Plot synopsis

The focus of the next series is 1928 and the life of the famous scientist, author of fundamental works on the history of Russian literature and culture, People's Deputy of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev (1906 - 1999).
Since the mid-1920s, a powerful campaign to dispossess the peasants was launched in the young country of the Soviets. Mass collectivization, which reached its peak at the end of the decade, led to the complete collapse of agricultural production in the country. And, as a consequence of this disastrous policy, a terrible famine began in Russia several years later.
No one will ever know the exact number of those repressed in 1928. Representatives of the clergy and intelligentsia, as well as "kulaks" (all peasants who refused to join collective farms fell under this category of enemies of the Soviet power) were sent en masse to the Solovetsky Islands. Five years earlier, a special-purpose forced labor camp had been organized there, which laid the foundation for a whole system of similar zones, called the "Gulag Archipelago" by the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
It was on Solovki that the "camp economy" was born. It was Solovki that became the first special zone, which later served as a kind of model for concentration camps both in the USSR and in Nazi Germany. In 1934, the Solovetsky Islands were visited by a German delegation, and subsequently the slogan "Work makes you free" was carved on the gates of the death camp in Auschwitz, which was taken from Bolshevik Russia.
In February 1928, Dmitry Likhachev was arrested and sent to Solovki. Only chance saved him from execution. Later, Dmitry Sergeyevich recalled more than once that it was the "Solovki experience" that not only drastically changed his fate, but also helped him formulate his life credo. Likhachev absorbed the spiritual wealth of the Russian intelligentsia, which was not broken by cruel conditions, brutal guards, humiliation and torture, along with the merciless northern winds. The greatest humanist considered himself throughout his life an ambassador for those who remained forever on the islands...

Commentaries

Сценарии телесериала «Исторические хроники с Николаем Сванидзе», с 1913го по 1933 год. [Scénarios de la série télévisée « Chroniques historiques avec Nikolaï Svanidzé », de 1913 à 1933], Marina ZHUKOVA, Амфора, 2014

- Screenplay

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- Historical Chronicles with Nikolay Svanidze, (kinoglaz.fr), 2026

Photos, videos, texts

Dmitri LIKHATCHOV (Дмитрий Сергеевич ЛИХАЧЕВ) 1906-1999