The Literary Legacy of Julius Margolin, Gulag Veteran and Public Intellectual
S354, CGIS South
1730 Cambridge St.
Cambridge
Wed., Apr. 22, 2026, 4:30 – 6 p.m. 
One of the earliest essential contributions to the corpus of Gulag literature is "Journey into the Land of the Zeks", the memoir of Julius Margolin, a Russian/Polish/Israeli writer who had been imprisoned in Soviet labor camps for five years and, managed to leave the USSR in 1946, as part of the repatriation of Polish citizens after World War II. Margolin’s book, long recognized for its literary merit, and for its testimonial function, represents the Gulag through the eyes of a liberal Western intellectual. The book’s fate was thorny, possibly because of what some of the readers perceived as a clash between the author’s protest against labor camps and his concern with (among other issues) specifically Jewish fates. An astonished outsider in the camps, Margolin remained a partial outsider in Israel, a Russian intellectual, recognized and listened to by narrow circles of the audience, which, however, proved to be indomitably faithful.
Gazette Classification: Humanities, Lecture
Organization/Sponsor: Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Speaker(s): Leona Toker, Professor Emerita, the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), Maxim D. Shrayer, Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies, Boston College; Chair, Seminar on Russian and Eurasian Jewry, Davis Center
Cost: Free
Ticket Web Link: www.eventbrite.com…
Contact Info: [email protected]
Harvard Key Required: No
More info: daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu…