Although Stalinism as a political system ceased to exist with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, its legacy did not evaporate. On the contrary, it left a deep mark on the national identity of the people living in the vast expanses of the Russian Federation that has emerged from the shadow of the broken Soviet empire. To better comprehend the phenomenon of Stalinism, this interdisciplinary work utilizes tools from the humanities and social sciences. The narratives of Kolymskie rasskazy (Kolyma Tales) by Varlam T. Shalamov (1907-1982) serve as a means to uncover the nature of the wounds...