Remembering the Gulag in post-Soviet Magadan

Abstract

This essay explores the relationship between place and memory in the former Gulag periphery of Magadan in northeastern Russia. Located on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, the city of Magadan emerged as a gateway to the sparsely populated region after the discovery of gold in the late 1920s. Today, a huge monument, the Mask of Sorrow, raised upon a hill on the margin of the city, commemorates the hundreds of thousands of prison- ers who were shipped to Magadan during the dictatorship of Stalin to work in the region’s newly established gold mines. Crucial to the region’s development was the construction of the legendary Kolyma Road between the port of Magadan and the industrial areas at the up- per Kolyma River. Built by prisoners under the most adverse conditions, this road is often referred to as ‘Road of Bones’. This essay demonstrates how the Mask of Sorrow and the Kolyma Road, during particular commemorative events, participate in the enactment of a historical landscape that bears the potential for a ritual return of the victims of the Gulag.