In the 1930s, horrible mass repressions started in USSR. The government extensively persecuted people who seemed politically unreliable (religious, farmers, jews…). Almost all of them were sent without trial to GULAG labor camps where they worked to death. Over 27 years of repressions, nearly 20mln people were imprisoned in GULAG, 2mln of them died there.

Decades passed, but beeing the darkest periods in Soviet history the GULAG years still echoe through hearts and minds of people and cast a shadow over modern era because children of repressed victims are still alive and so is the tragedy itself.

Currently, the subject of repressions is so difficult and painful even official propaganda is keeping silence. There is no significant discussion or reflection on that. This led to shocking statistics: just half of the youth know about mass repressions in USSR (Russian Public Opinion Research Center survey, September 2018). Russians forget about GULAG.

The more people remember this tragedy, the less likely it will repeat. That’s why we needed to remind people about the horrors of repressions and spread knowledge about the GULAG among the young audience. With assistance of the GULAG History Museum, we started the "Survivors" project, an edition of graphic novels containing the memories of GULAG victims to reach out to young people.

We had no budget for the project. We know that the subject of GULAG is controversial: some people think that mass repressions are fantasy and some people believe the tragedy was real. And there is serious confrontation between them. We needed to get both camps to notice us in the run-up to the fundraising campaign for books production.

We wanted to introduce real GULAG victims and present evidence of mass soviet repressions. Thanks to the GULAG History Museum, we found survivors to tell their real stories about their imprisonment and the way the government ruined their life.

After that we needed to spread the ready e-book among core audience - young Russian-speaking people from 18 to 24 years. We chosen comics as a format: it is universally understandable and suitable for a first acquaintance with a complex topic. For distribution the book we collaborated with educational institutions and relevant media.

The first phase was the announcement of fundraising for publishing. This crowdfunding campaign was picked up by mass media and local social influencers. Thanks to that we collected enough money for the next phases. We found living GULAG victims and wrote about their stories.

The stories were translated into graphic novels made by different artists with each one highlighting their hero’s personality. After each novel we gave statistical data on repressions showing the scale of the tragedy, and a direct link to the hero’s live interview. The book’s cover conveys the idea of a little man in the face of a huge state machine.

Thanks to fundraising, we shared the free “Survivors” e-book version with everyone, especially young audience. We collaborated with the Department of Education and universities, enabling pupils and students to download the e-book on the Museum’s website via a QR-code or read it using e-book apps.

With the help of crowdfunding, we created a free e-book containing tragical stories from real survivors. The e-book has already been downloaded over 236,442 times. The release of the SURVIVORS graphic novels got more than 220 publications in mass media, discussions on TV and a massive buzz in social networks. Thanks to this massive coverage in both conventional media and social media on every phase we reached 106,282,000 people around the world. About 90% were from CIS (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belorussia) and about 10% were from Europe and Israel. The PR-value of the whole campaign (without any prior budget) amounted to $2.1 mln. The e-book is still available for download and will be available for a long time. The most important result is that we gave the youth a chance to learn about national tragedy, so that it won’t repeat.