Keeping faith with the Party: Communist believers return from the Gulag

How is it that some prisoners of the Soviet gulag-many of them falsely convicted-emerged from the camps maintaining their loyalty to the party that was responsible for their internment? In camp, they had struggled to survive. Afterward they struggled to reintegrate with society, reunite with their loved ones, and sometimes renew Party ties. Based on oral histories, archives, and unpublished memoirs, Keeping Faith with the Party chronicles the stories of returnees who professed enduring belief in the CPSU and the Communist project. Nanci Adler's probing investigation brings a deeper understanding of the dynamics of Soviet Communism and of how individuals survive within repressive regimes while the repressive regimes also survive within them.

Introduction: enduring repression -- The Gulag prisoner and the Bolshevik soul -- Reconciling the self with the system -- Beyond belief: party identification and the "bright future" -- Striving for a "happy ending": attempts to rehabilitate socialism -- The legacies of the repression -- Epilogue: the "bright past," or whose (hi)story?