The origins, functions, and institutions of the Gulag -- Reclaiming the margins and the marginal : Gulag practices in Karaganda, 1930s -- Categorizing prisoners : the identities of the Gulag -- Armageddon and the Gulag, 1939-1945 -- A new circle of hell : the postwar Gulag and the rise of the special camps -- The crash of the Gulag : releases and uprisings in the post-Stalin era
Summary
Death and Redemption offers a fundamental reinterpretation of the role of the Gulag--the Soviet Union's vast system of forced-labor camps, internal exile, and prisons--in Soviet society. Soviet authorities undoubtedly had the means to exterminate all the prisoners who passed through the Gulag, but unlike the Nazis they did not conceive of their concentration camps as instruments of genocide. In this provocative book, Steven Barnes argues that the Gulag must be understood primarily as a penal institution where prisoners were given one final chance to reintegrate into Soviet society
