Letters from the Gulag as a Survival Technique: A Case of the Artist Grigorii Filippovskii

Main Article Content

Andrei Zavadski

Abstract

This essay examines how writing letters to his wife helped the Soviet illustrator Grigorii Filippovskii, who in 1938 was sentenced to five years of camp labor, to survive the Gulag. Using methods of narrative analysis, the author identifies in Filippovskii’s letters (retyped by his wife Liia Nel’son for her unpublished memoir) three narratives, or stories, that allow the artist to maintain a connection with his pre-Gulag life: a limited circle of social contacts in the camp, Filippovskii’s reflections on art and his career as an artist, and his love for his wife. Filippovskii thus (re)constructs in these letters a “normal,” precamp everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), while simultaneously distancing himself from the realities of the camp. In Russian.

Keywords

Alltagsgeschichte, Commemoration, Gulag, Grigorii Filippovskii, Letters, Memoir, Repressed Artists


Abstract 223 | PDF (Русский) Downloads 101 HTML (Русский) Downloads 38

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).