Labor Camps Research Articles

Трансформация классической лагерной прозы в новейшей отечественной литературе

Introduction. In the classic sense, forced labor camp prose includes fiction and documentary texts created by immediate participants of the events described (Stalin’s purges of the 1920s–1950s), and thus being usually autobiographical by nature. The bulk of such prose works were created in the 1950s–1970s by such writers as A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Shalamov, E. Ginsburg, Yu. Dombrovsky, A. Zhigulin, etc. Goals. The paper attempts an analysis of features inherent to manifestations of the forced labor camp theme in contemporary Russian fiction, and relates such texts to existing visions of such prose. Results. As is evident, there can be no camp prose — in the mentioned sense — in 21st-century Russian literature but the sociocultural trauma experienced by individuals (and communities) proves so deep and fundamental for their consciousness and subconsciousness that it persists in Russian literary discourse to date. Family memories, archival documents, search for identity, keen interest in national and regional history, official and social mythology give birth to various author’s strategies of addressing this sensitive issue and working with it. These yield narratives that greatly vary in authors’ ideological and aesthetic viewpoints and give rise to enormous — and sometimes violent — controversy in contemporary cultural environment.

МАСОВІ РЕПРЕСІЇ ПРОТИ ПОЛЬСЬКОЇ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ МЕНШИНИ УКРАЇНИ В 1937–1938 РР.

The article is devoted to the fact that in 1937-1938 Stalin's totalitarian regime began mass repressions against the multi-ethnic population of Ukraine, including Poles. This period went down in history under the name of the years of "the great purge or the great terror", when the state security bodies, guided by the decisions of the higher party bodies, in particular the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), carried out mass repressions on the territory of the USSR and the union republics. The February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) in 1937 became the ideological basis for the implementation of repressions. The national direction of political repressions began to be carried out by the relevant orders and directive letters. In particular, the operational order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00485 of August 11, 1937 initiated the deployment of the "Polish operation". Repression affected various social strata of the Polish population of Ukraine: peasants, workers, civil servants, representatives of the intelligentsia, leaders of the party-state apparatus. The NKVD authorities accused the Poles of various types of hostile activities: participation in counter-revolutionary activities, espionage for the benefit of Poland and other countries, treason, terror, sabotage, vandalism, counter-revolutionary insurgent activities, anti-Soviet agitation, membership in the ranks of the Polish military organization. The NKVD investigators sought testimony from the arrested Poles with the help of moral and psychological pressure and torture. All the arrested Poles received long terms of imprisonment in correctional labor camps or were sentenced to the highest degree of punishment - execution. 267,579 thousand people became victims of Stalin's terror against the Polish national minority in the Ukrainian SSR.

George Kennan’s Photography Collection of Political Exiles in Labor Camps of Late Imperial Siberia

George Kennan’s Photography Collection of Political Exiles in Labor Camps of Late Imperial Siberia

Forced Labor Camps for Jews inReichskommissariatUkraine: The Exploitation of Jewish Labor within the Holocaust in the East

AbstractUsing mainly survivor testimonies, more than 120 forced labor camps for Jews have been identified in Reichskommissariat (Rk) Ukraine, a larger number than previously known. Many were road construction camps along Transit Highway IV, where living conditions were harsh and Jews that fell sick were routinely shot. Similar camps also extended eastward into the Dniprpetrovsk and Cherkasy regions. In addition, a few camps for Jews engaged in bridge construction were established on the fringes of Rk Ukraine, using the labor of Jews from Transnistria. In the Volynia, Rivne, and Brest regions the Germans also established camps for work in agriculture, peat-digging, forestry, lumber, and for skilled craftsmen. The Jews in most of these camps were killed by the end of 1942, either together with the inmates of nearby ghettos, or separately a few weeks later. The location of many camps in the countryside facilitated the escape of some Jews. A few remnant ghettos, such as that in Volodymyr-Volynsky, existed into 1943. Little trace remains of these camps today, even where the Jewish gravesites have been marked by memorial stones.

Evacuation and Repression: The Spaniards' Life in Kazakhstan

When the war erupted between the USSR and Germany, the emigrants who were in the European part of the USSR were evacuated to the eastern republics, including Kazakhstan along with some children from children’s homes. The Spaniards repressed by the Soviet government and the soldiers-prisoners of the “Blue Division” were kept in the Kazakh camps. This paper examines the Spanish emigrants’ life and activities in Kazakhstan, their resettlement from Kazakhstan to the Crimea, and the problem of Spanish emigrants’ conscription in the Soviet Army. Also, the fate of repressed Spaniards who were sent to correctional labor camps in the Karaganda region has been traced.

