Letters from ALZHIR

Piero  Ianniello; Aruzhan Bashenova

doi:10.32523/2616-7255-2024-148-3-56-74

Authors

Piero Ianniello University of New Haven https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8279-6054
Aruzhan Bashenova L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9941-9337

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32523/2616-7255-2024-148-3-56-74

Keywords:

Alzhir; Gulags; female camps; female prisoners; communication from the jail

Abstract

This article aims at offering a glimpse into the emotions of the prisoners in the camp ALZHIR (Akmolinskiy lager' zhen izmennikov Rodiny, Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), Kazakhstan in Soviet times. Alzhir was a female forced labour camp in the time of the Soviet Union, a Gulag that darkened the history of the Soviet Union. This investigation will take place through a collection of letters, both from prisoners and their children, translated in English for the first time. Letters represent the only tool through which prisoners were able to communication with their families, and through which they were able to keep their maternal sense from which they had been violently deprived. The letters reflect the moods, needs, worries and the hopes of both the prisoners and the children left behind. The discussion concerning the letters reveals that the communication with the world outside of the camps (allowed only from 1940) was not enough to give back the sense of normality that the women yearned for whilst imprisoned.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Applebaum A. Gulag: A History. New York: Doubleday. – 2003. – 679 р.

Dolovich S. “Creating the permanent prisoner”. Ogletree CJ and Sarat A (eds) Life without Parole: America’s New Death. New York: New York University Press. – 2012. – Р. 96-137.

Etkind A. Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford: Stanford University Press. – 2013. https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/67557.

Forbes M. “The Forgotten Women of the Gulag”, The American Interest, November 2020;

Fulkerson L J. "Voice of Silence: Women Inmates' Perspective on Sexual Violence in the Soviet Gulag, 1936-1956", Senior Projects, Spring 2020;

Fulkerson L J. "Voice of Silence: Women Inmates' Perspective on Sexual Violence in the Soviet Gulag, 1936-1956". Senior Projects Spring. – 2020. – 196 р. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/196.

Henry J. “Death-in-prison sentences: Overutilized and underscrutinized”. In: Ogletree CJ and Sarat A (eds) Life without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty? New York University Press. – 2012

Ilic M. “Women's Experiences of 1937: Everyday Legacies of the Purges and the. – 2017.

Great Terror in the Soviet Union”, Women's Experiences of Repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Routledge London;

Keep J. “Recent Writing on Stalin's Gulag: An Overview”, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, – 1997. – Vol. 1. – N2.

Octavian G. “Recreation of normality in the absurd space of deportations to the Siberian Gulags”, Vergentis, July August 2019.

Petkevich T. Memoir of a Gulag Actress. Translated by Joshua Rubenstein, Northern Illinois University Press. ‒ 2010.

Presser J., Memoires als geschiedbron, in: Winkler Prins Encyclopedie, 8 (1958).

New edition in: Uit het werk van J. Presser, (1969).

Sliva S.M. “On the meaning of life: A qualitative interpretive meta synthesis of the lived experience of life without parole”. Journal of Social Work. – 2015. – N.15(5);

Stepanova-Klyuchnikova G. E. (2003), Kazakh ALZHIR, Association of Victims of Illegal Repression. Available at the website: https://vgulage.name/books/stepanova-kljuchnikova-g-e-kazahstanskij-alzhir/ (Last access: January 10, 2024);

Taplin P. “Female prisoners of the Gulag”, Russia Beyond, JULY 03 2014. Accessible at: Female prisoners of the Gulag - Russia Beyond (rbth.com) (Last access: November 10, 2023);

Vannier M. “Normalizing Extreme Imprisonment: the Case of Life Without Parole in California”, Theoretical Criminology, December. 2019;

Vannier M. “The power of the pen: Prisoners’ letters to explore extreme imprisonment”, Criminology & Criminal Justice. ‒ 2020. – N. 20(3).

Villaume A. “‘Life without parole’ and ‘virtual life sentences’: Death sentences by any other name”. Contemporary Justice Review. ‒ 2005. ‒ 8(3).

Waters L. G. “Captive Body, Free Mind: Euphrosinia Kersnovskaia, the Gulag, and Art Under Oppression” Student Publications. 2017. 568. Accessible at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/568 (Last access: November 10, 2023)

Wilson T. B. "Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag,” in Journal of the His-tory of Sexuality. ‒ 2015. ‒ 24. ‒ N. 2.

Zhanbosinova A. S., Zhandybayeva S. S., Kazbekova A. T. Ego-documents of the History of Political Terror in Kazakhstan. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2021. – Vol. 66. – Is. 3.

Zgustova M. Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women’s Voices from the Gulag, Other Press. 2020.