Writing The Woman’s Documentary Voice in Perestroika Gulag Narratives

Abstract

A substantial body of fictional and factual literature discusses labor camps, imprisonment, and exile as aspects of Russian culture both before and after 1917. However, while the Thaw opened public discussion of the Gulag, women’s responses have received far less attention than their male counterparts. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, the nebulous genre of life writing allowed women a framework for more visibly representing their experiences in the lageri.