Grey is the Color of Hope: Book Review

“Grey is the Color of Hope” is the personal testimony of Irina Ratushinkaya’s time spent in a Soviet Union political camp. The book takes place at the height of the Cold War and details the inner secrets of a country under the burden of a communist nation. Jailed for her poetic writings, Irina finds herself facing seven years of hard labor in a political prison camp, followed by five years of exile. “Grey is the Color of Hope” is the story of those seven years, her fight for survival, and her battle to defend human rights while in the Soviet political camp. While in the prison camp, Irina faces many challenges such as: starvation, freezing temperatures, force-feedings, Inhumane prison guards, Shizo sentences, and the constant denial of basic human rights. In the midst of a grey world, Irina chooses to hope that her future is full of color. The hope she clings to so desperately ends up being her key to survival.

There is so much meaning that can be drawn out of the title of this book. The color grey is a literal take on the Irina’s perspective while in prison. “Grey faces, grey or blue jackets, grey barracks, and grey fences. Even the snow, powdered over with coal dust has lost its whiteness” (Ratushinkskaya 199). All clothing, hair, eyes, buildings, attitudes, and feelings took on a certain grey hue that was devoid of any unique source of character or light. This was life in a Soviet Union political camp. Although the color grey was a physical representation of Irina’s life, it also took on a symbolic representation of the emotional element the political prisoners experienced. The sadness, weakness, fear, and oppression, which were inflicted on the prison camps, all contributed to the colorless atmosphere which existed within the souls of those in captivity. Yet, amid a world devoid of color, hope existed. In a life full of oppression, hope thrived. Hope is born out of the grey. If certain areas of our life weren’t grey, then why would we need to hope? The very existence of hope is confirmation of a grey area. Irina refused to let the vices of her world influence the faith and hope she possessed. Instead she looked at every pain, heartache, and tragedy not as another broken piece, but instead as an opportunity for future mending. In her book, “Daring to Hope,” Katie Davis says,

The things I thought would break me were the things that drove me straight to Him. My anguish and my sorrow sent me to the healer who would mend all those broken places and put me back together more beautifully than I had ever imagined. All those cracks holes and ruptures, they would be places in my life where His glory would shine through. Beauty, though not as I expected it, would be found amid the ashes. These would be places that taught me His heart as He lovingly and tenderly bound them up, and they would make me brave, ready for the next thing. Ready for anything (Davis).

This is the attitude Irina showed in her writing of this book. Pain doesn’t represent the destruction of hope, but instead represents an opportunity to hope. Grey is the color of hope.

Irina Ratushinskaya was born in Odessa, Ukranian SSR, in 1954. She was born into the U.S.S.R. at the height of the Cold War amid the battle between democracy and communism. While reading “Grey is the Color of Hope,” the faith in God Irina possesses is something which continually seems to jump out of the pages. Growing up in the environment which she did, as a strong believer, Irina’s faith was constantly being tested. In her memoir, “In the Beginning,” Irina writes during one of her times of testing,

Is He kind, or not? – that is what I need to determine in the first place. If He’s not, then I don’t want to have anything to do with Him, even if He’s all-powerful. So, if He starts punishing me for undue familiarity, then I don’t want to know Him (Ratushinskaya 27-28).

Irina’s faith was raw, unmasked, and emotional. She wasn’t afraid to press into God for answers to hard question. Growing up in the environment she did, answers to hard questions were something she needed. Her faith in God would soon become more than something she would lean on in hard times, but instead something she would cling onto in a desperate fight for survival. In September, 1982, on her 29th birthday, Irina was sentenced to seven years of hard labor and five years of exile for the writing of her poetry. During those seven years in the Soviet prison camps, Irina developed close friendships with many of her fellow inmates. These relationships would grow to become more than just friendships. They would become fellow advocates in her fight for human rights. There were many protests which were birthed out of the close friendships Nina developed. For example, there were many collective hunger strikes for things such as: indecent food quality, wrongfully cancelled meetings, or inhumane treatment of individuals. One other small but powerful protest came from their refusal to wear identity tags issued by the camp managers. Wearing identity tags had no other purpose than to humiliate and to imply ownership over the person wearing them. They were not just refusing to wear the tags, but they were refusing to degrade their humanity to something that could be owned and ruled over by another individual. They refused to lessen the value of their human lives. It was protests like these which landed Irina and the politicals in the SHIZO punishment cells. The details of SHIZO, which Irina described in the book are vial enough to turn your stomach. She wrote about having to sleep next to her own slop bucket and having to share cramped living quarters with giant rats the size of her feet. She would also only be allowed to eat small rations of “bread,” which wouldn’t have even been acceptable for dogs today. To make matters worse, they were forcefully stripped down to nothing and given paper-thin garments in order to make the already freezing conditions even more unbearable. In short, these prison cells were simply another form of human torture. When the prisoners would confront the prison officials about the freezing temperatures and lack of proper food portions, they would either be ignored or blatantly lied to. In the officials’ eyes, Irina and her friends did not even deserve to be told the truth. Yet despite the living conditions, Irina managed to survive eleven months in these punishment cells during her seven years of confinement. Irina gives all the credit to God for getting her through the time she spent in SHIZO. During one of her sentences in the stone-walled SHIZO cell, she quotes, “Strange things happen when you have nothing to rely on except God’s help” (Ratushinskaya 225)

