The Man From Talalaivka
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When Peter forged travel documents during Stalin’s formidable reign to see his parents in a Siberian labour camp before they perished, he knew he was facing the life-or-death challenge of his life. What followed in the years after that journey could not have been foreseen by Peter or his countrymen. In 1941, the Ukraine was invaded by Hitler’s army and remained under its control until its retreat two years later, taking Peter and his young family with them, as workers in Germany’s labour camps where he has to draw on every ounce of his being to keep his family alive. After years of hardship and suffering, a hand of hope is offered in the form of a ship that would take Peter and his family, now displaced persons, with no country they could claim as their own, as far away from Stalin’s Soviet Union as possible: to Australia, a land of opportunity and fairness before the law. Based on a true story, The Man from Talalaivka, is both a political and personal story. But above all, it is a story about survival and endurance, and love: love for one’s family, love for one’s country, love for humanity.
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The Man from Talalaivka
A story of love, life and loss from Ukraine
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In these few short years, since completing his army service and training, Peter saw changes within his Ukraine that could only be explained in the light of Lenin’s untimely death, and the ensuing power struggle between members of the Bolshevik Party’s Politburo. Whatever ephemeral unity the Party apparatchiks published in Pravda, Peter and his trusted friends knew differently. Now, with Lenin’s new economic policies abandoned, ostensibly for the ‘purity’ of Bolshevik ideals, and Stalin’s power supreme with the implementation of this first Five Year Plan, all certainty was gone. No-one in this part of the countryside, in Sumskaya Oblast, knew from where their daily bread would come, nor under which roof they would be protected. And already, the gulag labour camps were swelling at an alarming pace. Such was the legacy of Stalin and his henchmen’s application of the so-called ‘purist’ Bolshevik ideals.
He reined his horse at the southern crossroads of Talalaivka, and headed south-eastward towards Kylapchin and his family’s farm. He paused, allowing a unit of soviet militia, led by trained soldiers, to pass. The captain eyed Peter, recognised him in his heavy army coat, and tipped his cap in soldierly fashion. Peter responded. He had trained with this man who, like him, was energetic, keen to do well. Peter had chosen the civil service once his official national training was completed; the captain had remained in the army. “A good leader,” Peter noted thoughtfully as the unit passed, “but for whom, now that our circumstances are changing so rapidly?”
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