16

Essays I The Unfamiliar historical landscape that bears the potential for aritual return ofthe victims of the Gulag. Kolyma Road, during particular commemorative events, participate in the enactment of a referred toas‘RoadofBones’. and the This essaydemonstrateshowtheMaskofSorrow per KolymaRiver. Built by prisonersunderthe mostadverseconditions, this roadisoften the legendary Kolyma Road betweenthe port ofMagadanandthe industrial areas at the up- newly established gold mines. Crucial to the region’s development was the construction of ers whowereshippedtoMagadanduringthedictatorship ofStalintoworkintheregion’s upon ahillonthemargin ofthecity, commemorates the hundredsofthousandsprison- discovery of gold in the late 1920s. Today, a huge monument, the Mask of Sorrow, raised Sea, thecity of Magadanemerged asagatewaytothesparselypopulated region afterthe Gulag peripheryofMagadaninnortheastern Russia. Located on the coast of the Okhotsk ABSTRACT // This essay explores the relationship between place and memory in the former REMEMBERING THE GULAGINPOST-SOVIET MAGADAN THE KOLYMA ROAD& THE MASKOFSORROW: // NORMANPRELL http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X Norman Prell 17 - - The Unfamiliar The Although the department of the Gulag of the Although the department 2 ). According to regional archival documents it According to regional archival documents ). http://www.sovlit.net/conversationswithaksyonov/ http://www.sovlit.net/conversationswithaksyonov/ See also: John Pohlmann: Conversations with Vassily Vassily See also: John Pohlmann: Conversations with of the Kolyma Gulag, For numbers of prisoners and victims Aksyonov. Aksyonov. [03/10/2013]. (2007: 267-283) who bases his ac- Panikarov see for example: Kozlov and Batsaev historians: work of two local on the count (2002). 1 2 The Russian Northeast, map section from U.S.S.R. - Terrain Terrain map section from U.S.S.R. The Russian Northeast, - 1974. (Image courtesy and Transportation, of the University of Austin) Libraries at Texas died, estimates 1953, when Stalin lin. From 1929 until sentenced were either people 24 million that indicate USSR of the areas remote to or exiled prison labour to repression 2003: 4-5). Besides the political (Applebaum ), (vrag naroda people’ of the ‘enemies of the so-called as a cru- also functioned labour and colonisation forced and collecti industrialisation cial means to the country’s exiles and Only prisoners years. those in process visation in Rus- example, could be forced to work and settle, for isolated and inhospitable Far Northeast. sia’s started Magadan Sea, Okhotsk the of coast the on Located discovery the after region the to gateway a as function to 1920s. the late of gold at the upper Kolyma River during In 1932, the sparsely populated region was taken under ), trust (Dal’stroi construction local the control of a special rapid region’s the with government Soviet by the charged by means of a local forced labour system development (Sevvostlag is estimated that around 870,000 prisoners were shipped around that is estimated work in the re- to Magadan in order to build roads and gold mines. gion’s was dissolved in 1960 and most of the camps had been camps was dissolved in 1960 and most of the of the Gulag the legacy death, after Stalin’s dismantled phenomenon continues up to the as a social and cultural present During day. Soviet times any official memory of begin- the with was suppressed. Only Terror Stalin the known as glas- of reform, project of Gorbachev’s ning (restructur nost (transparency/openness) and perestroika ing), in the 1980s, there was an outpouring of personal of outpouring was an 1980s, there the in ing), accounts and memoirs from underneath the surface of in which suddenly started to be communicated silence a and representing remembering then, But even public. past has often been a painful and impossible catastrophic process. One major concern in the memory of the Gulag, - -

Trying to remember and to describe the unspeak- the describe and to to remember Trying 1 The Burn (Ozhog), first published in Italy in 1980, hen 16-year-old Vassilii Aksenov (Tolya) joined his Aksenov (Tolya) Vassilii hen 16-year-old in 1948, he soon got used to the mother in Magadan

