In Death and Redemption, Steven Barnes provides the first major revision in our understanding of the Gulag since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago of the 1970s. Barnes, while noting that Solzhenitsyn – who lacked archival records and relied only on first-hand testimony and his own personal experience – was remarkably correct about many aspects of the Gulag’s history, nevertheless challenges Solzhenitsyn’s contention that we should understand the Gulag only as a place of destruction. Instead, Barnes argues that the
Gulag was a space of both death and redemption. Drawing upon findings from the early
1990s that approximately 20% of Gulag inmates were released each year (“the most important archival-based revelation” [10] concerning the Gulag), Barnes seeks to …show more content…
Yet the strength of the book is less in the overall argument than in the details.
Death and Redemption at its most fundamental level is an in-depth history of the Gulag during the Stalin era, with an archival focus on the camps of the Karaganda region of
Kazakhstan, supplemented by a wide array of memoirs for the Gulag as a whole. And in this detailed history, Barnes reveals an insight into many facets of the Gulag’s history, immediately making it a key foundational work in the small but burgeoning subfield of
Gulag studies. On topics as varied as forced labor, escapes, gender identity, the Gulag at war, ethnic deportations, propaganda, the special camps, resistance, and ethnic solidarity among the prisoner population, Barnes offers considerable information and analysis.
Importantly, because of his careful attention to both central Gulag archival documents and the documents of a particular camp, Barnes is able to show that the Gulag as it existed on paper was not always the same as the reality. For example, authorities had trouble eradicating contact between the prisoners and the free population (43–46,
Gulag was a space of both death and redemption. Drawing upon findings from the early
1990s that approximately 20% of Gulag inmates were released each year (“the most important archival-based revelation” [10] concerning the Gulag), Barnes seeks to …show more content…
Yet the strength of the book is less in the overall argument than in the details.
Death and Redemption at its most fundamental level is an in-depth history of the Gulag during the Stalin era, with an archival focus on the camps of the Karaganda region of
Kazakhstan, supplemented by a wide array of memoirs for the Gulag as a whole. And in this detailed history, Barnes reveals an insight into many facets of the Gulag’s history, immediately making it a key foundational work in the small but burgeoning subfield of
Gulag studies. On topics as varied as forced labor, escapes, gender identity, the Gulag at war, ethnic deportations, propaganda, the special camps, resistance, and ethnic solidarity among the prisoner population, Barnes offers considerable information and analysis.
Importantly, because of his careful attention to both central Gulag archival documents and the documents of a particular camp, Barnes is able to show that the Gulag as it existed on paper was not always the same as the reality. For example, authorities had trouble eradicating contact between the prisoners and the free population (43–46,