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Coetzee's Carcer[e]al State: Michael K as Hunter-Gatherer

In Life & Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee appears thoroughly persuaded by those anthropological theories—still emerging at the time of the novel's publication—that were reconceiving hunter-gatherer bands as happier, healthier, better-fed, more leisured, and less socially stratified communities than the permanent settlements of agriculturalists. By depicting Michael as a nutritionally and spiritually satisfied forager upon the karoo and by figuring the labor camps in which he is intermittently confined as epitomes of the Neolithic (and subsequent) grain state, Coetzee endorses those intellectual currents that have now supplanted the optimistic narrative of the Agricultural Revolution with that of the Agricultural Trap. In short, the novel figures the adoption of farming as a hedonic catastrophe for the great mass of humankind. Thus, critics who register their disappointment with the novel's supposed political quietism have failed to grasp the text's longue durée concerns or to realize that Michael refuses to aid the guerillas because their victory would only impose upon him a different version of agro-culture. By the same token, many critics' insistence that Michael is a vaguely allegorical figure offering some unrealizable alternative lifeway is refined into sharper focus by the revelation of his anthropological specificity.

구젤 야히나의 소설 『줄레이하 눈을 뜨다』(2015)를 통해 살펴본 포스트소비에트 문학장

This article attempts to examine the current literary scene in Russia through the novel Zuleikha opens her eyes by Guzel" Yakhina, a Tatar writer who has attracted great attention since its publication in 2015. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian literature has been transformed under the capitalist system over the past 30 years. In this process, the literary debate between high literature and popular literature has always been an important issue. Yakhina"s debut novel Zuleikha opens her eyes also could not avoid this controversy. And the heated debate about the novel, which became the best-selling novel in Russia in 2020, is not cooling down. What is the reason for the attention paid to this novel, which deals with a melodramatic story in a well-known Soviet labor camp? What is the basis for controversial reviews of the novel by critics and social media readers? This paper tries to answer to these questions, explore the aesthetic value of the novel, and further draw the landscape of contemporary Russian literary field.

The Mortality of Released Prisoners and the Scale of Soviet Penal Mortality, 1939–45

The Mortality of Released Prisoners and the Scale of Soviet Penal Mortality, 1939–45 Stephen G. Wheatcroft (bio) I was delighted to be asked to comment on Mikhail Nakonechnyi's provocative and important work on Soviet penal mortality, which I hope marks the beginning of a much needed search for data to empirically test theories about the scale of Soviet penal mortality There is no doubt that the release of ill and near-to-death prisoners would have reduced the appearance of mortality in the labor camps and colonies. But whether these releases were carried out specifically to reduce the camp and colony mortality figures seems to me to be unlikely. The amount by which this process reduced the appearance of mortality in the labor camps and colonies remains unclear, but thanks to the recent work of Mikhail Nakonechnyi, it is now a little clearer. He has demonstrated that there is documentary evidence to show that in certain locations at certain times, when general mortality levels were high, the level of unrecorded mortality for released prisoners was very high. In Bezymianlag, the main camp investigated by Nakonechnyi, in the month of May 1943 it amounted to as much as 64 percent of the level of recorded mortality in the camp. In Kargopol´lag in September 1943, it was as much as 46 percent above the level recorded there. Nakonechnyi has wisely noted that "the temporal and spatial" width of this phenomenon are "as yet unknown" (804). But they seem to be significant. Can we do anything to test their significance further and to improve our understanding of the scale of mortality in the Soviet penal system? The second part of my commentary is an attempt to do that. It emphasizes the need to look carefully at the dynamics of the population studied as well as its mortality count. It recommends calculating per capita indicators of mortality. It begins by looking in more detail at per capita mortality in Bezymianlag. Then it looks at what we know about the overall indicators of per capita mortality for all of the Soviet penal system and draws attention to [End Page 851] our current lack of knowledge about the history and philosophy of the penal statistical systems, and the urgency of improving our understanding in this area. But before doing this, I would like to comment a little more on the importance of Nakonechnyi's research, correct some erroneous references that he makes to my own work, and provide a rough guide as to what levels of per capita mortality should be considered crisis levels for normal populations, for penal populations, and for wartime. Nakonechnyi's work is particularly important for countering the ungrounded assertions of Golfo Alexopoulos, who has claimed the enormous importance of the "release to die" claim that she thinks covered up about five million deaths in the camps.1 When this is compared with Zemskov's figure for direct mortality in the camps of one million,2 it can be seen that she is proposing a 500 percent correction to penal mortality for the entire period 1929–53 and not just the worst years of 1941–45. Nakonechnyi's work is the first serious attempt to test this claim, although he presents it as though his arguments were directed at others (including myself). Testing and looking for documentary evidence to support claims are something that Nakonechnyi and I certainly agree are important.3 The origins of the "release to die" argument can be traced back to the Russian historical demographer V. A. Isupov, who argued in 2000 that "the secret of reducing mortality in the Gulag lay not so much in improving medical services and the living conditions of the prisoners as much as in the so-called aktirovka of the prisoners." He pointed to the decree of the plenum of the Supreme Court on 1 August 1942 and the joint directives of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), the People's Commissariat of Justice (NKIust) and the Procuracy of 23 October 1942 allowing for the liberation of prisoners too ill to work.4 "In other words," he wrote, "prisoners were aktirovany [released] to die." Isupov pointed out...

