Štajner, Karlo, 1902-1992

Karlo Štajner (15 January 1902 – 1 April 1992) was an Austrian-Yugoslav communist activist, prominent Gulag survivor and memoirist. Štajner was born in Vienna, where he joined the Communist Youth of Austria, but emigrated to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1922 on the order of the Young Communist International to help the newly established Communist Party of Yugoslavia. After an illegal communist printing house in Zagreb where Štajner worked was raided by the police in 1931, he fled Yugoslavia, visiting Paris, Vienna, and Berlin before finally settling in the Soviet Union in 1932, where he worked in the Comintern publishing house in Moscow. During the Great Purge in 1936, Štajner was arrested and spent the next 17 years in prisons and gulags and three more years in exile in Siberia. He was released in 1956, after having been rehabilitated, and returned to Yugoslavia. He spent the rest of his life in Zagreb with his wife Sonya whom he married in Moscow in the 1930s. In 1971, Štajner published a memoir book titled "Seven Thousand Days in Siberia" about his experiences in the Soviet Union. The book was a bestseller in Yugoslavia and was named the "book of the year 1972" by the Vjesnik newspaper.