. A lot of information can be found in the archives of the FSB (the current name of the KGB), but the tendency in Russia is that such archives, after some years of relative openness, are closed to the public again. Field research into the graves has never been done. Fact however is that some 100,000 prisoners in the first few kilometres up to the 8th lock somehow vanished without a trace. From the archival records, it can be concluded, that they were registered and deployed within a period of three months, but after that were never officially decommissioned. Most of the convicts who survived the Belomorkanal were sent to other penal labour projects, such as the the Moscow-Volga canal. Apparently their re-education through labour had not yet finished. The Belomorkanal is still in use. But one of the main reasons it is still fairly well-known today, is that there is a popular brand of strong, inexpensive Russian cigarettes with the same name. This year the 70th anniversary of the White Sea Canal is celebrated and commemorated. The city of Medvezjegorsk has devoted a sympathetic museum to the building of the canal. This is located in a hotel which in 1933 was built especially for Stalin to attend the festive opening of the canal. And Petrozavodsk has a small museum which is devoted to political repression. It is also a documentation centre. Sometimes elderly people visit to donate photo's and documents, which then receive a place in the display windows. Main text written by Bastiaan Kwast, maart 2003 International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Project assistance from Iurii Dmitriev, Petrozavodsk Karel'skii gos. kraevedcheskii muzei (Karelian State Regional Museum), Petrozavodsk Translated/adapted from: http://www.iisg.nl/collections/belomorkanal/index.html
