Academic Studies Press Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag (Myths and Taboos in Slavic Cultures)

Containing analyses of everything from prisoner poetry to album covers, this book moves beyond the simplistic good/evil paradigm that often accompanies Gulag scholarship. While acknowledging the normative power of Stalinism—an ethos so hegemonic it wanted to harness the very mechanisms of inspiration—the volume also recognises the various loopholes offered by artistic expression. Perhaps the most infamous project of Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan, the Belomor construction was riddled by paradox, above all the fact that it created a major waterway that was too shallow for large crafts. Even more significant, and sinister, is that the project won the backing of famous creative luminaries who enthusiastically professed the doctrine of self-fashioning. This book complicates our understanding of the Gulag by looking at both prisoner motivation and official response from multiple angles, thereby offering a more expansive vision of the labor camp and its connection to Stalinism. Review “The most outstanding feature of this book is probably the unpublished material it includes and its analysis as presented by the author. This, together with the wide range of cultural objects analysed (art, theatre, poetry, autobiographies, songs, chastushki, tattoos, etc.), testifies to the extremely precious work done by the author, who managed to recover from Russian state archives and from secondary sources a very interesting set of material for her work. . . . [T]here is no doubt about the quality of this research, which the author has carried out with devotion, enthusiasm, and—interestingly enough—creativity. . . . Draskoczy’s book is one of the few monographs devoted to the analysis of creativity within the camp. It shows how insightful, inspirational, surprising, and productive research on the Gulag from within, using the documents written or created by prisoners during the time they spent there, can be.” - Modern Language Review, Volume 110, Part 4, October 2015 About the Author Julie S. Draskoczy  has taught Russian history and culture at the University of Pittsburgh, Stanford University, and Patten University in San Quentin prison. Julie received her PhD in Russian literature and culture from the University of Pittsburgh in 2010. She was named an Andrew W. Mellon Scholar of the Humanities at Stanford University and has studied in Russia as a Fulbright-Hays recipient. Her book and film reviews have appeared in The Slavic and East European Journal, The Modern Language Review, and Kinokultura. She has published articles in The Russian Review and Studies in Slavic Cultures and has edited numerous projects including The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe and Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She currently lives in San Francisco where she teaches Soviet history at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay.