The Voices of Samizdat and Magnitizdat

This chapter treats “samizdat” (self-publishing) and “magnitizdat” (audio tape self-publishing) in the late Soviet Union via the concept of the “voice.” Komaromi discusses a select set of examples including guitar poetry; Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Evgeniia Ginzburg’s camp memoirs; poetry at Maiakovskii Square; and the texts of Leningrad second culture. These examples facilitate exploration of the way samizdat and magnitizdat related to official culture, even as they expanded the range of late Soviet culture far beyond what was allowed in print. They also make it possible to analyze the way samizdat and magnitizdat voices mediated between silence and speech, matter and spirit, presence and absence, and the individual and the collective, creating new ways for Soviet citizens to express themselves and be heard by one another.

Dostoievski și literatura Gulagului

This paper aims to describe and analyze the references and allusions made by the authors who write about the Soviet Gulag to Dostoevsky and to his text written after his imprisonment in the tsarist prison in Omsk, The House of the Dead (1860- 1862). Starting from the premise that The House of the Dead has a special status as it is a text that makes the transition from the classical and vaguely defined genre of prison literature (i.e. literature written in prison or related – however not always explicitly – to the prison experience) to that of testimonial literature (i.e. literature related to a traumatic experience of a collective nature that is able to testify on behalf of those who remain to suffer in prisons or concentration camps), I will emphasize the testimonial character of Dostoevsky’s writing. Subsequently, I will analyze how the authors who write about their experiences in the Soviet camps (Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, A World Apart, Julius Margolin, Journey into the Land of Zeks and Back, Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, Yevgenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, Within the Whirlwind, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago) relate to Dostoevsky’s text. At first, the references to Dostoevsky highlight the continuity between the two repressive systems: the tsarist katorga and the Soviet Gulag (Gustaw Herling-Grudziński). Later, however, the differences between them become apparent, as the Gulag writers all highlight in their writing the extent and intensity of the suffering experienced by those who lived through the hell of the repressions in the Gulag. In this way, they enter in an ironic and polemical dialogue with the nineteenth-century Russian writer. In the end, this polemical separation from Dostoevsky shows how the Gulag writers abandon the messianic and humanistic innocence of the nineteenth-century prison literature in the context of the totalitarian and repressive system of the twentieth century.

Autobiography and Self-Reflection in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The GULAG Archipelago”

“The GULAG Archipelago” is based on historical and autobiographical material. Autobiography is a key feature of the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This style trait manifests itself in the plot, composition, is expressed in the ways of self-reflection, methods of self-identification, in the functions and role of the author-narrator. The retrospective component, as well as the identity of the author and the narrator, the identity of the author and the character, are of fundamental importance. The type of narration chosen by Solzhenitsyn for “The Archipelago” opened up inexhaustible possibilities of fictional and documentary prose as a genre that conceals a way of correlating autobiographical and factual material. At the same time, the author was also a witness to what was happening and conveyed the details, the spirit of his time. Solzhenitsyn’s autobiography is special: it is not only the use of the facts of the writer’s biography, it is the desire to convey their thoughts as a result of the experience through the psychological experiences, thoughts and feelings of the author. The writer draws a spiritual rebirth of a person in the labor camp, reveals moments of repentance, the development of spiritual stoicism. Hard labor elevated Solzhenitsyn and became the highest point from which the most important stages of his life can be counted.