Remembering the Victims of the Gulag: Images of Dokhodiagi in Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and Shalamov's Kolyma Stories

Abstract

The current article contributes to the emerging literature on dokhodiagi–the Gulag's most vulnerable, famished, and exhausted prisoners, whose deaths were a common occurrence in the harsh conditions of the Soviet forced labor camps. I explore the literary representation of dokhodiagi in the two major works authored by Gulag survivors–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Stories. Both Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov dedicate their works to the memory of victims who perished in Stalinist camps, which suggests their intention to commemorate dokhodiagi. Yet, a close examination of Solzhenitsyn's and Shalamov's texts shows marked differences in how the two authors engage in the process of memorializing the Gulag's victims. By focusing on the selected passages from The Gulag Archipelago and Kolyma Stories, I juxtapose the narrative strategies that Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov use to describe dokhodiagi, as well as address the larger ethical issues that underlie the two authors' written testimonies of the Soviet forced labor camps.