Sacred Springs in the Camps

Gulag Memory, Legend, and Place

Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

168 Seiten

2026
University of Wisconsin Press (Verlag)
978-0-299-35470-1 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Februar 2026)
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Former Gulag sites—operating theaters of terror during the Stalinist period—are scattered across western Siberia, where memories of the purges run deep. The camps represent some of the most horrific events of the Soviet past, and yet their current role is complicated. Focusing on three former prison camps, folklorist Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby untangles a surprising nexus of memory, legend, and vernacular religious practice afforded by the existence of sacred springs at these sites.

Grounded by detailed ethnography, Sacred Springs in the Camps explores how legend creates, negotiates, and challenges collective memory; how lived religious practices intersect with the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church; how politics intertwine with belief; and how the social construction of sacred places affects folk narratives, faith, and local identity. These unlikely holy waters thus reflect important facets of contemporary Russian religion, politics, and society, refracting and reframing memories of the socialist past even as they offer important lessons for the present moment.

Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby is a professor in the Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Village Values: Negotiating Identity, Gender, and Resistance in Contemporary Urban Russian Life-Cycle Rituals.

List of Illustrations
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Chapter 1. Negotiating Religious and Secular Memory
Chapter 2. Interacting with the Holy Springs: Ritual, Pilgrimage, and Tourism
Chapter 3. Legends of the Holy Springs
Chapter 4. Politics of the Holy Springs
Chapter 5. Healing and Medicine
Chapter 6. Ecology of the Holy Springs
Conclusion: Haunted by the Past
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	10.2.2026
Zusatzinfo	12 b&w illus., 1 map
Verlagsort	Wisconsin
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-299-35470-9 / 0299354709
ISBN-13	978-0-299-35470-1 / 9780299354701
Zustand	Neuware