European Heritage a One-Man Band
THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN MAGAZINE, August l8-19, 1979
Review of Igor Kaczurowsky’s Because Deserters are Immortal by Margaret Smith
There is now a growing number of small publishers reasserting themselves amidst the takeover of old independent publishing companies by multinational corporations. The most prominent new members of this group include Sisters Publishing Co-operative, Hale and Iremonger, and the Alternative Publishing Co-operative.
Many of these are catering for vocal minorities and more recently this has extended to various ethnic groups.
The publisher of Because Deserters Are Immortal, Bayda Books, originates from our migrant community. It’s a one-man show. The editor translates, publishes and distributes the books in his spare time, while working full-time as an engineer. He writes that his aim is to “acquaint Australians with the heritage of Eastern European migrants who have settled here.”
Because Deserters Are Immortal is set in the early 1940s during the German occupation of the Soviet Union. The novel is a graphic autobiographical account of personal survival, and harks back in some respect to the great Russian classics. The novel’s protagonist is both a pacifist and an anarchist and one suspects that this is the position of the author as well. He is not committed to pacifism under all situations, but during this period of history he finds he has no choice.
How could he ally himself to the brutalisation of the Russian troops under Stalin and the atrocities committed against his own people in the name of the USSR? However, there could be no liberation from the invading Germans practising genocide with every advance.
The novel traces the desperate survival of the central character, Serhiy. He miraculously manages to rescue himself and several compatriots in several hair-raising exercises. Somehow these people exist in the shadows between temporary capture and enlistment in the Soviet Army, or in German work and prison camps, until one of their number engineers an escape.
When Serhiy is forced to take up a job in the passport office, he finds himself in the impossible position of trying to avoid stamping Jewish passports with their fatal religion, whilst his cruelly jealous superior officer watches over his shoulder and insists on the condemning stamp to save their own skin. Serhiy attempts to forge a passport for one young Jewish girl, but he arrives at her doorstep one hour after the Germans have taken her away.
The only time the book flags in its grip of the reader is when Igor Kaczurowsky deviates to tell someone else’s story instead of his own. These passages never have the same authenticity and intensity.
Because Deserters Are Immortal is the second publication of Bayda Books. Others will be welcomed.
