Volume 52, Number 5 · March 24, 2005
Album from Hell
By Anne Applebaum
Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps
by Tomasz Kizny
Firefly, 496 pp., $69.95
Yellowed, dusty, covered in thick cardboard, and held together with string, the Gulag photo albums stored in the Russian State Archive look, at first glance, like nothing more than old family albums kept too long in the attic. But even when opened, their true function isn't immediately clear. Many have whimsical introductions, elaborate calligraphy, painted illustrations. One, for example, displays a watercolor painting and a hand-lettered dedication on its title page: 'Thank you great Stalin for our happy childhood!' Another features a poem:
Review, 2405 words
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