Literature published in BAMlag’s main newspaper Stroitel BAMa

Abstract

T. Smykovskaya writes about a unique episode of Russian literary history: the development of so-called ‘labour-camp literature’, more specifically, lyrical poetry, published in the camps’ newspapers. The article focuses on BAMlag’s principal paper Stroitel BAMa, which saw publications of works by A. Alving, P. Florensky, A. Tsvetaeva, and other detainees. In her examination of the material, which so far has provoked little to no scholarly interest, the author highlights the key themes, images and subjects of labour-camp literature. Essentially, the article attempts to focus on the yet unknown history of the newspaper Stroitel BAMa, the main printed medium of BAMlag, as well as to describe the paper’s artistic and journalistic paradigm, which defined the literary activities of Svobodlag for a decade. Therefore, the article covers the newspaper’s history from the 1933 competition for its name until the emergence of the poetry section in the mid-1930s; from the Stakhanov theme, omnipresent in ‘free’ and labour-camp poetry alike in 1936, until eulogy of the Soviet leaders in pre-war years.