In an innovative effort to situate Baltic testimonies to the Gulag in the broader international context of research on displacement and memory; scholars from the Baltic States; Western Europe; Canada; and the United States seek answers to the following questions: Do different groups of deportees experience deportation differently? How do the accounts of women; children and men differ in their representation? Do various ethnic groups remember the past differently: how do they use historical and cultural paradigms to structure their experience in unique ways? The scholars researched the archives; read testimonies; interviewed former deportees; and examined artifacts of memory produced since the late 1980s; applying crossdisciplinary approaches used at the study of the Holocaust testimonies; the testimonies of women have received a particular emphasis. The essays in the book also examine the issues of transmittance; commemoration and public uses of the memory of deportations in contemporary social; cultural and political contexts of Baltic societies; including the reflection of Gulag legacy in literature; the cinema and museums.

Tomas Balkelis is a senior fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius.

Violeta Davoli.t. is Senior Researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History, Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, and Project Leader of Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe (Horizon Europe, 2022-2025). She is co-series editor of CEU Press’s new series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe.