Women of the Gulag

Our subject is Women of the Gulag. The term Gulag, which in Russian is the abbreviation for "Main Camp Administration," has come to mean something larger than the corrective labor camps under the Gulag administration. It signifies the system of repression of the Soviet period, which peaked under Stalin. We use "gulag" broadly to mean the whole mentality of the Soviet repression system, the end point of which was execution or the camps, special settlements, places of exile where the victims of repression "sat".

A Pulitzer-winning journalist Anne Applebaum expressed in her interview, "What had happened since 2000 is that history has been gradually re-politicized. The Russians have become sensitive about discussing this sort of crimes of their past. For the Russians, understanding the history of the gulag is absolutely crucial." It is also crucial for the West: "The failure in the West to understand the magnitude of what happened in the USSR and central Europe may not seem to have an immediate implications for the Western way of life, however, in the modern global society, it is important to raise awareness of the global history and politics."

Anne Applebaum, in her on-camera statement tells us that Russia "still lacks 'that defining moment, that big monument'" that will help the Russian people come to terms with their past.