The columns of prisoners marched around the the around marched of prisoners columns The the town from through day after day right clock In the predawn center… the disinfection the port to to walked Tolya early morning, when mist of the would columns those another after one school, come flowing toward him. Theirsound was the shuffling of of hundreds shoe soles, characteristic the muffled, indistinguishable talk, the shouts of the guards, the growling of the dogs. Ak- (Vasilii 1994: 247) cited in Hochschild senov, sight of prisoners being convoyed every day through this sight of prisoners being His mother, in the Far Northeast of Russia. city isolated re- been had Ginzburg, Evgenia author Gulag famous the in stay to was required but camps local from the leased Magadan for another five years. The last timeback four-year-old the left her son was when she had seen she had in her Kazan flat on her arrest ten years earlier. For Ak- himself, the streets a famous author who became senov, of an im- by means with him had remained of Magadan age of hundreds of shoes shuffling pastautobiographical his in scene this included he When day. him day after novel once seized him he tried to refer back to a place that had have imagined as a world apart from anything he could before. tration of all corrective labour camps and labour settle of all corrective tration ments in the former Soviet Union (Glavnoe Upravlenie has also ‘Gulag’ the term At the same time, ). Lagerei system of excessive entire synonymous with the become and mass terror under the rule of Joseph Sta- punishment During the years of the Gulag Magadan functioned as the functioned Magadan Gulag of the years During the dreaded most and isolated most of the one doorway to punishment regions of the Soviet Union, according to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, ‘the greatest and most famous The Gulag (2003: xv). Archipelago’ island in the Gulag acronym for a special police functioned as a bureaucratic oversaw the adminis in 1929, that created department, THE ROAD RIVER AS A UP TO THE CHALLENGE TO KOLYMA MEMORY POST-SOVIET able, Aksenov returns to the evocative image of hundreds Aksenov returns to the evocative able, on the street, of prisoners anonymously passing him who those prison- knowing in detail of us either without ers were and where they went. I have chosen this scene, of this text: question the main well introduces it because How does a city like Magadan, which has come to repre- in the Gulag more than any other and death sent suffering place, communicate in time? I want to follow this ques- past during of the experiences to people’s with regard tion and in relation to the events commemorative particular region’s and in the in monuments of memory preservation of role the in interested particularly am I Here landscape. memory, for postcatastrophic monuments and landscape consideration in also but Gulag the to relation in as such of the more recent collapse of the Soviet Union. W ISSN: 2050-778X http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ 18

Essays I The Unfamiliar Model offuturemonumentbyKramarenko Berzin’s bustinfrontofcityadmin http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X Norman Prell

including the juridical question of responsibility, remains man figures disappearing into the ground. This kind of the challenge of coming to terms with the incommen- memorial montage, according to him, would be able to surable dimension of suffering and death that had been communicate both the region’s tragic Gulag but also its hidden away during Soviet times. For example, how can gold mining past. However, following the discussions in individuals and the Russian public today commemorate the local news and talking to one of the leading artists the large number of victims of the Gulag, most of whom who has actually been involved in the planning of the disappeared anonymously and without a proper burial? new monument, the dominating idea has come to concen- trate on the commemoration of the region’s geological When Aksenov joined his mother in exile, Magadan opening and industrial construction without referring to mainly consisted of watch towers, barbed wire fences its forced labour system. According to the artist, Evgenii and prison barracks. Only the two main streets, Prospekt P. Kramarenko, the region’s tragic past has already been Lenina and Prospekt Stalina, had barely been built up, addressed by another monument, the Mask of Sorrow, as reminding him of a real city. In contrast, the road up to well located at the margin of the city and speaking ex- the Kolyma River (500 kilometres) had already been in clusively to the former Gulag. The new monument, rep- operation for more than a decade. This contradiction of licating a magnetic compass to represent the geological a poorly developed capital city, compared with the road, expeditions at the beginning of the region’s Soviet de- which had been forced onto the region’s difficult land- velopment, shall address the other, more heroic, side of scape within only a few years, clearly underlines the pri- the region’s history. Significantly, the colossal monument ority of the Dal’stroi construction enterprise. It shows that of the Mask of Sorrow has often been identified by lo- Magadan above all functioned as a transit base for prison- cal residents during our conversations as being ugly and ers who after their arrival on ship were sent further on to ill-proportioned. This aesthetic dislike of the city’s most the mining areas at the Kolyma River, with the Kolyma famous Gulag memorial, however, was often accompa- Road serving as a key infrastructure in the region’s indus- nied by a more substantial critique or resistance against trial management. It was this transient aura of a tragic-he- the existing view, mainly from outside the region, of as- roic construction site, exclusively focused on the region’s sociating Magadan first of all and often exclusively with mineral exploitation through the excessive employment the terror of the Gulag. of forced human labour, which Aksenov became aware of when he first saw the columns of prisoners flowing towards him. The shuffling of hundreds of shoes passing ENTERING THE FIELD AND WORKING WITH THE REGION’S him on the street every day symbolises the constant ar- LANDSCAPE rival of new shiploads of prisoners in Magadan. It meta- phorically produces the image of a place that constantly When I started my field research in September 2011, my vanishes away into the region, but also refuses hold in mind was filled with images from the memoirs and per- terms of memory when it comes to remember all those sonal accounts of former Kolyma prisoners. One of the who never came back from the mines. The historical ex- things that I wanted to do first was to explore the city of perience of the Gulag is thus reflected in the region’s ma- Magadan as the original background of those events that terial landscape and speaks in the very architecture of the happened more than half a century ago. However, at least road itself, where the city’s main street, Prospekt Lenina, in the beginning, my mental representations hardly coin- flows into the region’s highway, without any major inter- cided with the material reality of the present city. While ruption, but in a single, straight line disappearing towards walking along its streets, Magadan did not automatically the Kolyma River. reveal to me its Gulag past. The place, of course, has changed since the local forced labour system had been There have been recent discussions in the local media con- dissolved during the 1950s. The prison barracks have cerning the idea of creating a new image for Magadan’s been replaced by common tenement houses. The watch future. One important aspect of the debate relates to the towers and barbed wire fences have disappeared in the construction of a new monument highlighting the begin- process of reconstructing and redefining Magadan after ning of the Kolyma Road in Magadan. Such monument Stalin’s death. perhaps would interrupt the constant flight of the city’s main street into the region, helping its residents to iden- Despite the region’s on-going economic and social de- tify their city as a place on its own. In one of our many cline after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Magadan con- conversations, a local geologist, who has been living and tinues to exist as an important gateway to the region and working in Magadan for a long time, introduced me to as administrative as well as economic centre in the Rus- his own thoughts regarding the possible shape and mes- sian Northeast. According to its residents, the worst ef- sage of such monument. One Saturday morning in May fects of postsocialist transformation, such as food supply 2012, we left the city in order to spend the day out ex- shortages and unemployment, have now been overcome. ploring the surrounding landscape. Passing a roundabout After the region’s population had dropped by 50 percent that could be seen as a kind of demarcation between city during the 1990s, the city of Magadan has regained a cer- and region, Boris M. Sedov suggested that in the centre tain degree of economic stability within the last ten years. of this roundabout the road could simulate a tunnel, go- Most of the people I interviewed have lived in Magadan ing underneath the road’s surface with columns of hu- for a long time, but not long enough to have personally http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X The Unfamiliar 19 20

