According to his memoir The Long Walk, Polish writer Slavomir Rawicz claims that he escaped from a Soviet gulag in 1939 and walked all the way to southern India over a duration of two years. However, there is apparent doubt over the veracity of this epic. Some claim that his ordeal was too inhuman for someone to survive, and note the scant details of the story (i.e., the American named “Smith” and nothing else).
So, what’s the Straight Dope?
I’ve read the book wondered about that myself. (Maybe that’s one reason why no one has yet tried to film this story even though it would seem to be excellent source material for a movie.)
Although I don’t want to necessarily cast doubt on Rawicz’s story (especially if it turns out to be at least mostly true), you can add me to the list of people who would like see confirmation of its veracity.
FWIW, Rawicz himself has always maintained that it is absolutely true. I, personally, have a circa 1990 letter from him (my sixth-grade class read it and sent him letters).
The key objections raised on the Internet, as far as I can tell, are thus:
My personal issue with The Long Walk relates to topography: my relief map of central Asia shows way more mountains than Rawicz recalls; the entire (WAG) 1,000 miles between Lake Baikal and India looks, on my map, mountainous or at least rough going. But the ‘mountain crossing’ part of The Long Walk is rather short… what gives?
When I was a kid, I believed the story absolutely. Now that I’m older, I honestly dunno. On the one hand, desperate people can–and do–amazing physical feats. On the other hand… well, it’s pretty DARNED amazing.
I was at school in England with a student named Martin Smith (1960-1964). He said his grandfather had been an engineer building the Russian Metro and had married a Russian princess. Smith is now in charge of a theological seminary in the USA. I will write and ask him if there is any conenction.
And if people don’t know, it has now been filmed by Peter Weir as The Way Back.
Very good, but with differences in the details. More has emerged since this thread was first started and it’s now thought unlikely that all of the story happened to him, although there’s a chance it happened to somebody!
I saw it at the New Year and commented briefly on the two versions. Sadly, the yeti didn’t appear in the film!
I am appalled that people would question someone like Rawicz first instead of anything that has come out of Russia. The Russians committed unspeakable atrocities during the war, especially against the poles. Are people forgetting Katyn?
Stalin was much responsible for WW.II as Hitler. I do not believe anything from russia. I think Rawicz story is a 100% believable. I can not imagine anyone would rather stay in the gulag instead of taking a chance on freedom in the wilderness. I know i would.
It seems to me the folks at the BBC, like all media outlets would do anything and say anything to get as much attention as posssible for themselves regardless of the truth.
It’s irrelevant. Katyn doesn’t make the story more or less believable. You mention that you aren’t surprised that people would try to escape the goulag, but most didn’t escape it, and didn’t even try. And those who escaped don’t claim they crossed a whole continent mountain ranges and deserts included.
I’ve no opinion about the veracity of the story, but the oppresive nature of the Soviet goverment has no bearing on it.
This footnote in the Wikipedia article that Marley23 linked to is pretty damning.
I was a skeptic before now I’m even more so.
Having read the book years ago, I was left with the impression that it’s bullshit, based on simple physiology. Covering immense distances on foot under extreme conditions with little to no provisions or equipment just doesn’t add upp. Traditional Aborigines of Central Australia or the Kalahari !Kung need plenty more water, food and shelter to survive than Rawicz’ group of modern, European POWs.
Just because you don’t like a country doesn’t mean that its records are not reliable. The Nazis in particular (and the East German government that succeeded administration of part of their territory) are reknowned for the meticulous and accuracy of their records. They happily catalogued in great detail everything that was going on in their country, including the oppression and atrocities committed against their own citizens. Comparing Stalin’s government to Hitler’s in this regard is certainly not doing it the disfavor you think. (For the record, I really don’t know how reliable Stalin-era prison camp records are. Maybe someone who has actually investigated the matter could speak up.)
