Academic literature on the topic 'Labor camps – fiction'

This paper examines the memory of the Romanian-German victims of the Soviet Gulag as recorded in recent collections of testimonies and interviews, a museum exhibition, an audio-visual documentary project, and Herta Müller’s 2009 novel Atemschaukel. It employs Alexander Etkind’s notions of “soft memory” and “hard memory” to discuss some of the key historical and political events that have impeded the establishing of consensual remembrance policies of the Soviet Gulag in communist Romania. I show how both German and Romanian communities since 1990 have memorialized the Gulag and discuss Atemschaukel as a legitimate impulse to document both personal and collective trauma of the second and subsequent generations. I argue that in the absence of a crystallized, hard memory, the historical documents and the historical fiction analyzed serve as viable examples of soft memory that succeed in memorializing the forced labor camps experience in its collective and individual forms.

The dendroimage image of Siberia is considered in the context of geopoetics and ethnodendrology. For the first time the proposed analysis systematizes the motives associated with the image of larch, one of the main trees in the region. The research materials are scientific works on ethnography and folklore studies, Russian and Russian-language fiction about Siberia written in the XIX-XX centuries. The name of the tree reflects its dual status: coniferous and deciduous simultaneously. The “gender” of the larch is also indeterminate: male / female. The larch has an «intermediate» position in the system of the most important dendroimages of the Siberian text: between cedar and birch. It can be associated with universal tree mythologemes (World Tree, Tree of Life and Death, family tree, etc.), but it most clearly embodies the basic concept of Siberia as a space of violence, hard labor, exile, concentration camps.

In his monumental non-fiction book, The Gulag Archipelago, Nobel Prize-winning author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn illustrates real events in Soviet labor camps in literary form. The depiction of EVIL is shocking. The totalitarian Soviet regime subjected millions of people to a horrific fate. As is generally well-known, A. Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a Soviet concentration camp. Mass terror was the essence of Soviet totalitarianism. A. Solzhenitsyn included a lecture on Soviet criminal law in his book, stressing the importance of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in authorizing this terrorism. Solzhenitsyn himself was not a lawyer. However, his conclusions were very accurate. Article 58 of the Criminal Code, which consisted of seventeen paragraphs, defined “counter-revolutionary offenses”. They were obviously punished most severely. Article 58 became a weapon of terror for the Soviet authorities, who used it to convict millions of innocent people.

Soviet Criminal Law in the Eyes of a Gulag Prisoner: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Lecture on Criminal Law in Light of The Gulag Archipelago In his monumental non-fiction book, The Gulag Archipelago, Nobel Prize winning author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn illustrates real events in Soviet labor camps in literary form. The depiction of EVIL is shocking. The totalitarian Soviet regime subjected millions of people to a horrific fate. As is gener- ally well-known, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a Soviet concentration camp. Mass terror was the essence of Soviet totalitarianism. Solzhenitsyn included a lecture on Soviet criminal law in his book, stressing the importance of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in authorizing this terrorism. Solzhenitsyn himself was not a lawyer. However, his conclusions were very accurate. Article 58 of the Criminal Code, which consisted of seventeen paragraphs, defined “counter-revolutionary offenses”. They were obviously punished most rticle 58 became a weapon of terror for the Soviet authorities, who used it convict millions of innocent people. Słowa kluczowe: Aleksandr Sołżenicyn, Nagroda Nobla, prawo karne ZS

