Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps

Speaker: Andrea Gullotta, Lecturer at School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow
Discussant: Irina Sandormirskaja, Professor, Cultural Studies, CBEES
Chair: Lovisa Andén, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Culture and Education, Department of Aesthetics

Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps

Andrea Gullotta's research of intellectual life and literature at the famous GULAG camp of Solovki during the 1920s. In the current active research of cultural life in Soviet prison camps, there are topics that have yet to be thoroughly investigated. Gullotta is addressing the heritage of the literature of the Silver Age in the work of the numerous Gulag literature authors who grew up during this period and whose writing shows traces of that extraordinary time.

Bio:

Andrea Gullotta is a lecturer in Russian at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow. He is co-editor in chief of “AvtobiografiЯ. Journal on Life Writing and the Representation of the Self in Russian Culture” (http://www.avtobiografija.com).

Author of Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps.
(Cambridge: Legenda, 2018)

‘Small and remote as it is, Solovki has always been central to Russian culture. Nearly all the central themes of Russian history — the power and schisms of the Orthodox Church and its intimacy with the state; the development of the Gulag — are reflected, or more often anticipated, in its history... The legacy of the Terror remains a battlefield. Books as scrupulously researched as Gullotta’s are invaluable.’ — Robert Chandler, Financial Times 27 April 2018

Creator of the virtual exhibition "Beauty in Hell: Culture in the Gulag" (The Hunterian)