Irina Ratushinkskaya proves just how great of a poet and writer she is in this book. Her skills are expressed in the ways she flawlessly displays the emotions of the characters. While reading this book, you will become so emotionally involved and invested that it almost seems that you can feel their pain, hear their cries, and experience their anger. Irina writes in such a way that will draw you in so close that you will take on the emotions of the characters in the story. This is one of the books greatest strengths. Irina also articulates her message and main purpose clearly and effectively throughout the entirety of the book, always making sure to tie everything together with one concise message.

“Yes, we are behind barbed wire, they have stripped us of everything they could, they have torn us away from our friends and families, but unless we acknowledge this as their right, we remain free” (Ratushinskaya 40).

This is the crux of the entire book. The fight for human decency and the right to keep your dignity. Some of the weaknesses of this book come as a result of its strengths. Because Irina is so emotionally driven in her writing, it often indirectly causes her writing to be less informationally focused. There was not a large amount of background given on the current situation of the Soviet Union at the time of the story nor did she give a detailed personal history on her own life prior to being sent to prison. Some of this background information could have provided a better understanding and perspective on the situations and events which she wrote about.

One of the common themes present throughout the entire book is that of faithfulness. God’s faithfulness was proven true for Irina, and Irina’s faithfulness was proven true for God. There was faithfulness present among close friends, and faithfulness held closely between a husband and wife. Irina’s relationship with God, although rarely mentioned directly, was one of her most defining characteristics. When she was thrown into a regime camp for seven years and when she was repeatedly tossed into SHIZO, she remained faithful to God. In return, God also remained faithful to her. Through every injustice and every wrongdoing, Irina was faithful to God, and God would prove himself faithful in return. She proved her faithfulness by choosing to never give up on hope. As a prisoner in a regime camp, she also considered herself a prisoner to hope. For Irina and all the other prisoners, hope was never a feeling they had, but instead, hope was always a choice that had to be made. They made deliberate decision to never, under any circumstance, allow themselves to hate (Ratushinskaya 260). They made the deliberate decision to always dissolve any anger with laughter. They made the deliberate decision to never willfully give away their humanity. They made the deliberate decision to fight for human rights. By doing so, they made the deliberate decision to hold on to hope. By making the deliberate decision to hold on to hope, Irina made the deliberate decision to be faithful to God. Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” This was a verse that continually echoed in the chamber of my brain as I read through Irina’s story. Her actions and the character she displayed were a steady reminder that we can trust Him and that we are able to hold onto hope as long as we are able hold onto Him. Another portrayal of faithfulness was beautifully displayed among Irina and the friends she created in the political camp. At numerous points throughout the story, Irina and her fellow prisoners Lyuba, Tanya Osipova, Raya Rudenko, Natasha Lazareva, and Tatyana Mikhailovna Velikanova, would simultaneously go on hunger strikes to protest any injustice done to any one of them. If one person wrongfully had a meeting with a family member cancelled, they would all collectively go on a hunger strike. They were faithfully united as a group, fighting not for their individual selves, but instead for basic human dignity of all mankind. When asked “To what do you feel allegiance?” they answered, “To human rights” (Ratushinskaya 311). At one point in the book Irina purposefully allows herself an opportunity to be thrown into SHIZO, a type of cruel punishment cell, only for the reason that she didn’t want an ill Natasha to have to be there alone. She quotes,

Truth to tell, I don’t regret this return to SHIZO: it was unbearable to think of Natasha lying alone and ill on the floor of the cell. How will my being there help her? I don’t know – but at least she won’t be alone (p.223).

This was often the reasoning of Irina. It was never about the outcome but only about what was right or wrong in the moment. It was about choosing to value human life in a place that constantly tried to devalue it. In choosing to be faithful to the fight for human life, they were choosing to be faithful to each other. In another beautiful display of faithfulness, Irina remained faithful to her husband throughout the entirety of her time spent in prison. On more than one occasion, Irina was offered “a quickie” by numerous strangers whose paths happened to cross with hers. Yet, despite years of separation, Irina chose to remain faithful. In her book, Irina taught us the importance of faithfulness in our lives. While reading the book, I continually found myself asking, “To whom and to what do I need to remain faithful to?” Our faithfulness is a representation of our values. If we value human life, we will be faithful in the fight to protect it. If we value our relationships, we will be faithful in our pursuit of those close to us. If we value our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we will be faithful in our process to become more like Him.

