Survival as Victory by Oksana Kis explores how Ukrainian women endured and resisted Soviet repression in the Gulag. Drawing on over 150 personal accounts, this powerful work reveals how identity, faith, and dignity became acts of defiance. Myra Junyk reviews Kis’s groundbreaking work, highlighting its relevance amid renewed aggression against Ukraine in 2022.
Transcript:
In this edition of Knyzka Corner, we will be discussing Survival as Victory – Ukrainian Women in the Gulag by Oksana Kis. 
Survival as Victory – Ukrainian Women in the Gulag, published by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, examines the stories of Ukrainian women who were sentenced to the Soviet Gulag in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Oksana Kis based her work on memoirs, diaries, and oral histories of over 150 women who survived the dehumanizing effects of exile and imprisonment. These women were often sentenced because of their nationalist leanings. In the Gulag, they tried to maintain “normalcy” by preserving their Ukrainian identity. These stories are particularly poignant considering the events of 2022 when the Ukrainian nation was invaded by Russia resulting in millions of Ukrainian women and children being forced to flee.
In the “Introduction,” Oksana Kis remembers a 2002 interview with Maria Shanhutova, from the village of Denyshi, about her time as a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag. “This stooped elderly woman remembered her captivity not as a browbeaten victim, but with pride and dignity: she spoke about how she successfully resisted a powerful, soul-crushing system.” (p. 1) Ukrainian women were found in high numbers in Gulag camps from 1939 to 1956. Conservative estimates suggest that over two hundred thousand Ukrainians were sent to the camps during this period. These camps were meant to remove, punish, and reeducate those who dared resist the Soviet regime. Individuality, nationality, gender, religion, and political ideals were ruthlessly crushed. The horrific conditions in the camps were largely kept secret until the 1990’s. Anne Applebaum’s 2003 Gulag studied the daily lives of the people in this abusive and inhumane system. While Applebaum used archival materials and recollections, Oksana Kis has used the memoirs of Ukrainian women who were political prisoners.
The focus of this study is on the strength and strategies that over 150 Ukrainian women used to survive despite the horrors of the Gulag. The seven chapters of this book deal with: daily life, living conditions, national identity and Christian faith, creativity, femininity, sexuality, and motherhood. Interspersed in the text are illustrations of the work of women in the Gulag: embroidery, Christmas cards, albums, letters, poems, icons, and other handmade items. These beautiful and colourful examples of creativity speak to the dedication of the women to preserve not only their humanity, but their identity as Ukrainians in the face of unimaginable repression by their Russian captors.
Ukrainian history has not focused on the history of women. In particular, the topic of the daily lives of women has been poorly developed. In this context, Survival as Victory and its use of individual women’s memoirs of the Gulag is a unique examination of the repression of Ukrainian women by the Soviet regime. Their memoirs speak to the abuse and attack on their Ukrainian national identity that they experienced during their imprisonment. “Hunger, cold, exhaustion, and injuries drained the women and destroyed their health, crippling and killing thousands of political prisoners. Despite all these unbelievable difficulties, many of them managed to survive.” (p. 170) Their determination to preserve their Ukrainian culture and religion in the Stalinist period speaks to the resilience of the Ukrainian nation – despite Russian determination to rewrite Ukrainian history. “Their memoirs repeatedly raise such issues as the importance of the Ukrainian language in the completely Russian-speaking environment of the camps and prisons, a longing for their homeland, and grief over the fate of the shackled Ukrainian people.” (p. 177)
This book is an important addition to the academic studies of Ukrainian women’s history, Soviet repression of Ukraine, as well as the horrors of the Gulag. The text is detailed and very readable because it is based on the memoirs of actual Ukrainian women who survived their imprisonment in the Gulag. Researchers will appreciate the meticulous research as well as the extensive appendices, a glossary, geographic details, notes, and a bibliography of both primary and secondary sources. Survival as Victory describes the oppression of Ukrainian women in the Gulag by their Russian captors and their success in resisting this oppression.
Given the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this book has become particularly important to explain why women who have been impacted by the war are so determined to fight for the right of their country to survive. Once again, Russia is fighting to destroy the Ukrainian nation using the brutal tactics of war crimes against the civilian population, and once again Ukrainian women are determined to survive to achieve victory.
Oksana Kis is a historian who works on Ukrainian women’s history, feminist anthropology, and oral history. She holds a doctorate in History and Ethnology. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv, the president of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History, and the online editor of the journal Ukraïna Moderna. Dr. Kis has edited several books and thematic issues of scholarly periodicals on women’s history and feminist anthropology. Survival as Victory is an important addition to the history of Ukraine’s struggle for freedom and independence. “Every time that they found a way to remain human in the face of inhuman conditions – to remain women, Ukrainians, and Christians, to preserve their identities and values – they beat the system.” (p. 2)
Survival as Victory – Ukrainian Women in the Gulag is available at Amazon (affiliate link) and Harvard University Press.
—Reviewed by Myra Junyk
Kis, Oksana.
SURVIVAL AS VICTORY – UKRAINIAN WOMEN IN THE GULAG.
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), 2020. 640 p. ISBN 978-0-674-25828-0.
Available at Amazon and Harvard University Press.
