Tyler C. Kirk is Assistant Professor of History and Arctic and Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
In After the Gulag, Kirk uncovers the process of remembering that took place in the Komi Republic from the late-1980s up to 2021. He mines an innovative source base, in that he has explicitly (for the most part) rejected state archives and gone to the words of the prisoners. Kirk presents a region that understands its past, finds unity in that past (even the repressive elements), and where individuals can find ways to deal with their traumatic experiences. --Wilson T. Bell, author of Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War The book takes us to a lost era, when civil society organizations like Memorial existed and served citizens, and when Russians were grappling with the painful chapters of their recent history. The stories are vivid and gripping, and the characters are memorable, sympathetic, and complex. --Golfo Alexopoulos, author of Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag