In 1946 an artist named Nikolai Getman was imprisoned in the Soviet Union's GULAG. During the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed a system of extreme repression and terror that inflicted forced famines, purges, executions, and arrests on the people of the Soviet Union. Under Josef Stalin, forced-labor camps in Siberia became the pillar of that system. They were one of the principal techniques by which Stalin exerted absolute control over the lives and decisions of the Soviet people. An estimated 50 million people died as a result of Stalin's inhuman policies of terror and repression.

Nikolai Getman in his workshop

I was born on December 23, 1917 in the town of Kharkov, Ukraine. My mother died in the typhus epidemic of 1919, before I reached my second birthday. It fell upon my father and my two older brothers, Pyotr and Aleksandr, to care for me and raise me. I remember the 1918 civil war and its consequences - the 1921 famine - from the age of four. Our family did not have an easy life in Kharkov, then the capital of Ukraine. I was saved from starvation by my aunt Masha.

From early childhood, for as long as I can remember, I was always drawing; I tried to express the things I felt and observed. My drawings were primitive, of course, but the early sketches were utterly sincere. At school, I would do drawings for the class newspaper, decorate the classroom, and on special occasions the whole school.

I lived through the tragic news of the death of my brother Aleksandr, who was accused of committing a "white" terrorist act and shot by firing squad on December 11, 1934. Fearing persecution and repression, my brother Pyotr took refuge for several years in a friend's house in Moscow. My father left in secret one night to live with his sister, my aunt Masha, who moved from her village of Pokrovskoe to Dnepropetrovsk not under her maiden name of Getman, but using the name of her husband, Pavel Epifanovich Sokh.

The fates decreed that the repression would not affect me, a second-year student in a technical college, but that was in the 1930s. After graduating in 1937, I entered the Kharkov Art College to become a professional artist. One of the teachers there, Semyon Markovich Prokhorov, was a pupil of Repin' s. He often spoke of the great artist and teacher. I have never forgotten the words that were to become my credo: "The most important thing in a picture is color. It is through your use of color that you will make the viewer sense the mood of your canvas. Without color there is no art."

Magadan Hills (Golgotha)
In 1932, members of the Tsaregradsky, Bilibin and Drapkin expedition discovered gold at the mouth of the Utinny River. A settlement was built between the villages of Balaganny and Ola, the hills there destroyed, piers built, and the settlement named Magadan after a nearby stream. Forced laborers were brought in to build roads from Magadan to the gold. Building the roads was incredibly harsh labor in the permafrost. The prisoners were poorly fed and worked for long hours under fierce conditions with rudimentary tools. The sentiment expressed here is that the roads were built on human bones—that every hill, every gully, and every path in Magadan represents human lives and could be the site of a human grave. The sun is eclipsed to symbolize the darkness and evil that cast its shadow over the people of the Soviet Union. The cross represents the enormous burdens the prisoners had to bear. It also symbolizes Christ's trek up the hill of Golgotha, which the artist likens to the prisoners' journey.
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In the NKVD's Dungeon
This is one of the few paintings in the collection that depicts an event or circumstance which Getman did not actually witness. It is dedicated to Aleksandr Getman, the artist’s brother, who was executed on December 1, 1934—more than likely having been led down a dimly lit corridor and shot in the back, in a basement where few were likely to hear. Aleksandr Getman was among a group tried as spies and dissidents operating out of Leningrad. All the victims of this trial were later reportedly rehabilitated—that is, had their names and public standing restored. The artist is intent on seeing his brother's name restored officially and publicly. His campaign to thus memorialize his brother has so far been frustrated, however, both by the Soviet government and now by the Russian government.

In my third year I was called up to join the Red Army, which was where the war found me. I saw military action in the 24th Army. On Victory Day I was on the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary, a lieutenant technician. Marshal Tolbukhin sent me to Romania as an art specialist to serve on the Soviet Commission for the return of art treasures stolen by the Germans.

I returned home to Kharkov in October 1945 where I became one of the millions of Stalin's victims. My crime was meeting with other artists in Dnepropetrovsk, where I was visiting my father, and exchanging memories of what we had seen in the towns we liberated. Remnants of fascist propaganda, posters, leaflets, cartoons. One of the artists took a cigarette box and drew a caricature he had seen of Stalin with a play on the abbreviation SSSR (USSR): Skoro Smertrt' Stalinskomu Rezhimu (Sudden Death to the Stalinist Regime). An informer reported the sketch, and the whole group of us were arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation. I was arrested on October 12, 1945. In January 1946 I was convicted and sent to Taishetlag in Russia's Irkutsk Oblast.

