Gulag

[Deborah Hoffman]

Not for anything will I wade into this debate, though I am enjoying the exchange. In bringing the example of Gulag I was more thinking of the term as a cultural referent that one (ideally) should be able to identify in the U.S., especially since Amnesty International referred only several years ago to U.S. detention centers as a gulag. A person who doesn't even know what the term refers to cannot understand the comparison being drawn, let alone evaluate it. I'm all for teaching people to think rather than just plugging them with regurgitatable knowledge, but a certain amount of basic information is necessary in order to do some of that thinking.
   
  I would also be interested in hearing about the non-totalitarian historical models Andrey Scherbenok brings (whether on or off list), in the interest of free exchange of ideas.
  

>Date:    Sun, 3 Feb 2008 17:56:09 -0500
>From:    Edward M Dumanis <dumanis at BUFFALO.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Gulag
>
>I strongly disagree. You might be missing the point. Following your
>logic, we should not use such "loaded" words as the Holocaust, or, going into 
>a relatively recent Russian history, "raskulachivanije" because they
>imply a certain interpretation of history, and we, as somebody having no
> moral values and just trying to stay "neutral," should teach the language and
>culture without any imposition of our own principles.
>The reality is that it is a pure fiction. One cannot teach history and 
>culture without taking sides. So, "what side are you on, on?" - "that
>is the question." In the Humanities, any human action is a subject of 
>interpretation.
>I am just wondering if there is any other member of the Columbia
>Society of Fellows in the Humanities, the organization whose name you use in
>your signature, who would subscribe your point of view. If so, I would like
>to hear from them as well.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Edward Dumanis <dumanis at buffalo.edu>
>
>>On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Andrey Shcherbenok wrote:
>>
>> I think that "concentration camp" is a technical term that has
>>precise literal meaning -- just as GULAG has it when it is used to refer to a
>> particular state institution. The problem with GULAG is that it is
>> nearly impossible to use it outside the specialized historical study without
> >implying all the historiographic conceptions that it has accumulated
>>in political discourse starting with Solzhenitsyn's book and which more
>>or less fit the so-called "totalitarian model" of Soviet history -- a model
>>which is far from being universally accepted in historical scholarship. A
>>loaded term like GULAG is especially dangerous because it does not explicitly
>>articulate those historical interpretations (which would open them up for
>>critical scrutiny) but rather imply that these interpretations are inherent in
>> the historical reality of the GULAG in its literal meaning. I do not
>>think these considerations apply to the terms like "concentration camps" or
"corrective labor camps" or "prisons", that is why they are safer to use. I hope
>>this answers your question.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Andrey Shcherbenok
>>
>> Columbia Society of Fellows in the Humanities


Deborah Hoffman, Esq.
Russian > English Legal and Literary Translations

A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life. -- R. G. Collingwood

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