Ekaterina Makhotina: Vom „Heldenepos“ zum „Opferort“ und zurück

From an “Hero Monument” to a “Counter- Monument” and Back: Sites of Memory of the White Sea-Baltic Channel in Contemporary Russia. A Local Study on Medvezh’egorsk Rayon

The cultural memory of the Gulag represents a fundamental area of inquiry for historical research. Soviet ideology sought to represent the Stalin’s industrialization program  as part of a heroic past. The White-Sea-Baltic Canal, built in 1931-1933, spearheaded the great technological projects. It was the first time that Stalin’s industrialization program resorted to forced labor – the Canal and the infrastructure accompanying it were erected by the prisoners of the BelBaltLag in approximately 20 months. From the very beginning, a propaganda campaign was carried out in which Soviet writers such as Maxim Gorki played an active role. In 1934 a book was published that laid the foundation to the glorification of the White-Sea-Canal and determined subsequent interpretations that would remain unchallenged until the 1980s. The dominant discourse celebrated the forging of the “New Man” to the effect that state violence, political repression and the victims of Stalinist and Soviet rule were neglected. This changed only with Glasnost’.

In this article I study the formation and genesis of cultural memory with regard to the White-Sea-Canal from the 1930s up to the present. The article will focus on a specific locality – Medvezh’egorsk. It was here that the Gulag-camp and the administration of the White-Sea-Canal had been located. I will describe and analyze the development of collective memory during the Soviet- and post-Soviet era, taking into account sources such as monuments and exhibitions. I argue that the absence of material monuments commemorating the victims of forced labor proves how unpopular this dark side of the past is among officials, not least in recent years. First and foremost, however, it testifies to the fact that the absence of social practices of commemorating the victims of Stalinism among the local population paved the way to heroicizing the Stalinist past.

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