The Song of the Cossacks

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Drama: The Song of the Cossacks

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BBC Radio 4 - Drama on 4, The Song of the Cossacks

The story of how Britain sent thousands of Cossacks to Stalin and certain death in 1945.

The play explores the horror of June 1945 when Cossacks were forcibly  repatriated to Stalin’s USSR. With original testimony of survivors and the music of the great Cossack choirs.

“The Cossacks could have lynched me. Instead they didn’t want to believe me. They continued trusting me. That was horrible. I remember all of it with true horror. It was truly a diabolical plan.” (Rusty Davies, British Liaison Officer for the Cossacks in 1945)

At the end of the war in 1945, the Yalta agreement provided that Prisoners of War were returned to their home country. The Cossacks, bitterly opposed to Stalin, had joined the German forces to fight against Stalin. 

Stalin insisted they be returned to their “homeland” in the USSR. All parties knew this would mean certain death. 

In this fictional dramatisation of true events, Major Christopher Graham and Sergeant Wilson are in charge of a Cossack prisoner of war camp. The prisoners comprise whole families including women, children and young babies. The two officers, struggling with a lack of resources and manpower, work with the Cossack generals to run an orderly camp. The Cossack generals believe the British to be trustworthy and, although deeply concerned at the prospect of a forced return to the Soviet Union, accept the two officers’ assurances that this will not happen. 

When the British government acceded to Stalin’s demands, the army felt obliged to break it’s word and organise the enforced repatriation to the Soviet Union. 

Jean Binnie’s original stage-play, dramatised for radio by Stephen Wyatt, examines the dilemma of ordinary army officers ordered to betray the people whose trust they had gained and whose welfare they had been in charge of. Running through this play is the 2022 testimony of survivors of these events, voiced by actors from the Teatr Napadoli in Kyiv, and the testimony provided to the subsequent enquiry by Major Rusty Davies, the British Liaison office of the time. 

Cast
Major Christopher Graham: Finlay Robertson
Sergeant Wilson: Phil Carriera 
Sir William Temple: David Acton
John Pelham: Lawrence Russell 
Colonel Wensley: Jonathan Keeble
General Dorov: Christopher Douglas
General Skiro: Geoffrey Kirkness
Captain Andrei Rostov: Ivantiy Novak
Katya Dorov: Amrita Acharia
And Mikhaila Rostov: Jilly Bond.
The testimony of Rusty Davies performed by Christopher Ettridge
Verbatim testimonies performed by actors from Teatr Napodoli, Kyiv

Drramatised for radio by Stephen Wyatt from an original stage-play by Jean Binnie and with additional material by Kit Hesketh Harvey

Recorded in London and Kyiv, and on location

Sound Design: David Thomas
Director: Jonathan Banatvala.
Producers: Jonathan Banatvala and Melanie Nock

An International Arts Partnership for BBC Radio 4

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