Essays I The Unfamiliar social life: ideal representations and the actual world of everyday landscape that builds on the relationship between those the material world, Hirsch suggestsanunderstanding of ern convention of landscape as an ideal representation of ing inanylocal context. Trying togobeyondthe West- appears and interacts as a cultural and physical surround- landscape which in pattern general more a to fieldwork lates thesubjective experience of theresearcherduring fieldwork in Magadan. However,own interestingly, Hirschmy re- during experienced have I what is place same tion ofdifferent spatial-temporal settingsinoneandthe I believe that this process of recognition and the conjunc Anthropology ofLandscape, to theregion’s Gulag. According to Eric Hirsch inThe bring backintoexistence for methis‘otherplace’ related trying to catch a glimpse of their lives would sometimes of Political Repressions.Listeningtotheirnarrativesand local Caritas andtheMagadanCommittee of the Victims by the organised meetings official at introduced kindly of accounts was I whom to ex-prisoners, remaining few the the of some through influenced increasingly was back into the past. This spatial-temporal conversation their immediate appearance also followingtheirtraces beyond places its see to began I Slowly, Magadan. with ally resultedinmehavingamoreintimate relationship tory inthelocal library and in the regional archive gradu- Walking daily its streets and readingabout the city’s his- den but unavoidable presence of the region’shid- tragic past. the felt increasingly also I people, its know to got I more the and Magadan in stayed I longer the yet, And often entirelydisappearedfrommymind. the actualcityhowitistoday, whiletheGulagofpast ings with me. During these experiences, I learned to read to share their lives and their beautiful natural surround- homes andoftentookme on tripsinto the region in order unfavourably, theygenerouslykept inviting me to their of place. Even though they often viewed my questions while ignoring their own historical experiences and sense when myquestionskept asking about the region’s Gulag why myinterlocutors sometimes felt rather frustrated understand, to started I conditions. inhospitable region’s struction and aspartoftheprocessovercoming the ticipation in theregion’s industrial and ideological con- tities that hadbeen created through their personal par aware that most of my interlocutors had strong local iden- became I conversations our During benefits. social and financial other and salaries higher by attracted and North contract workers, following the Soviet propaganda of the experienced the Gulag.Oftentheycame to theregionas There is a relationship here between an ordinary, graphic descriptionandinterpretation(1996:2). ethno- through and fieldwork through understand cal practice and whichwecome to recognize and second landscapewhichisproducedthroughlo- [t]here is thelandscape we initially see anda - - to takeonitselfthetaskofcoming totermswiththeso- affected by questions related to the past and finally started emergence of a new political discourse that was strongly the conveyed also It issue. financial a only not was ment long public debate preceding the creation of the monu- funding initiatives inRussiaandthe US. However, the ment inMagadan,butalsosupportedbyotherprivate and theregionalgovern- federal governmentinMoscow crisis. In the end, the monument was co-sponsored by the expensive art-memory project in the time of economic Raizman (2003), noteveryonesupportedtheidea of an local newspapers. According tothelocalhistorian David mation, the newmonument was vividly discussed inthe was struggling with the effects of post-Soviet transfor lowing years,while a great part of the region’s population Human Rights Organisation Memorial in 1989. In the fol- the initiative of thelocal representative of theRussian vited to Magadan in order to discuss the monument on in- was Neizvestnyi, aRussianémigrélivingintheUS, 2003). ing and the obligation of memory in the present (Raizman the past,whileotheralsorelates to theact of mourn- which refers to Gulag punishment and incarceration in vestnyi, the mask’s face divides into two sections, one of According to the author of the monument, Ernst Neiz- И-О-937. number: prison anonymous an by underlined of thefaceisarrangedaroundabarrenwindowthat can be seen dropping from its left eye. The other half Viewed fromcloseup,tearsintheformofsmallermasks the city and watches all over the