Zuzanna Bogomił’s Gulag Memories fills a gap in the English-language scholarship by focusing on the “carnival of memory” (6), a phrase borrowed from Bakhtin, of the late-1980s and early-1990s. She argues that this period lay the foundations for attempts to commemorate the Gulag at least until 2015, the approximate end of Bogomił’s discussion. Following an introduction that outlines the theoretical underpinnings of her work, including discussions of Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz, and a brief outline of her methodology, the book is neatly structured into four main chapters, each highlighting one key region for Gulag commemoration: the Solovetskii Islands, the Komi Republic, Perm΄ Krai, and Kolyma. A concluding chapter then attempts to tie these various memory projects together, with particular emphasis on two of the “memory actors” (11) that she had discussed throughout the book: the Orthodox Church and the Memorial Society.

Bogomił makes no pretentions for comprehensiveness, and indeed one of the strengths of her book is that she demonstrates significant regional variation in how the Gulag has been commemorated, with that variation often resulting from the way the Gulag itself developed in each region. From her analysis, one would expect other regions, not discussed, to show considerable variation. Rather than praising or condemning the various memory actors’ attempts at dealing with the past, Bogomił instead describes how they have gone about doing so, using sources such as interviews, press coverage, and analysis of the various monuments, museum exhibits, grave markers, days of remembrance, and so on, created since the late-1980s. She treats multiple memory projects as complex, discursively formed historical phenomena. For example, she describes the Mask of Sorrow Monument in Magadan as a “complex cultural statement,” (172) and deals extensively with the symbolism of the monument, its planning, and its reception. If there is an over-arching argument to the book, it is that memory and commemoration are complex and contested, and that the Orthodox Church's approach to Gulag memory is more in line with a turn towards Russian nationalism, than that of the Memorial Society, which tends to be critical of the state.

Bogomił’s regional coverage is uneven, and purposely so. She spends the most time on the Solovestkii Islands, because discussion around memory projects involving Solovetskii allow the “beginnings of a formation of a commemorative language to be better understood” (20). In this chapter, she is able to discuss days of remembrance; the Solovetskii Museum; the work of the local chapter of Memorial; the transfer of Solovetskii stones to Moscow and Petersburg; the role of the Orthodox Church as it relates to the memory of the Gulag, the Solovetskii monastery, and “New Martyrdom” (69); mass graves and grave markers; responses of various national minority groups; and other issues. In subsequent chapters her discussions are more limited. For example, the chapter on Perm΄ is almost exclusively on the Perm΄−36 museum.

She ends her narrative, for the most part, in 2015. At this point, according to Bogomił, the state started to become more involved as a memory actor, as evidenced by the takeover of the Perm΄−36 Museum and the opening of the Gulag Museum in Moscow. She writes that in 2015, “the Russian Federation became actively involved in the formation of the memory of repressions” (187). The original, Polish version of the book came out in 2012, and the revised, English edition in 2018. When she is able to go beyond 2015, as in the case of Perm΄−36, she emphasizes that despite some changes, the fundamental approach to Gulag commemoration remains in line with that of earlier efforts. In framing the end of her story in 2015, therefore, the reader is left somewhat confused: how did central state authorities relate to these various memory actors before 2015? Is 2015 really a key turning point? This endpoint also allows for only a very limited postscript pertaining to the Gulag Museum in Moscow and the Moscow Wall of Sorrow monument, dedicated in 2017.

Overall, Gulag Memories is an engaging and thought-provoking examination of the commemoration of the Gulag in the Russian Federation, and Bogomił’s emphasis on the complexity of this process reveals that discussions of the past in the post-Soviet period have been more dynamic and nuanced than is often credited. Gulag Memories is an important contribution to the study of the Gulag, and of memory formation in post-Soviet Russia.