The many shades of gray

The novel between shades of gray by Ruta Sepetys gives a voice to the 20 million people who suffered and died agonizing deaths at the hands of Josef Stalin. While this novel is fictional, it is a historical fact that Stalin was responsible for treating Lithuanians and many other PEOPLE from the small surrounding countries like animals. I do not want to take away from the terrible treatment of the Jews by Hitler and the enslavement of Africans, but I think that the pain suffered by these people should also be included. I feel like especially in history classes, all of the focus is on Hitler and the Jews; not much attention gets paid to the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who suffered in Siberia at the hands of Josef Stalin. Stalin and the Soviets hid this secret very well. It makes me wonder if the Soviets were not on America's "side" at the end of World War II that this would be a more openly discussed part of history.

These poor people had no idea why they were being treated this way, especially the children. They even thought that Hitler would be their savior; not knowing that if we gained more power they would just be trading in one evil man, Stalin, in for an even worse man, Hitler. I just couldn't imagine living under the rule of someone else who feeds me below the bare minimum, just enough to survive, but not enough to enjoy living. There is a quote from the book that really stuck with me after reading, "There were only two possible outcomes in Siberia. Success meant survival. Failure meant death. I wanted life. I wanted to survive" (Sepetys 319). These people did what they could to survive, but at the same time they had a limited amount of supplies available to them. There were times when getting shot actually seemed pretty painless compared to starving, freezing and working endless hours of hard manual labor.

While I think we all need our eyes opened to this horrible tragedy that began at the start of the second world war, we can also learn a lot from the fictional characters in this novel. I think Elena Vilkas, the mother of Jonas and Lina teaches a great message to everyone, but especially to young adolescents. "Her cup overflowed with love for everyone and everything around her, even the enemy" (Sepetys 316). She sacrificed so much during their imprisonment. She offered to help everyone who was shipped away from their native land, even if they were mean to her back. This character teaches us that we need to always be willing to help one another, no matter what, even if you do not like that person because in the end we are all human beings. She even shows respect to one of the NKVD guards and asks her daughter to apologize to him. This guard showed one act of kindness to her the entire time she was their prisoner, but she made sure her daughter apologized to him for yelling at him. He stood by and helped the Russians treat the Lithuanians like animals, but Elena still looked at him as a person.

The second character I found very intriguing was this very NKVD guard, Nikolai Kretzky. He was a young guard, thought to be no older than 20 years old. This character I think was intended to show that not all of the Soviets believed that people like the Lithuanians deserved the treatment that was issued. He was a Russian who was following orders and it is easy to hate him even though he wasn't as mean as the other guards. He went along with it and did nothing to prevent the imprisonment from happening. While he didn't necessarily make matters worse, he definitely didn't stand up and help these people. Throughout the novel though, you can see him in a conflict with himself. You can tell he isn't a Lithuanian prisoner, but he isn't a pure NKVD guard either. I like to think of him as a weak individual who knew what he was doing was wrong, but didn't stand up to the other guards. At the same time, I can't blame him for his silence. If he stood up for the Lithuanians, he would have been killed or treated as a prisoner. He provided one of act kindness earlier in the novel and when this act was discovered he was not killed, but he was sent up as a guard to the arctic circle as a punishment. It would be tough to live in a world where you know that if you act against the demands of an evil ruler like Stalin that you will be punished, even if you are being a loyal human being as opposed to a loyal subject. I think students could learn a valuable lesson from Kretzky's lack of action throughout the novel. It could create a good debate atmosphere on whether or not he was responsible to stand up to Stalin and his imprisonment of these innocent people.

This novel is great because not only can it be taught in an English classroom, but it could supplement learning in a history classroom. I think there is a lot to be learned about some history that gets glossed over in the 1940's. It blows my mind that something of this magnitude was a well-kept secret just 70 years ago. It would also be interesting to compare with a class how much harder it would be to cover something like this tragedy up in our current world with all of the new technology.

If it has not already been made clear, I think this book would be wonderful to teach in school. This especially holds true if you collaborated with a history teacher and taught this book while he or she taught a unit on Stalin or World War II.