surrounding landscape. a humanface,thehugeconcretesculptureloomsabove gion’s industrial area.Raiseduponahillandresembling arrival in Magadan and before their departure to the re- transit campwhereprisonersusedtobetakenaftertheir the monument commemorates the location of a former Situated at the margin of the city by the Kolyma Road, most famousGulagmemorial site intheentireregion. Since itsinauguration in 1996,theMaskofSorrowis TORICAL LANDSCAPE THE MASKOFSORROW AND THE ENACTMENTOF A HIS- region itself. different social and political enactments of the past in the region’shistorical background,butalsoinrelationtothe bearing in mind my ownlimitations in understanding the to enteradiscussionofmemoryandplace in Magadan, and aroundthecityofMagadan. This distinction helps me with thedifferent spatial-temporal readings ofplacein foreground andbackgroundlandscapecorrespondswell between distinction conceptual this that believe I Again 1996: 3). ground’ and‘background’ ofsociallife(Hirsch scape’ entails a relationship between the ‘fore- of the everyday… Defined in this way, then, ‘land- vaguely connected to,butstillseparatefrom,that workaday lifeandanideal imagined existence, http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ - ISSN: 2050-778X Norman Prell 21 - - - - - The Unfamiliar The of mourning in the present. In the formal is turned into a separation, this duality of the monument arrangement cross large a follows sculpture the of outline the when Consider other. the from face of the half one dividing of context particular in the of memory problem ing the the mask, at least in division of this material the Gulag, relates metaphorically monument, of the my own reading between the living and the dead. to a disturbing silence to the monument, this silence was During my own visits landscape of a surrounding the effect often increased by the with communication particular a in itself found that elevated sculpture. In one direction, gazing out into the Mask of Sorrow holds of the Okhotsk Sea, the distance the where Bay, Nagaev the with contact kind of mystic a - pe Dal’stroi ship during the on prisoners used to arrive a young wom- monument side of the reverse riod. On the her face covered by her hands, is an on her knees, with with the fateful Koly- interior turned towards the region’s The River. Kolyma towards the Road disappearing ma a defaced by above her head is joined woman kneeling fall into the same prisoner on a metal cross that seems to on the whole scene the According to Kozaev, direction. resembles an open church reverse side of the monument that flows into the surrounding landscape and evokes the (Raizman dead the for cemetery unbounded an of idea 2003). Road and the Mask of Sorrow con- the Kolyma Together, to the landscape of memory relating stitute a remarkable charged However this temporally Gulag. former region’s representa simple a in itself reveal not does landscape regard with understood, be should it Rather view. tional with interacting idea of several landscapes to Hirsch’s background that as a potential each other simultaneously, The en- circumstances. under particular is only revealed Sorrow that Mask of the at begins past the of actment landscapes. between different functions as a mediator speak to begins only however background region’s The when other conditions join together as well. In the fol- lowing paragraphs, I would like to illustrate through an takes communication how this spatial-temporal example commemorative on the occasion of a particular place event. Before I start my ethnographic description, a few relation more words should be said about the conceptual ship between memory and place. from derive does not proposed here of place notion The as outlined, for example, by René Des- rational geometry, a cartes in his La Géométrie (2001 [1637]), indicating system. site within a three-dimensional-coordinate spatial follows a phenomenologi in this context Rather place for instance, by Edward cal understanding, as advanced, of con- notion Aristotelian to the Casey (1987) in relation steadily holds its contents that as a medium place taining within its own boundaries and thus allows for a certain be- relationship in time. Considering the continuance ‘it is the sta- Casey asserts that and memory, tween place of experiences as a container persistence of place bilizing memorabil its intrinsic so powerfully to contributes that in its the notion of place (Casey 1987: 186). However, ity’ - - perestroika

The first new memorial in Magadan during cial catastrophe of the Gulag. According to the architect architect the to According Gulag. of the catastrophe cial is Mask of Sorrow the Kozaev, Kamil monument, of the Russia is willing to to the world that statement a clear 2003). (Raizman Gulag of the atrocities the for repent - debate of state-spon the on-going comparing However, James after the Holocaust, in Germany sored memory a ‘paralyzing exists there that (1992: 270) argues Young to comes it when memory state-sponsored in ambiguity’ of crimes which the victims of the the commemoration state itself has perpetrated. In Russia this ambiguity were terror and violence because further complicated, is people. own its against arbitrarily state the by organised involves of the Gulag, therefore, The social catastrophe as ‘unjusti- has termed Etkind Alexander a problem that fied repressions’, referring to ‘senseless acts of violence - elude respon agency and therefore, which do not specify dem- and Etkind Young 2009: 184). Both (Etkind sibility’ victory historical to remembering in contrast that onstrate or triumph, the memory of self-inflicted genocide to challenge different mass-murder poses a completely and the task-outline of a related monument. of the local to the victims therefore was not dedicated Gulag but instead came to honour the Berzin, who had also been first Eduard P. boss company, Dal’stroi of the forced labour system. He was ar of the local in charge Here I want to follow Neizvestnyi’s dual interpretation of interpretation dual Neizvestnyi’s follow to want I Here prison- of the suffering the as representing monument the process painful the also addressing as and past the in ers rested in 1937 under the accusation of espionage and and of espionage accusation the in 1937 under rested bronze bust, mounted to death in 1938. His sentenced build- city administration in 1989 in front of the local that will not be easy ing, has opened a path of memory to tread. It instead allows different narratives to come in the past in the present. the ambiguity of that perpetuate conduct as moderate relatively Berzin’s By emphasising - (in comparison to his succes executor chief the region’s in his posthumous rehabilitation sors) and highlighting dis- takes a critical him thus still 1956, commemorating It also allows local residents to tance to Terror. the Stalin in line with the region’s hold on to their settler identities the However, socialism. during construction celebrated how demonstrates Sorrow of Mask the of realisation final conquest remains of the region’s uneasy this narrative local of the the hundreds and thousands of victims with role an important the Mask of Sorrow plays Today Gulag. because it consequently in the local culture of memory, atroci the questions about addressing unpopular keeps ties perpetrated in the region’s Gulag. In the following paragraphs I want to show how this often difficult com- by the past is facilitated with the region’s munication landscape that otherwise of a historical ritual enactment everyday actual hidden behind the city’s tends to remain of this landscape enactment The very ritual appearance. however shows that there exists a constant relationship of so- background foreground and the only between not of the present and cial life, but also between the actuality the memory of the past. ISSN: 2050-778X http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ 22