A Story with Characters and Action

A Story with Characters and Action

Doing remembering as a multimodal accomplishment

Abstract The present study investigates how remembering is publicly displayed during storytelling in Oral History Interviews with Italian-speaking witnesses of labor camps during WWII. We focus on the use of the first-person indicative mi ricordo (‘I remember’). In this particular narrative genre, mi ricordo is recurrently used by narrators, as it makes the act of remembering publicly accessible. Drawing upon the methods of Interactional Linguistics, we identify two practices involving the use of mi ricordo: projecting the transition to the narration of a specific episode and displaying epistemic credibility towards facts. We argue that these practices correspond respectively to prospective and retrospective scopes of mi ricordo. Furthermore, a fine-grained multimodal analysis shows that narrators make the scopes of mi ricordo recognizable through recurrent multimodal gestalts, which encompass verbal, prosodic and bodily resources. In the discussion, we argue that the recognizable gestalts are routinized ways of dealing with the emergent character of remembering in oral history interviews and with the interactional tasks that are relevant in this particular communicative genre. The findings highlight that doing remembering is a multimodal accomplishment.

AMERICA’S RACIAL STAIN The Taint Argument and the Limits of Constitutional Law and Rhetoric

AMERICA’S RACIAL STAIN The Taint Argument and the Limits of Constitutional Law and Rhetoric

“This does not interest the court!”: the 1966 Soviet Satire Trial and its persistent legacy

Abstract Soviet writers Yuli Daniel (aka Nikolay Arzhak) and Andrey Sinyavsky (aka Abram Tertz) published several satires anonymously in capitalist countries during the Cold War. In 1965 both writers were arrested in the Soviet Union and they were put on trial in February 1966. They were charged under Article 70 of the Penal Code that criminalized libel and defamation of the state and agitation with the aim of undermining or weakening the state. Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp and Daniel was given five years. This trial’s controversial discussions about authorial opinions and intentions and the complex relationship between satire and social reality remain highly relevant today. This article presents seven contradictions and ambiguities inherent to satire in order to disentangle different arguments and viewpoints in their context. The reception of satirical texts is complicated by issues surrounding ethics and violence, seriousness and non-seriousness, truth and fiction, ambiguous or dubious empathy, morality, political content in non-political texts, and the use of a fictional persona. The vagueness and in-betweenness of satire can pose a challenge to environments averse to ambiguity, as was the case in this Soviet trial, but also in similar cases until today.

The Description of Worker-Peasant Faculty in H. Kant’s «Assembly Hall» (Die Aula, 1965) and F. Marquardt’s «Document, or Aries Entangled in the Thicket by their Horns» (Dokument oder Widder im Dornbusch, 1965): Assertion and Opposition of New Reality in GDR in the 1950–1960s

