Information about the author:
A new book by Vyacheslav Umnyagin, the executive editor of the book series “The Recollections of Solovetsky Prisoners (1923–1939)” prepared by the Publishing Department of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Stavropigialny Monastery, develops a new topic of historical memory paradoxes (contradictions). The subject was first touched upon in Vyacheslav Umnyagin’s monograph entitled “The Solovki: The Landscape of Russian Dissent” (IWL RAS, 2021) and in his collection of articles “In Search of Unity: About Solovki and Beyond” (IWL RAS, 2023). The author is striving to reconstruct the ways of thinking and lifestyle typical for the gulag memoirists. What gave them stamina to live in imprisonment? What were they guided by when choosing between the good and the evil? And what were they expecting after liberation? One will find answers to these and other questions of spiritual and moral significance in the essays included in this book.