Essays I The Unfamiliar Mask ofSorrow http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X

Norman Prell 23

The Unfamiliar The Magadan and Nagaev Bay, Sep. 2011 Sep. 2011 Magadan and Nagaev Bay, ISSN: 2050-778X http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ 24

Essays I The Unfamiliar Marking theRoadofMemorythroughMagadanon30 October 2011 (PhotobyV. Smirnova) Nagaev BayinMagadan http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X Norman Prell 25

3 - The Unfamiliar The Za nami pridut ko- pridut Za nami Zabveniiu ne podlezhat (We Special Troika Commissions (consisting of three people) Troika Special functioned as an extra-juridical executive organ of the People’s of the People’s organ executive as an extra-juridical functioned Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). They were and punishment ployed as an instrument for quick execution em- during the Stalin Regime. 2 Following the example of a tradition that had started at in the early Stone in Moscow the Solovetskii Memorial of selection alphabetical an aloud read 1990s, volunteers was led by the The performance names from this book. of the initiative coordinator I. , Smirnova, Vera must not forget!) who afterwards in a of es- the importance with me emphasised conversation the performing link between this interpersonal tablishing and the dead person on the list whose name is volunteer between This focused communication read out in public. a kind of bond to create seemed dead and the living the reading this at present us who were of most between names those of reciting the during least At performance. ritual, of the attendees most Memory this Book of from to personal backgrounds, appeared their different despite be part of one commemorative community. ence of temporal metamorphosis’. This temporal effect effect temporal This metamorphosis’. of temporal ence in arrangement exceptional monument’s the is based on posi- elevated its landscape, surrounding the to relation - Yam to according which, proportions, colossal and tion and start distance the visitor at a functional keep polsky, monu- the approaching when time of flow the upon act to the ritual bus to argument Yampolsky’s ment. Relating people’s to the Mask of Sorrow, tour from Nagaev Bay on the bus while approaching the monu- intense reactions of by this transformation explained ment can partly be time. In other words, approaching the Mask of Sorrow prepared for a breakdown of linear by bus has gradually between past and pres- of the distinction that is, time, in interpreted reactions, emotional ent. From people’s the wider context of my fieldwork experience, I under to experience bus had started on the stood that some of us ways. Long since forgotten the past in more immediate Distant minds. troubled their on reappeared had events bodies. reacting through their returned had memories sepa- being although together joined had lives People’s the in time of collapse gradual The chronologically. rated be seen as a can monument the process of approaching at the Mask the ceremony accompanying element crucial at the monument represents one The arrival of Sorrow. and temporal of spatial stage in this process important right next started to gather People had approximation. sculpture was while the gigantic to the Mask of Sorrow, contrast, of this spatial above their heads. Out looming and the monument had grown into the incommensurable started to play on its transcendental qualities. - com and the past of the revival the stage, next On the with the ritual reading of the dead continued memoration called book, local a from names of us…), published in 1999. for come will ships (The rabli… of list a this book includes as Martirolog, to Also referred been sentenced 7,546 registered cases of people who had commissions. Troika local to death by non-juridical , - - - Sovetskaia

containing function does not imply that the landscape of landscape the that not imply does function containing Bear past do not change. of the and memories Magadan In the morning of 30 October Repressions, of Political Victims Day of the membrance 2011, the Russian Re- and families prisoners, their group of former a small of the city administration friends, some representatives local in front of the myself, meet and others, including procession by House of Culture in order to join the yearly is The idea bus from Nagaev Bay to the Mask of Sorrow. in Magadan and to arrival the prisoners’ to commemorate the city until join them on their walk all the way through Four of the Kolyma at Kilometre camp the former transit two buses slowly the Bay, Nagaev at off Road. Starting of Kommuny and streets the along followed GULAG REMEMBRANCE DAY: THE RETURN OF THE DEAD OF THE RETURN GULAG REMEMBRANCE DAY: ing in mind the idea of different perspectives based on perspectives based the idea of different ing in mind and one work in at simultaneously experiences diverse con- can landscape and place physical location, the same and thus must of memory experience one more than tain are place and landscape Consequently, vary accordingly. as proposed ear relationship, understood as a continuous poles (1996), between different lier with regard to Hirsch tensions but also hold certain that interact of experience of place function While the containing other. with each over time of experience continuity provides for a certain within landscape in respect to its (Casey), the tension (Hirsch) foreground and background qualities different hu- in the disharmonies involved also accounts for the me allows Casey While encounter. spatial-temporal man as a place that continues in time to understand Magadan Hirsch experience, of historical accumulation the through disjunctions historical helps me to address the region’s followed by particular problems of memory. Studying the impact of monuments on the flow of time, that ‘any monu- (1995: 96) argues Yampolsky Mikhail protec- ment creates around itself… a sort of mystical with the experi connected tive zone… that is apparently stopping over at the former disinfection centre, and con- and centre, disinfection former at the over stopping and the Kolyma Road. For Lenina tinuing on via Prospekt region’s with the bus, who were not familiar those on the the journey with illustrated historian Gulag past, a local convoyed along about how prisoners used to be details in backs and their to numbers pinned with streets, these Four on the At Kilometre the company of barking dogs. Kolyma Road the bus turned left onto a small serpentine By then the from below. road approaching the monument atmosphere on the bus had grown increasingly intense. by Gu- song composed singing a popular were People lag prisoners, Ia pomniu tot port Vaninskii (I remember that port , in in Vanino) which the final trip to Magadan baring any planet is described as a journey to a different hope of a return. When we finally arrived at the foot of most people on the bus had started the Mask of Sorrow, transformation that to be under the impact of a particular of space emerging the into closer everybody draw would a commemorative landscape. ISSN: 2050-778X http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ 26

