Overview

The first extended study in English of the revolutionary memoirs from Shlissel’burg Fortress. In 1884, sixty-eight prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum-security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St. Petersburg. Inhuman conditions in the prison caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, and over half died. However, the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates’ living conditions. Their memoirs enshrined their experience in revolutionary mythology and served as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy’s loss of moral authority. This book features three of these memoirs—translated into English for the first time—as well as an introductory essay that analyzes the memoirs’ construction of a collective narrative of resilience, resistance, and renewal. The first extended study of these memoirs in English, this book uncovers an important episode in the history of political imprisonment. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the Russian revolution, carceral history, penal practice and behaviors, and prison and life writing.  

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9781787359925

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Reviews

'An impressive study ... Young's expertise in Russian literature and language is reflected in her skilful translations capturing the many nuances, registers and special meanings of words used by the inmates. Like all history books that offer important and original translations of sources with a handy glossary and meticulous bibliography, this publication would be a welcome reference in any library. However, Young has produced a book for anyone interested in narratives about resistance, resilience and renewal.' European History Quarterly 'Convey[s] a sense of squandered human potential.' The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) 'Sarah J. Young's excellent collection of revolutionary memoirs from Shlissel'burg Prison provides a welcome addition to a range of scholarly fields, from history to carceral studies, translation and literature.' Revolutionary Russia 'Sarah Young has performed an exceptional service to the field of nineteenth-century studies by assembling this superb edition of three representative memoirs written by revolutionaries held in the Shlissel'burg prison under the Russian Empire's last two tsars, Aleksandr III and Nikolai II....Writing Resistance is an exceptional collection that will interest anyone who works on radical movements, prison reform and carceral issues, or even women's history in the nineteenth century. The collection raises important issues about the degree of continuity between nineteenth-century Russian carceral practices and the operations of the Soviet political confinement system.' Nineteenth-Century Contexts 'The memoirs published by Young have not been republished in Russian since the 1920s, becoming a bibliographic rarity [and] the presentation of which to an English-speaking audience is an undoubted breakthrough in studying the history of the prisoners of the Shlisselburg Fortress.'Cahiers du Monde Russe 'Young has made a great contribution to prison literature with her translations, and her work would be of interest to academicians, researchers and students who are interested in carceral life of political prisoners during the Soviet Union.' International Journal of Russian Studies

Author Information

Sarah J. Young is Associate Professor of Russian at UCL SSEES, where she teaches and researches nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, culture and thought. She is the author of Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative (2004), and co-editor of Dostoevsky on the Threshold of Other Worlds (2006). Her current research focuses on the Russian tradition of carceral literature.

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