Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923–1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps by Gullotta Andrea (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 563 Gullotta, Andrea. Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923–1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps. Legenda, Cambridge, 2018. x + 359 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. £75.00; $99.00; €85.00: £12.49; $14.99; €14.99 (e-book). Since the opening of the archives at the end of the Soviet period, research on the history and workings of the Gulag has proliferated, with significant recent studies from scholars including Golfo Alexopoulos, Alan Barenberg, Steven Barnes, Wilson Bell and others. The literary output of Gulag prisoners has comparatively suffered from scholarly neglect, and the research that has been conducted thus far has focused largely on works written by survivors — notably by the most famous ex-prisoners, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov — following their release. The considerable body of writing produced within the hard labour camp system, much of it officially sanctioned for publication in the Gulag’s own presses, has received very little attention from researchers. Andrea Gullotta’s study of the literature of the Solovki labour camps — effectively the ‘first Gulag’, where the structures and strategies of the system were developed before their deployment on a mass scale across the USSR — brings to light the vicissitudes of culture within Soviet penal policy generally, as well as the flourishing Solovki literary scene more specifically. As becomes clear, the SLON (the Solovki Special Purpose Camp), in its variety, resembles a microcosm of the Gulag itself. Although not as extreme as the Soviet camp system later became, the same features are apparent: hard labour, brutal punishments, poor living conditions and the establishment of differential rations for achievement (or otherwise) of work targets, existed alongside thriving cultural and educational activities, and the conduct of academic research in the Krimkab and elsewhere by scholars among the prisoners including Father Pavel Florenskii, future academician Dmitrii Likhachev, and historian and theoretician of kraevedenie Nikolai Antsiferov. As Gullotta attests in his chapter on the history of the Solovki camp, finding definitive corroboration of the facts in many cases proves impossible. The study for this reason employs a measured approach to uncovering the history of the camp that examines the evidence provided in memoirs as well as in official documents, but retains a clear awareness of the limitations of both types of source. This leads, for example, to a very balanced examination of the evidence surrounding Maksim Gor´kii’s notorious visit to the islands in 1929. Turning more specifically to the literature of Solovki for the bulk of the study (the islands’ thriving theatrical groups are also addressed), Gullotta assesses the fortunes of the main publications, notably the journal SLON/ Solovetskie ostrova, and the weekly newspaper Novye Solovki, the effect of changing personnel within the camp administration, and of external political SEER, 98, 3, JULY 2020 564 factors, on the possibilities of independence within the islands’ publishing system. Although the appearance of these publications ostensibly paralleled prison publishing initiatives elsewhere within the early years of the Soviet carceral system, the Solovki titles were overall more sophisticated than the average camp publication, with greater artistic achievements, partly due to the large number of intellectuals incarcerated there, although the quality of the content remained uneven. Moreover, this was not solely a press aimed at other prisoners, as the publications were available for subscription beyond the camp system and even abroad. This is perhaps less surprising than it appears, when considered in the context of the early focus (in theory at least) of the Soviet penal system on re-education, and the propaganda campaigns that emphasized the Gulag as an institution that privileged reform over punishment. The longest chapter, on SLON literature, addresses both the authors and texts that appeared in the islands’ various publications. The literary careers of key figures such as Boris Glubokovskii, Boris Evreinov and Vladimir Kemetskii (Sveshnikov) are intertwined with analysis of their works. Some prose works and theatrical pieces of interest are discussed, including Sof´ia Okerman’s remarkable, bleak short story, Siluety zhenbaraka, and Boris Shiraev’s fascinating Opyt Professora Kal´, which Gullotta describes as a ‘non-identical twin’ to Mikhail Bulgakov’s Sobach´e serdtse, written in the same year (p. 215). However, it is poetry that dominates...