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Memories of the Gulag Memories of the Gulag in unpublished Gulag life writing during the Khrushchev Thaw: A personal narrative analysis against the backdrop of the 1960s’ post-Stalinist discourse. MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam July 2018 Author: Arthur Koeman Student number: 10631097 Main Supervisor: dr. S. (Sudha) Rajagopalan Second Supervisor: dr. C. (Claske) Vos Summary The topic of my thesis is the interaction between the creation of narratives in Gulag life writing by former victims of the Great Terror and the dominant post-Stalinist discourses on the status of returnees in society and exposure of the past. During the period of de-Stalinisation under Khrushchev, commonly referred to as the period of ‘Thaw’, many former prisoners found the incentive to write one’s memoir. I analyse the narrating strategies as adopted in the memoirs and the use of particular discursive devices that support the narrating strategies of the author to negotiate in the dominant discourses. With this study, I aim to contribute to the understanding of the Gulag memoir as a historically specific genre. The primary sources of this study are three unpublished Gulag memoirs, written by Maria Moiseevna Goldberg (1901-1984), Olga Michailovna Kuchumova (1902-1988), and Maria Karlovna Sandratskaia (1898-1984), written resp. in 1963, 1961, and 1964. The methodology of this study is the personal narrative analysis, as developed in autobiography studies. Such a qualitative assessment entails a close reading of the text to reveal particular narrating strategies from the explicit as well as the implicit objectives of the authors. To understand the workings of narrative creation, I explain the Foucauldian concept of discourse, the self, experience, and personal memory within a framework of subjectivity. To historicize the narrative, I sketch first the main political and societal developments during the Khrushchev Thaw and point to the dominant tropes and narratives in official statements, literature and other channels that have been dominant in the formation of the discourse. My research demonstrates that the authors of this study either frame their stories as politically neutral or align themselves with the state by condemning Stalin and his ‘cult of personality’. Since the quest of guilt had been full of ambiguities, the authors circumvent the involvement of the Party during the repressive years and instead present their continued loyalty to the Party and the willingness to continue to work for the cause of communism. What is surprising though, is that the authors break with the Party’s caution not to start a second purge among Stalin’s former henchmen and use the memoir to name and shame local perpetrators of the camp who had lost themselves in brutality and abuse of power. On the other hand, they name and praise those who remained ‘honest’ citizens and communists. I understand this as a strategy of ethics by which the authors juxtapose their honesty with the dishonest other to renegotiate their position as a former prisoner in society and the communist collective. By narrating with a collective voice, personal experience is framed as a larger shared experience of a collective of victims. By this, the writing of such outward-looking memoirs is a powerful and mobilising force by which the authors empowered themselves as survivors in a societal climate of distrust about their innocence and a tendency not to dwell on the past. ii Table of Contents Summary ii Acknowledgements iv Note on Transliteration v Chapter 1: On the research subject and methodology 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 The genre of the Gulag memoir 4 1.3 Selection of primary sources 6 1.4 Methodology and limitations 8 Chapter 2: Theoretical framework 12 2.1 Discourse 12 2.2 The self 13 2.3 Experience 14 2.4 Personal memory and remembering 15 Chapter 3: Historical context and public discourse 16 3.1 Silent de-Stalinisation (1953-1955) 16 3.2 The Secret Speech (1956) and its aftermath 17 3.3 Memory and trauma 19 3.4 Responses from ‘below’ 21 Chapter 4: Textual analysis 23 4.1 Framing 24 4.2 First stage: Deprivation of freedom 28 4.2.1 A period of uncertainty 29 4.2.2 The arrest 30 4.2.3 Prison and sentence 32 4.2.4 Etap 34 4.3 Second stage: Life in the camp 36 4.3.1 Human dignity 37 4.3.2 The other 43 4.3.3 On the connection with the nation outside the zone 48 4.3.4 On release and return: reflections 49 Chapter 5: Conclusion 52 Bibliography 55 iii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor dr. Sudha Rajagopalan for guiding me in the process of writing this thesis. Apart from her supervision, I would like to thank her for excellent teaching that introduced me to the scholarly field of Soviet subjectivity and the topic of Soviet self-writing. I will remember