When reading “Grey is the Color of Hope,” it almost seems that Irina spent more time hunger striking than not. Hunger striking, with the exception of a good attitude, was the only weapon that the politicals had over their prison officials. Hunger strikes were something the Soviet government took very seriously because it was extremely bad publicity for one of their political prisoners to die from a protest over unjust treatment. In an attempt to alleviate the threat of hunger strikes, prison officials began to initiate the process of force feeding. This is exactly what it sounds like. It involved around seven to eight grown men pinning down and prying open the mouth of the unwilling victim, while they force a tube down their throat and into their stomach. They would then proceed to pour liquid down the inserted tube until it filled their empty and sensitive stomach. Irina’s writing of this event is extremely graphic and ended up making me sick to my stomach. Although this is a physically gruesome process, this form of torture deals a much larger, emotional punch. One survivor of this inhumane practice, while discussing the topic of torture says, “I know from my own experience that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it is about self-respect and human dignity” (Vladimir Burkovsky, Torture’s Long Shadow, The Washington Post). Again, this held more meaning than getting prisoners to submit to an authority. This was a direct attempt to devalue and delegitimize one human life over another. During the force feedings, Irina and the prisoners put up the fight of their lives, despite being extremely weak from their hunger strike. Only one person willfully submitted to eating what they were about to force her to eat. However, Irina and the other prisoners did not see this act as cowardly. In the book Irina writes,

To their way of thinking, once you’ve conceded something, they’ve got you on the hook. You’re theirs! A moment of weakness is interpreted as weakness forever, even if it is the weakness of a woman driven to the limits of her endurance facing threats from strong, merciless men” (Ratushinskaya 123).

There came a point where they physically were not able to stand up for themselves, however, because they did not allow themselves to believe that those in power had the right to inflict their dominance over them in such a cruel way, they were still able to stay strong.

Because of the lack of background information found in the book, it may be helpful to understand a small amount of the external factors involved in Irina’s life during the times she wrote about. During the time of Irina Ratushinskaya’s life, the Soviet Union, now known as Russia, was a completely Communist-run state. The effects of communism are unavoidable. When power is placed on a sole individual or party and denied to all others, oppression is bound to follow.

Communist theory and practice have traditionally denied the legitimacy of any form of opposition or autonomous group activity. The doctrine of the proletarian dictatorship, as developed by Stalin, conferred on the so-called party of the working class the exclusive authority to exercise political leadership and denied to other parties and groups the right to share this power or to counteract it (London 120).

Unfortunately, this happened on a mass scale in Russia. Communism found its way into Russia through the influence of Vladimir Lenin, who rose to power in 1917. Irina was born one year after Joseph Stalin died in 1953. Although many of the human atrocities committed by Stalin died with him, human oppression and economic depravity still continued as a result of the continued Socialist policies. To accompany the economic and human oppression, one other thing, which can always be associated with communism is censorship and propaganda. Whether it be the radio stations, newspapers, or even school textbooks, communist policies have always included a wide variety of censorship and propaganda. The censorship and propaganda which happened in Russia during the twentieth century gave birth to a generation whose ears were deaf to the outside world.

Moscow, in fact all of Russia had been completely cut off from the rest of Europe for years. Even now, at the beginning of the new era, echoes from the “burgeois” West reach this land of the East so faintly as hardly to catch the ear” (Scheffer 5).

This is a common practice of an oppressive government. As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power.” Because communism’s main focus and objective is to take away power from the masses and hand it over to one singular ruling force, they had to first censor all outside knowledge attempting to enter into their communist state. This was the world Irina grew up in and she had to experience many of the effects of communism first hand.

“Grey is the Color of Hope” is an excellent portrayal of what it looks like to stand up and fight for what is right, even in the midst of intense opposition. It is a book that will challenge you as you read it, to question what it is you are willing to fight for and at what cost you will be willing to defend it. In the book, Irina quotes 1 Corinthians 7:23. It says, “You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men” (ESV 1 Corinthians 7:23). You can tell when you read the book that this was a foundational verse for Irina when it came to the way she lived her life. Again, it challenges the reader to ponder the way that they should live and the value that they are currently placing on their own life. “Grey is the Color of Hope” teaches us to value our own lives and the lives of those around us. This is not a prideful stance, but instead one that believes we are created in the image of an all-powerful, loving God and thus, have immeasurable value. In her writing, Irina captured the attitudes, emotions, and character of the people the story in such a way that when you finish the book, you feel like you have known the people your entire life. Some of the characters you wish you didn’t know, for you are able to witness the numerous testimonies of the evil that humankind is capable of. Irina described such characters as “the repetitive functioning of a machine, totally devoid of any element of humanity” (Ratushinskaya, 259). Yet, even in the midst of the level of human evil described in this book, hope still thrives. This is, perhaps, the greatest lesson the reader can learn from this book. Even though our surroundings look bleak or devoid color, we are still able to hope. Our hope is not confined to the boundaries of our human thinking or ability, but only by the power of the one whom we trust, Jesus Christ. Grey is the color of the prison walls. Grey is the color of the fences. Grey is the color of the aging faces, and grey is also the color of hope.