GULag-Letters

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dittmar Dahlmann
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 261408071

The focus of the project GULag letters has been hardly considered in the GULag research overall so far. There has been hardly any research that has investigated the letters from GULag prisoners they exchanged with their dependants. Because of that this project will be firstly dedicated to the aquisition of so far unknown letters. This is going to happen by a systematic evaluation of personal NKWD archival materials, official NKWD archival records as well as assets from archives of organizations dedicated to former GULag prisoners. In addition, data collection will be facilitated through personal contacts to former GULag prisoners and their dependants. The researcher aims to get further insights by analysing about 1.000 letters from Russia, Lithuania and Germany from that time. Archival research and personal stories of former GULag prisoners have yielded deep insights into the administrative circumstances, censorship and and the general conditions of writing letters under GULag conditions. Among other things the content analysis will focus on the several facettes of interaction between prisoners and their dependants, the exchange of experiences from both sides of the barbed wire, the mutual humanitarian encouragement, the material support, the subject omissions in the letters as well as practices related to bypassing censorship related these extreme conditions. Results of this scientific research will be presented in form of a detailed annotated edition of GULag letters.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants