Remembering and Forgetting the Gulag: Prison Tourism in the Former Soviet Union

• In Event: Roundtable: Prison Tourism Roundtable 2

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative account of prison tourism in the post-Soviet region. It juxtaposes prison tourism in the Gulag center of Russia and Kazakhstan – countries where the Soviet system of labour camps was most prevalent - with the Gulag periphery of the Baltic States – countries where less remains of Soviet penal structures, but a sense of national victimhood is higher. The chapter is broadly organized around four key variables for comparison: the physical location of the sites; the representations of victims and perpetrators in museum objects; the degree of commercialization; and the narrative of making a break with the past and concealing continuities with the Soviet system. The chapter finds big differences across the cases in terms of these variables. However, it argues that one thing prison museums throughout the region share is a lack of engagement with the issue of penal reform and the degree to which elements of the Soviet system of punishment still endure.

Author

• Gavin Slade, University of Glasgow