Intelligentsia and Criminals: the Emergence of the Reform Narrative in Solovki (First Soviet Forced Labor Camp)

THE EMERGENCE OF THE REFORM NARRATIVE IN SOLOVKI (FIRST SOVIET FORCED LABOR CAMP)

Abstract

One of the manifestations of the myth of the Soviet "new man" is the figure of the "reforged" prisoner. The term "reforged" (perekovka) first appeared in the White Sea-Baltic Canal Gulag, as an appeal to the malleability of the human soul, which could be reforged for a new purpose. The present article examines the origin of this myth in the first forced labor camp in history: the Solovki Special Purpose Camp (1923 - 1936). We will analyze the reform narrative that emerged in this camp on the basis of the analysis of the literary journal Solovetskie Ostrová (The Solovkí Islands). The texts published in this journal were written by the intellectual prisoners (pre-revolutionary intelligentsia) who observed the common prisoners of the camp (thieves and criminals of the underworld). One of the fundamental characteristics of the narrative developed by these texts is that it focused on a teleological gaze that sought, through what "is", that which "should be": it went beyond the image of the ordinary criminal to see the potential "new man". This article studies how this narrative founded an archetypal typology and a proto-canon, which can be recognized as the basis of "socialist realism".