Word: derevyanko
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...wall-Pravda, the prisoners read of the insurrection in East Germany. Resistance was so open that on July 22, 1953 Vorkuta Commander General Derevyanko made a speech in one troublesome barracks. A Lithuanian interrupted: "I am sick of just working, working until I drop dead in the pit or the tundra sucks me up." Said Derevyanko: "You do not need freedom in order to live. As a citizen you are only on file [an expression frequently used in Soviet bureaucracy], but as a worker you live." The prisoners made a slogan of the general's words, shouted...
General Kuzma N. Derevyanko finally kicked up a typically Russian uproar...
...Derevyanko had known in advance that the subject was on the council's agenda for the day. Just before U.S. Representative William J. Sebald rose to read a prepared statement blasting the Russians for their treatment of Japanese prisoners, Derevyanko took the floor himself, went through the formality of charging "American imperialists" with cooperating with "Japanese Fascists." Having had his say, Derevyanko stalked moodily out of the meeting room...
Next day, the problem of the prisoners gave Derevyanko new troubles. When his car pulled up to the Soviet embassy shortly after noon, he found the gate closed, the compound surrounded by some 400 sad-eyed Japanese who wanted an answer to a petition in which they begged information on their missing relatives Derevyanko sneaked into the embassy by the back door, later sent an interpreter out to deal with the crowd. He got the petitioners to disperse on promise of an answer this week...
Said General Douglas MacArthur of Derevyanko's walkout: "I can well understand the reluctance of the Soviet member to listen to so gruesome and savage a story in all its harrowing barbarity. It would well chill and sicken even a hardened old soldier...