Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

Amazing true account of courage and determination. 4.5 stars.
This group of men escaped from a Siberian prison camp in 1941 and spent a year making their way to safety in India. They crossed very harsh terrain including the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas. Sadly, not all of them survived the journey.
Most interesting were the locals they met along the way, especially the Mongolians and Tibetans.
Very well edited and not too long. Reads like a novel.

This book was a real disappointment, so stupid a lie that it is almost as hard to believe that so many people fall for it--oh well, the Bible comes to mind. I love non-fiction, especially books on mid 20th century history. I had just finished reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and found this book in the Falcon Press racks at an airport. I began to read it, and inch by inch I started to feel the lie. Ivan Denisovich is a made-up story (based on the author's actual experience, but fictionalized) and it feels true at every turn, but Long Walk never feels true. It feels like a fantasy from the get-go. At the point where I finally found the incredibly obvious lie that made me finally give in and admit that this book was BS, I looked at the name of the publisher. Globe Pequot. I am an author of a book they published, not a very good club to be in from my experience. And I had yet to read about the Yeti sighting, which should have put me off when I first read blurbs about the book. I put the book down, not caring about the rest of the made-up story--it is now emergency toilet paper. I felt like my mind had been raped, much like the pretty girl in the story would have been if the story were to ring true. Here is the back breaker, if you want to understand just how stupid it gets: The tale of "going for days without water" in the Gobi Desert and the subsequent portrait of the "oasis" are completely laughable. I live in a desert climate and have to tell you for your own safety that you will not survive longer than a day without water, especially if you exert yourself in the heat of day, which is what our hero said the group was doing for many days on end. Just ask search and rescue workers in Arizona or New Mexico! You don't last long without water, and if you finally find some water in that condition, it is probably halucination. Maybe this is the lesson of the book. We are so thirsty for a good read, that we will believe pigs fly and men don't eat each other when the going gets extremely rough.

This book was kind of sad, but I really liked it. It's about a man whose first life is stolen by the Communists. So he escapes from a camp in Siberia and walks thousands of miles to get a new life--a good one. I cried when they were going through the Gobi desert, was touched when Marchinkovas said that the kindness of the Tibetian people wiped away some of his bitter memories.

Taking it as complete truth is a bit hard, but this book is a wonderful story of the human desire for freedom, of resilience, companionship and fortitude.

Perhaps I’ve been missing references to this book and gulags for years, but now I see them everywhere. The night after I finished this book, I laughed uproariously to find this book (and its movie) being referenced in the new Muppets movie. I think I was the only person in the theater who got the joke when the actress that played Christina in the movie started doing ballet against scene cuts of Muppets treacherously traversing snowy mountains and hot deserts to get to Kermit the Frog in his Siberian gulag. Or maybe I’m the last person to have seen the movie and read the book and the pop culture aspect of it is old news.

I remember my International Relations professor referencing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his writings about the Russian gulags (Russian forced labor prison camps), but it was only a vague reference without much background. Somehow I missed that Stalin began placing people in gulags in 1930 and had already imprisoned 1.5 million inmates in gulags by the beginning of World War II with numbers rising as high as 2.5 million inmates in the 1950s. The majority of these camps were located in Siberia. And it’s the journey to and the escape from one of these Siberian gulags to India (by way of the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas) that is the subject of this book.

The history of this book is a convoluted one. The tale within the book occurs from 1941-1942 and was originally ghost written for the author in 1955. A few years ago, it came out that it was impossible for this to have been the true story of the author since he was released from the gulag in 1942 to a refugee camp in Iran rather than escaping to India in 1941. Another man, Witold Gliński, then claimed that the story was true, but that it had happened to him instead.

Regardless of what is true and what is not, it’s a fascinating story of survival and perseverance. The movie and book became instant favorites of mine. I think that, more than anything, I was amazed that the U.S. allied with Russia in World War II when Stalin was very much still reigning terror down upon those whom he saw as a threat to his rule and spread of communism. It was a selfish alliance in some ways, but a wise alliance in others. But what was happening in Russia during World War II (and afterward) isn’t depicted in movies and literature nearly as much as the horrors of Hitler. In toll of lives, Stalin was directly or indirectly responsible for far more than Hitler. Still, I suppose it could have been worse.

I watched the movie version of this book (“The Way Back”) first, and it left out the horrifying fact that a large part of the journey of Russia’s political prisoners to Siberia was done on foot. Prisoners were chained together poorly dressed for the cold weather and made to walk 1000 miles or more with only bread and water to sustain them. Many died along the way. One thing that struck me in the book was the author’s observation that a decade in age made a huge difference in how well a man was able to endure and survive the journey and the work expected up them upon arrival. I suppose that if you’ve already endured and survived a 1000-mile trek, you’re more apt to think that a 4000-mile escape route from Siberia to India might not be impossible.

