TV Show Reunites
Russian Siblings
Sundered by Stalin,
Long-Lost Brothers
Embrace on Prime Time
By GUY CHAZAN
March 9, 2007; Page A1
MOSCOW -- In a television studio here, two old brothers hug and weep -- reunited on prime time 60 years after Stalin's terror tore them apart.
Sergei and Pyotr Leontiev are reunited on the Russian TV show, 'Zhdi Menya.'
They are stars on "Zhdi Menya," or "Wait for Me," one of the most popular TV shows in Russia. With its mission to reunite loved ones, the program probes Russia's 20th-century history and the scars it left on the lives of ordinary people. It has become a must-watch for Russians still trying to make sense of their tortured past.
The brothers in this episode, Sergei and Pyotr Leontiev, were separated in 1941 when their mother was sent to a prison camp 1,800 miles east of Moscow. She took with her Sergei, then 2 months old, but left behind seven other children whom she never saw again. Meanwhile, Pyotr and his sisters left home, taking jobs at factories in nearby towns.
Since its launch in 1998, "Zhdi Menya" has brought together 30,000 people sundered by Stalin's purges, war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. That's earned it a unique, and cherished, place in popular culture.
WSJ's Guy Chazan discusses "Zhdi Menya" ("Wait for Me"), a popular Russian TV show that reunites loved ones -- many of whom have been separated by the tragedies of recent Russian history.
"We reconstruct the real history of this country," says Igor Kvasha, the program's host. "Not the garbled version in the text books."
Yet the program is ostensibly unpolitical. A tear-jerking cross between Jerry Springer and the History Channel, it recounts the crimes of communism without apportioning blame. That makes it palatable to Russia's leaders, for whom Soviet-era might is still a political touchstone. President Putin has called the USSR's collapse the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."
The show's neutral style allows it to tackle subjects ignored by other media. Russian TV barely mentions Chechnya, but "Zhdi Menya" features Chechens who were separated from their children in the chaos of war in the rebel republic. Their stories humanize the toll of the long-running conflict.
At a recent shoot on a sub-zero Moscow afternoon, Mr. Kvasha read out the names of people whose fates remain a mystery. Among them: Ruslan Gilkhanov, a Chechen medical student who was dragged from his house by armed men in July 2003 and hasn't been heard from since. "I've written to everyone for help, including the president, but gotten no answer," his father said in a forlorn letter to the program.
Under baking lights, Mr. Kvasha, a celebrated actor, sits at his desk surrounded by enlarged snapshots of faces -- babushki in head scarves, couples with 1970s hairstyles and soldiers in World War II uniforms. Behind him hangs a glass panel covered with photos of the missing. Every time someone is found, he solemnly removes their picture.
Mr. Kvasha asks members of the audience, many holding up photos of relatives, to tell their stories. To the lucky few he pronounces the longed-for words: "We found them, and they're here in the studio."
A heroine of the recent shoot was 70-year-old Maya Reis, whose father was arrested in the 1930s at the height of Stalin's terror. His four daughters were sent to different orphanages and never saw each other again.
Two wrote letters to "Zhdi Menya" -- one six years ago, the other last December -- and researchers matched them up. As the audience applauds and dabs eyes, Maya and her sister Rosa, dressed in Soviet-era floral frocks, embrace in the studio -- their first encounter in 70 years. While most reunions on the program tend to trigger outpourings of tears and words, the two sisters just stare at each other in stunned silence, speechless at the sudden turn in their fortunes.
Often, the "Zhdi Menya" plot is more prosaic. On the same shoot, a teenager is reunited with the boy she had a fling with on a Volga steamship. An orphan adopted by a Spanish couple when she was 5 meets her long-lost sister by satellite link-up. A young man who ran away from home is reunited -- somewhat reluctantly -- with his domineering grandmother.
A cottage industry, "Zhdi Menya" now has a network of volunteer sleuths -- postmen, private detectives and housewives -- spread across Russia. Since its launch nine years ago, it's received a million letters, and gets appeals -- by post, phone or email -- every three minutes. Researchers used to trace 15 people a month; now they find a hundred times as many.
"There's a lot of pseudo-historical stuff on TV these days," says Irina Petrovskaya, a television critic. "'Zhdi Menya' is different because it's totally authentic. That's why it's so popular."
