World Premier of "Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley's Search for His Father" Is Being Broadcast at http://Reason.tv

World Premier of "Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley's Search for His Father" Is Being Broadcast at http://Reason.tv

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Reason.TV (http:/reason.tv) is featuring "Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley's Search for his Father" as its film of the week from February 25 to March 2. This is the world premier of the 28-minute documentary, which chronicles the search for one of the millions of men arrested in Russia during Stalin's Reign of Terror in the 1930s.

One can view the film at the home page of Reason.TV, which gets some 1.4 million visitors per month. No special players are necessary to see the broadcast.

"Return to the Gulag" depicts the search for details about the fate of Arcadi Berdichevsky, Jon Utley's father, the chief financial officer of the Soviet Import-Export agency Promexport, who was arrested by secret police at midnight, April 10, 1936. His wife and son never saw him again, and until Jon's trip never knew the reasons for the arrest or the cause of his death.

Arcadi Berdichevsky's experiences serve as a microcosm of the all-engulfing great terror imposed by Stalin "when few were spared ominous fear, paranoia, imprisonment, hard labor, and even death," the film's narrator explains. Arcadi was arrested without cause, tried by a kangaroo court, and sentenced to hard labor in the Gulag, in Vorkuta, Komi, on the Arctic Circle, in northern Russia. This true story was also the fate of some 18-20 million others in the 1930s who were sent to the Soviet Gulag.

Freda Utley, Arcadi's British wife, organized an international campaign for his release which included personal letters to Stalin from prominent international figures. All pleas were ignored.

Freda Utley, who was an author, scholar, and British trade union leader, and her son, Jon, went for years not knowing even the charges against Arcadi, nor his whereabouts.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jon Utley, nearly 70 years later, was able to return to Russia and find original files and government photos of his father -- and learn of his surprising death by firing squad in 1938 for leading a hunger strike in the camps.

The documentary includes news and file footage of the life and times of Soviet Russia in the 1930s, in addition to interviews with Ann Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History; Joshua Rubenstein of Amnesty International; and Russian archivists and historians.

It was filmed on-site tracing Jon Utley's journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia to find the records. "Return to the Gulag" is a small but revealing window into Russia's turbulent 1930's.

"Return to the Gulag" was directed by John J. Michalczyk, Director of Boston College's Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Documentary Film, which provided funding for the film along with the Freda Utley Foundation.

An article by Jon Utley, "Vorkuta to Perm: Russia's Concentration Camp Museums and my Father's Story", about the subject of the documentary can be seen at http://www.fredautley.com/.

A longer film on the Soviet concentration camps, "Confronting Amnesia: Frozen Memories of the Soviet Gulag," has also been produced by Boston College.

DVDs of "Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley's Search for his Father" are available for purchase from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, www.victimsofcommunism.org for $15 plus shipping. To order, visit the website or send an email to vocmemorial@aol.com.

[end]

Source: Freda Utley Foundation

CONTACT: Jon Utley of Freda Utley Foundation, +1-202-298-5514

Web Site: http://www.fredautley.com/

-------
Profile: intent