A new exhibit on display at Marist College is taking a closer look at a time of human suffering.
The exhibit, “GULAG: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom” is being shown through April 19 at the Steel Plant Studios on the Marist College campus and is the first exhibit on the Soviet Gulag in the United States.
The exhibit opened on Ellis Island in May 2006, and has since traveled to Boston University, the Manzanar National Historic Site, the site of a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans in Independence, Calif., and the Martin Luther King National Historic Site in Atlanta, Ga., before coming to Poughkeepsie.
This exhibit traces the historya of the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system, describes daily life in the camps, outlines the human rights movement in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s and describes the effort of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 to educate young Russians on the history of the Gulag and the totalitarian state. The final section deals with the work of historic sites around the world to explore and give meaning to the difficult histories in their own countries.
The vast network of camps was an integral part of Stalin’s plans for rapid industrialization. At its height the Gulag imprisoned or internally exiled over 5 million Soviet citizens, both repressing political opposition and providing labor for Stalin’s economic programs. Highlighted in the exhibit is the history of one camp in Russia’s Ural Mountains, Perm-36, and how Russians committed to preserving the memory of the Gulag have transformed the labor camp into an historic site and museum.
Bringing the history of the Gulag to American audiences through an exhibit was the idea of the director of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 in Perm, Russia. The Gulag Museum is a member of an organization called the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, a group formed in 1999 through the initiative of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, to promote the use of historic sites as centers for public dialog on issues associated with human rights. The exhibit, which was designed in Russia and built in the United States, was developed through a partnership of the U.S. National Park Service, the Gulag Museum, the International Memorial Society, and Amnesty International, USA. The Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park is also a member of the coalition.
This year, the site is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved in the United Nations in 1948, which, partially in response to the massive human rights abuses of the 20th century, for the first time in the modern world articulated a standard of universal rights. This international document, as well as the Helsinki Accords which was endorsed by the Soviet Union, were later invoked by Soviet dissidents in their appeal for justice.
Featured in the exhibit are copies of rare artworks by former Gulag prisoners depicting degrading living and working conditions, archival footage from Soviet propaganda films of the largest construction projects under Stalin’s dictatorship, a re-creation of a dismal solitary confinement cell for political prisoners, portraits of former political prisoners at Perm-36, historic photos, and artifacts depicting camp life, hand-made cups and spoon and crude tools prisoners employed in their backbreaking work.
“We are so pleased to be working with Marist College and all of our local partners to bring this 20th century history to the Valley,” said Sarah Olson, superintendent of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites. “We hope that the public will have an opportunity to see the exhibit and attend the related events.
For more information, visit www.marist.edu.