Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta

Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes

by Alan Barenberg

This insightful volume offers a radical reassessment of the infamous “Gulag Archipelago” by exploring the history of Vorkuta, an arctic coal-mining outpost originally established in the 1930s as a prison camp complex. Author Alan Barenberg’s eye-opening study reveals Vorkuta as an active urban center with a substantial nonprisoner population where the borders separating camp and city were contested and permeable, enabling prisoners to establish social connections that would eventually aid them in their transitions to civilian life. With this book, Barenberg makes an important historical contribution to our understanding of forced labor in the Soviet Union and its enduring legacy.

Genres: Russia, History, Nonfiction

403 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Andrew Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few studies actually cares about ex-prisoners' post-Gulag life. Barenberg depicts in detail how ex-prisoners tried to overcome social discrimination, find jobs and accommodation. However, somehow he neglects how the reforging project of Gulag actually worked on these prisoners. Although it does sound ironic that a labor reforging project, which was supposed to reforge prisoners into a new socialist people, actually ended up killing many of them, the actual practices and effects of the making (or discipling if you would like to borrow the Foucauldian concept) of a new socialist people should receive enough scholarly attention in this book.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

really appreciate thorough historic works on the gulag that acknowledge how it was an integral part of the soviet system, politically, economically, socially, economically. it did not exist in isolation from the rest of society, and the boundaries between prisoners and non-prisoners were always blurry. the book also managed to successfully walk the line between personal narrative and archival material, a balance which so many gulag studies get wrong.

i also love the use of such a specific case study. a sensitive, compellingly written and informative work. essential read for anyone trying to get a handle on the legacy of forced labour in russia today