Materialy Samizdata (Materials received from the USSR and made available to the public by the Samizdat Archive of Radio Liberty, Munich, henceforth ‘MS’, with numeration).

Poverty and working conditions in Siberia

This document, part of an open letter addressed to the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Production Trade Unions in December 1977, describes working and living conditions in the hamlet of Chuna, Irkutsk province. The author, Anatoli Marchenko, is a worker, himself born in Siberia. Although the conditions described were no doubt typical for Siberia in the late seventies, they were probably inferior to those of the towns of European Russian. At the time of writing Marchenko was living in Chuna as a political exile. His account of his earlier experiences in labour camps, Moi pokazania (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), is valued for its restraint and evident veracity.