the numerous brainstorms we have had on the subject of this thesis, and I am grateful for her suggestions and for helping me with structuring my thoughts. Secondly, I would like to thank dr. Christian Noack and prof. dr. Michael Kemper for the inspiring seminars in the master track of East European studies. Having arrived from a very different educational background, they encouraged and helped me during the year to improve my skills in writing, reading, and argumentation. Thanks to the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam and Memorial in Moscow through which I got access to the archive in which the memoirs of former victims of Stalinism are stored. Many thanks to Vladimir Bobrovnikov for co-reading my thesis and for helping me with difficulties in translation. I am grateful for the many suggestions he gave on supplementary readings. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, mum and dad, who supported my choice to enrol in this master. Without their support, it all would not have been possible. Arthur Koeman iv Note on Transliteration To transcribe particular Russian words in Cyrillic script into the English Latin script, I make use of the ‘Modified Library of Congress’ system of transliteration because of its simplicity and readability for non-Russian speakers. In some cases, I deviate from this system if it concerns names of persons, cities and concepts that are better known by its English Latin script – for example, the family name Goldberg instead of Gol’dberg and the first name Olga instead of Ol’ga. As it concerns the bureaucratic acronym of ‘GULag’ (Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei or: Main Camps' Administration) I will refer to it as ‘Gulag’. v Chapter 1: On the research subject and methodology 1.1 Introduction Shortly after the death of First Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin in 1953, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet decreed a mass amnesty for the release of a million prisoners that were sentenced and sent to labour camps during Stalin’s reign.1 It was an extraordinary reform that would be the start of a period usually referred to as the ‘Thaw’(Ottepel’). Led by First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev the Soviet Union underwent a period of de-Stalinisation, that is the reversal of Stalin’s oppressive policies and the removal of Stalin’s ’cult of personality’ (kul’t lichnosti) that, according to Khrushchev in his 1956 Speech as delivered to the Congress, had been the source of all evil in the past decades. The repressive and authoritarian reign of Stalin, together with the destroying impact of the war, had left deep material and emotional scars in Russia’s society. Over the years, millions of Soviet citizens had been arrested for minor crimes, the thwarting of state policies, or simply out of suspicion of being a ‘Counter-revolutionary’ (Kontrrevoliutsioner). Those ‘Enemies of the People’ (Vragi Naroda), as Stalin referred to political prisoners, were sent away to stay and work in labour camps for years. Having its antecedent in pre-Soviet Russia, the system of labour camps expanded during the early Soviet era with camps set up all over Russia and the southern Soviet republics. This cheap resource of labour had the potential to be contributive to the economic development of the country, and besides this, work in the camp was a means of re-education and reformation of the criminal into a good Soviet citizen.2 The system of labour camps, better known by its acronym ‘Gulag’, and the procedure of arrest, interrogation, transport, and work, were standardised and optimised over the decades. Because of the system’s enormous size, some former prisoners described that at its height it had created the image of two versions of life in Russia: life within and outside the ‘zone’ of the camp.3 The long duration of imprisonment and often poor living conditions in the camp caused many deaths among the prisoners. The death of Stalin marked a change in the state’s attitude towards the Gulag and its prisoners. In the years after the mass amnesty of 1953, under the supervision of Khrushchev, a growing number of amnesties were issued to camp prisoners and among them also the political prisoners. The return of former political prisoners proved to be an uneasy re- unification of the two Russias since it confronted society and the authorities with a past full of difficulties. It was only in the late 1950s with a ‘Secret Speech’ in 1956 given by Khrushchev that the topic of the Gulag and the political repression could be openly discussed. First within the upper 1 Anne Applebaum, Gulag - a History (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 430. 2 More on the origins and development of the Gulag, I refer to: Applebaum, Gulag - a History.
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