The Prison Camp as Pedagogy of Place

Place-based education usually refers to curricular work conducted in PK-12 settings that mobilizes local contexts to teach subject matter content. The education research reviewed here departs from this approach. Less interested in place as a means to transmit content, instead this article describes the often intangible learning that occurs in place. Place is a repository of lived experience, one in which the mind and body are intertwined. Place-based learning involves the knowledge and affective attachments provisioned by architectural arrangements and designs. Grounded in familial experience as Japanese Americans incarcerated in World War II-era prison camps, I research historic concentration camps, prisons, and other confinement spaces and how these sites educate contemporary audiences. Many of these historic prisons are places in which populations deemed security threats to the state were targeted, stripped of certain rights and obligations, forcibly removed, and sequestered. Treating these place-based projects as a kind of “curriculum,” my research also has implications for teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms.

D. Portnova. The dotted line of distant joys

The review deals with a book of reminiscences by Dalila Portnova, a niece of the writer Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978), a preeminent master of prison camp prose who wrote extensively about Stalin-era repressions. The chapters devoted to the author’s family include Portnova’s memories of her late uncle that were first printed in the Noviy Mir journal in 2017; a sensation at the time, they also provoked a mixed reaction of surviving family members and people who knew Dombrovsky well. Yet no coherent attempts were made to disprove the publication (other than comments on Facebook), even though Portnova’s account is not without flaws and inaccuracies. In his review, Igor Duardovich points out the valid new facts recounted in Portnova’s memoir as well as its discrepancies and explains why the book is relevant for a complete reconstruction of Dombrovsky’s biography: a project as yet unaccomplished, either in the form of separate publications or as a monograph.

‘It was no different to a prison camp’: Oral accounts of adaptations, transitions and surviving an ‘emergency camp’; from Sophiatown to Ammunition Depot 91, 1955–1960s

The demolition of Sophiatown, Cato Manor, District Six and other areas under the apartheid regime hugely impacted the socio-economic lives of various South Africans (particularly those people classified as non-whites). The classification of South African cosmopolitan townships as slums according to the Slums Act of 1934, and the ambitions of achieving social segregation, resulted in the geographical separation of races facilitated by the Group Areas Act of 1950. The act legally justified the forced removal of Indian families from Sophiatown. Then, they were temporarily placed in a military base next to Lenasia. Through the use of oral interviews, this article interrogates the unknown history of the Indian families in their transitional period from Sophiatown to Ammunition Depot 91 (also referred to as the ‘military camp/military base’ in Lenasia). Furthermore, the article sheds light on their untold experiences; particularly on the arrival of Indian families in the military camp, their living conditions, health-related matters, the utilisation of coping mechanisms such as religion and recreational activities, perceptions about their stay, effects on transportation and their general experiences in the transition camp. The article accentuates the rapid nature of these removals particularly in Sophiatown which resulted in the lack of adequate alternative accommodation for the Indian residents.Contribution: The article offers fresh perspectives for deeper interrogation of the consequences of forced removals in apartheid South Africa, by reflecting on the memories and lived experiences of interviewees in a case study that has hitherto not been addressed by social historians.

Das Motiv der Grenzüberschreitung in Karpatendeutschen Autobiografien

"The Motif of Crossing Borders in Carpathian German Autobiographies. Josef Derx's Memories is the autobiography of a Wehrmacht soldier who becomes a banker after the war. Free of mythology and biblical references, but often with humorous-parodic undertones, the narrative focuses on spatial and temporal details of Derx's life story. In the description of everyday life in a prison camp and the escape from it, the transformation of the remembered self into a remembering self can be observed textually and stylistically by means of changes in tempo and rhetorical figures. Elisabeth Metzl's Ein Paradies verloren aber wir leben (A Lost Paradise but We Live) tells the story of a young woman who has to flee from Bratislava to Austria in her “travelling prison” before the war, without knowing that she will leave her homeland behind forever. The search for her lost sons becomes a personal odyssey. Keywords: autobiography, remembered self, remembering self, personal odyssey "

F. M. Dostoevsky in the Feature Story of G. A. Vyatkin

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to find a suitable approach for the reconstruction of the creative biography of F. M. Dostoevsky presented in the opinion journalism of the Siberian poet, journalist, and publicist G. A. Vyatkin.Results. This article is the first noticeable contribution proposed in studying opinion journalism of the Siberian poet and journalist G. A. Vyatkin about F. M. Dostoevsky. It considers Vyatkin’s works in the context of tragic events in Russian history of the 1910–1920 years. This perspective is especially meaningful and beneficial in the light of the fact that Dostoevsky was almost unknown to the soviet society until the 1970s. His works were not a part of a school or university educational program.Conclusion. The article concludes by arguing that Vyatkin was one of the first to tell about Dostoevsky’s exile and hard life in the prison camp, about his compassion and worry for people. He recalled many forgotten facts of Dostoevsky’s biography, found and published quotes from official documents and literary critics.

