Rethinking the Gulag

Alan Barenberg is the Buena Vista Foundation Associate Professor of History at Texas Tech University. He is author of Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta. Emily D. Johnson is the Brian and Sandra O'Brien Presidential Professor of Russian at the University of Oklahoma. She is author of How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie and editor and translator of Gulag Letters by Arsenii Formakov.

"Rethinking the Gulag brings together an interdisciplinary group of authors working at the absolute cutting edge of scholarship on the history, literature, and legacy of the infamous Soviet forced labor system. The chapters are polished, intricately researched and argued pieces that come together to create the single best edited collection of work on the Gulag to date."—Steven Barnes, George Mason University"This is a first-rate, innovative, and wide-ranging volume that promises to make a major contribution to Gulag scholarship. It covers a great variety of aspects of the Gulag, and an unprecedented range of methodologies, including cutting-edge digital approaches."—Polly Jones, University of Oxford"Rethinking the Gulag combines groundbreaking interdisciplinary research and innovative methodologies to illuminate under-studied aspects of Gulag history, culture, and legacy, introduced with an enlightening essay on the evolution of Gulag studies by the volume's editors, professors Alan Barenberg and Emily D. Johnson. It opens new vistas and establishes new standards for Gulag studies. It is one of those rare contributions that is both a must-read for researchers and eminently appropriate for the classroom."—Diane Nemec-Ignashev, Carleton College

• 1. Introduction: Gulag Studies since the Archival Revolution, by Alan Barenberg and Emily D. JohnsonPart I: Identities2. Religious Identity, Practice, and Hierarchy at the Solovetskii Camp of Forced Labor of Special Significance, by Jeffrey S. Hardy3. Censoring the Mail in Stalin's Multi-ethnic Penal System: The Use of Languages Other Than Russian in Soviet Inmate Correspondence, by Emily D. Johnson4. "Who are you in life?": The Gulag Reputation System and its Legacies Today, by Gavin Slade5. The Real Gulag: Commentary on the "Identities" Section, by Lynne ViolaPart II: Sources6. "They won't survive for long": Soviet Officials on Medical Release Procedures, by Mikhail Nakonechnyi7. Applying Digital Methods to Forced Labor History: German POWs During and After the Second World War, by Susan Grunewald8. Framing Gulag Memoirs: A Distant Reading, by Sarah J. Young9. Researching the Gulag in the Era of "Big Data": Commentary on the "Sources" Section, by Judith PallotPart III: Legacies10. The Role of Nature in Gulag Poetry: Shalamov and Zabolotsky, by Josephine von Zitzewitz11. "I would very much like to read your story about Kolyma": Georgii Demidov, Varlam Shalamov, and the Development of Gulag Prose, 1965-67, by Alan Barenberg12. The Necropolis of the Gulag as a Historical-Cultural Object: An Overview and Explication of the Problem, by Irina Anatolievna Flige (translated by Josephine von Zitzewitz)13. Sites and Sounds of the Camps: Commentary on the "Legacies" Section, by Alexander Etkind14. Afterword, by Alan Barenberg and Emily D. JohnsonIndex