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[GULAG] Vozvrashchenie k zhizni (zapiski kul’trabotnika ITL NKVD SSSR) [i.e. Return to Life (Notes by a Cultural Worker of a Correctional Labor Camp of NKVD of USSR]

Loginov, M.

Moscow: KVO GULAGa NKVD SSSR, 1944. Item #1862

32 pp. 20,5x14,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Covers rubbed, with small fragment lost, minor tear of spine, some soiling, few marks, otherwise very good.

For inner use in camp. Wartime edition. Extremely rare.
A good example of utopian propaganda books collecting stories about ‘happy re-education of prisoners in GULAG’. Name of the camp wasn’t revealed.
“Unlike capitalist countries, where concentration camps are places of torture and death of people, correctional labor camps of the Soviet state are a kind of school for re-educating the worldview left to us as a legacy by capitalist society” – the author writes. According to the foreword, Loginov headed a cultural-educational department of one of the NKVD labor camps.
The edition collects six stories of pre-war and wartime prisoners. The first story is about a female geologist whose husband was an inveterate spy serving for a foreign country, so he was arrested and shot in 1937. Without her will, the geologist provided enemies with secret data about the geological service in the USSR, that is why she ended up in the labor camp for 5 years. “The loss of a child, remorse for Soviet society, pain and suffering for what she had done, and long imprisonment knocked her out of balance and she took the path of sabotage and violation of labor discipline”. After a conversation with the educator, she starts to change her behavior, works a lot and refuses to make her duties easier. Soon, authorities release her and she begins a shock-working life for the socialist construction.
The collection itself is divided into pre-war and wartime sections. The second one opens with the foreword about restructuring the labor force because of WWII and doubling the pace of work by prisoners themselves. For those who were out of this enthusiasm, educators found new wartime arguments. Prisoners were urged to work twice as hard to help the country defeat the Nazis. One of the prisoners of this section himself volunteered to go to war instead of his sentence, and was soon sent to participate in military actions near Kyiv where he finally died. Other two violators decided to work twice as hard to help the country defeat the Nazis.
This edition is comparable to other books about former prisoners and street children educated in labor communes, but this one led to exceeding work standards in every case. Also, it is particularly interesting due to wartime cases.

Not in Worldcat.

Status: On Hold