This article examines the conditions of female prisoners of GULAG labour camps and prisons during Stalin’s era and analyses the culture and survival strategies those prisoners developed. The source material consists mostly of memoirs, as well as a few letters provided by the Memorial Archive from Moscow.Its results show that women were less likely than men to get physically tortured or punished. Instead, psychological torture and humiliation were the most commonly used against female prisoners. However, ...
This article examines the conditions of female prisoners of GULAG labour camps and prisons during Stalin’s era and analyses the culture and survival strategies those prisoners developed. The source material consists mostly of memoirs, as well as a few letters provided by the Memorial Archive from Moscow.Its results show that women were less likely than men to get physically tortured or punished. Instead, psychological torture and humiliation were the most commonly used against female prisoners. However, they were more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, by either guards or fellow inmates. Men and women worked in many of the same fields of labour in the camps, but women were more likely to get light work, and to be genuinely proud of their work effort. The work environment was also the main place where the genders could interact, and build friendships and camp romances. The daily struggles of camp life, like getting enough food and acquiring light work, became the main focus and chief problem.To overcome the mental and physical hurdles of camp and prison life, they developed a series of survival strategies. These included telling each other stories, singing or reciting poetry. They would bribe or lie their way into light work, cheat with the production numbers to get off with doing less work than expected or use sex as a commodity or leverage. The most common phycological survival strategy was apathy towards their surroundings. The most important and most uplifting way to manage camp life was to team up two and two, occasionally more, and work together. These groups would share food and resources, they would edge each other on and save each other from themselves or the dangerous work environment, ensuring survival.
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