The Dnepropetrovsk Oblast court condemned me under article 54-10 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. In Russia this is known as article 58. I was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and five years' suppression of civic rights. I spent about eight years in Siberia (Taishetlag) and Kolyma (Svitlag). Labor camps records show that I was held in custody for seven years, ten months and eighteen days. I was freed on August 30, 1953.

Magadan's Port: Nogaevo
The port of Nagaevo was built at the capital city of Kolyma, Magadan specifically for the transport of prisoners. It was the first glimpse the prisoners had of the land to which they had been transported. This view captures the typical landscape of the region, but in the spring, when the snow is lightest. The seabirds in the foreground echo the migratory birds that appear in other paintings in the collection and are, for the inmates, always a distant reminder of freedom.

I developed a unique way of working, which seems to go against all the established rules for creating a picture. In the camps, it is unthinkable to do sketches or drafts or details. All the material amassed for the future painting is concentrated in intense mental work. The idea in my head and the blank canvas is the starting point for each work. There are not many artists who would readily agree with me. This method, this approach, is not taught in art college. One should never forget the established canons-first, "what" to portray and "how" to portray it and, second, there is no art without color. As the brush lays the picture onto the canvas, the color, not the paint, comes into its own.

I am sometimes asked how I felt, or rather how anyone can feel in such unimaginable circumstances as loss of freedom, arrest, interrogation, trial, prison, labor camp. The human brain possesses a unique ability to adapt, and this ability is far greater than we can imagine in ordinary life.

I did not think about death at all because I did not believe in it. I did not live in permanent fear, but with an extremely heightened sense of danger. I was always on my guard, but the main thing is that I would not have survived without the belief, the absolute conviction that good would triumph over evil. Nothing could convince me that Bolshevism - the plague of the 20th century - would reign unchecked in Russia. I was one of a huge number of people, among whom, in the face of death, the whole gamut of human behavior was revealed more clearly than ever before.

I, like everyone else, wanted to draw a specific conclusion based on my experience. And it was this. There is a human virtue called strength of will. I realized what a great, unbending force that is, if even the terrible Gulag machine could not extinguish it. This is why I am absolutely convinced of the victory of good over evil. I believe this because that extremely harsh and tragic repression and lawlessness persuaded me of the value of man, and of the dignity of his spirit and mind. The very atmosphere of our age arouses great alarm for the fate of Russia and her jewel - mankind. Each of us is responsible for the future. Because of this responsibility, I cannot be silent.

Some may say that the Gulag is a forgotten part of history and that we do not need to be reminded. But I have witnessed monstrous crimes. It is not too late to talk about them and reveal them. It is essential to do so. Some have expressed fear on seeing some of my paintings that I might end up in Kolyma again-this time for good. But the people must be reminded, as part of their education, and as a tribute to the memory of the more than 50 million who died as a result of one of the harshest acts of political repression in the Soviet Union. My paintings may help achieve this.

Stalin's death changed little. Khrushchev's thaw and the denunciation of the personality cult did nothing to eliminate the system, which can still be felt. Russia is still looking for another way today. The Bolsheviks' motto - "Those who are nothing will become everything" - provides inspiration for certain people.

Remember the NEP (New Economic Policy)! I remember it. I remember how my father, a worker in the Kharkov tobacco factory, lived and supported his family.

He lived honorably and freely.

I dedicate my collection to the memory of those who survived the Gulag and to those who did not. Light a candle in memory. The living are in need of it more than the dead. Bow your heads.

A Search: They Find a Book of Esenin's Poetry
Unprovoked body searches in the camps were commonplace. At random, arbitrarily and disrespectfully, the guards hunted for contraband. In the scene depicted here, a book of banned poetry is found. The penalty for such a transgression was severe. The prisoner's sentence would be lengthened by the number of years he or she had already served. Under Stalin, the Soviet regime sought total control over the minds of the entire population, control which included whatever art inmates were allowed to experience. Numerous poets, musicians and artists, including Sergei Yesenin, Pyotr Lechshenko and Aleksandr Vertinsky, were branded as bourgeois, as hostile elements. Their songs, music and poems were forbidden to all. Punishment for disobedience in the Soviet Union was harsh, and harsher still in the Gulag.

Eternal Memory in the Permafrost
The painting depicts both the burial of a Russian convict and a Japanese POW and the observance of two religions, Russian Orthodoxy and Buddhism. The prisoners present at the ceremony are not clerics, but rather inmates, who felt the need to provide a respectful burial for the dead. In the extreme winter cold, bodies were placed beneath a block of ice because digging graves in the permafrost was too difficult. The funeral shown here provides an example of the crosscultural unity Gulag prisoners developed in the face of their common fate.