Journal archive

Abstract: This article is devoted to a group of closely related people who, having fought Bolsheviks, remained in Soviet Russia, adopting survivalist conformism, yet did not avoid arrest, prison, exile and camp; who escaped from the country to save their lives and speak analytically about the USSR; who fell into the trap of a “conspiracy of silence” which still lasts. Firstly, the notion of ‘elsewhereness’ is applied to their life-time peripeties. Secondly, ‘liminality’ the unity of those peripeties with a posthumous sequel, considering them part of the group’s interaction with a hegemonising agency, showing the correlativity between ‘elsewhereness’ and ‘liminality’, and applying theoretic perspectives on ‘liminality’ by Spariosu and Szakolczai. Put differently, I view the condition of enduring a “conspiracy of silence” is viewed as an aspect of ‘elsewhereness’, and the policy of “silencing” the group as ‘liminalisation’, yet recognising that the ‘agents’ of “silencing” are themselves inscribed in a liminal situation. Thirdly, the non-personal object of “silencing” is identified – the set of accounts and ideas ignored due to their unpleasantness or to reservations about their source: the pre-Solzhenitsyn accounts and ideas about Gulag, at which anglophone scholarship arrives only recently as if at its own discoveries, while selectively ignoring the precedents. Fourthly, that set is related to ‘elsewhereness’ and ‘liminality’, viewing concentration camp experience as one both of ‘being-elsewhere’ and ‘liminal’, and the venture to create those camps as ‘liminal’. Alongside with this, the heurism of generalisations by I. Solonevich, one of the members of the aforementioned group, and by some people who, in different times, followed the Solonevichs beyond the state border of the USSR (M. Nikonov-Smorodin, M. Heller), is demonstrated.

About the author(s) :

Yordan Lyutskanov

Institute for Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia, Bulgaria)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6363-1585

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 19.11.2021; date of publication: 25.12.2021.

References:

Alexopoulos, G. (2015). Destructive-Labor Camps: Rethinking Solzhenitsyn’s Play on Words. In Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (New Series). Vol. 16. No. 3, pp. 499–526.

Applebaum, A. (2003). Gulag: A History. New York, Doubleday. 677 p.

Baron, N. (2001). Conflict and Complicity: The Expansion of the Karelian Gulag, 1923–1933. In Cahiers du Monde russe. Vol. 42. No. 2/4, pp. 615–648.

Baron, N. (2002). Production and Terror: The Operation of the Karelian Gulag, 1933–1939. In Cahiers du Monde russe. Vol. 43. No. 1, pp. 139–179.

Beaujour, E. K. (1984). Prolegomena to a Study of Russian Bilingual Writers. In The Slavic and East European Journal. Vol. 28. No. 1, pp. 58–75.

Bell, W. T. (2013). Was the Gulag an Archipelago? De-Convoyed Prisoners and Porous Borders in the Camps of Western Siberia. In The Russian Review. No. 72, pp. 116–141.

Berdinskikh, V. (2005). Spetsposelentsy: politicheskaya ssylka narodov SSSR [Special Settlers: the Political Exile of the Peoples of the USSR]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 765 p.

Berdinskikh, V., Berdinskikh I., Verem’ev, V. (2015). Sistema spetsposelenii v Sovetskom soiuze 1930–1950-kh godov [The System of Special Settlements in the Soviet Union of the 1930s–1950s]. Syktyvkar, Institut yazyka, literatury i istorii Komi NTs UrO RAN. 244 p.

Brown, K. (2007). Out of Solitary Confinement: The History of the Gulag (Review). In Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Vol. 8. No. 1, pp. 67–103.

Conolly, V. (1938a). Observation in Russia. By Sidney I. Luck (Review). In International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931–1939). Vol. 17. No. 6, pp. 868–869.

Conolly, V. (1938b). Russia in Chains. By Ivan Solonevich (Review). In International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931–1939). Vol. 17. No. 6, p. 869.

Conolly, V. (1939). Urch, R. O. G. The Rabbit King of Russia (Review). In International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931–1939). Vol. 18. No. 4, p. 587.

Conolly, V. (1969). C. R. Bawden, The Modern History of Mongolia (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968) (Review). In Studies in Comparative Communism. Vol. 2. No. 2, p. 179–183.

Coyne, E. J. (1938). Soviet Tempo by Violet Conolly (Review). In The Irish Monthly. Vol. 66. No. 775, pp. 10–14.

Dundovich, E., Gori, F., Guercetti, E. (Eds.). (2003). Reflections on the Gulag: With a Documentary Index on the Italian Victims of the Gulag. Milano, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. xi+705 p.

Finkel, S. (2008). The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. In History. Vol. 36. No. 1, p. 71.

From the Editors. (2015). In Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Vol. 16. No. 3, pp. 469–475

Geller, M. (1974). Kontsentratsionnyi mir i sovetskaya literatura [The Concentration [Camps] World and Soviet Literature]. London, Overseas Publication Exchange. 354 p.

