An Unlikely Vessel on Siberian Rapids
The journey relied on an unconventional watercraft named Matylda, an inflatable raft constructed from twenty thick cylindrical tubes originally manufactured in Lomnice nad Popelkou for inflatable industrial halls. According to historical accounts, the design allowed water to flow freely between the cylinders rather than accumulating inside the boat, enabling the crew to navigate violent rapids on the upper Yenisei River in Siberia. Years earlier, journalist and traveler Jaromír Štětina used the same raft model to navigate the perilous Indus River in the Himalayas, turning the simple watercraft into a legend among Czechoslovak river expeditions.
Cameraman Petr Volf and director Milan Maryška joined the 1987 expedition—organized in cooperation with the Soviet magazine Sobesednik—to document a journey from the river’s source to the ocean. Yet the initial reality of the voyage proved uneventful. Weeks passed with little action beyond filming routine tasks like checking ropes, sleeping, and eating. Seeking a more truthful picture of the region, Volf and Maryška abandoned the raft and ventured independently into local villages, traveling by various local transport methods to reconnect with the expedition further down the river.
Documenting Siberia’s Hidden Reality
In remote settlements along the river, the filmmakers encountered the indigenous Evenk and Ket populations living in conditions of extreme deprivation. Volf described the areas as places where the Soviet system had completely collapsed, marked by rampant alcoholism and profound social decay. Their cameras recorded stark scenes of daily hardship, including the funeral of an elderly woman who had choked on her own vomit and an incident where an intoxicated young woman fatally attacked her partner with scissors.
“In our film are drunk villagers who write letters to the comrades that the Soviet Union gives them nothing and that they need to be saved,” Volf recounted in material detailed in the source articles.
Intervention by the KGB and Domestic Suppression
The unvarnished depiction of Soviet life quickly drew the attention of the KGB. Following an interrogation by security forces, the filmmakers were banned from continuing their work in the region. Despite the stop order, the crew managed to smuggle the exposed film stock back to Czechoslovakia.
Back home, the material faced immediate scrutiny from the Státní bezpečnost (StB), the communist-era secret police, who attempted unsuccessfully to recruit Volf as an informant. Director Milan Maryška also faced severe professional retaliation, landing on a cultural blacklist following a conflict with state television management. Stripped of his right to work in film or television, Maryška earned a living working as an ambulance driver.
Because of the political ban on the director, the resulting four-part documentary series, titled Jenisej, člověk a řeka (Yenisei, Man and River), was initially introduced to television audiences by Volf alone during a travelogue program. Early broadcasts of selected clips eventually generated enough public and institutional momentum to secure the eventual airing of the complete series, rescuing the footage from permanent archival suppression.
Worth a look
