Description
Book SynopsisReflects on the writings and testimonies that shed light on the veiled aspects of totalitarianism, dehumanisation, and atrocity. Identifying key themes that recur in the narratives - arrest, the stages of trial, imprisonment, escape, and more - the author discusses the historical, political, and social contexts of accounts of the Gulag experience.
Trade ReviewToker (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) provides a far-ranging and penetrating study of Russian camp literature. Traditionally read chiefly for its horrifying content, this literature has received little attention for its aesthetic qualities. Toker concedes the priority of the moral aspect but places her topic in wider contexts. She first provides a historical sketch of the archipelago, as Solzhenitsyn, its most famous survivor, described the vast camp system stretching across the Soviet Union. Although the author examines many accounts, those of Solzhenitsyn are at the book's core: these and Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov's story cycles provide the basis for such meta-literary issues as the interrelations of factography, history, memoir, and fiction; the structure of camp writings (from arrest through release); and the relation to Russian literary tradition. Many classics of the genre (by Evgenia Ginzburg, the Pole Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, the American Alexander Dolgun) serve as sources in formulating a composite model. Also addressed are writers who may or may not have served camp time but whose fictions take place in their shadow, e.g., Iurii Dombrovskii, Georgi Vladimov, A. Siniavskii, Sergi Dovlatov. Toker provides an excellent survey of a genre and a judicious consideration of the many issues it raises. Russian and English bibliography. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers.July 2001
-- D. B. Johnson * emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara *
Table of ContentsPreliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Introduction
1. Soviet Labor Camps: A Brief History
2. The Literary Corpus: Memoirs
3. Camp Memoirs as a Genre
4. The Gulag Archipelago
5. From Factography to Fictionalization
6. Varlam Shalamov
7. The Gulag Fiction of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
8. In the Wake of Testimony
Notes
Works Cited
Index
