New collection explores 'memory zones' of an abandoned gulag

Zones mémoires is the inaugural edition of the “Memoria et Historia” series, founded by the Slavic languages department of the University of Lausanne in collaboration with the Franciszek Karpiński Institute of Regional Culture and Literary Studies (Siedlce, Poland).

The collection starts with Chtchoutchi: a gulag camp lost in the vastness of the Russian Far North. At the beginning of the 1950s, prisoners were working on the construction of a polar railroad; a disproportionate undertaking launched on Stalin's orders and abandoned as soon as he died. Seventy years later, ruins and rails scattered in the tundra; the account of a few witnesses and precious archive documents remain.

Guided by these traces, the authors present varied and original points of view on the camp and its context, combining historical, archaeological, technical, and environmental approaches. Their attention is focused in particular on the material remains, what they reveal about the gulag, and what they have become today: a back-and-forth between the past and the present, as the camp is both an object of research and a living place of memory.

Starting from a circumscribed case, this work therefore leads to a broader reflection on the place occupied by the gulag’s remains in the contemporary world.

About the Changing Arctic program

The interdisciplinary Changing Arctic program allowed students to have a field research experience in the Russian Far North, focusing on climate change, climatology, oceanology, and biodiversity. In 2019, three EPFL master students joined an expedition to the Yamal Peninsula of northwest Siberia to carry out research at the site of the gulag camp and railway as part of a program offered in the College of Humanities (CDH) Minor in Science, Technology and Area Studies (STAS). Read the CDH article on the unique voyage.