Abstract:

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Gulags have garnered an abundance of attention. From the structure of the system, to the conditions of the camps, and the famous writers, scientists and political prisoners that were sentenced to serve their time. Many important authors and academics began to discuss the value of memory in relation to tragic events. However, there have not been many studies focusing on the Baltics and Central Asia. Scholarship has rarely examined the memory of the Gulags from an Estonian museum (Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom), which leaves a lot of questions about the evolution of the memory. Another gap to explore is through a comparison of narratives in two former Soviet republics. The research will build on to our understanding of Estonia’s memory-building of the Gulags through the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom, but also compare it with the Karlag Gulag Museum in Kazakhstan, while interviewing focus groups of 18-25 years olds to identify if memory of the Gulags comes from the information found in museums or from other avenues such as foreign media. To conduct my study, I will be visiting both museums to study their exhibitions about Gulags, analysis of the museum pamphlets, focus groups with 18–25-year-olds in both countries. I hypothesize that the memory surrounding these events, through the perspective of the museums, will be similar between the different populations of Estonia and Kazakhstan due to the shared experiences of the Soviet past, imprisoned writers, and experience inside the Gulags. This study is important because it will allow for a comparative analysis of two former Soviet Republics through similar tragic events and to identify tragedy as a unifying theme regardless of politics, culture, and geography.