Kengir Uprising - Significance

Significance

Among the strikes and rebellions that were taking place in Gulags across the Soviet Union in this period, the uprising at Kengir was perhaps the most significant. While Stalin's death, Lavrentiy Beria's fall, and Nikita Khrushchev's rise bore much promise for the prisoners, who had long expected general amnesties and rehabilitation to follow these events, the role of the Kengir uprising in hastening this process cannot be overlooked. The uprising further demonstrated to the authorities that Stalinism was not a sustainable policy option and that mass injustices such as those taking place in Gulag would not stand in perpetuity without significant cost. In a shift that boded poorly for the Soviet regime, many of the prisoners took part knowing full well that they were doing so at the cost of their lives, and prisoners in other camps, namely in the nearby Rudnik camp, had joined with the Kengir prisoners in solidarity, launching their own short-lived strikes.

The significance of the temporary freedom enjoyed by those prisoners was not lost on many. In a 1978 review of Solzhenitsyn's book, Hilton Kramer of The New York Times declared that the uprising "restored a measure of humane civilization to the prisoners before the state was able to assert its implacable power again." At a 2004 reunion of Kengir prisoners, a survivor of the camp mentioned that, despite the brutality and loss of life that came with the uprising's suppression, the 40 days engendered in the prisoners "a great feeling of freeing one's spirit", and another prisoner recalled that "I had not before then, and have not since, felt such a sense of freedom as I did then" — both sentiments echoed often by Solzhenitsyn. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn would later dedicate a screenplay he had written to the bravery of the Kengir rebels, entitled Tanks Know the Truth (Знают истину танки).

Most remarkably, as George Mason University historian Steven A. Barnes noted in a 2005 edition of Slavic Review, the prisoners' campaign was conducted with a certain pragmatism, and their propaganda with a level of skill, that was all but unprecedented. As noted, instead of making explicit their hostility to the Soviet regime and handing an excuse to the authorities to invade, they ostensibly expressed approval of the state while, meekly, asking for the restoration of the rights and privileges afforded to them in the Soviet constitution. This message was itself spread not only to the camp authorities and any of the MVD-brass that would visit the camp for negotiations, but, crucially, to the civilian population surrounding the camp. Before the authorities came up with the idea of using their own rival kites to tangle and bring down the prisoner's kites with, they kept a large retinue of guards and warders, on horseback and motorcycle, waiting for the leaflets to be dropped from the kites so that they could, literally, chase down and retrieve them before they could be read by members of the public. The tact, cohesion, and ingenuity displayed in the uprising was a troubling sign to the authorities of what was perhaps to come.

Nevertheless, any potential effect the uprising could have had was strictly circumscribed by the nature of the Soviet regime, which was quick to use massive force to quell even the most humble of threats. In the same Times review, Kramer issued an important caveat to his previous claim: