Obraz łagru w twórczości Borisa Filippowa

Abstract

Boris Filipoff (1905–1991), Russian author, poet and literary critic, representative of the «second wave» of Russian emigration, living in the USA since 1950, was a prisoner of the Ukhta-Pechora camp from 1936 to 1941. Filipoff’s camp experiences were then reflected in his journalistic and literary works. The author referred to them in articles published in the “Za Rodinu” newspaper, issued in Pskov and Riga by general Vlasov’s army. The subject of concentration camp was also taken up by Filipoff in his emigration short stories. Near the end of his life he reflected again on his camp experiences in memoirs entitled: Looking back (Всплывшее в памяти. Главы из воспоминаний, 1990). Despite the lack of genre uniformity of Filipoff’s „camp” texts and the long period of time over which they were written, the image of the camp they presented was characterised by stability and consistency. The author, depicting callousness of the camp reality, did not lose his faith in moral greatness of the enslaved people, setting the sphere of transcendence, power of human mind and freedom of spirit against the cruelty of the Gulag. The article is an analysis of the image of concentration camp in the Filipoff’s works mentioned above.