The article depicts The Workers’ and Peasants’ Faculty (WPF) in the
 works «Assembly Hall» by H. Kant, 1965 and «Document, or Aries Entangled in
 the Thicket by their Horns», 1965by F. Markquardt, their assertion and opposi-
 tion of the new reality in Germany in the 1950–1960s. Both authors belong to the
 same generation, they came to the WPF in the similar way: H. Kant did it after
 captivity in Poland, F. Marquardt came after labor camp in Siberia. Both of them
 became communists. In the lives of both writers WPF left a significant mark. In
 the image of H. Kant, WPF appears as a group of friends as embodiment of a new
 life, which gave opportunities for the development of those who previously could
 not dream about it. Kant found a poetically vivid and precise image, viz. assembly
 hall of the old university, a symbol of new science and new intelligentsia, that
 conquered it. The writer does not ignore the serious miscalculations of party and
 state bureaucrats, this soulless machine that broke the fate of ordinary people.
 Over the years Kant’s novel began to be perceived as a parabola telling about
 the equistential contradictions between great plans and human imperfection that
 hinders their implementation.
 F. Marquardt writes on behalf of those fallen «under the wheels» of the
 system, the WPF collective is a collection of predators of all stripes from small ro-
 dents to giants who trample the personality. This is an idol to which any manifestation
 of individuality, friendship and love are sacrificed. The idol is nourished by the at-
 mosphere of universal fear denunciations, blackmail, «Document», a piece of paper
 replaces the essence of the person himself. The protagonist must sacrifice his friend
 to stay in the ranks of the party and try to become like everyone else.

Metaphors in Laszlo Darvasi’s Short Stories of Magic Realism

This paper explores the specifics of Laszlo Darvasi’s poetic language
 aimed at creating original metaphors and similes based on universal images. The
 purpose of the analysis is to disclose some tropological techniques that allow us
 to interpret some of the mysterious and vague stories of the modern Hungarian
 writer who used the style of magical realism.
 The method of this study should be considered as a lingupoetic approach
 to the tropes presented primarily by A.A. Potebnya.
 The results confirm the literary significance of Darvasi’s poetic world:
 rethinking of traditional images (including wood, a tree, a stone, a mountain), as
 well as deployment and realization of unexpected and incompatible combinations
 of semantisation. The presented interpretation gives an opportunity to look deeper
 into the unique phenomenon in modern Hungarian literature that brings together
 real historical events (labor camps or revolution) and archetypal images in an unusual poetic system. The tragic causes of historical situations are not disclosed by the writer, who focuses mainly on existential threat and life drama lurking in everyday life. The metaphorical plan contributes to the creation of this meaning. The results of the study, conducted in this article, can be used not only to familiarize new trends in literature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but also to study tropological issues.

Reverberations of Collective Traumatic Memories from a South Korean Movie to June Fourth and Jiabiangou

This article begins by probing why the South Korean film banned in China, A Taxi Driver, would receive high accolades from so many Chinese netizens, and why the Chinese websites would suddenly delete all mention of and comments about the film by the end of October 3, 2017. This incident reveals a stark contrast between two countries: the democratic South Korean government has created and maintained the collective memory of the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement and reconciled past injustices, whereas the authoritarian Chinese regime has continued to erase the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Pro-democracy Movement and June Fourth Massacre and forbid any discussions and investigations into the truth. After discussing the movie’s transnational reverberations of collective traumatic memories, this article suggests that the taboo on June Fourth drove some concerned authors to write about disasters caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) from the Mao era. Examining the writer Yang Xianhui’s (1946- ) strategies to both dodge censorship and unearth the traumatic memories of the Jiabiangou labor camp rightist-inmates from 1957 to 1961, this article argues that Yang’s stories and other authors’ or filmmakers’ works on Jiabiangou would create reverberations of traumatic memories, contribute to collective memory, and indirectly resist the state violence that represses the memories of the CCP-manufactured tragedies.

Timber industry activity of the GULAG correctional labor camps of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in the late 1920s - 1937

The article examines the activity of correctional labor camps specializing in timber industry in the Soviet Union in the period from the late 1920s to 1937, singled out as the first stage of development of this group of camp complexes. The definition of the concept of "forest" correctional labor camps is given. For the first time, an analysis of the timber industry activity of the camps was undertaken. "Forest" camps functioned in the areas of the largest Soviet cities (Moscow and Leningrad), in the European North, the Urals and Siberia. Their main function was reduced to the development of woodlands, timber harvesting, mechanical processing of forest resources developed to a lesser extent. Conclusions are drawn about the gradual expansion of the scale of the timber industry activity of correctional labor camps in the period from the late 1920s to 1937. However, at this stage, the volumes of harvesting and mechanical processing of wood by "forest" camps were insignificant against the background of the development of the forest industry in the country. The first multi–industry "forest" camp appeared - the White Sea-Baltic Combine, which had a strong influence on the development of the timber industry in the autonomous Karelian Republic. With the help of prisoners' labor, the construction of a pulp and paper enterprise in the Urals was carried out. The experience of using prisoners in the timber industry in the period from the late 1920s to 1937 was a significant groundwork for further enhancing the role of the Main Directorate of Camps of the NKVD of the USSR in the industry.

