Camp literature constitutes a peculiar example of twentieth-century
literature motivated by factors that are of a clearly ethical
nature. Its most fundamental purpose—to testify before
the world
on behalf of those who perished, to symbolically
compensate for their annihilation by engraving their presence in
cultural memory — has been traditionally identified by
writers-survivors as their moral obligation (Sarah Berkowitz, Primo
Levi, Terrence Des Pres, Eugenia Ginzburg, Aleksandr
Sol&zhachek;enicyn, Nade&zhachek;da
Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam). Realizing this moral obligation
(bearing witness
) assumes a special kind of faith in
history and language (Wiesel). Witness
is a legal
metaphor. It requires the presence of a judge and the law—an
audience capable of and willing to listen and a language of
representation and moral evaluation shared by the writer-survivor and
the audience-judge. In this context, both Nazi and Soviet camp
literature deal with two common areas of problems. (1) To many writers
and critics, the extreme experience in question seems to defy language
and its conventions (George Steiner, Varlam &Shachek;alamov, Anatol
Krakowiecki). (2) As Nietzsche said, life must feed on
oblivion
— the suppression of traumatic memories in
cultural discourse seems to be a condition of going about the daily
business of living (Cicero, European peace treaties, Levi,
Wis&lbar;awa Szymborska). What makes the Soviet camp literature
peculiar is a third area of problems, which it does not share with its
Nazi counterpart. Unlike the Nazis, the Soviets have created and
maintained for seventy years a public discourse in which the camps are
presented as a morally positive or at least historically justifiable
phenomenon. This discourse monopolized all public references to these
subjects in Soviet society and influenced Western public discourses on
the Gulag. Literary works about Soviet camps tend to be strongly
influenced or even decisively motivated by the anxiety caused by the
prospect that the historical judgment of the Gulag would be possible
only on terms set by the perpetrators themselves. Sol&zhachek;enicyn's
camp prose (