Just Send Me Word

Almost everything we know about the terrible experience of the Gulag has been based on survivor memoirs, in many cases written decades later. For obvious reasons there is very little authentic, contemporary material.

Just Send Me Word is a uniquely powerful and moving experience. It is the story of the relationship between Lev and Sveta, two young Muscovites who were separated first by the Second World War (in which Lev went missing) and then by the Gulag, where the Soviet state sent Lev for ten years on absurd and arbitrary charges. Extraordinarily, during Lev's long exile in an Arctic camp they were able to smuggle letters to each other and even meet. Both sides of the entire correspondence have survived and these letters (of which there are some 1,500) form a detailed, highly articulate and agonizing account of life in Stalin's Soviet Union. They are also a testament to human constancy under impossible circumstances - a love story like no other.