Research Catalog

Voices from the Gulag : life and death in communist Bulgaria

Title: Voices from the Gulag : life and death in communist Bulgaria / [compiled and edited by] Tzvetan Todorov ; translated by Robert Zaretsky.
Publication: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©1999.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	DR93.A1 V65 1999	Off-site

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Description

10, 178 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"In Voices from the Gulag, Tzvetan Todorov singles out the experience of one country where the concentration camps were particularly brutal and emblematic of the horrors of totalitarianism - communist Bulgaria."
"The voices we hear in this book are mostly from Lovech, a rock quarry in Bulgaria that became the final destination for several thousand men and women during its years of operation from 1959 to 1962. The inmates, though drawn from various social, professional, and economic backgrounds, shared a common fate: they were torn from their homes by secret police, brutally beaten, charged with fictious crimes, and shipped to Lovech. Once there, they were forced to endure backbreaking labor, inadequate clothing, shelter, and food, systematic beatings, and institutionalized torture."
"We also hear from guards, commandants, and bureaucrats whose lives were bound together with the inmates in an absurd drama. Regardless of their grade and duties, all agree that those responsible for these "excesses" were above or below them, yet never they themselves. Accountability is thereby diffused through the many strata of the state apparatus, providing legal defenses and "clear" consciences. Yet, as the concluding section of interviews - with the children and wives of the victims - reminds us, accountability is a moral and historical imperative."--Jacket.

Subject

Genre/Form

Biographies
History

Note

Translated from the French ed.: Au nom du peuple; original documents written in Bulgarian.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Foreword / Istvan Deak -- The Inmates -- The "Crimes" -- Arrest and Deportation -- Camp Life -- Life After the Camp -- The Women's Camp -- The Other Side -- The Nurse -- A Brigade Chief -- Two Guards -- The Chief of State Security at Lovech -- The Regional Director of State Security -- At the Ministry of the Interior -- Among the Families.

ISBN

0271019611
9780271019611

LCCN

99010414

OCLC

ocm40602858
40602858
SCSB-14499234

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library