Steven Barnes
The American Historical Association recently honored Steven Barnes, associate professor of history at George Mason University, with the 2013 Hebert Baxter Adams Prize. The prize honors an American or Canadian author in the field of European history and recognizes his book “Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society.”
In his book, Barnes examines and reinterprets the role of the Gulag, the Soviet system of forced labor camps and internal exile that was at its height in the Stalin and early post-Stalin era from the late 1920s to the late 1950s. Emphasizing the role of Soviet ideology in defining the boundary between honest citizen and implacable enemy, Barnes looks at the Gulag as a penal institution that afforded millions of prisoners a final opportunity to be “re-educated” and thus reintegrated into Soviet society. Millions of others deemed “failures” in re-education were destined to die in the harsh conditions of the Gulag.
“It is a great honor to receive the Adams prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the discipline of history,” says Barnes, who is also director of the Center for Eurasian Studies. “All those cold, lonely days of research in Russia and Kazakhstan seem worth it, if I can help educate the public about this horrific institution and the violations of human rights that passed under the claim of creating a better society.”
Barnes is currently working on a new book tentatively titled “The Wives’ Gulag: The Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors to the Motherland.” The book traces women’s lives in a camp for elite women during the height of Stalin’s Great Terror. He is also writing about representations of the Gulag in the visual arts.
Additionally, with the National Parks Service and the Gulag Museum in Perm, Russia, Barnes was historical consultant for a traveling museum exhibit on the history of the Gulag. Working with George Mason’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Barnes built a website on the history of the Gulag.
This article appeared in a slightly different format on the Department of History and Art History website.