The failure to establish a central memorial to the victims of the Gulag mentioned in my previous post is part of a problem of contested memory that has been apparent since the demise of the Soviet Union but has escalated in the last decade or so. As Arseny Roginsky’s eloquent essay The Embrace of Stalinism shows, […]
All posts tagged Evgeniia Ginzburg
Historical memory of the Gulag (3): Contested memory
Posted by Sarah Young on September 17, 2015
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2015/09/17/historical-memory-of-the-gulag-3-contested-memory/
Women in the Gulag
I always welcome new contributions to the study of the Gulag, particularly (because it is a dimension that remains much less explored than the history) those that focus on personal experiences of the Soviet labour camp system and the writings associated with it, so I was looking forward to reading Paul R. Gregory’s Women of […]
Posted by Sarah Young on November 11, 2013
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2013/11/11/women-in-the-gulag/
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
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/09/05/gulag-voices-two-books/
Top ten food in Russian literature: part 2
I shall keep you in suspense no longer. 5. Shalamov, ‘Condensed Milk’. As in the case of Solzhenitsyn, hunger is ubiquitous in Shalamov’s stories, so food also plays a significant role. ‘Condensed Milk’ is unusual in depicting a moment of triumph and satiation: the narrator, offered a place on an escape, asks the ringleader Shestaskov […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 19, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/19/top-ten-food-in-russian-literature-part-2/
Siberian prison and exile: two studies
I’m currently working on revisions to an article on nineteenth-century narratives of prison and exile (see my previous posts on an earlier stage of work on this and on the conference where I presented it), and in the process of completing my reading, two works have stood out in different ways: Sergei Maksimov’s Sibir’ i […]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 26, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/26/siberian-prison-and-exile-two-studies/