Gulag Voices Todorov Analysis

The first impression society might assume of the Gulags is that there was no room for moral life in the camps, in that there was no opportunity to be a good person in an environment of cruelty and death. This might have been the case in a few situations, however, there was always room for morality, whether it was intentional or subconsciously. We need to realize that these facilities were dehumanizing and to save some sort of moral direction may have conserved the individual’s identity. To say all prisoners in the Gulag had aspects of moral life is a broad assumption, as historians we need to look at what caused the loss of morality in these situations. To understand the significance of morality in the Gulags we also have to examine the detrimental …show more content…
Considering Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of moral life and analyzing the “Gulag Voices” by Anne Applebaum we will be able to evaluate morality verses immorality in the Gulag labor camps.
Analyzing Todorov’s “Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps” he gives the audience an intriguing theory, a theory of moral life and if it actually existed in the labor camps. “The camp was a great test of our moral strength, of our everyday morality” In the “Gulag Voices” we can examine each memoir and depict if there was any morality in their tragic experience in the Gulags, was morality a way of keeping their individuality or was it to help the prisoners keep any sense of good in their lives? Elena Glinka had a traumatizing experience in the Kolyma camp; she was falsely arrested and sent away from her schooling. With her involvement in the camp we can only praise her for having a morbid sense of gratefulness for the disturbing event that developed her time in the camps. Glinka was raped by the miners’ Party boss and considered herself lucky for that. She felt blessed, she had not been raped by numerous men like other women had endured, she became one man’s property and that was her saving grace. “She thanked God that