Gulag Memories

<p> Though the institution of the Gulag was nominally closed over half a decade ago it lives on as an often hotly contested site of memory in the post-socialist era. This ethnographic study takes a holistic comprehensive approach to understanding memories of the Gulag and particularly the language of commemoration that surrounds it in present-day Russian society. It focuses on four regions of particular historical significance-the Solovetsky Islands the Komi Republic the Perm region and Kolyma-to carefully explore how memories become a social phenomenon how objects become heritage and how the human need to create sites of memory has preserved the Gulag in specific ways today.</p>