The purpose of this article is to collect together separate pieces of information about A. Bogdanov’s exile in Vologda and retrace the conditions under which his formation as a politician and a thinker was taking place in those years. An outstanding scientist, philosopher, physician and revolutionary, Alexander Bogdanov spent three years in exile in Vologda (1901–03). A. Lunacharsky, A. Remizov, N. Berdyaev, B. Kistyakovsky, P. Shchegolev, B. Savinkov and his wife V. Uspenskaya, and many of the future prominent figures of the Bolshevik Party were in exile in Vologda during that period. For a year and a half, Alexander Bogdanov lived in the village of Kuvshinovo near Vologda and worked as a doctor at a psychiatric hospital, the description of which he later used in his science fiction novel Red Star. After leaving the service and obtaining permission for private practice, he used his practice as an excuse to visit his associates. He helped the Vologda exiles by giving them medical examination certificates to be submitted to the police, which allowed the exiles to stay in the governorate city rather than be sent to the remote settlements of Vologda Governorate. In the course of numerous discussions between exiles belonging to different philosophical and political camps, Bogdanov’s skill as a philosopher and polemicist was honed. Thanks to the tremendous dedication, hard work, and concentration on his scientific activities, Alexander Bogdanov had strengthened his reputation as a famous Marxist writer by the end of the exile. Moreover, due to his illegal correspondence with the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper, he established contacts with the leading circles of the emerging Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The time Alexander Bogdanov spent in exile in Vologda paid off and produced a great effect on his formation as a researcher and a political activist.

Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel/ Atemschaukel is an innovative attempt to remember and narrate traumatic experiences. The novel reads like a document and, at the same time, like fiction. Through a complex overlapping and poetic condensation of the most diverse memories, Herta Müller has created a place where she and her readers commemorate all those who perished or were exterminated in dictatorships, labour camps and death camps. The challenge is to keep lived memories alive by reinventing them in the process of post-memorial writing.

By the “Great Wall of Confinement,” the authors refer to the prison camp system established by the Chinese Communist Party after 1949. The two crucial components of this system are the laogai system (laodong gaizao, translated in the book to “remolding through labour” rather than the more often used “reform through labour”), and the laojiao system (laodong jiaoyang) or “reeducation through labour.” Let me say at once that this book is much more than an analysis of the literature surrounding the phenomenon of the prison camps. Through memoirs from former inmates and reportage literature we learn many detailed facts about the Chinese camp system, details equally valuable to the legal and the social science scholar.The book describes in detail the daily life of the camps, the prison conditions and the system's methods of arrest, detention, solitary confinement, torture for confessions, famine, degradation of prisoners, and a range of practices showing the security forces' discretionary powers and the “flexibilities” of informal sentencing. The authors emphasize both the modern ideology of remoulding and the traditional legalist (fajia) roots of a “very malleable sort of law.” Williams and Wu commendably combine a range of valuable empirical detail with a more general theoretical analysis of the historical, cultural and systemic roots and practices of the camp system.The only exceptions to generally harsh conditions in the PRC camps were the special prisons for high-ranking persons like the famous Fushun prison in Liaoning province which contained the last Manchu emperor, Puyi, high-ranking prisoners of war such as former Kuomintang top military officers, and Japanese prisoners of war.

The literary output of the Polish-Yiddish writers who survived WWII in the Soviet Union is mostly a literary mirror of the times of exile and wartime wandering. The two major themes that reverberate through these writings are: the refugees’ reflection on their stay in the USSR, and the Holocaust of Polish Jews. After the war, some of them described that period in their memoirs and autobiographical fiction, however, due to censorship, such accounts could only be published abroad, following the authors’ emigration from Poland. These writings significantly complement the texts produced during the war, offering plentiful details about life in Poland’s Eastern borderlands under Soviet rule as it was perceived by the refugees, or about the fate of specific persons in the subsequent wartime years. This literature, written in – and about – exile is not only an account of what was happening to Polish-Jewish refugees in the USSR, but also a testimony to their coping with an enormous psychological burden caused by the awareness (or the lack thereof) of the fate of Jews under Nazi German occupation. What emerges from all the literary texts published in post-war Poland, even despite the cuts and omissions caused by (self)-censorship, is an image of a postwar Jewish community affected by deep trauma, hurt and – so it seems – split into two groups: survivors in the East (vicarious witnesses), and survivors in Nazi-occupied Poland (direct victim witnesses). The article discusses on samples the necessity of extending and broadening of that image by adding to the reflection on Holocaust literature (which has been underway for many years) the reflection on the accounts of the experience of exile, Soviet forced labour camps, and wandering in the USSR contained in the entire corpus of literary works and memoirs written by Polish-Yiddish writers.

