Search results for "Gulag literature"
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Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps
2018
In 1923, the Soviet state decided to create a prison camp on the Solovki archipelago, the site of a former monastery. It became the laboratory of the Gulag, where the techniques of labour-camp exploitation were developed. Prisoners died by the hundreds both within the walls of the monastery and in the frozen forests beyond. Yet the camp's activities in cultural re-education were surprisingly extensive. With the connivance of part of the administration, Solovki became a unique cultural citadel, where the values of a dying intelligentsia were reflected in the works and words of the prisoners, who numbered not only poets and actors but also figures such as the revered Russian scholar Dmitrii L…
“I feel, I know, I am immortal”: literary works in the newspapers of Soviet prisons and camps in the 1920s
2021
Abstract The present article sheds new light on the newspapers and other publications of the Soviet prison camps in the 1920s and early 1930s. The first part reconstructs the institutional dynamics that brought about the publication of newspapers, wall newspapers and other periodicals produced inside the camps. The article then focuses on a selection of literary works published by inmates and on the importance of Soviet newspapers published in places of detention as a source for the study not only of the history of the Gulag, but also of its culture and literature.