UNKNOWN

Steplag, Kengir, Kazakhstan read out like a death sentence to those on the receiving end of Soviet injustice. The year is 1954, less than ten years out of the hell of World War Two, and the world is embroiled in a new type of ‘Cold War’. That phrase was scathingly true for the millions of people still locked into the ‘ice guillotine’ better known as the infamous Soviet penal system: Gulag. The infamous Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was dead, his henchman Lavrenty Beria was executed, but their iron fists still held firm from beyond the grave. Volodymyr Andriyovich Zaluzhniy and his best friend Stas were captured rival Ukrainian and Polish anti-Soviet partisans. Their unlikely friendship, bonded by their shared harrowing stories, embodied the extraordinary events about to unfold.

They were segregated, along with thousands of other partisans, from the general prison population to Kengir: a notorious, high security gulag in central Kazakhstan. They spent weeks in horrid conditions to be lowered deeper into hell. They were strangers in a strange land where nothing was as it seemed. On this last train to Kengir, love steered their way when Volodymyr met a fellow Ukrainian combatant named Kateryna and her Polish friend Kasia. They, along with Volodymyr’s commander Sokil and his right-hand man Nacham, traversed this nightmare until they took control.

The Cold War heated up when the inmates, known as zeks, ignited a fire on the steppes. Former enemies of the reconquered Soviet lands, criminal and political prisoners alike, put aside their differences to rise up against their mutual tormentors. Their rebellion became a beacon of hope in the bleakness of the Soviet regime. Hope and naivety runs a fine line. Their sacrifices lit a catalyst that brought an end to the Gulag, but would it be enough to save them?