The Gulag as a Place of Illness, Death and Untold Stories: New Approaches to Research on Stalinist Camps

The workshop will bring together researchers from Munich, Bonn and Helsinki who are working on a specific question of Gulag research that has not yet been considered: what role do the (forced) illnesses of camp prisoners and the aspect of medicine play in history and in the culture of remembrance?

Program:

12.00 – 12.15: Katja Makhotina (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg): Introduction

12.15 – 13.00: Mikhail Nakonechnyi (Aleksanteri Institut Helsinki): “Death, Smoke, and Mirrors: The GULAG’s Medical Manipulations in Comparative Perspective“

13.00 – 13.45: Hera Shokohi (Universität Bonn): “The best accommodations are chosen for recovery centers”: Remembering and Forgetting the Sick and the Dead of Karlag

13.45 – 14.15 Coffee break 

14.15 – 15.00: Anna Mazanik (MWN Eastern Europe / Helsinki): “Encephalitis and Medical Research in the GULAG in the Soviet Far East”

15:00 – 15.30: Katja Makhotina (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg): „Belomorkanal: a Symbol of Stalinist Violence and a Place of Remembrance“

15.30 – 16.00: Discussion, closing remarks