The Gulag Survivor Beyond the Soviet System

Even before its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union was engaged in an ambivalent struggle to come to terms with its violent and repressive history. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, entrenched officials attempted to distance themselves from the late dictator without questioning the underlying legitimacy of the Soviet system. At the same time, the return of Gulag victims to society opened questions about the nature, reality, and mentality of the system that remain contentious to this day. This book is the first to examine at length and in-depth the post-camp experience of Stalin's victims and their fate in post-Soviet Russia. As such, it is an essential companion to the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Written and researched while Russian archives were most available and while there were still survivors to tell their stories, The Gulag survivor is a groundbreaking work in modern Russian history.