Reason.tv and Jon Utley’s search for his father
Jon Basil Utley, Robert A. Taft Fellow for International and Constitutional Studies at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, was two years old in Moscow when his father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, a Russian trade official, was sent to a labor camp by the Soviet secret police. His mother, Freda Utley, escaped with Jon to England and then to America.
In 2004 and 2006, Utley, a well-known journalist, embarked upon a search to learn of his father’s fate. This documentary traces Utley’s journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia and his final uncovering of the horrible truth at the dreaded camp city of Vorkuta within the Artic Circle.
Directed by John J. Michalczyk, Return to the Gulag is a small but revealing window into Russia’s turbulent 1930s.
An Etoile Production funded by The Freda Utley Foundation and the Jacques Salmanowitz Program For Moral Courage in Film at Boston College. Thanks also to the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation.
For more information about the documentary, visit http://fredautley.com/Berdichevsky.htm.
For a DVD version of this program ($15 donation, plus shipping), please go to the website of The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation or email vocmemorial@aim.com.
Approximately 28 minutes. ©2008 The Freda Utley Foundation.
{ 7 comments }
Thanks for posting this.
Communism murdered more persons than Nazism.
Why are we always talking about the horrors of Nazis and the holocaust but almost never about the horrors of the gulags and communism.
Yes people died in Nazi death camps, but much more people died in communist “work” camps. Instead of being gassed, they were worked to death without being fed, nor heated nor clothed.
People died of malnourrishment, cold and overexhaustion.
The communists were as horrible as nazis, yet never receive any publicity nor bad press.
And what’s frightening is Obama’s Community Service which is involuntary servitude. If we accept that, he might ask more and more and might start making prisoners work etc.
There could be “gulags” in America too.
This is a wonderfully produced and very moving presentation. Just outstanding in every way.
Prisoners already work, competing with the private sector.
But they hate us because we’re free. Srsly.
That terrible turn in his (the son’s) life occurred because his mom was a commie swine, and his dad was a gutless bureaucrat.
I can go hear stories about the Dirty War from my father.
These things are not ancient history.
something amiss with the link…waiting…waiting…nothing happens.
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