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Extracting the Karta from Katorga i Ssylka: Mapping Punishment in Pre-Revolutionary Russia

Fri, November 10, 3:45 to 5:30pm, Marriott Downtown Chicago, Floor: 10th, O'Hare

Abstract

The experience of migration and exile, the dislocation of space, were crucial components of the Russian revolutionary tradition. As James Billington notes, these exiles "never lost faith in a coming revolution" and thus could not be broken by the experience. Quite the opposite, in fact: they viewed exile as a pilgrimage to burnish their revolutionary bona fides through suffering for the cause.
The success of the October Revolution provided the first opportunity to openly celebrate these martyrs in print. No expense was spared in documenting their experiences. The most extensive such work was undertaken by the All-Union Society of Hard Laborers and Exile-Settlers, who published 116 issues of the journal Katorga i Ssylka between 1921 and 1935. Among their last publications was a biographical dictionary nearly 900 pages long that serves as an excellent complement to the unfinished Deiateli revoliutsionnogo dvizhenii v Rossii.
Digital and computational methods offer new opportunities to explore the treasure trove of information collected by early Soviet historians. Historical GIS, in particular, can recontextualize the ebb and flow of the Russian revolutionary movement within familiar historical narratives via the spatial turn as well as reveal underlying trends and unexpected contingencies obscured by the volume of data. As such, this paper will not only illuminate the shifting priorities of the authorities in choosing where to send exiles, but also offer prosopographical insight into those who chose to join the All-Union Society of Hard Laborers and Exile-Settlers to document their story unaware of the Great Terror to come.

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