# How to Survive Stalin's Gulag and Remain Human #### calendar\_today Date and Time **March 17, 2021** 12:00PM - 01:30PM EDT #### pin\_drop Location **YouTube** A Discussion of Oksana Kis's New Book, *Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag* **Martha Kebalo,** UN/ECOSOC, World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations **Oksana Kis,** Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine **Lynne Viola,** Department of History, University of Toronto *Attendees will receive a link to purchase the book at a 30% discount through Harvard University Press.* [Watch live on YouTube](https://youtu.be/ZofAOWRypYw) ![Poster for Survival as Victory event](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/huri/files/kis_book_talk_poster1000.png) ## Abstract Lynne Viola and Martha Kebalo will join author Oksana Kis to discuss her latest publication, *[Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/survival-as-victory)*. The book offers a poignant look at the devastatingly harsh and dehumanizing conditions in Stalin’s forced labor camps. Imprisoned for their political beliefs and struggle against the Soviet regime, Ukrainian women fought to retain their identity as well as simply to survive. Based on Kis’s research, our panelists will explore how women lived and survived in the Gulag, the role of creative expression and religion, the endurance of nationalism and political thought, and the tension between rejecting traditional gender roles while embracing the conventionally female activities - such as knitting, caregiving, cooking, and embroidery - as a means of survival. ## Book Description Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women were sentenced to the Gulag in the 1940s and 1950s. Only about half of them survived. With *Survival as Victory*, Oksana Kis has produced the first anthropological study of daily life in the Soviet forced labor camps as experienced by Ukrainian women prisoners. Based on the written memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories of over 150 survivors, this book fills a lacuna in the scholarship regarding Ukrainian experience. It details the women’s resistance to the brutality of camp conditions not only through the preservation of customs and traditions from everyday home life, but also through the frequent elision of regional and confessional differences. Following on from the groundbreaking work of Anne Applebaum’s *Gulag: A History* (2003) and Lynne Viola’s *The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements* (2007), *Survival as Victory* is a must-read for anyone interested in gendered strategies of survival, accommodation, and resistance to the dehumanizing effects of the Gulag. Attendees will receive a link to purchase the book at a 30% discount through Harvard University Press. **[Read more about the book](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/survival-as-victory)** ## About the Speakers Sort **Oksana Kis** is a historian and anthropologist, author of *Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag* (HURI, 2020) to which this discussion is dedicated, Acting Head of the Department of Social Anthropology, and a Leading Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Lviv). She taught at Columbia University, University of Alberta, Ukrainian Free University in Munich, and Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She is the award-winning author of *Zhinka v tradytsiinii ukraïns’kii kul’turi druhoï polovyny 19–pershoï polovyny 20 stolittia* (2008), recognized as the best book in Ukrainian women’s studies by the Ukrainian National Women's League of America and by an award from the Lesia and Petro Kovalevy Foundation, and of *Ukraïnky v HULAHu: Vyzhyty znachyt’ peremohty* (2017; 2nd ed. 2020), as well as the editor of *Ukraïns’ki zhinky v hornyli modernizatsiï* (2017), recognized as the best book on history at the Lviv Book Forum. ![Oksana Kis](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/kis_bio_photo_250.jpg?itok=JVopIjFV) **Martha Kichorowska Kebalo** received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the Graduate Center at CUNY, having done fieldwork in the Cherkasy area of central Ukraine among women’s organizations arising in the post-Soviet period. She continues to maintain collaborative contacts with women activists Ukraine and in the Ukrainian diaspora. A member of branch 64 of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, she serves since 2013 as the Main Representative to the UN for the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations (WFUWO), an international NGO in consultative status with UN’s ECOSOC. She is currently preparing for publication a history of “The UNWLA 1925-2020: Women’s Community, Citizenship, and Commitment in the Ukrainian Diaspora.” **![Martha Kebala](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/kebala_250.jpg?itok=SjKKW3Sb)** **Lynne Viola** is University Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include women, peasants, political culture, and Stalinist terror. She is the author of *Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes of the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine* and *The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements*, among many other books and articles. **![Lynne Viola](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/viola_bio_photo_250.jpg?itok=-4YGDzxy)** [WATCH ON YOUTUBE](https://youtu.be/ZofAOWRypYw) ![UNWLA logo](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__100x100_scale/public/huri/files/unwla_logo_2x.png?itok=Drqan8Je) This event is co-sponsored by the [Ukrainian National Women's League of America](https://unwla.org/). ───◊─── Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Megan Duncan Smith, HURI Programs Coordinator, at in advance of the session (at least two weeks prior, if possible). Watch videos of past HURI events on our [YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/huriyt) and [subscribe](https://web.lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/lists/huri-events-list.lists.fas.harvard.edu/) to our email list to receive announcements about events and other activities. See also:- [ Seminar in Ukrainian Studies ](/event-type/seminar-ukrainian-studies) - [ History ](/fields-expertise/history) - [ Publications ](/program/publications) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://www.huri.harvard.edu/node/1384553/event-feed.ics) Copy link link