Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society

by Steven A. Barnes

Death and Redemption offers a fundamental reinterpretation of the role of the Gulag--the Soviet Union's vast system of forced-labor camps, internal exile, and prisons--in Soviet society. Soviet authorities undoubtedly had the means to exterminate all the prisoners who passed through the Gulag, but unlike the Nazis they did not conceive of their concentration camps as instruments of genocide. In this provocative book, Steven Barnes argues that the Gulag must be understood primarily as a penal institution where prisoners were given one final chance to reintegrate into Soviet society. Millions whom authorities deemed "reeducated" through brutal forced labor were allowed to leave. Millions more who "failed" never got out alive.


Drawing on newly opened archives in Russia and Kazakhstan as well as memoirs by actual prisoners, Barnes shows how the Gulag was integral to the Soviet goal of building a utopian socialist society. He takes readers into the Gulag itself, focusing on one outpost of the Gulag system in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, a location that featured the full panoply of Soviet detention institutions. Barnes traces the Gulag experience from its beginnings after the 1917 Russian Revolution to its decline following the 1953 death of Stalin.



Death and Redemption reveals how the Gulag defined the border between those who would reenter Soviet society and those who would be excluded through death.

Genres: History, Russia, Soviet Union, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2011

Reviews

[Stephanie Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

He didn’t really advance his thesis put forth in the introduction. Little attention was given to Karlag and the Karaganda region, even though that was meant to be the focus of the book. The conclusion was devoid of any analysis relating to the book’s initial theories laid out in the introduction, and was merely a summary of the Gulag’s progression. I found his writing terribly dry and the book was hard to get through. It was disappointing since the introduction held a lot of promise. The discussion on gender and sexuality was also quite annoying. I felt he focused too much on marriage and finding love rather than the reality of sexual assaults. If his research didn’t find evidence of rape and sexual assault, he didn’t mention it. On cohabitation, he said something like “it’s impossible to say how much of cohabitation was forced.” The answer is probably a lot. Rather than dealing with the reality of rape, he brushed it aside and went into detail on the stories of women who “found love.” The one paragraph he devoted to male on male rape was more honest than his discussion of women, but still lacking. Three stars is probably too generous.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting look at one camp system (Karaganda, in Kazakhstan) during and immediately after Stalinism, but also a lot of attention to the cultural milieu of the camps and their place in Soviet society outside of just purely economic/slave labor terms.

[Rick Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly the easiest to access of the Gulag texts I've read. It's rich in detail, open in its judgment and well sourced. I really enjoyed this book to the extent one can enjoy exceptional scholarship.

[Alex Ward-Robinson]

[read for essay]

[Claire Binkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful information, but terrifying history, hence not a very high rating. This book helped fill in the holes Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago left.