Anthropogenic Elements of the Cultural Landscape of the Island Goli Otok in Croatia

The island Goli otok (north Adriatic, Croatia) cultural landscape is a complex system of interactions between people and nature, which has arisen through the anthropogenic use of this unique natural space with the aim of implementing ideas of the ideological re-education of political prisoners between 1949 and 1956, and the punishment of criminals and some political prisoners between 1956 and 1988. The most significant elements of the cultural landscape of the island are comprised of the anthropogenic structures of the political prison camp which deliberately used the natural features of the landscape in such a way as to enable methods of coercion of prisoners, which finally resulted in the unique identity of the space as a unit.

QUESTIONS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE FORMATION AND FUNCTIONING OF THE GULAG SYSTEM

This article examines the historiography of the formation and functioning of the GULAG prison-camp system. It is known that more than 20 camps were created on the territory of Kazakhstan, which covered almost all regions of the republic with their network. Of great interest are the studies of Russian and foreign scientists, who, based on a large archival material, were able to conduct a thorough analysis of the process of creating and developing the GULAG. Kazakh researchers also contributed to the coverage of this issue, revealing the features of the structure and activities of the camp system in the territorial borders of Kazakhstan. It should be noted that correctional labor camps to a large extent played the role of economic entities, rather than institutions for the re-education of criminal elements. In addition to criminality, in the 1920s and 1950s, there were people in the camps who were convicted on false and far-fetched charges. This article is not a complete overview of the problem under study and requires further study. The article was prepared in the framework of the scientific project No. AR08856940 «Prorvinsky and Astrakhan camps in the GULAG system: history, memory, heritage (1932-1950))».

The Legal Regulation of the Penitentiary Justice of the USSR (1944 – 1956)

In this article, on the basis of documents stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History and the United State Archive of the Chelyabinsk Region, the regulation of the penitentiary justice authorities is considered. The aim of the paper is to identify the characteristic features of the regulation of the activities of the penitentiary justice bodies. The number of those convicted by the penitentiary courts for the period of their existence (1946–1956) is revealed. The characteristic features of the regulation of the activities of the penitentiary justice bodies are highlighted. These include the following. Firstly, the delphic language resulting in the lack of clearly defined competence for the penitentiary courts; their functions expanded and narrowed. Secondly, the inconsistency of the regulatory framework manifested in the fact that by-laws passed by the Ministry of Justice contradicted the legislation and limited the rights of the accused and defendants. The practice of the Judicial Collegium for Penitentiary Courts of the USSR Supreme Court was not consistent. The author distinguishes two stages in the development of the competence of prison camp courts. The first one that lasted until the early 1950s was the period of expansion. The second stage was reduction of competence. At the same time, initially the reduction of competence was not common. But, after the death of I. Stalin, this process became widespread.

Russian prison camp prose and сhinese literature of the «high walls»: one day of a prisoner in the novels by A. Solzhenitsyn and Tsun Weisi

The article examines the system of creative roll calls of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the сhinese writer Tsun Weisi, called by critics «Chinese Solzhenitsyn». The work of the writers is analyzed in the context of typologically similar trends in the russian and chinese literary process – russian prison camp prose and chinese literature of «wounds and scars» and «high walls literature», the fate of both writers is seen as an example of the complex confrontation between the individual and the totalitarian system. Comparing the works of Tsun Weisi and A. Solzhenitsyn the author reveals many motifs that are significant for the artistic world of the writers: rigid time localization and expansion of the time frame due to the introduction of heroes' memories into the narrative, description of the isolated world of the prison, the motive of physical and moral exhaustion, description of hard work and harsh realities of the surrounding nature, the motive of adversities and absurdity of the political system, motives of denunciation, betrayal and provocation. Along with this, the article considers significant differences in the reproduction of the main constants of prison camp discourse in Tsun Weisi and A. Solzhenitsyn’s works: relations among prisoners and between the authorities and prisoners, the ideological component of Tsun Weisi’s prison discourse, when the camp becomes a micro-model of the political system in the country, ideological and political priorities, determining the reduction of the object world and the poster character of the chinese writer, a high stone wall as a symbol of the Great Wall of China, impassable prison walls and the a priori doomed attempts to combat absurdity and injustice in an ever-changing brutal political reality.