Essays I The Unfamiliar ers inthecamps. fully reciting poems that had been composed by prison- ritual processionwasjoinedbyanunearthlyvoiceforce- monument. After the chimes of the bell had stopped,the inside, before reappearing again on the other side of the monument, passing throughareconstructed prison cell Through asmalldoorpeoplethendisappearedintothe face. sculpture’s the into right staircase final a up climb slowly to began first the while mask, the towards closer emony. Followingthecall of thebell,peoplemovedeven monument, introducingtheultimate stage ofthecer the loud chimes of a bell from the barren window in the an awe-inspiring silence that was only interrupted by concluded, theMaskofSorrowhillwasdominated by Once theritual reading ofthenamesdeadwas cation, leavingbehindbutapotentialsilence. Mask ofSorrowremainsaprivilege of uniquecommuni ethnographic description. This ultimate reality inside the monument, however, cannotreallybeexpressedthrough reuniting with the living. What truly happened inside the The pasthadfallenintothepresent,whiledeadwere between people and their spatial-temporal environment. re- finally sulted, even if not for all participants, in a mystical union had space monumental the into penetration Human boundaries. and temporal spatial all sacrificing had collapsed underthe effect of ‘traumatic proximity’, zone ofthemonument,speakingin Yampolsky’s words, a sense oftheir ‘unusual’ surroundings. The protective were silent and, as far as I could see, carefully tried to get and following me through the reconstructed prison cell inside themonument. The peopleimmediately preceding experience myself themystical potential of thismoment to able partly was I mask, the through procession the ing way.Join- this in past the of experiencing instant final mass gatheringoutsidethemonument,appearedas by one. This isolatedencounter, hiddenawayfromthe People had to pass through this intimate space alone, one prison cell inside the monument was dark and narrow. reconstructed the Indeed, sculpture. the of womb sacral cal thatpeoplenowweregoingto‘meet’ thedeadin from a position high above the city, it seemed only logi- streets ofMagadan,andafter having called the victims After havingfollowed the prisoners’ route through the pathway totheother-world. from afardistance, turning the monument into a liminal nearby, thisvoice,bysometechnical effect, appeared 4 Polius Liutosti The poemswere selected from Suzdal’tsev &Panikarov (eds.) power. (Casey1987:200) intrinsic its to beholden remain we it, membering rein - but last; aban- at ours becomes place Then don… or fear or joy overwhelming of moments in objectlessness this experience We object. nate own luminosity,in its a discrimi- disintegratedas dissolved invisible, becomes account very this on …we feel ourselves merging with a place, which (2010). 4 Although comingfromloudspeakers - - thousands of people has created a haunting condition in uncertainty concerning the disappearance of hundreds of if they were still alive. According to Etkind (2009), this ten notknowwherethearrested hadbeentaken to and ten underunknowncircumstances. The familiesdidof- people inStalin’s Russiadisappearedenmasseandof- friends in order to deal with the person’s death. However, how apersondiedseemstobecrucialforrelatives or place of aperson’s burial. The knowledge ofwhereand however, whichmostlyremainsunsatisfied,concernsthe longings to the victim’s family. The strongest request, than 60yearsago,oraskingforareturnofpersonalbe- about thereasonforanarrestthathadtakenplace more Magadan in the running year of 2011, usually inquiring gram following the event, 120 petitions had been sent to 2011).Efir, Nov (Magadan pro- 1 radio the to According or father, whohad suffered or disappeared in the Gulag and mostofthemhadsomeoneintheirfamily, mother of theintervieweeshadlivedinMagadanforalongtime, now depriving them of their very ability to speak. Most had learned to control in their everyday lives but that was the event,experiencing the proximityofapastthatthey terviewer’s questions. They were still under the effect of tarily burstintotearswhentheytriedtoanswerthein- Efirrightaftertheceremony, someinvolun- Magadan back to the bus. Randomly interviewed by the local radio ticipants seemed exhausted.Slowlytheymadetheirway After passingthroughthe monument, most of the par CONCLUSIONS ON THE AGENCY OFPLACE AND MONUMENT 30 October2011 Remembrance Day ofthePolitical Repressions inMagadan, http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ - ISSN: 2050-778X Norman Prell 27 - - The Unfamiliar The All photographs by the author unless otherwise noted. ent stages of revision. Special thanks to the anonymous feed who has given me an enormously helpful reviewer back that will accompany my work beyond this essay. I am indebted to my interlocutors in Magadan, and espe- cially to Vera I. Smirnova, David I. Raizman, Evgenii Kramarenko, P. Boris M. Sedov, Evgeniia Il’enkova P. article this support whose without Gureeva A. Ol’ga and could not have been realized. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my PhD colleagues in our the initial version of this text and encouraged office who read the to grateful most am I Unfamiliar. The to it send to me differ the through me guided professionally who editor - - - - f u