Cet submission vise à interroger les formes d’encadrement du marché du travail du journalisme, la diversification des statuts d’emploi qui y ont cours et ses effets sur l’espace professionnel. Il s’appuie sur une exploitation secondaire des donnéesde la Commission de la carte d’identité des journalistes professionnels (carte de presse non obligatoire mais largement répandue en France), sur la confrontation avec d’autres sources statistiques, et sur une quarantaine d’entretiens avec des journalistes « instables », n’ayant pas de contrat de travail permanent mais rémunérés sous d’autres formes, relevant de différents secteurs de la presse écrite, aux situations diversifiées. L’analyse conclut à un recul voire un dépérissement – invisible jusqu’à présent – de la « pige », forme de paiement à l’submission, au feuillet ou à la journée, ponctuel ou plus régulier, mais qui est officiellement assimilée à un contrat de travail, selon une fiction juridique, et permet l’accès des personnes concernées à divers droits salariaux et sociaux. Ce statut classique est débordé par les divers statuts précaires qui se sont multipliés dans l’ensemble du salariat (contrats à durée déterminée, dont le terme, variant d’une journée à 12 voire 18 mois, est fixé à l’avance, et contrats aidés, bénéficiant de subventions de l’Etat avec des objectifs de réinsertion professionnelle). D’autres statuts utilisés proviennent de secteurs connexes aux médias d’information (artistes auteurs employés par la presse écrite au contact de l’édition, intermittents du spectacle employés en télévision au contact des métiers du spectacle et de l’audiovisuel). Ce processus de déstructuration du marché du travail a été accentué et amplifié par le statut d’auto-entrepreneur, considéré comme relevant du travail « indépendant », et rémunéré sous forme de factures pour des prestations de service, qui s’est particulièrement diffusé dans les secteurs médiatiques émergents ou dérégulés comme Internet. Quels rôles ont joué les différents acteurs de l’espace professionnel dans ces processus ? Comment comprendre la dynamique de ces évolutions ? This submission aims to question the framing of the journalism labour-market, the diversification of employment classes within it, and its effects on the professionalfield. It is based on a secondary statistical analysis of data from the Commission de la carte d’identité des journalistes professionnels (the press card is not compulsoryto work as journalist in France, but its use is widespread and still holds strong symbolic value), and their disagreement with other statistical sources; and on forty interviews of “casual” journalists without permanent contracts (remunerated in other ways) belonging to various sectors of the press in diverse contexts. The analysis demonstrates a decline, unseen until now, in “freelance” journalism; defined as payment per submission, per sheet or per day, occasional or more regular, but officially considered an employment contract according to legal fiction, allowing these journalists to benefit theoretically from all the labour rights and social security of employees. This classic status is overrun by other “precarious” labour categories, which have multiplied among salaried employees (fixed-term contracts, from one day, to twelve, or even eighteen, months; state-aided contracts, granted with the purpose of reintegration into the workforce). Other statuses originate in news media-related sectors (author-artist, employed by the written press on the fringes of the publishing sector; non-permanent employees of entertainment industries, employed by television at the boundary between the broadcast sector and entertainment). This destructuring process of the labour market has been furthered by the recent “auto-entrepreneur” status, regarded as a kind of “self-employment” and paid in the form of invoices for service delivery – widespread in emerging or unregulated media like the Internet. What are the roles of the various actors within the professional field in these processes? How can we understand the dynamics of these changes? Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar as formas de controle do mercado de trabalho jornalístico, a diversificação dos estatutos profissionais e seu impacto sobre o espaço profissional. Ele é baseado na exploração de dados secundários da Comissão da carteira de identidade dos Jornalistas Profissionais (o documento não é obrigatório, mas é amplamente difundido e carregado de valor simbólico na França), em confronto com outras fontes estatísticas e 40 entrevistas com jornalistas em situações não estáveis de trabalho, ou seja, sem contrato permanente, mas remunerado de outras formas, em diferentes setores da imprensa. A análise demonstra uma queda – invisível até o momento – no jornalismo «freelancer», definido como o pagamento por reportagem, por página ou por dia trabalhado, ocasional ou com alguma regularidade, mas considerado oficialmente um contrato de trabalho de acordo com a ficção jurídica, permitindo teoricamente que esses jornalistas se beneficiem de todos os direitos trabalhistas e previdenciários dos demais empregados. Este estatuto clássico é suplantado por outras categorias «precárias» de trabalho, que se multiplicaram entre os empregados assalariados (contratos com prazo determinado, a partir de um dia, a 12 até 18 meses; contratos subsidiados pelo Estado, concedidos com a finalidade de reintegração da força de trabalho). Outros estatutos utilizados provêm de setores correlatos ao da mídia informativa (autores e artistas, trabalhadores do mercado editorial, da indústria de entretenimento e dos meios audiovisuais). Este processo de desestruturação do mercado de trabalho foi promovido pelo recente status de «auto-empresário», considerado como uma espécie de «auto-emprego», que é remunerado na forma de faturas de prestação de serviços, difundido em países emergentes ou pela mídia não regulamentada, como a Internet. Quais são os papéis dos vários atores do campo profissional nestes processos? Como podemos entender a dinâmica dessas mudanças?

