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The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin
Joseph Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union has been called "the other holocaust." Over the course of 24 years, more innocent men, women, and children perished than died in Hitler's murder of European Jews. This book originated 30 years ago when Stephen F. Cohen, a professor of Russian studies and history at New York University, first began researching the lives of those victims released after Stalin's death. There was precious little information available, and many of the victims were still afraid, but Cohen persisted, and through the years accumulated the remarkable stories of their return to society.
- GenresHistoryRussiaNonfiction
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2010
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238 people want to read
About the author
Stephen F. Cohen
24 books74 followersStephen F. Cohen was Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he served as director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. He grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Indiana University, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.
For his scholarly work, Cohen received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.
Over the years, he was also a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.
Cohen visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.
(source: Amazon)
Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.
For his scholarly work, Cohen received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.
Over the years, he was also a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.
Cohen visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.
(source: Amazon)
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 28, 2010
In 1929, Stalin began his ruthless purge, imprisoning and murdering millions of innocent Russians. It began in the countryside, as Stalin attempted to collectivize 125 million peasants. From 1936-1939, Stalin’s effort to “cleanse” the nation descended upon Russia’s cities. Almost two million people were arrested. Virtually half of them were shot. The rest entered Stalin’s immense gulag, stretching from the Ukraine to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
During Stalin’s reign, from 1926 to 1953, up to 20 million Russians died as a result of deportation, imprisonment, harsh conditions and the results of “collectivization.” An estimated 12 to 14 million innocent Russians were imprisoned in faraway camps (gulag) from which they would never return. In most cases, they were never heard from again. Many of these victims were summarily convicted by assembly-line tribunals, known as “troikas.” Most were tortured to death or they did not survive prison interrogation. As the torture continued, so did mass killing areas and graves around the country. The vast majority of these people, just like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, were innocent of any crime.
Stephen F. Cohen carries us deep into the story of Stalin’s gulag, as seen through the eyes of the family members and a handful of survivors. Cohen, by virtue of his significant scholarly experience and his many years living in the former Soviet Union, offers a fresh view of the abuses of government in Stalinist Russia and beyond, through perestroika and to the collapse of the USSR. He writes primarily of famous “zeks” or prisoners who were tortured to death, perished from massive forced labor, starvation, sickness and as a result of brutal climate conditions. More importantly, Cohen draws a focus around how the genocide emotionally scarred the victim’s families. A handful of zeks were able to smuggle letters to family members and friends. Through these precious words, Cohen reveals details of the greatest mass murder in history. Yet, there are many more victims. The spouses, parents, grandparents and children of those unjustly imprisoned themselves became victims. Hardly a family in Russia escaped this deadly national tragedy.
Cohen describes how Russia became a glorious world power under Stalin, who casted his repressions as a necessary way to control “enemies of the people.” We are eventually swept through the end of Stalin’s regime, into the Khrushchev era and beyond; a time of great social turmoil and political transition. Cohen had personally identified with many leading anti-Stalinists, becoming a patriot of the new perestroika in his own right. Here, he becomes both writer and the topic of his writing. This presents as a painful process for Cohen, as he must decide whether to write about himself or the victims he came to love. In this dichotomy, Cohen typically moves away from his own actions. Immersing himself with the surviving family members of prominent gulag victims, Cohen describes how the events and culture of the gulag became known via representations in stories, music, theatrical interpretations, literature, paintings and even sculpture. The reader is carried along for a detailed analysis of the mass murder, including unknown heroes, powerful political leaders, inspired family members and terrorizing villains.
On the road to Russian recovery, we come to appreciate the internal and external pressures leading to the anti-Stalinist policies of Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Like Holocaust survivors, Stalinist victims wrote memoirs. Cohen describes how these memoirs were at first anti-Russian, but eventually became a roadmap for the Russian catharsis after the gulag had ended. And, while this was an irritating process for the Russian people, through Cohen’s eyes, we see the agony of millions of family members whose loved ones were unfairly imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Although many children of victims went on to have successful careers, most remain psychologically traumatized by the suffering they and their loved ones endured.