Interesting-this story is similar to Jozef Bauer (a German Army POW who escaped a prison camp in Siberia). Bauer claimed to have crossed Siberia-though he had help from some local people. Did he do it? Unless you have a map, crossing Siberia wold be difficult-it is a huge region, and is criscrossed by giant rivers (the Lena is 12 miles wide), and enormous swamps-if you got lost in these, it would be hard to get out. Eventually, Bauer got to the Iranian border, and was allowed to cross.
His book (“As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me”) is a good read-but it is getting hard to find.
Where’d you get this number from?
The best cite I can find is here, which states it is 30 km (18.6 mi), but that’s just at its mouth.
I seem to remember being taught;
you can last 30 days without food
3 days without water
3 minutes without air
Ok, that may not be written in stone, but at some point I recall his group
went for 13days without water.
Sounds like the sort of thing that got published in the USA as part of anti-Soviet propaganda.
Some hope-out-of-dystopia fantasy.
Skyhorse Publishing have a $15 edition (ISBN 1602392366) available in the US and there’s a £8 UK paperback (ISBN 1841197262) currently in print as well…
As far as Rawicz’s book goes, I think his claiming they met a yeti in the Himalayas discredits it somewhat!
Bumping this thread (just happened-on by chance); most recent previous post on it, early this year.
With my taking a (largely sceptical) interest in things cryptozoological: like a good many people, I first heard of Slawomir Rawicz’s narrative of his supposed odyssey, via the episode in it which tells of the party’s encountering a pair of yetis in the Himalayas. With there being overall – as mentioned in this thread – much to cast doubt on the narrative’s truthfulness (and doubts began to be expressed, right from the time of the book’s publication in ?1956); I strongly tend to the view that Rawicz made the whole saga up. (Might have been wonderfully inspirational fiction; but one feels that such material should be written as fiction, not as supposedly-true [auto]biography.)
Interesting point for “crypto-fans” – I have come to understand that as regards Rawicz’s whole story, and the (brief and fleeting) “yeti” element in it: it would seem to be one of those oddities of the relative importance of the cart and the horse, the tail and the dog, or the sagittal crest (or whatever) and the yeti. The whole business first came to light in the mid-1950s when Ronald Downing, a reporter on Britain’s “Daily Mail”, who had been writing about the then much-discussed enigma of the Himalayan yeti, was contacted by Rawicz, who had settled in Britain, and who wished to inform Downing of the yeti encounter which he alleged himself and his companions to have experienced. The two men met, and in course of conversation, Rawicz told Downing about his and companions’ supposed Siberia-to-India trek. The upshot was the book “The Long Walk”, essentially ghost-written by Downing on Rawicz’s behalf. I fear that I suck at posting links; best I can offer is: Google “Ronald Downing”. Click on about the 9th “hit” on the first page: “Cryptomundo – The Way Back: Will Yetis be scene stealers?”
As one who would greatly wish for there to be a mysterious species of giant ape-man haunting the Himalayas, but reckon that thing vanishingly unlikely, by reason of the great shortage of persuasive evidence; I feel sad, that almost everything would seem to point to Rawicz’s story having been made up out of whole cloth.
Never having seen the movie nor read the book, I would like to comment that the human is both incredibly fragile and amazingly tough - people do manage to survive the most amazing hardships. As has been pointed out that the natives are frequently willing to be amazingly hospitable [the whole 3 day guest thing is because life in marginal areas is dangerous and being willing to feed and water someone for 3 days may save your own life later when someone else is willing to do the same for you even if you are a total stranger.]
And again, since it was ghost written, and Rawicz probably combined the stories of a bunch of people to get the base narrative, of course the disparity of distance, geography and hardships makes sense - it is a synthesis instead of a recounting. But it is probably a cracking good adventure story.
About a year ago, just after I saw the Weir film, I “traversed” the approximate route by “flying” low and slow on GoogleEarth. That’s when I got skeptical (I hadn’t been aware of any doubts out there).
The desert was one thing. But as a previous poster mentioned, those mountains coming into Ibdia are nuts. One damned range after another. No way.
I don’t know anything about the claim nor the exact route, but I spent a fair amount of time in Tibet. Color me dubious. Especially in that time period. Christ look at a map from lake Baikal to India. …