The Gulag was a system of forced-labor camps in the USSR that reached its peak during Stalin’s rule.

Dasha Karetnikova’s father was born in ALZhIR (the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), northern Kazakhstan in 1938. Her grandmother, a music teacher, was arrested in Moscow while she was pregnant and sent to the camp for 8 years. The children of the prisoners lived in complete isolation, separated from their mothers by barbed wire. Dasha’s grandmother taught the commandant’s children to play piano. When she heard that a committee was coming to place the children into an orphanage, she told the commandant that if her son was taken away, she would not teach his children piano anymore. He announced quarantine for the entire camp—thus, none of the children were taken. Dasha’s father first saw his mother at the age of 8, when they were freed. They were deprived of civil rights until Stalin’s death.
The book’s title, Motherland hears, Motherland knows, refers to the name and opening line of a song the author’s father once sang in front of Joseph Stalin as a member of the leading Soviet boys’ choir.
From Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia, these photographs, alongside a collection of historical materials, document the travels which Dasha undertook with her father between 2019 and 2023. Researching deep into historical events and revisiting the cities and places where he lived and worked during and after his imprisonment, this collaborative road-trip between Dasha and her father attempts to piece together the uncertainties about his past, which he had spent a lifetime trying to make sense of.
“I never took dad’s warnings about the future seriously… I needed to travel with my dad to the places that he always talked about, and to fully hear him out. It was a serious trial for us both, but neither the pandemic nor emigration stopped us.” (D.K.)
Despite lifelong attempts and the intense process of making this book, Dasha’s father died without knowing exactly why his mother was arrested so many years ago. After having been born in the Gulag in 1938 and living in the shadows of accusations, he was once again pursued by state authorities in old age in 2022.

This project would not have been possible without the support of Simon Mraz, Dr. Helga Rabl-Stadler, Artists Solidarity Program Europe (ASoP) financed by BMEIA, Dialog Büro Vienna and people whom we cannot name for their safety.

Dasha Karetnikova, *1996 in Moscow; lives and works in Belgrad.