The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
Perhaps I’ve been missing references to this book and gulags for years, but now I see them everywhere. The night after I finished this book, I laughed uproariously to find this book (and its movie) being referenced in the new Muppets movie. I think I was the only person in the theater who got the joke when the actress that played Christina in the movie started doing ballet against scene cuts of Muppets treacherously traversing snowy mountains and hot deserts to get to Kermit the Frog in his Siberian gulag. Or maybe I’m the last person to have seen the movie and read the book and the pop culture aspect of it is old news. I remember my International Relations professor referencing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his writings about the Russian gulags (Russian forced labor prison camps), but it was only a vague reference without much background. Somehow I missed that Stalin began placing people in gulags in 1930 and had already imprisoned 1.5 million inmates in gulags by the beginning of World War II with numbers rising as high as 2.5 million inmates in the 1950s. The majority of these camps were located in Siberia. And it’s the journey to and the escape from one of these Siberian gulags to India (by way of the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas) that is the subject of this book. The history of this book is a convoluted one. The tale within the book occurs from 1941-1942 and was originally ghost written for the author in 1955. A few years ago, it came out that it was impossible for this to have been the true story of the author since he was released from the gulag in 1942 to a refugee camp in Iran rather than escaping to India in 1941. Another man, Witold Gliński, then claimed that the story was true, but that it had happened to him instead. Regardless of what is true and what is not, it’s a fascinating story of survival and perseverance. The movie and book became instant favorites of mine. I think that, more than anything, I was amazed that the U.S. allied with Russia in World War II when Stalin was very much still reigning terror down upon those whom he saw as a threat to his rule and spread of communism. It was a selfish alliance in some ways, but a wise alliance in others. But what was happening in Russia during World War II (and afterward) isn’t depicted in movies and literature nearly as much as the horrors of Hitler. In toll of lives, Stalin was directly or indirectly responsible for far more than Hitler. Still, I suppose it could have been worse. I watched the movie version of this book (“The Way Back”) first, and it left out the horrifying fact that a large part of the journey of Russia’s political prisoners to Siberia was done on foot. Prisoners were chained together poorly dressed for the cold weather and made to walk 1000 miles or more with only bread and water to sustain them. Many died along the way. One thing that struck me in the book was the author’s observation that a decade in age made a huge difference in how well a man was able to endure and survive the journey and the work expected up them upon arrival. I suppose that if you’ve already endured and survived a 1000-mile trek, you’re more apt to think that a 4000-mile escape route from Siberia to India might not be impossible. Once the prisoners escaped into the wilderness, I found it odd that they never found a way of carrying water with them. They could have hollowed out a tree trunk, used the bladder of the deer they killed, rummaged in the garbage of villages they passed for some sort of vessel, etc. But they never had more than a mug between them for cooking or carrying water. At the point that they realized they were wandering into a desert, surely they would have realized their need for a way to carry water. It’s amazing how often they went forward on their journey with simply the hope that they’d eventually encounter food and water if they kept going. I suppose that you do what you have to do. I’m still amazed that more of them didn’t die in the desert with only the occasional mud puddle and snake to sustain them. And I’m amazed, too, that they managed to get to India without a map. I’m thinking about how difficult it would be for me to attempt a similarly lengthy journey from here to Alaska on foot with nothing but a general directional idea and no map. Christopher McCandless’ version of that journey was harsh enough in Into the Wild. Luckily, poor peasants are far more accepting of a ragamuffin group of travelers than your average city dweller. If you saw a band of half-starved dirty travelers walking down your street, you'd be more likely to lock your doors than kill a lamb to feed them. Whether this story was completely, partially, or not at non-fiction, it still stands as a grand tale. I highly recommend it to those interested in history and tales of survival.
When this novel was first published in 1956 it created a sensation. It claimed to be a memoir of a man, who with seven others, had escaped from a Siberian prison work camp in 1942 and managed to walk all the way to British India. The story was eagerly consumed by the cold war era public who were enamored by the tale of an escape from the evil empire of the Soviet Union. It was an incredible story of endurance that required walking across the Gobi Desert and over the Himalayan Mountains.Research of Soviet records since the cold war has revealed that while it is true that the author had been a prisoner in Siberia in the early 1940s, he did not escape in the manner described in this book. Instead he was released as part of a 1942 general amnesty and subsequently transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran. He did end up living in Britain and probably passed through India on the way there.I'm surprised that anybody believed the story in the first place because of its many technical flaws. If the author had called the book a novel I would criticize for being unrealistic and in need of additional research into means of survival in the desert and mountains. Unfortunately, the author claimed it to be a true memoir of his experiences. I say unfortunate because it clearly makes him to be a liar.If there is any possibility of truth in the story it may be that Slavomir Rawics stole the story from another person who actually walked such a journey. I think it's possible that prisoners from Siberia managed to escape to India, but I'm quite confident that they didn't do it by walking across the Gobi without equipment and a map. Their crossing of the Himalayas has similar problems. And the book's claim that they saw Abominable Snowman (i.e. The Yeti) establishes the fact beyond all doubt that the book is fiction, and fiction not very well done.But the fact remains that the idea of escaping from Siberia to India is a heck of a story. The 2011 movie "The Way Back" is based on this book. Maybe the movie is more realistic, but I've not seen the movie so I can't judge it. The movie's popularity caused the book to be republished and consequently brought to my attention. You can read more about the controversy regarding the authenticity of the book at this Wikipedia article.The following review from PageADay's 2007 Book Lover's Calendar was how I first learned about the book:BACK IN PRINTRawicz’s memoir is one of the most extraordinary and harrowing you will ever read. A young Polish officer in World War II, Rawicz was captured by Soviet forces and sent to a work camp in Siberia. In 1941 he and six fellow prisoners escaped and, with only an ax head and a makeshift knife, trekked thousands of miles through Siberian tundra, the Gobi desert, and over the Himalayas to freedom in British-occupied India. The New York Times calls Rawicz “a poet with steel in his soul” and Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) calls the book “one of the epic treks of the human race.” THE LONG WALK: THE TRUE STORY OF A TREK TO FREEDOM, by Slavomir Rawicz (1956; The Lyons Press, 1997)
What do You think about The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom (2006)?
