Thursday, October 30, 2008

Link to article on ALZHIR

My friend Kristina Gray has written a very good post on her blog about ALZHIR, the labor camp in Kazakhstan established by Stalin for the wives of "traitors."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this link, Otto. In my course on Russian Dissident Culture, we watched Mikhalkov's "Burnt by the Sun." At the end, Colonel Kotov's young wife is arrested for being the "wife of an enemy of the people," and she and her daughter were deported to Kazakhstan, where she died three years later. I've forwarded the link to this article to my class so they can read about her probable fate.

Kristina said...

Thanks Otto for linking to my piece, I have photos of the ALZHIR memorials in subsequent blog entries once I got home to Almaty. Turns out I have a student in one of my classes whose mother as a 19 year old bride was imprisoned for 10 years at ALZHIR. I can't wait to get more information from Aida's research about what her grandmother went through.
Walt, I remember watching the Academy award Best Foreign film "Burnt by the Sun." I should have my students watch that as well. Thanks for the reminder.

J. Otto Pohl said...

You are welcome.