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Connor Doak University of Bristol Inside Stalin's Concentration Camps: What

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Connor Doak University of Bristol Inside Stalin's Concentration Camps: What Connor Doak University of Bristol Inside Stalin's Concentration Camps: What can the writings of survivors reveal? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) “Frequently, in painful camp seethings, in a column of prisoners, when chains of lanterns pierced the gloom of the evening frosts, there would well up inside us the words that we should like to cry out to the whole world, if the whole world could hear one of us. Then it seemed so clear: what our successful ambassador would say, and how the world would immediately respond with its comment.” — From the NoBel Lecture, 1970 “Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of Bad in his own and others' eyes.... That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.... Without evildoers there would have Been no Archipelago." — From The Gulag Archipelago (written 1960s; published abroad 1973) “It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my Bent Back, which nearly Broke Beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human Being Becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to Be infalliBle, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor Between classes, nor between political parties either—But right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. That is why I turn Back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those aBout me: “Bless you, prison!” I . have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having Been in my life!” — From The Gulag Archipelago Yevgenia Ginzburg (1904–1977) From Journey into the Whirlwind (written 1960s; published abroad 1967) Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) From Kolyma Tales (written 1954–1973; puBlished aBroad in the 1970s) === Further Reading List of GULAG narratives By Sarah Young (UCL): http://sarahjyoung.com/site/reading-lists/gulag-narratives/ Online GULAG Museum, maintained By Memorial, a Russian human rights organization. The site is gradually being translated into English: http://www.gulagmuseum.org/start.do?language=2 Anne AppelBaum, GULAG: A History of the Soviet Camps (2003) Fyodor Mochulsky, Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir (2011) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–56: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (1974–1978) .
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