Never Remember: Searching for Stalin's Gulags in Putin's Russia by Gessen, Masha

A haunting literary and visual journey deep into Russia's past--and present

The Gulag was a monstrous network of labor camps that held and killed millions of prisoners from the 1930s to the 1950s. More than half a century after the end of Stalinist terror, the geography of the Gulag has been barely sketched and the number of its victims remains unknown. Has the Gulag been forgotten?

Writer Masha Gessen and photographer Misha Friedman set out across Russia in search of the memory of the Gulag. They journey from Moscow to Sandarmokh, a forested site of mass executions during Stalin's Great Terror; to the only Gulag camp turned into a museum, outside of the city of Perm in the Urals; and to Kolyma, where prisoners worked in deadly mines in the remote reaches of the Far East. They find that in Vladimir Putin's Russia, where Stalin is remembered as a great leader, Soviet terror has not been forgotten: it was never remembered in the first place.

"A short, haunting and beautifully written book." --Wall Street Journal

Author: Masha Gessen
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Published: 03/20/2018
Pages: 156
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.80lbs
Size: 7.80h x 10.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780997722963

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2017
Publishers Weekly 01/15/2018