Sandarmoch. Dramaturgy of Meaning
'Sandarmoch. Dramaturgy of Meaning' by Irina Flige, a member of the Memorial Association, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, is the first publication in Poland dedicated to the history of Sandarmoch - one of the largest cemeteries of victims of Stalinist repression.
The history of Sandarmoch as a memorial symbolically concentrates the general history of the memory of the Great Terror and the era of Stalinist repression. Irina Flige characterises "the main characteristic of the memory of the Terror in contemporary Russian mass consciousness" as follows: "there is tragedy, there are innocent victims - yet there is no crime and there are no criminals". In essence, it is the memory of a tragic era without tragic guilt, and therefore without its redemption and without catharsis.
Irina Flige's book is undoubtedly unique among works devoted to Soviet repression. Why?
- Firstly, the object of study becomes not the history of repression as such, but the phenomenon of the 'place of memory' as a living sociocultural process.
- Secondly, it is indeed only in this book that the life of the 'place of memory' is described and analysed in detail.
- Thirdly, Irina Flige's book is methodologically significant for similar studies of the phenomenon of memory in the 20th century. The phenomenon is analysed in its historical continuity, complications and transformations. In fact, Flige has created a 'historical model' of the forms of memory of the events of Soviet history.
The publication was published by the Mieroszewski Centre jointly with the Polish Institute in St. Petersburg and is a translation of Irina Flige's (St. Petersburg 'Memorial') book Сандормох: драматургия смыслов.
The Polish edition has been expanded with an introduction by I. Flige 'Sandarmoch: Polish presence' and a historical introduction Poles - victims of Sandarmoch by Aleksandr Daniel. The Polish edition will also be enriched with iconographic material.
