DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2023.3.40640

Abstract: The periodization of political repression in the USSR was and remains an urgent issue in the study of the GULAG. According to A.V. Bakunin, when determining the main stages of political repression in the USSR, it is necessary to proceed from the periodization of Soviet totalitarianism, which includes three main stages: the formation (genesis) of totalitarianism (1917–1929), the domination (apogee) of totalitarianism (1929–1953), stagnation and collapse of totalitarianism (1953–1991). After 1991, the mass publication of memoirs of former prisoners of Soviet camps has begun, and it is the memories that are the main source for our research. As part of the current work, we hypothesize that the perception and transmission of memories of the camps may be influenced by the period or stage of repression in which the prisoners served time. The conducted content analysis of memoirs of former GULAG prisoners in subgroups by gender and stage of political repression allows us to conclude that in all subgroups of documents the categories of "Power", "Life" and "Work" dominate, regardless of the stage of political repression and the gender of the authors of the memoirs. This confirms the thesis that in the memory of former prisoners, first of all, memories associated with daily survival in the camp and overcoming inhuman living and working conditions leave an imprint. At the same time, it can be noted that in the subgroups with a small number of incoming documents and marked elements, for example, in the subgroup "women, dates of arrest from 1918 to 1922", significant deviations in the frequency of occurrence are observed – bright connections of atypical categories are revealed. Conversely, the more texts and the larger the studied subgroup, the more common features of the perception of camp life appear. This confirms the hypothesis about the massive nature of large arrays of thematically similar texts.

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2022.6.39493

Abstract: The memoirs of GULAG prisoners are an underestimated source on the history of repression in the USSR, although written and oral memories allow a deeper understanding of what prisoners had to go through and complement the dry and incomplete data from official sources. In this study the memoirs of prisoners published on the resource of the Sakharov Center "Memories of the GULAG and their authors" and transcripts of video interviews with the repressed of the project "My GULAG" of the GULAG History Museum were used as a source. The paper analyzes the features of working with written and oral memories. The comparison of the results of content analysis in groups by gender as well as by the form of fixation of memories - written (memoirs) and oral (interview materials) – was carried out to identify various gender characteristics of perception and broadcasting of camp life. The analysis suggests that despite the gender differences in the perception and translation of the camp stage of life by men and women in written and oral memories the global view of former prisoners on the period of repression does not depend on gender or on the form of fixation of memories. The more texts of memoirs and transcripts of memories there are in the group, and the larger the group of texts is studied, the more common features of the perception of camp life appear. This confirms the hypothesis about the massive nature of large arrays of thematically similar texts.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2021.3.36214

Abstract: Political repressions affected representatives of all social strata and groups. This period left a bulk of documents, including memoirs, where the most intimate and difficult thoughts and recollections of their authors are reflected. One of valuable sets of memoirs of political repressions history is collected by the Sakharov Center website. The electronic resource "Memories of the Gulag and their authors" is valuable not only because it exhibits memoirs of more than one and a half thousand people who suffered from repressions but also because of the biographical information about the authors of these memoirs compiled on the basis of information from the memoirs. Biographical data on the victims of the Gulag system became the main source of this study. They allow us to describe and analyze the social portrait of Gulag victims who left memories. Biographical data became a source for creating the database "Gulag prisoners-authors of memoirs". The social portrait of the repressed and its characteristic features were described, as well as a comparison of the social portrait of male and female prisoners was made. Males and females were analyzed separately to pursue the goal set. The analysis suggests that there is a certain similarity of biographical characteristics among the authors of the memoirs which is probably due to the fact that the educated, intelligent segments of the population were one of the objects of a purposeful repressive policy followed in the Soviet state. .