By Mackenzie Pickering
“Magadan seen from mountain” by Johannes Rohr – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The history of Magadan, Russia, is defined first and foremost by the Gulag. At the same time, however, this notorious town also contains starkly beautiful landscapes and locals characterized by their persistent efforts to move beyond Magadan’s murky past. Yet these features rarely receive even a passing mention when considered alongside the looming presence of Stalin’s labor camp. In writing her short story collection Snow in May author Kseniya Melnik successfully explored this often tenuous balance through storytelling and her own family history.
Growing up, Melnik says she had no idea of her town’s association with the Gulag. She never studied it in school; no one ever talked about it. Not until she began researching for her book of short stories based primarily in Magadan did she discover the truth. In this way, using both historical fact and family members’ personal stories, she was finally able to see her hometown in all of its fascinating complexity. Her grandfather moved to Magadan just as the Gulag system was declining and actually lived downstairs from musician and former prisoner Vadim Kozin. That experience led to a story entitled “Our Upstairs Neighbor,” which uses Kozin as a blueprint for the titular character. Out of respect for Kozin and the relatively unknown truths about his life, Melnik’s version remains firmly on the fictional side. Rather than trying to piece together an authentic voice for the revered musician, she allows her own creative voice to take over. Although the gulag was obviously a large part of Kozin’s experience in Magadan, Melnik never uses the camp as a setting; it is only ever a shadow occupying the periphery of the story. The characters themselves are defined by so much more than their town’s dark history, just as their real life counterparts are.
Through her parents’ stories, Melnik was also able to understand how hard the citizens of Magadan strove to create a more beautiful life for themselves after Stalin. Her father talked of community parks made out of once-empty tundra and parades in front of the Palace of Professional Unions. Her mother once took part in Magadan’s annual spring festivities, performing the Lambada, a dance popular in South America, in front of large crowds of people. In a way that is not often acknowledged, Magadan gradually became something of a cultural center. This change was due in large part to the influx of educated individuals who found themselves in the town after the end of the gulag, but also because locals began to want something more. They wanted to find new ways of defining themselves that were outside of anything Stalin had ever done to their town. They wanted the freedom to choose how the rest of the world would see them.
We can all learn from this representation of Magadan. Just as the history of that small Russian town cannot be shaped by the gulag alone, neither can regions like the Caucasus be defined solely through their series of conflicts. If we would only scratch a little deeper, search a little harder, we might just find the beautiful parks and joyful parades. And sometimes, as in Melnik’s case, the best way to go about this is through family stories, using details provided by people who were not only there, but who have also shaped your own history in some small way.
Mackenzie Pickering is a Junior majoring in English Literature at Miami.