Once the prisoners escaped into the wilderness, I found it odd that they never found a way of carrying water with them. They could have hollowed out a tree trunk, used the bladder of the deer they killed, rummaged in the garbage of villages they passed for some sort of vessel, etc. But they never had more than a mug between them for cooking or carrying water. At the point that they realized they were wandering into a desert, surely they would have realized their need for a way to carry water. It’s amazing how often they went forward on their journey with simply the hope that they’d eventually encounter food and water if they kept going. I suppose that you do what you have to do. I’m still amazed that more of them didn’t die in the desert with only the occasional mud puddle and snake to sustain them. And I’m amazed, too, that they managed to get to India without a map. I’m thinking about how difficult it would be for me to attempt a similarly lengthy journey from here to Alaska on foot with nothing but a general directional idea and no map. Christopher McCandless’ version of that journey was harsh enough in Into the Wild. Luckily, poor peasants are far more accepting of a ragamuffin group of travelers than your average city dweller. If you saw a band of half-starved dirty travelers walking down your street, you'd be more likely to lock your doors than kill a lamb to feed them.

Whether this story was completely, partially, or not at non-fiction, it still stands as a grand tale. I highly recommend it to those interested in history and tales of survival.

ರಷ್ಯಾದಿಂದ ತಪ್ಪಿಸಿಕೊಂಡ ನಿರಪರಾಧಿಗಳ ತಂಡವೊಂದು ಕಾಲ್ನಡಿಗೆಯಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಕ್ರಮಿಸಿ ಸುರಕ್ಷಿತ ಸ್ಥಳಕ್ಕೆ ಪ್ರಯಾಣ ಬೆಳೆಸುವ ಕಥೆ. ತೇಜಸ್ವಿ ಒಬ್ಬ ಸಮರ್ಥ ಅನುವಾದಕ ಅನ್ನುವುದು ಕೃತಿಯನ್ನು ಓದಿದಾಗ ತಿಳಿಯುತ್ತದೆ.

Que grande história! Que grande aventura! Que grande coragem!
Gostei muito deste "Rumo à Liberdade" e, uma vez iniciada a fuga, dei comigo a "vivê-la" intensamente e a torcer para que a mesma terminasse bem.
Há quem duvide da veracidade desta história, mas a verdade é que só quem a escreveu é que sabe efectivamente se algo se passou de facto, o que se passou e como se passou. Algum fundo de verdade haverá sempre. Por outro lado, em ficção (e esteve livro não se encontra catalogado como tal), muito do que se conta e inventa tem como base algo que se conhece ou que se viveu directa ou indirectamente na realidade.
O homem só sabe verdadeiramente aquilo de que é capaz quando posto à prova e quando sabe que desistir, ao invés de persistir e lutar, significa colocar em causa a sua sobrevivência e... pode significar morrer. É perante o desconhecido da vida que brota, no meu entender, a verdadeira coragem. Neste caso, arriscar uma fuga para a liberdade poderia também ser sinónimo de uma ameaça à sobrevivência não só fruto da potencial ameaça humana (ser outra vez "apanhado" pelos russos), como também da ameaça natural decorrente de condições geográficas especialmente exigentes neste espaço da Terra (da Sibéria à Mongólia terminando nos Himalaias). E, assim sendo, entre poder morrer preso e poder morrer em fuga pela liberdade, Rawicz optou pela última possibilidade e tentou a sua sorte...
Gosto de livros que me inquietam e que me deixam a pensar... Este foi um deles. Desde há uma semana (quando terminei de o ler) que ando a interrogar-me até que ponto a ideia de liberdade não poderá ser em si mesma uma prisão? Até que ponto não se é mais livre preso do que nessa busca, por vezes sedenta e faminta, pela liberdade? Essa perseguição pela liberdade é um esforço de sobrevivência (a vida em "prisão" acaba também por sê-lo, mas sob outras condições)... E a sobrevivência, quando em condições adversas (humanas e geográficas), pode chegar mesmo a ser uma pesada prisão de risco mortal (?!). Tudo se pode perder ali... Numa má escolha, na falta de sorte... Ao mesmo tempo, não será a liberdade uma espécie de ave em relação à qual corremos, corremos e corremos atrás sem nunca a conseguir "agarrar", conquistar? Não será o desejo de liberdade uma insatisfação permanente?!
Volto ao principio: Que grande história! Que grande aventura! Que grande coragem! E acrescento: que grande livro!

Again, I'm pleased with the random order of my reading. Reading this after Solzhenitsyn helped me orient myself to Rawicz's experience in the Gulag.

There is great controversy whether this escape and long-distance trek in snow, sand, water, and ice did in fact take place. (Consensus, as far as I can tell, is that there is no evidence of it happening.) I will skip that. Suspending belief, this is an absorbing, thoroughly harrowing survival story.

I had the same responses as I did when reading Alfred Lansing's great story of the Shackleton expedition, Endurance. It doesn't seem possible that the body can survive the level of privation described.

One luminous motif is the culture of hospitality to the group of eight sojourners. The tradition of hospitality to travelers was an innate and wonderful part of the life of these people, their generosity was open-handed and without thought of reward. Without their help we could not have kept going.