The Book Series “Memories of Solovki Prisoners” as a Phenomenon of the Russian Memoiristics

The article demonstrates that the new series “Memories of Solovki Prisoners 1923—1939” is a signifi -cant contribution to the development of the memoir genre. Its compilers (The Solovetsky Monastery Publishing) successfully combine the adherence to tradition and the innovative approach caused by the nature of the material (object of the memories). All the texts included in the series are autobiographical, retrospective, have a documentary basis, subjective evaluation character and often increased emotionality. There are resented different subtypes of memoiristics: from unsophisticated stories about people’s own experiences (S. Kureishi, A.R. Grube, etc.) to truly artistic generalizations (B.N. Shiryaev, O.V. Volkov, etc.). The only object common for all of the series’ memories is the “Soviet prison”, organized on the Solovetsky Islands in 1923—1939. Its population consisted of a wide range of types in all parameters: social, age, regional, ideological, etc. The memoirs contain many previously unknown historical facts and varied interpretation of events. All this makes the publication encyclopedic. The mandatory expert comments for each publication and the analytical reviews, not tied to a specifi c memoir, gives the series an academic character. The specifi city of the memories’ object infl uenced on the distribution of the material in volumes. In general, the memoirs are arranged according to the chronological principle. However, due to the nonlinear change of the population, there are quite a lot of chronological overlays. An important feature of the series is the presence of crosscutting thematic lines, represented in all volumes. They are the history of the monastery, escape from the camp, fates of the imprisoned priests, foreigners, women, etc. High quality, voluminous visuals are also included in the unifi ed semantic fi eld of the series.

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