"In After the Gulag, Kirk uncovers the process of remembering that took place in the Komi Republic from the late-1980s up to 2021. He mines an innovative source base, in that he has explicitly (for the most part) rejected state archives and gone to the words of the prisoners. Kirk presents a region that understands its past, finds unity in that past (even the repressive elements), and where individuals can find ways to deal with their traumatic experiences."?Wilson T. Bell, author of Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War

"The book takes us to a lost era, when civil society organizations like Memorial existed and served citizens, and when Russians were grappling with the painful chapters of their recent history. The stories are vivid and gripping, and the characters are memorable, sympathetic, and complex."?Golfo Alexopoulos, author of Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag

"Despite today's grim reality in post-Soviet Russia, Kirk's work offers the heartening perspective that in provinces like Komi, far from the center, colonized by forced labor, memory not only lives on but is "vibrant" (210) among local individuals and organizations. The forced disappearance of civil society and the revival of repressive tactics did not succeed here in suppressing the local memory of repression, and that may be considered a triumph, however small, for the victims."?Nanci Adler, University of Amsterdam , American Historical Review

"The book thus deserves credit as a pioneering study that reveals the immense potential of nongovernmental archives of personal recollections, while offering a regional cross-section of federal memory policy over the past thirty years."?Aleksandr IVANOV, Ab Imperio