which the missed person is neither dead nor alive and can nor alive dead is neither person the missed which the dead is This return of a ghost at any time. return as that places of particular to the experience usually linked Mask of Sor The past. the to relate or another way one in In 1996, the Mask of Sorrow started to function also in compensation for the absence of other official memori row and the Road of Bones clearly follow this pattern of follow this pattern Road of Bones clearly row and the memory. place and als relating to the disquieting loss of so many people. Its anonymous of problem the is therefore challenge main of victims, compiled from the ar death. Lists of names and tes- death of a person’s evidence chives, at last speak the in the past. However, committed tify to the crimes historical names at particular ritual reading of individual The of documentation. the matter sites reaches beyond with a social confronts its participants ritual, above all, this convert to partly past and attempts in the catastrophe during through social spectacles of memory catastrophe which the ‘ghosts of the dead’ are finally put for all platform functions as a Mask of Sorrow here The to sleep. memories and sorts of people with their own individual process this in face distorted monument’s The beliefs. complicated works to the country’s as a mirror relating the itself, Resembling the anonymity of death history. with- silence creative of kind a Sorrow renders Mask of outside. Confronting the from out imposing any narrative also generates the sculpture open way, past in this rather in the historical participates new discourses and therefore as functions monument the words, other In itself. process the unmasking exploration, of historical means a creative interpretation. historical event and allowing individual I started this text arguing that memory in the aftermath context. particular of the Gulag has developed in its own repre- historical Under the condition of postcatastrophe, narratives, but sentations in Russia do not follow clear (Etkind and silence by defamiliarisation are dominated ab- the implicate does not however, This silence, 2009). Rather this altogether. sence of language and memory our ways of reading and understand- challenges silence ing the past. I have tried therefore to emphasise the role time. of communication the in landscape and place of reveal only does not for example, Road, Kolyma The and to the transport of prisoners to Magadan physical the simul- (Road of Bones) it As a metaphor River. Kolyma journey between taneously explores the transcendental tran- life and death. Hereby the road conveys a particular which is successfully remem sience of space and time, as the such of movement, practices and images in bered or Road Kolyma the along shoes of hundreds of shuffling body of the monumental passage through the liminal the the prisoners’ from its departure Taking Mask of Sorrow. com- final this Gulag, the of netherworld the into journey in experience a historical also represents act memorative its own that is not only concerned right, an experience new ways into with the past, but one that tries to establish the future. ISSN: 2050-778X http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ 28

Essays I The Unfamiliar (2): 267-296. Germany Today’in Itself against ory Young, JamesE.(1992)‘TheCounter-Monument: Mem- Bloomington andIndianapolis:IndianaUniversityPress. Pp. 93-112 inN.Condee(ed.)Soviet Hieroglyphics Monuments’. of Shadow the ‘In (1995) Yampolsky,M. kolymskikh Lagerei. Magadan:NovaiaPoligrafiia. (2010) (eds.) Liutosti: Stikhiuznikovstalinskikh I. Panikarov, & A. Suzdal’tsev, dom House. (2011). Solzhenitsyn, A. stalinskikh repressii vMagadane zhertvam pamiatnik – Skorbi Raizman, D. (2003)Maska tung desGulag:267-284. Das Lager schreiben. Varlam Shalamov und die Aufarbei ropa. 6 Fakten’und Daten Kolyma. (2007)‚ Panikarov,I. member Stalin.NY: Viking PenguinBooks. (1994) Hochschild, A. don Press. Landscape: Between Place and Space.Oxford:Claren of Hirsch, E., and O’Hanlon, N.(1995)Anthropology sian Fiction’ SlavicReview the Unburied:Magical Historicism inContemporary Rus- Etkind, A. (2009)‘StoriesoftheUndeadinLand Publishing. Hackett Indianapolis: tics, Geometry, andMeteorology. Descartes, R. (2001[1637])DiscourseonMethod, Op- Study. IndianaUniversityPress. Phenomenological Casey,A E.S.(1987)Remembering: 1941. Magadan:SVKNIIDVORAN. lag NKVD SSSR v tsifrakh i dokumentakh. Chast’ 1. 1931- Batsaev, I.D. and Kozlov, A.G. (2002) (2003) Applebaum, A. Aksenov, V.(2010) koi oblasti kotorykh privedeny vispolnenie na territorii Magadans- reabilitirovannykh lits, smertnye prigovory v otnoshenii Spisok korabli: Abramov,pridut nami S.(ed.)(1999)Za REFERENCES . Magadan. Ozhog. Eksmo. The Unquiet Ghosts: Russians Re- Gulag: A History. PenguinBooks. h Glg Archipelago Gulag The . 68(3):631-658. . Magadan. Critical Inquiry. 18 Critical Dal’stroi iSevvost- Osteu- . Ran- Polius - - . http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X http://journals.ed.ac.uk/unfamiliar/ ISSN: 2050-778X The Unfamiliar 29