On 9 August 2020 Belarus held a presidential election where Alexander Lukashenko once again won the vote. Lukashenko has won every presidential election since 1994 and the latest one was marred by claims of widespread electoral fraud. The results were rejected by numerous countries, the European Union and resulted in sanctions and protests in Belarus. Protesters, who included bloggers, business men, presidential campaign members and peaceful prostesters were met with resistance and imprisonment from the Belarusian authorities. Those who disagree with government, express their opposing opinions or are involved in political activities are imprisoned in prison camps, among others one outside the Belarusian capital Minsk (according to CNN)
Although Red Crosses was published in 2017 before recent events, it’s difficult not to draw a parallel between Belarusian, Minsk-born author, Sasha Filipenko’s background and the main plot of his novel.
Sasha Alexander moves into an apartment block with his three–month–old daughter, hoping to start a new life without his recently deceased wife. All he wants is rest and time alone, but a red cross painted on his front door brings someone else’s past to his doorstep. Ninety–year–old Tatyana Alexeyevna suffers from Alzheimer’s. The red crosses are her way of finding her way back home. Each day her memories are fading; her short–term memory dissipating and before long the remaining memories of her life will be lost. Sasha wants to move on with his life and forget while Tatyana desperately clings to the little she has left.
Tatyana longs for an audience. Sasha longs for silence. But Tayana is persistent and despite Sasha’s initial harsh resistance and extreme rudeness, he yields and is drawn into a turbulent life which stretched over most of the 20th century. As much as these 280 encompass Tayana’s story, it’s also the story of the Soviet Union and the atrocities committed under its name.
“We meet every day, and every conversation reveals new problems. The eraser of memory. The scissors of fate.”
In 1919 the young Tatyana moves to Russia with her neurotic, religious father and later marries Lyosha, an architect with whom she has a daughter. Tatyana is recruited to work for the NKID, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, translating official letters. These letters and other historical documents such as internal Soviet government memos, official Soviet decrees and rulings, as well as telegrams and letters the author sourced from the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, are included in their original format and add an extra layer of authenticity.
While serving for Russia during the war Tatyana’s husband disappears. She lives in hope that he’s still alive, but when she sees his name on a Romanian list of prisoners of war her own life is also at risk. Lyosha is considered a traitor and Tatyana is arrested, her daughter taken to an orphanage and she is imprisoned in Stalin’s gulag. After being raped and tortured repeatedly she remains imprisoned for a decade, all the while hoping that her husband and daughter survived the war.
Tatyana’s rendition of her tragic life is void of any sentimentality or demands for sympathy. She merely recounts her life, knowing after years of suffering, that human life is a cheap commodity. Her need to recount the details of her life reminds us of the vital importance of memories and remembering the past in an attempt to avoid its repetition.
“I’ve become indifferent to human suffering – I see it as an intrinsic part, as something natural.”
As one would expect Red Crosses isn’t always a comfortable read. It lays bare the inhumanity with which innocent people were treated and how families were divided and destroyed. Knowing that decades later, in 2021, in some countries people are still being imprisoned for their beliefs makes for an harrowing realisation.
Red Crosses is published by Europa Editions who also provided me with a review copy on NetGalley. This first novel in English by Sasha Filipenko was translated by Brian James Baer and Ellen Vayner.
About the author
Sasha Filipenko, born in Minsk in 1984, is a Belarusian author who writes in Russian. After abandoning his classical music training, he studied literature in St. Petersburg and worked as a journalist, screenwriter and author for a satire show. Sasha Filipenko lives in St. Petersburg.
About the translator
Brian James Baer is Professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University and Leading Researcher at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. He is author of Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature and founding editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies. His translations include Juri Lotman’s Unpredictable Workings of Culture and Russian Short Stories in the Penguin Parallel Text.
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