Stalin's Political Prison Camps
But authorities eventually managed to track Vazirov down in Urganj in 1940 and they arrested him. He was brought back to Baku for a drawn-out interrogation that lasted six months. Chamanzaminli learned that Bakir Chobanzade, a Crimean Tatar poet, had implicated him. Clearly from photos, it can be seen that Vazirov was tortured during his interrogation period. None of his family members were allowed to visit him during this time but transcripts of the "interrogations" show that he never admitted to the Soviet government's false accusations, nor did he implicate any fellow Azerbaijanis in an attempt to get his own sentence reduced. Condemned on fabricated charges, Vazirov was sentenced to eight years at one of the Gulag political prisoner camps at Sukhobezvodnaya near Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. He died of malnutrition, disease, and - no doubt - heart break, three years after his arrest in January 1943.
Read more about this topic: Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli, Death in The GULAG
Famous quotes containing the words stalin, political and/or prison:
“To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world.”
—Josef Stalin (1879–1953)
“Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)