This chapter focuses on The Ditch , which is Wang Bing’s only foray into feature-length fiction, and shows how the recourse to fiction and reenactment raises important ethical issues about the representation of labor camp guards and survivors played by semi-professional and nonprofessional actors and about the recreation of the camps themselves. The chapter argues that the representational and ethical issues in the film depend on “techniques of creative repetition,” which correspond to how adaptation and reenactment allow for the creative repetition of past events and experiences. The chapter draws on documentary scholars’ writings on reenactment and Gilles Deleuze’s reflections on repetition to argue that what Wang Bing ultimately sought to accomplish in The Ditch was to find a new audiovisual strategy to represent historical events, and that the two techniques of creative repetition used in The Ditch make the spectator reconsider key moments in twentieth-century Chinese history concerning the horrors of labor camp life.

Notebook 1 argues for the centrality of movement to Richard Wright’s lesser-known novella “Down by the Riverside,” which is inspired by the labor conflicts of the Delta and the 1927 flood. An analysis of Wright’s fiction and historical documents reveals how labor conditions limited economic solidarity among the indebted. However, the flood also reveals the critical consciousness that evolved among the indebted who eventually became refugees in the relief camps. Despite the tragic story Wright tells, he offers readers a glimpse of the Event, wherein fear and guilt are broken and no longer paralyze the oppressed into inaction. Notebook 1 not only attends to the brilliance of Wright’s fiction before Native Son. It also goes beyond Wright’s story to show the debates that developed in Black newspapers over the proper objectives and strategies for reconstructing the Delta after the flood, which echoes the sabotaged need for Reconstruction decades after the Civil War.

Chapter Three begins with the killing of a Schutzstaffel officer by Jewish prisoner Yehuda Lerner at the Sobibór death camp on 14 October 1943. The uprising which took place in the camp on that day is the defining event of a chapter which looks at three sites of memory of the Holocaust and includes a space which was exploited by the Nazis during the Holocaust and two locations which were created for the purpose of forced labour and extermination, namely the Old City of Lublin and the camps in Majdanek and Sobibór. Lublin and Majdanek are explored in regard to the opposition between creative geographies and topographical coherence; Sobibór, a site obliterated by the Nazis in the attempt to hide the mass murder, is discussed with a focus on the ways in which fiction films and testimonial performances included in documentaries are intertwined in the process of memorialising a place where no tangible trace bears witness to the events which unfolded on its grounds.