Pyotr Leontiev wrote to the program in 2001 in search of his brother. He had spent years trying to trace him through official channels, but was rebuffed at every turn.
The Leontiev family had been devastated by war and terror. Their father, drafted in 1941, was declared missing in action in 1943. Their mother was arrested on charges of "speculation" -- neighbors informed on her for selling a few pounds of tobacco and she was packed off to the Gulag with Sergei, her youngest son, still a babe in arms. His siblings had only his cradle to remember him by.
Researchers at "Zhdi Menya" contacted police in Karaganda, Kazakhstan -- the site of the mother's prison camp -- and after trawling archives they found a Sergei Leontiev whose records matched Pyotr's description. Within weeks they had tracked down Sergei, a retired carpenter. After a childhood in orphanages in Karaganda, he'd spent most of his life, impoverished, in workers' barracks.
In the studio, Pyotr told his story: "The tragedy that befell our family wasn't unique." He described how his mother was wrenched from her children, how their last sight of her and baby Sergei was on a prison train bound for the steppes. "We never heard from them again." The children, raised by a 19-year-old sister, were lucky: Children of "enemies of the people" were often separated, their names changed, and sent to orphanages thousands of miles apart.
To the strains of Mozart's Requiem, Mr. Kvasha spoke to the audience: "It's hard to imagine how many stories there are like this. They didn't just take away people's husbands, wives and parents. They deliberately destroyed archives, concealed people's names. They took away their memory."
In a heart-rending moment, he led Pyotr Leontiev to his brother, who was sitting weeping in the audience. The two embraced.
Pyotr had mixed feelings about the encounter. The joy of seeing Sergei was clouded by the revelation that his mother had been worked to death in 1943. "It was very hard, a very sad day," says Pyotr.
The two men broke down and looked deeply into each other's eyes. "We survived," Pyotr said to his brother. "We survived."
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MORE 'ZHDI MENYA' REUNIONS
Anzor Dadayev was 6 years old when he lost his mother in the first, chaotic days of the Chechen war in early 1995 and spent the rest of his childhood in the orphanage of Chechnya's capital, Grozny. Eleven years later his mother, Olga, who had meanwhile moved to southern Russia, saw and recognized him on "Zhdi Menya." The two were reunited. In all, 15 children from the Grozny orphanage have found their parents through "Zhdi Menya."
* * *
While a German prisoner-of-war in the Soviet town of Mariupol in modern-day Ukraine after World War II, Willi Birkemaier fell madly in love with a local woman, Nina Tarasenko. The two were forced to part when Willi was sent back to Germany in 1948. But they met through "Zhdi Menya" 52 years later. Willi also met Tanya -- his daughter by Nina. He hadn't even known Nina was pregnant, and Tanya had never known who her real father was.
* * *
Tibor and Miklosz Bleier, Jewish twins from Hungary, were sent to Auschwitz in World War II and experimented on by the notorious Dr. Mengele. After the war, Tibor ended up in Soviet Ukraine, Miklosz in Israel. The Cold War meant they never saw each other again: Each thought the other had died. "Zhdi Menya" reunited them in October 2005. In an emotional scene in Kiev airport, the two rolled up their sleeves and showed each other the numbers tattooed on their arms while they were in Auschwitz: 5103 and 5104.
* * *
Luigi Pedutto met and fell in love with Mokrina in Austria in 1943. He was an Italian prisoner-of-war, she a forced laborer from Ukraine. They were separated when Soviet troops occupied their village and sent Mokrina back to Ukraine: They never saw each other again. "Zhdi Menya" reunited them when Luigi was 82 and Mokrina 84, a great-grandmother living in a tiny village in Ukraine. Since then, he has visited her home and she has traveled to Italy, where she was made an honorary citizen of his home town, Castel San Lorenzo.This focus on the victims of the communist regime contrasts with most mainstream media, which these days tend to humanize Soviet-era leaders and gloss over their crimes. A TV drama, "Stalin.Live," has been panned by critics for portraying Stalin as a sympathetic old man.
Source: WSJ, March 9, 2007, A1
This program is shown on Channel One Russia. See [url="/tv/"]Russian TV[/url] for schedule.