Gullotta, A. (2011). A New Perspective for Gulag Literature Studies: the Gulag Press. In Studi Slavistici. Vol. 8, pp. 95–111.

Gullotta, A. (2012). Trauma and Self in the Soviet Context: Remarks on Gulag Writings. In AutobiografiЯ. No. 1, pp. 73–87.

Jolluck, K. R. (2011). Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (Review). In European History Quarterly. Vol. 41. No. 1, pp. 176–178.

Knapp, B. L. (1991). Exile and the Writer: Exoteric and Esoteric Experiences: A Jungian Approach. University Park (Pa.), Pennsylvania University Press. 253 p.

Moine, N. (2007). The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. In Cahiers du Monde russe. Vol. 48. No. 4, pp. 728–732.

Neumann, I. (1999). Uses Of The Other: “The East” in European Identity Formation. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. 283 p.

Nikonov-Smorodin, M. (1938). Krasnaya katorga: Zapiski solovchanina [The/A Red Katorga: Notes by a Solovki Inmate]. Sofia, Izdatel’stvo N.T.S.N.P. 371 p.

Pieralli, C. (2013). La lirica nella ‘zona’: poesia femminile nei GULag staliniani e nelle carceri. In Alberti, A., Moracci, G. (Eds.). Linee di confine. Separazioni e processi di integrazione nello spazio culturale slavo. Firenze, pp. 221–246.

Rozanov, M. (1979). Solovetskii kontslager’ v monastyre. 1922–1939:  Fakty – Domysly – “Parashi”: Obzor vospominanii

solovchan solovchanami: v 2 kn. i 8 ch. Kn. 1 (ch. 1-3) [The Solovetsky Concentration Camp in the Monastery. 1922–1939: Facts – Conjectures – Dirt: An Overview of Solovki Residents’ Memoirs by Solovki Residents]. USA, Author’s ed. 293 p.

Shearer, D. (2015). The Soviet Gulag – an Archipelago? In Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Vol. 16. No. 3, pp. 711–724.

Shapovalov, V. (Ed). (2001). Remembering the Darkness: Women in Soviet Prisons [anthology]. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield. xiii+377 p.

Solonevich, I. (1935). Collectivisation in Practice. In The Slavonic and East European Review. Vol. 14. No. 40, pp. 81–97.

Solonevich, I (1936a). Proiskhozhdenie i tsel’ «Golosa Rossii» [The Genesis and Aim of “Voice of Russia”]. In Golos Rossii. No. 1 (18 June), pp. 1–2.

Solonevich, I. (1936b). Pochemu v Sofii [Why in Sofia]? In Golos Rossii. No. 4 (9 July), p. 3.

Solonevich, I. (1938). Rossia v kontslagere [Russia in Concentration Camp]. 3rd ed. Sofia, Golos Rossii. 518 p.

Solonevich, I. (1938a). Russia in Chains: A Record of Unspeakable Suffering; Vol. 1 / trans. by Warren Harrow. London, Williams and Norgate. 315 p.

Solonevich, I. (1938b). Soviet Paradise Lost / trans. by Warren Harrow. New York, Paisley. 313 p.

Spariosu, M. I. (2015). Modernism and Exile: Play, Liminality, and the Exilic-Utopian Imagination. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. xxi+209.

Szakolczai, A. (2000). Reflexive Historical Sociology. London & New York, Routledge. xiv+281 p.

Szakolczai, A. (2017). Permanent Liminality and Modernity: Analysing the Sacrificial Carnival though Novels. Abingdon & New York, Routledge. ix+271 p.

Terner, V. (1983). Simvol i ritual [Symbol and Ritual]. Moscow, Nauka. 280 p.

Thomassen, B. (2009). The Uses and Meanings of Liminality. In International Political Anthropology. Vol. 2. No. 1, pp. 5–27.

Toker, L. (2000). Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors. Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press. xv+333 p.

Toker, L. (2019). Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps: An Intercontextual Reading. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2019. xii+281 p.

Tsarevskaya-Diakina, T. V. (2005). Istoriya stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh – pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov. Sobranie dokumentov v semi tomakh. T. 5: Spetspereselentsy v SSSR [The History of Stalin’s Gulag. End of 1920s – First Half of 1950s.

A Collection of Documents, in 7 vols. Vol. 5: Special Re-settlers in the USSR]. Moscow, Rosspen. 824 p.

Viola, L. (1996). Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press. 312 p.

Viola, L. (2002). The Cold War in American Soviet Historiography and the End of the Soviet Union. In The Russian Review. No. 61, pp. 25–34.

Viola, L. (2003). The Aesthetic of Stalinist Planning and the World of the Special Villages. In Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 101–128.

Viola, L. (2009). The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press. xxv+278 p.