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Who were the righteous in the soviet totalitarian state? Which mechanisms were used to withstand Evil in and outside the gulags in totalitarian society? Were margins of choice open to people, despite the repression, the camps and the extreme solitude in which they found themselves?
These are the questions the Committee for the Gardens of the Righteous would like to answer in organizing an international conference, with the presence of European experts, researchers from Russia and surviving witnesses of that era.
The conference will take place in Milan, Italy, December 9 through 11, at Teatro Franco Parenti
International Conference
PROGRAMME
Day 1: Tuesday 9 December
Morning, 9am (Discussant Dario Fertilio)
Welcome by the Authorities
Introduction
Gabriele Nissim
“No, I will not give you my soul!”
Elena Bonner Sakharova
Andrej Sakharov’s struggle for legality and justice
Vittorio Strada
Completeness of memory and historical conscience. The century of totalitarianism and the metanoia of Vasily Grossman
Sergio Rapetti
The Gulag system: 1918-1991. Jacques Rossi and his extraordinary “recorded memory”
Discussion
Afternoon, 3pm (Discussant Marcello Flores)
Defending truth
Nikita Struve
Osip and Nadezhda Mandel’shtam: together, at the service of poetry and truth
Irina Sirotinskaja
Responsibility and morality of the word in Varlam Shalamov
Natalia Gorbanevskaja
“Stolen air”. Anna Achmatova’s Requiem and the poetry magazines of the Sixties
Alexander Daniel’
Literature on trial. Sinjavsky and Daniel: “the defendant pleads not guilty”
Arina Ginzburg
From the White Book on the Sinjavsky-Daniel’ case, to support for political prisoners and the Helsinki Movement: Alexander Ginzburg
Discussion
In the evening
“Life has fallen, distant flash of lightning…”
Recital by the songwriter and singer Elena Frolova on texts by Achmatova, Mandel’shtam, Shalamov, Barkova: love, poetry and music, despite the Gulag
Day 2: Wednesday 10 December
Morning, 9am (Discussant Carla Tonini)
Resistance in civil society
Vladimir Tolz
Samizdat free information in the Seventies and Eighties: the “Current events chronicle”, “Bulletin V” and the West
Giovanni Guaita
Resistance on the part of believers: the examples of Pavel Florensky and Alexander Men’
Elena Chukovskaja
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. From the exposure of censorship to testimony about the “Gulag Archipelago”
Sergej Chodorovic
The solidarity of ordinary people and support for prisoners’ families
Slavy Boyanov
Independent thought under totalitarian regimes
Discussion
Afternoon, 3pm (Discussant Pietro Kuciukian)
Defending human dignity in the Gulag
Sergei Kovaljov
“Resistance inside the lagers in the Seventies and Eighties: the example of Anatoly Marchenko
Yuri Mal’cev
The psychiatric repression of dissent: Petro Grigorenko, a rebel in the nomenclature
Armenag Manoukian
The repressions of the Thirties: episodes of resistance by Armenians
Amatuni Virabian
The Armenians repatriated after the Second World War and the defence of national identity
Discussion
Day 3: Thursday 11 December
Morning, 9am (Discussant Victor Zaslavsky)
The Gulag and Italy
Elena Dundovich
The Righteous who denounced the Gulag in the West. Some exemplary tales.
Pierluigi Battista
The Gulag in Italy: the battle for truth against negationism
Francesco M. Cataluccio
Against the removal of the Gulag. The case of Gustav Herling
Didi Gnocchi
Antonio Peluso, an Italian victim of the Gulag:
Francesco Bigazzi
The odyssey of Emilio Guarnaschelli
Discussion
Afternoon, 3pm (Discussant Francesca Gori)
The Gulag and post-soviet Russia
Viktor Shmyrov
The “Perm-36” lager, a memorial to the Gulag
Arseny Roginsky
Keeping the memory of the Gulag alive in contemporary Russia
Anatoly Razumov
The Leningrad Martyrology: popular remembrance of the victims of the “Great Terror”.
Closing debate, 6pm
The Righteous in the Gulag: why should we remember them?
(Moderator: Gabriele Nissim)
During the conference there will be an exhibition from the "Perm' 36" Memorial Museum containing documentation on the lager of the same name.
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