Gulag Echoes in the “multicultural prison”: historical and geographical influences on the identity and politics of ethnic minority prisoners in the communist successor states of Russia and Europe
Professor Judith Pallot took part in a two part round-table at the virtual Convention of the American American Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. The title of the session was Gender, Sexuality and Violence in the context of the escalation of Russia’s War on Ukraine: I and II.
Judith spoke about the gendered and ethnic sorting of people captured, deported and evacuated during the war as they are moved through a variety of carceral spaces.
The most recent member of the GULAGECHOES and Yugoslavian Penal Politics projects, Dr Mykhailo Romanov, took part in an online webinar on Scholarship in Exile: challenges of helping Ukraine academics and scholars at risk. He and Maryna Shevtsova discussed the current challenges facing scholarship in Ukraine and the ways in which the scholars at risk programmes might be modified to maximise the benefit to our Ukrainian colleagues. We are hoping that Mykhailo will be able to visit the Aleksanteri Institute for a short period in the near future.
January 29th-30th
Members of the research team attended the two-day seminar on the gulag, “Gulag and Finland – History and Memory” which took place in Helsinki. The first day was consisted of open lectures in the Helsinki public library that were devoted to the experiences of Finnish deportees and prisoners in the Russian gulag. Among the invited guest speakers were Irina Flige from Memorial St Petersburg, Nicolas Werth distinguished gulag scholar from the Sorbonne, Paris and our own Judith Pallot. Judith’s presentation, which was translated into Finnish, discussed the legacies of the gulag in the present day penal system in Russia but cautioning against the overuse of historical parallels
The seminars were followed by film showings that evening and the following day of films about the gulag. The highlight was the showing of the three-hour documentary about the gulag produced by Nicolas Werth, Patrick Rotman and Francois Ayme.
