Last week I participated in a workshop titled ‘Punishment as a Crime? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture’, at Uppsala University’s Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The programme, which is available here, was notable for its wide range of papers and approaches. The imperial, soviet and post-soviet periods were all covered, and [...]
All posts tagged Shalamov
Russian prison experience
Posted by Sarah Young on August 22, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/08/22/russian-prison-experience/
Four short links: Gulag
A number of Gulag sites have come or returned to my attention recently, so this is a quick round-up of the best (for reasons I won’t go into, I’m rather short of time at the moment and the longer posts I’m trying to write are somewhat behind schedule). I’ve not included the virtual museums I [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 13, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/07/13/four-short-links-gulag/
Music Monday: Hooligan
While I was reading up on Sergei Esenin recently (in connection with Shalamov), I was alerted to the song ‘Hooligan’ by Max, Kevin Mooney’s post-Adam and the Ants band, here in a great performance at The Clarendon, Hammersmith in, I believe, 1985: ['Hooligan' on YouTube] Reliable sources who were there at the time inform me [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 18, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/06/18/music-monday-hooligan/
Varlam Shalamov and the art of defecation
With apologies to any readers of a sensitive disposition, this is an important subject. Pretty much every Gulag narrative makes mention of the primitive toilet facilities and prison cells and camps – the ubiquitous and foul-smelling parasha (slop bucket) and arrangements for its emptying – and there are plenty of references to feelings of shame [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 7, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/06/07/varlam-shalamov-and-the-art-of-defecation/
Dostoevsky and the Gulag
I’ve started work on a paper on the depiction of criminals in labour camp writing for a workshop later this summer, and as Dostoevsky is one of my starting points, this has led me to revisit the broader question of the role of recurrent references to him in Gulag literature. This post is not intended [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on May 6, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/05/06/dostoevsky-and-the-gulag/
BASEES 2012 highlights
I was quite busy with committee business during the BASEES conference, but did manage to attend a few panels, and want to pick out a few highlights from what everyone I spoke to agreed was a very stimulating and enjoyable weekend. A Monday morning panel on Gulag literature may not be everybody’s idea of fun, [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on April 2, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/04/02/basees-2012-highlights/
Top ten letters in Russian literature
Letters play a significant role in some of my favourite works of Russian literature, and a couple in particular have been very much on my mind lately. So here is my top ten, which manages to encompass everything from the absurd to the tragic. Apologies for the plot spoilers (especially in entries 10, 7 and [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 15, 2011
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/12/15/top-ten-letters-in-russian-literature/
Life and Fate on the BBC
I’m still recovering from a couple of memorable days at St Peter’s College Oxford, where the BBC’s event to celebrate the Radio 4 adaptation of Vasily Grossman’s vast and still under-appreciated novel Life and Fate was followed by an interdisciplinary conference on Grossman. I’m still gathering my thoughts on the latter, so I’ll save that [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on September 12, 2011
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/09/12/life-and-fate-on-the-bbc/
Gulag Voices: two books
This year has seen the publication of two books titled Gulag Voices: an anthology of memoirs edited by Anne Applebaum, and a collection of oral histories by Jehanne Gheith and Katherine Jolluck, so this seems like a good opportunity to look at both of them. I had previously read all but one of the extracts [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on September 5, 2011
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/09/05/gulag-voices-two-books/
Judging books by their covers
As part of some work on Vasily Grossman (about which more anon), I’ve been catching up with my reading on Gulag history. Stephen Cohen’s The Victims Return finally arrived at the library, so I went to get it out. The first thing that struck me was how similar its cover was to another recent book on Gulag [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on August 29, 2011
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/08/29/judging-books-by-covers/