Cruises in evil waters: the Gulag Archipelago and its models

Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago is commonly referred to as belonging to a genre of its own. A connection can be, however, paradoxically traced to Belomor, the collective work of 36 Soviet writers under the direction of Maxim Gorky glorifying the benefits of work in prison camps for “reforging” criminals into enthusiasts of socialist construction. A book Solzhenitsyn shows to know, and violently criticizes, the structure of which, however, seems to inform through parody the structure of his own work. A linguistic analysis of The Gulag Archipelago shows how often inmates are treated as “the other” to which the writer tries to give voice. In this sense, a postcolonial reading can offer new insights, as camps become, paradoxically, the “Contact Zone” where the writer can finally meet the Russian people and even become part of it.