While only a small portion of this “historical truth-telling” could be published in the Soviet Union, Cohen allows that the political pressure shaped by this writing also created an avenue for inspired national leadership and the promise of eventual freedom of the press. Immersed within the anti-Stalinist institutions of post-Khrushchev Russia, Cohen reveals the eventual rebirth of individual freedom and the ultimate state-supported reporting of the mass graves, terror and martyrs.
When Alexander Solzhenitsyn died in 2008, President Putin’s government organized the equivalent of a state funeral, enacted measures to memorialize his life and then made The Gulag Archipelago required reading in Russian schools. In this, Russia had come full circle by surviving, institutionalizing and remembering the terror of Stalinization. Yet, there remains significant pessimism among the Russian people. Many of them view the new leaders in the same way their parents and grandparents viewed Stalin. Out with the old tyrant; in with the new one. We sense that the vast political struggle over this greatest of all Russian tragedies is coming to an end. But the nightmares, regret and tears will not be over until the last survivor and all of the victim’s children are gone.
Cohen is an excellent writer. He weaves the tale of Stalin’s great grip of terror carefully and accurately. His references are thorough. At times, however, it is difficult to comprehend how Cohen had personally influenced this story. He writes with adept detail of the relationships he has made with eminent Stalinist victims and their families. We see and feel the gulag through their eyes. Yet, we never have a full sense for the persuasion Cohen had over his subjects and their efforts to publicize the terror of their imprisoned family members. We also are left wondering about the depth of current sentiment for or against the Russian government. How has the current regime influenced opinion about the old one?
Cohen focuses on prominent Russians in the anti-Stalinist movement. Perhaps in the effort to encompass so many victims and their family members, we become lost in the crowded landscape. He might have focused on fewer victims and delved deeper into the circumstances of their imprisonment. This book would also be enhanced with pictures, tables and graphs. Of course, I am only reading the galley (and pictures can be added later).
Stephen Cohen brings to life the horror, shock and despair of Stalin’s gulag. With intense brutality and abrupt imprisonment, the gulag victims and their families cry out for justice. While many non-fiction books of this genre remain locked on Stalin, his mind and temperament, Cohen shows us Stalin’s national horror from the viewpoint of victims’ family members. This is a well researched, well crafted examination of Stalinist Russia, as told through the eyes of a prominent writer and historian.
Charles S. Weinblatt
Weinblatt is author of Jacob’s Courage: A Holocaust Love Story (2007, Mazo Publishers).
During Stalin’s reign, from 1926 to 1953, up to 20 million Russians died as a result of deportation, imprisonment, harsh conditions and the results of “collectivization.” An estimated 12 to 14 million innocent Russians were imprisoned in faraway camps (gulag) from which they would never return. In most cases, they were never heard from again. Many of these victims were summarily convicted by assembly-line tribunals, known as “troikas.” Most were tortured to death or they did not survive prison interrogation. As the torture continued, so did mass killing areas and graves around the country. The vast majority of these people, just like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, were innocent of any crime.
Stephen F. Cohen carries us deep into the story of Stalin’s gulag, as seen through the eyes of the family members and a handful of survivors. Cohen, by virtue of his significant scholarly experience and his many years living in the former Soviet Union, offers a fresh view of the abuses of government in Stalinist Russia and beyond, through perestroika and to the collapse of the USSR. He writes primarily of famous “zeks” or prisoners who were tortured to death, perished from massive forced labor, starvation, sickness and as a result of brutal climate conditions. More importantly, Cohen draws a focus around how the genocide emotionally scarred the victim’s families. A handful of zeks were able to smuggle letters to family members and friends. Through these precious words, Cohen reveals details of the greatest mass murder in history. Yet, there are many more victims. The spouses, parents, grandparents and children of those unjustly imprisoned themselves became victims. Hardly a family in Russia escaped this deadly national tragedy.