Slavomir Rawicz is in the Polish army and is arrested by the Russians, accused of spying. He spends a year in Russian prison, then is given a trial and sentenced to 25 years labor. He is transported by train from Moscow to Irkutsk, then is on a forced march in chains with hundreds of other prisoners to Camp 303 in Northern Siberia. After a few months he decides to escape, gathers a group of like minded men, is helped by the Camp Commander's wife who is sympathetic. They successfully escape the camp and so begins the long walk south from northern Siberia to India. This includes crossing the Gobi desert and climbing through the Himalayas! This is a very well-written book but so fantastic that I felt like I was reading Life of Pi, or maybe the Bible (ram with horns stuck in the thicket, the long exodus out of slavery, and (for the Christians) the virgin. I didn't see how the story could possibly be true, but on the other hand, maybe it was. I can't judge because I simply have no information except what the author is telling me. I choose to believe him, or at least not disbelieve him. The story is very moving in many ways but I didn't really have an emotional reaction to it until the end with the incident with Paluchowicz. I just couldn't believe it, after all the hardships. When they finally reach India I let out the breath I hadn't even realized I had been holding and cried with the men as they said goodbye to each other.Reading reviews and articles: Looks like it wasn't true. It was still an excellent story. Life of Pi and the Bible.
—Chana
A memoir must be an unrewarding thing to write today. So many have been discredited as either full of untruths or completely fabricated. Jerzy Kosinski's "Painted Bird", Carlos Casteneda's "The Teaching of Don Juan", more than a few of Oprah-publicized books, and now (a revelation for me) "The Long Walk", a book that has sold half a million copies since it was first published in 1956. I started to get suspicious about 1/3 of the way through this book. There were too many implausible incidents, starting from his insistence that he was completely innocent of spying or any other any crime against the Soviets (they claim he killed an NKVD officer), his extraordinary long interrogations, the long march from Irkutsk to the camp chained behind a wood-burning truck, his ability to interview and then reject candidates for the escape without anyone ratting him out, the help he got from the commandant's wife, and his naive view of the natural world. He claimed that the only living things in the Gobi desert were snakes, which they caught and ate (what did the snakes eat? Were they cannibals?). They evidently just laze around in holes with only their head sticking out. All of the snakes I have ever seen were either lying or crawling over the ground. It sounds more like gopher or night-crawler behavior to me.Then there were the pair of Yeti they spotted! Now I know there was a lot of interest in the Yeti, Sasquatch, and Loch Ness monster back in the 50's when this book was written, but really now, are we supposed to take this seriously? I haven't researched the disbelievers extensively, but Outside did a scathing review in 2003 ( http://outside.away.com/outside/featu... ) and the BBC did an expose in 2006 ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6... ).The current edition of the book has the usual testimonials on the back cover, including a glowing one from Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm), "One of the epic treks of the human race ...." he says. Well Sebastian, I've now got you calibrated! How does such obvious fabrication go unquestioned by so many people for so long (read some of the angry comments at the end of the BBC article)? Part of it may be the desire to believe a compelling story of incredible hardship and adventure, and part of it must be the West's fixation during the cold war with the evils of the Soviet Union. Anybody who can tell a story that makes them look like fools has got to be believed!See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_mem... for more about other fake memoirs. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavomir...
—Gary
This has been on my shelf for years and I've no clue what took me so long to read it. Epic true story of prisoners escaping from a Siberian work camp and WALKING to India...yeah, look at a map on that folks. Through Siberia, Russia, Mongolia, China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, the Himalayas...that's a lot of geography and all on foot. Mind boggling.One thing that struck me early on as he was talking about his initial capture and how they tried to torture him into confessing...next generation reading literature like this and the evil faceless bad guy isn't going to be the Russians, the Germans, or whoever...it's going to be us.
—Katy
