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Revision as of 18:40, 4 June 2011 by Kingstowngalway (talk | contribs) (→Publication of the diary)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Nina Sergeyevna Lugovskaya, in Russian Нина Сергеевна Луговская (25.12.1918, Moscow—27.12.1993, Vladimir), was a Russian painter and theatre designer in addition to being a survivor of the GULAG. During Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, a teenaged Nina was also the author of a diary, which was discovered by the Soviet political police and used to convict her entire family of Anti-Soviet agitation. After surviving Kolyma, Nina studied at Serpukhov Art School and in 1977 joined the Union of Artists of the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nina's diary was discovered intact inside the NKVD's file on her family. It was published in 2003, caused Nina to be labelled, "the Anne Frank of Stalin's Russia."
Biography
Nina had two older twin sisters, Olga and Eugenia (also called Lyalya and Zhenya). Her father, Sergei Rybin-Lugovskoy, was a passionate supporter of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Although she had many friends, Nina suffered from depression, and repeatedly confided her suicidal fantasies to her diary. Nina furthered suffered from lazy eye, which made her very self-conscious. In her diary, she often confided her hatred for Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These beliefs came from witnessing the NKVD's repeated harrassment of her father, who had been a NEPman during the 1920s.
When the NKVD found the diary in 1937, it was confiscated and used as evidence of Nina's "criminal" deviations from the Party line. Passages underlined for prosecutorial use included Nina's suicidal thoughts, her complaints about Communist indoctrination by her teachers, her loyalty to her persecuted father, and her oft expressed hopes that someone would assassinate Joseph Stalin.
Based on the "evidence" in her diary, Nina, her father, her mother and her two sisters were arrested and sentenced to five years' hard labor in the Kolyma death camps of the Soviet Arctic. After serving her sentence, she was released in 1942.
Nina's mother and sisters also survived Kolyma. In Magadan, Nina married Victor L. Templin, an artist and fellow survivor of the GULAG. Nina subsequently worked as an artist in the Theaters at Magadan, Sterlitamak, in the Perm region. While decorating the Magadan theater, Nina met with the painter Vasili Shukhayev, further considered herself his pupil. She also participated in several artistic exhibitions. After 1957, Viktor and Nina lived in Vladimir, Russia. She was formally rehabilitated in 1963 after sending a personal appeal to Nikita Khrushchev. She bacame a member of the Soviet Union of Artists in 1977 and, in the same year, held her first solo exhibition. Those who knew Nina and Viktor in in their later years remained unaware of their experiences in the GULAG. However, both of them lived to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Viktor and Nina Templin are buried in the cemetery near Ulybyshevskom, Vladimir Province.
Publication of the diary
After Nina's death, her diary was found in Soviet archives by Irina Osipova, an activist with the human rights organisation Memorial. At the time, Osipova was conducting research into opposition to Stalinism and uprisings in the GULAG. Deeply impressed by the diary, Osipova decided to publish it.
In 2003, the Moscow-based publisher Glas first printed an abridged version of Nina's diary in English as The Diary of a Soviet Schoolgirl. In 2007, Houghton Mifflin published a new translation by Andrew Bromfield. It was titled, I Want to Live: The Diary of a Young Girl in Stalin's Russia. All passages underlined by the NKVD were printed in bold type.
External links
- Secret Confession Moscow Times, 29 June 2007
- Pessimism and Boys London Review of Books, May 6, 2004.