Cohen describes how Russia became a glorious world power under Stalin, who casted his repressions as a necessary way to control “enemies of the people.” We are eventually swept through the end of Stalin’s regime, into the Khrushchev era and beyond; a time of great social turmoil and political transition. Cohen had personally identified with many leading anti-Stalinists, becoming a patriot of the new perestroika in his own right. Here, he becomes both writer and the topic of his writing. This presents as a painful process for Cohen, as he must decide whether to write about himself or the victims he came to love. In this dichotomy, Cohen typically moves away from his own actions. Immersing himself with the surviving family members of prominent gulag victims, Cohen describes how the events and culture of the gulag became known via representations in stories, music, theatrical interpretations, literature, paintings and even sculpture. The reader is carried along for a detailed analysis of the mass murder, including unknown heroes, powerful political leaders, inspired family members and terrorizing villains.
On the road to Russian recovery, we come to appreciate the internal and external pressures leading to the anti-Stalinist policies of Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Like Holocaust survivors, Stalinist victims wrote memoirs. Cohen describes how these memoirs were at first anti-Russian, but eventually became a roadmap for the Russian catharsis after the gulag had ended. And, while this was an irritating process for the Russian people, through Cohen’s eyes, we see the agony of millions of family members whose loved ones were unfairly imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Although many children of victims went on to have successful careers, most remain psychologically traumatized by the suffering they and their loved ones endured.
While only a small portion of this “historical truth-telling” could be published in the Soviet Union, Cohen allows that the political pressure shaped by this writing also created an avenue for inspired national leadership and the promise of eventual freedom of the press. Immersed within the anti-Stalinist institutions of post-Khrushchev Russia, Cohen reveals the eventual rebirth of individual freedom and the ultimate state-supported reporting of the mass graves, terror and martyrs.
When Alexander Solzhenitsyn died in 2008, President Putin’s government organized the equivalent of a state funeral, enacted measures to memorialize his life and then made The Gulag Archipelago required reading in Russian schools. In this, Russia had come full circle by surviving, institutionalizing and remembering the terror of Stalinization. Yet, there remains significant pessimism among the Russian people. Many of them view the new leaders in the same way their parents and grandparents viewed Stalin. Out with the old tyrant; in with the new one. We sense that the vast political struggle over this greatest of all Russian tragedies is coming to an end. But the nightmares, regret and tears will not be over until the last survivor and all of the victim’s children are gone.
Cohen is an excellent writer. He weaves the tale of Stalin’s great grip of terror carefully and accurately. His references are thorough. At times, however, it is difficult to comprehend how Cohen had personally influenced this story. He writes with adept detail of the relationships he has made with eminent Stalinist victims and their families. We see and feel the gulag through their eyes. Yet, we never have a full sense for the persuasion Cohen had over his subjects and their efforts to publicize the terror of their imprisoned family members. We also are left wondering about the depth of current sentiment for or against the Russian government. How has the current regime influenced opinion about the old one?
Cohen focuses on prominent Russians in the anti-Stalinist movement. Perhaps in the effort to encompass so many victims and their family members, we become lost in the crowded landscape. He might have focused on fewer victims and delved deeper into the circumstances of their imprisonment. This book would also be enhanced with pictures, tables and graphs. Of course, I am only reading the galley (and pictures can be added later).
Stephen Cohen brings to life the horror, shock and despair of Stalin’s gulag. With intense brutality and abrupt imprisonment, the gulag victims and their families cry out for justice. While many non-fiction books of this genre remain locked on Stalin, his mind and temperament, Cohen shows us Stalin’s national horror from the viewpoint of victims’ family members. This is a well researched, well crafted examination of Stalinist Russia, as told through the eyes of a prominent writer and historian.
Charles S. Weinblatt
Weinblatt is author of Jacob’s Courage: A Holocaust Love Story (2007, Mazo Publishers).
March 30, 2015
In the introduction, Cohen admits that this book is not the one he intended to write. It is obvious. The book reads as one that is just a recounting of the famous and influential friends that Cohen made as a researcher. It is less a well-researched book and more a travelogue. The Spy in the Archives was a much better book because it was self-consciously such a memoir instead of dressing it up as something more. I was disappointed in the book overall.
January 8, 2011
A very moving book on the return of innocent people from the horrifying torturings and work camps and prisons during the Stalinist purges of the 20th century. Goes into detail during the Khrushchev years - the releasing of the prisoners plus the condemnations of Stalin. During the present day there is however still a large segment of the population that reveres Stalin - and a debate that will continue well into the future as descendants want to learn more of what their families (both the accused and the accuseres) did during this time.