Ferenc Andai. In the Hour of Fate and Danger.

Ferenc Andai. <i>In the Hour of Fate and Danger</i>.

LAW REGULATIONS OF THE PENITENTIARY SYSTEM FUNCTIONING IN THE GULAG CORRECTIONAL LABOR CAMPS

The article attempts to analyze the fundamentals of the functioning of the punishment system in the GULAG correctional labor camps in the 1930-50s, considering them as a tool of totalitarian practices in the USSR. The research reveals that in the 1930-50s, the main places of imprisonment in the USSR were correctional labor camps, which were part of a centralized system – the Chief Administration of the Camps (GULAG) government agency.&#x0D; This system was not only a powerful tool for the execution of punishment and imprisonment, the main task of which was the use of prisoners’ labor to implement economic projects and plans, but also an important element of the functioning of the Soviet totalitarian state. The activities of the GULAG were regulated primarily by departmental documents. A significant number of them regulated the penitentiary system of the USSR.&#x0D; The activities of the GULAG were regulated primarily by departmental documents, including “Regulations on correction and labor camps of the OGPU USSR”, Provisional instructions on the detention of prisoners adopted in 1939 and 1940, Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On punishment for Nazi criminals guilty of murder and torture of Soviet civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies and traitors of the Motherland from among Soviet citizens and their accomplices” (1943), “Instruction on the registration and transfer of prisoners sentenced to hard labor” (1943), “Instruction on the regime of detention of prisoners in correction and labor camps and prisons of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs” (1947), Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on amnesty of certain categories of prisoners (1953), Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR “On the procedure for detention of convicted persons in forced labor camps” (1954) and others. Thus, for the operation of the penitentiary system in the USSR, a significant number of normative documents were developed; they regulated the penitentiary system and supported the functioning of the totalitarian state.

NKVD Industrial Engineering in the Kola North in the Late 1930s – Early 1940s

Introduction. On the territory of the Kola North, the prisoners carried out hydraulic construction, and mining enterprises were built. An analysis of the NKVD industrial construction sector’s functioning in the designated time and regional dimension allows a deeper understanding of the role of the GULAG in the industrialization of a particular region, the country as a whole, contributes to the further development of scientific ideas about the NKVD’s mobilization potential in the prewar period. The purpose of this study is to analyze the construction activities of the GULAG camps in the Kola North in the context of the mobilization practice of the NKVD in the prewar years. Materials and Methods. The source foundation of the study was a set of materials from both central and regional archives. Analyzing the processes took place in the regional sector of the industrial construction of the NKVD at the turn of the 1930s – 1940s, the author used dialectical, systemic approaches, comparative and statistical research methods. Results. At the turn of the 1930s – 1940s, in the territory of the Kola North, the construction activities of the NKVD were of a large-scale nature and were of military-strategic importance for the country. There was a goal given to the department to speed up the completion of important construction objects. At the same time, a whole range of problems characterizing the GULAG economy characterized the construction sector of the NKVD: a poor supply of machines and mechanisms, materials, and a lack of project documentation. These circumstances systematically led to the disruption of planned targets. In addition, construction labor camps, despite the growth in the number of special contingents, experienced a permanent shortage of labor, the cause of which was a large proportion of disabled prisoners and chronically ill, unfit for work, as well as disabled, sick prisoners. Significant losses of labor force in forced labor camps were the result of serious problems associated with the organization of labor processes. Construction management delayed the conclusion of contracts with ITL forced labor camps on the provision of labor. A significant part of the prisoners was not taken to work due to the failure to provide an escort, the lack of clothes and shoes, downtime at work due to the lack of building materials. Discussion and Conclusion. An analysis of the construction activities of the NKVD in the Kola North, the economy of the GULAG, as a whole, helps to identify and specify the problem of the safety of resources at the disposal of labor camps, the inability of the latter to ensure the economic use of thousands of prisoners. This circumstance significantly limited the mobilization capabilities of the NKVD, including in the process of implementing large industrial projects of military strategic importance for the country. The economic consequences of resource losses (an increase of production cost, work in general, a decrease in the balance of working time, etc.) largely determine the place of the GULAG in the economic history of the country.