Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag

By Julie Draskoczy.

From the Introduction: “In his autobiography the Belomor prisoner Andrei Kupriianov wrote, ‘No, I am not an alien element. I am united with the working class in soul, body, and blood. My father, mother, and I were all killed for the cause of the working class.’ While his parents’ deaths were literal, Kupriianov’s own death was metaphorical—his former, criminal self had been killed to allow for the creation of a devoted Soviet citizen. Kupriianov immediately introduces physicality and violence into the understanding of his identity…

Academic Studies Press (2014). 253 pages.