The Day Will Pass Away: The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard: 1935-1936

The diary offers a rare first-person perspective on the Soviet prison system through the eyes of Ivan Chistyakov, a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp. Despite his role as a guard, he embodies the experience of a prisoner, reflecting on his cultured past and nostalgia for pre-Revolutionary Russia. His writings blend poetic observations of the harsh Taiga landscape with stark realities of camp life, revealing profound insights into loneliness, brutality, and the enduring impact of this era on contemporary Russia and Europe.