After the Gulag

Tyler C. Kirk is Assistant Professor of History and Arctic and Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Letters to Syktyvkar Memorial: "Who will remember if I forget?" 2. The "Brotherhood of Zeks": Constructing Community and Identity Through Memoirs 3. Alternative Forms of Autobiography: Konstantin Ivanov's Letters and Art 4. "How I remained a human being": Elena Markova's Spiritual Resistance Inside and Out of the Gulag 5. Local Newspapers and the Production of Cultural Memory in Komi, 1987-2021 Epilogue Bibliography Index

"In After the Gulag, Kirk uncovers the process of remembering that took place in the Komi Republic from the late-1980s up to 2021. He mines an innovative source base, in that he has explicitly (for the most part) rejected state archives and gone to the words of the prisoners. Kirk presents a region that understands its past, finds unity in that past (even the repressive elements), and where individuals can find ways to deal with their traumatic experiences."-Wilson T. Bell, author of Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War "The book takes us to a lost era, when civil society organizations like Memorial existed and served citizens, and when Russians were grappling with the painful chapters of their recent history. The stories are vivid and gripping, and the characters are memorable, sympathetic, and complex."-Golfo Alexopoulos, author of Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag