Lamar Howell's Weblog

Yury Khorshunov’s story wrapped me in the arms of Mother Russia

Mrs. Khorsunov was Yury’s mother, and what she did endears me forever to her, to Nizhneudinsk, Siberia, and to the soil of Russia itself. Here’s his story: In March 1946, Mrs. Khorsunov was on her way from home after her work as a conductor on a train which regularly delivered prisoners to the Siberian wasteland. The driver of a sledge passed her with a load of dead prisoners. He told her one of the prisoners was still breathing and asked her what he should do, since it would be wrong, according to his Orthodox faith, to bury someone alive. Mrs. Khorsunov remembered how she had lost two brothers in the war and felt compassion for the pitiable prisoner. She secretly took him home with her. When he had the strength to speak all she could understand was “American.” He drew his story on paper: plane falling, three men, barbed wire fence. He managed to tell her his name, which she said sounded like Fred Collins. She tried to nurse him back to health, but he died a week later. She buried him in an unmarked grave. Inside his boot she placed the sole possessions he had on him: a small book, and a metal badge. Mrs. Khourdakov visited and tended his grave for many years, along with little Yury. She made Yury promise to tell the story when she died. He did.

I would pay money to go to the gravesite of Fred Collins, lie down in the soil of Russia, and rehearse what happened there. I would choose the first elderly mother of Russia who passed by and ask her to take me into her arms so I could weep for  my American.  

source: The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia by Tim Tzouliadis, The Penguin Press, New York, 2008