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

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.

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