Browsing by Subject "Federal Prison Service of Russia"

This thesis explores the role of the history of the Gulag in the contemporary mythology surrounding the Great Patriotic War in the Russian Federation, proposing a semiotic consideration to this phenomenon in Russian memory politics. While mythology has surrounded the Soviet victory in the Second World War since its conclusion, the thesis focuses on its most recent iteration during the Putin regime and briefly into the 2022 Russian war on Ukraine. To look more closely into this vast and amorphous mythology, the author narrows in on the historical considerations on the role of the Gulag during the Great Patriotic War. In particular, the thesis delves into the online materials of the Federal Prison Service (FSIN) published between 2009 and 2022 to evaluate how, through symbols and historical narratives, the Federal Prison Service of Russia weaves itself into the mythology of the Great Patriotic War. Utilizing the Roland Barthes seminal work on mythologies, the thesis concludes that FSIN reproduces previously established signifiers of the Great Patriotic War, drawing upon the war’s ‘matrix of signification.’ FSIN’s historical practices are a part of its relationship to the power centre, both to stake out a historical claim, or ‘place identification’ in the broader history of Russia’s modernization, and to signal loyalty to the centre by amplifying its cornerstone narratives on the Great Patriotic War.