Vladimir Petrov (author)

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Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov (1915, Krasnodar oblast, Russia - 1999) was at various times an academic, philatelist, prisoner, forced laborer, political prisoner, adventurer, factory worker and soldier. He was at various times a Russian, American, and man of no country, though he was brought up in the USSR and died in the United States. Most of the information concerning his life originates from his personal memoirs, entitled Soviet Gold and My Retreat from Russia and collected in the published work Escape from the Future.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Petrov was born in Russia in 1915 during the last days of the Tsar. He studied at a Soviet university in Leningrad where he was arrested on the night of February 17, 1935 by the NKVD. He was arrested at age 19 as part of the mass purges which followed in the wake of the assassination of Sergey Kirov. He was imprisoned and tortured for months before being formally charged with a crime.

According to his memoirs, the tribunal made clear to him that the reason for his punishment had been a series of letters on matters of stamp-collecting that he had exchanged with American enthusiasts. Due to their association with him, multiple of his colleagues were arrested on similar charges of counter-revolutionary activity. After a one-part trial in which he was not afforded the use of a lawyer, he was sentenced to six years hard labor in the gold fields of the Kolyma. This made him a resident of the so-called GULAG archipelago.

[edit] Prison term

During his internment, Petrov's life was one of complex vacillations. He at times had more freedom than many prisoners, having some freedom of movement, sufficient food, medical care, private housing, and female companionship. At times he was one of the worst-treated of all prisoners in the GULAG system, living on a bread ration of less than half a kilogram per day and working near-naked in sub-zero waters in mines. He constantly lived in hope of having his sentence commuted, and constantly lived in fear of Serpantinnaya, a truck stop north of Magadan which Petrov charges was used by the Russian police to perform summary executions.

He attempted escape numerous times, some of which attempts were only routed based upon lack of provisions and protective clothing to combat the Russian Winter. He traded in camp vodka and performed electrical repairs for fees and favors. He liaised with the wives of camp leaders. He was forced into acts of violence and became exposed to political dissidence. During his term he also discovered the largest ever gold nugget in the history of the Kolyma gold fields. He was hurt in a mine explosion and spent some time in hospital.

It has been claimed that much of his account bears similarities to the later semi-fictional account of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

[edit] After prison

Released from prison in the week that Nazi Gerrmany invaded the USSR World War II, Petrov, made his way across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. He avoided Soviet mobilization; as an ex-convict he would have been placed in a mine-clearing battalion. The German front established by Operation Barbarossa passed by his town and thus came under control of the Third Reich. He managed, over two years, to work his way across Eastern Europe, into Germany and then Italy. In Nazi Germany, he contacted and played a role in the operations of General Vlasov. His memoirs give markedly less information concerning his association with Vlasov than they do about almost all his other associations, even those with minor convicts (see Rumors below).

[edit] After the war

He finally managed to secure transportation to America, though how this came about is not clarified by his memoirs. Here he became an academic and taught at such schools as Yale University and The George Washington University while raising a family. He published the first volume of his memoirs, 'Soviet Gold', in 1949, and 'My Retreat from Russia' a couple of years later. 'Soviet Gold' was the first published memoir of a GULAG prisoner in the West, and received a favorable review from Winston Churchill. The collected volume was first titled 'It Happens in Russia' in the 1950s, then published as 'Escape from the Future' in 1973. Prof. Petrov's academic works included 'Money and Conquest', 'A Study in Diplomacy', 'What China Policy?', 'June 22, 1941' and various monographs. He died March 17, 1999 at age 83 at his home in Kensington Maryland, after a brief illness. He was survived by his wife, Jean McNab, nine children, and six grandchildren.

[edit] Rumors

In the early to mid 1970s, the time of his tenure at the George Washington University, there were rumors among the student body that Petrov was a recruiter for the Central Intelligence Agency. A relationship with a government agency was their explanation as to why a rather minor and unimportant ex-convict was able to secure passage to America and find meaningful employment therein. These allegations were not publicly addressed by Petrov.

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

  • Petrov, Vladimir (1973). Escape from the Future, Indiana Press.
  • Petrov, Vladimir (1949). Soviet Gold, Farrar Straus.
  • Petrov, Vladimir (1950). My Retreat from Russia, Yale University Press
  • Petrov, Vladimir (1998). Unpublished autobiography