Author: Claire Selvin / Source: Atlas Obscura
An Arctic fox, a hen, wild berries, a reindeer, a single candle glowing in the darkness, glaciers floating at sea, and an aurora borealis. These are some of the subjects of delicate, precise illustrations created by a man imprisoned in a Soviet gulag during the 1930s.
The man’s drawings and letters, teeming with melancholy, survive today thanks to his daughter who conserved and published them. His story, as told in Olivier Rolin’s new biography, Stalin’s Meteorologist: One Man’s Untold Story of Love, Life, and Death, is one of tragedy, but also of resilience—the kind that allows a sensitivity and love for the wonders and mysteries of nature to survive the most oppressive, cruel circumstances.Alexey Feodosievich Wangenheim was born in 1881 in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the town of Krapivno, a name that translates to “the place where nettles grow.” His father, Feodosy Petrovich Wangenheim, was a minor nobleman, a so-called barin. Nurturing his own passion for agronomy—the science of soil and crops—Feodosy encouraged his children to indulge their curiosities and interests in science. Though he studied math and agriculture, Alexey developed an unshakeable fondness for clouds and, in 1929, became the first director of the USSR’s Hydrometeorological Centre.
During his time as head of the Soviet Union’s meteorology department, Alexey worked to establish registries for water, wind, and sunshine, and, in 1930, he created the Weather Bureau in conjunction with the first comprehensive USSR weather forecast broadcasted over radio.
These were no easy tasks, as the USSR was a huge territory comprised of vastly different terrains and climates. The primary purpose of Alexey’s work was to better prepare farmers for meteorological events that might affect their crops. The meteorologist, however, could not solve all of the logistical and organizational flaws of Stalin’s model for socialized agriculture. Between 1932 and 1933, a devastating famine in Ukraine killed three million people.On a snowy January 8, 1934, Alexey’s wife, Varvara, waited for him outside a theatre, but Alexey never arrived. In the midst of great anxiety about treachery and betrayal of the Communist Party, Stalin began arresting and interrogating members of his government. Alexey was taken to Lubyanka, the secret police headquarters, and, after coercion, he eventually signed a confession stating that he knowingly and intentionally disseminated false weather forecasts to sabotage socialist agriculture. To be clear, Alexey was, in fact, innocent of these alleged crimes and was a mere scapegoat for widespread famine and death. He was sentenced to 10 years working at one of the first forced labor…
The post The Poignant Gulag Art by Stalin’s Doomed Meteorologist appeared first on FeedBox.