November 24, 2021
An interesting book on a topic I’d actually not considered in much depth. When thinking of Gulag history, it tends to be from the incarcerated point of view, of memoirs relaying the recollections of being there. As such it was certainly insightful to find out some examples of life upon return. My main gripe with this book overall was it generally felt a little vague, and strongly influenced by the individuals the author was personal acquaintances of. The book suffers from a small sort of identity crisis I feel, and it’s confessed as much to not be what the author intended of it at first. It feels like an overview of the topic, but it seems to struggle with a desire to delve deeper. A sound springboard and admittedly, given the difficulty of Russian archival work most of the 20th century, a great job.
June 23, 2022
Fine. Not a ton of substance but its also quite a short book. Its a mix of a broad history of the fates of Zeks in the post Stalinist era mixed with testimonies of Zeks that Cohen knew. His opinion of the Russian government, even at the time he wrote this (2010) feels naive, and if you know what Cohen thought about modern Russia, that'll make sense to you.
January 21, 2025
A required reading for Russian politics class however was grateful to learn about a topic I knew so very little information about. While the content is very heavy, I was intrigued to learn about “the second holocaust” from a perspective outside of the traditional western culture lens. Definitely recommend if in the right headspace.
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January 21, 2026#hadtoreadthisforrussianpols
October 18, 2015
The reason I liked this book is more from basic Russophilia and respect for what I read and breathed for semesters on end than over the exact details of what happened in the GULag camps.
Although I had read loads on the subject for a long while, I do not think I had exactly looked at this book in particular, so I am glad to finally add it to my history.
I was rather perturbed by the endnotes' lack of Cyrillic when detailing Russian sources, but that comes from being told it's only right if using this other alphabet. It just means I'd have to pull up a Word document and write them out: e.g. Как нашик дедов забирали (which looks wrong too) before going through the catalog.
So, this book helped me understand Russian history better, even after studying it for a while at the university, so I am in approval of it, even if such dreadfully terrible things happened under Stalin's rule.
Although I had read loads on the subject for a long while, I do not think I had exactly looked at this book in particular, so I am glad to finally add it to my history.
I was rather perturbed by the endnotes' lack of Cyrillic when detailing Russian sources, but that comes from being told it's only right if using this other alphabet. It just means I'd have to pull up a Word document and write them out: e.g. Как нашик дедов забирали (which looks wrong too) before going through the catalog.
So, this book helped me understand Russian history better, even after studying it for a while at the university, so I am in approval of it, even if such dreadfully terrible things happened under Stalin's rule.
December 22, 2016
I came across Cohen's book remaindered in a central London bookshop. Familiar with Cohen's excellent biography of Bukharin I was intrigued to see this short volume on the fate of Gulag survivors, most of them communist party activists or the children of leading party members including Bukharin and Antonov-Ovseyenko. It relates the partial rehabilitation of the 'zeks' under Kruschev and the clampdown after the Brezhnev freeze. Informative and based in large part on the testimonies of former returnees including Larina, Bukharin's wife. Well worth seeking out.
February 9, 2011
Was not a real page turner but gave me a good little history lesson about Russia after Stalin. Kruschev's role in freeing many of the political prisoners from Stalin's terror. The back and forth love hate relationship that the Russian people have with Stalin. Not to be lost is the heroic efforts of people in Russia to try and bring the terror to light.
February 7, 2011
A high level look at the winds of political change in the Soviet Union that determined the image of Stalin and the official line on his victims. I wish it gave a deeper dive into the personal stories but it didn't.
January 3, 2015
Very informative and not too academic.
April 15, 2014
Wonderful but too short a book about some Gulag victims/survivors the author met and interviewed over the years. Very disturbing, sad and happy at times. Excellent read!
March 8, 2016
Kind of bland, not enough detail...
December 29, 2017
Książka po trochę zapomnianej części współczesnej historii. Wszyscy słyszeli o nazistowskich obozach koncentracyjnych, ale niewielu słyszało o gułagach, a jeszcze innym uważają, że sprawa rosyjska.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews