The Women of the Gulags and Nelson’s paradigms of evil: becoming a sign of hope against all hope

Abstract

Ligita Ryliškytė analyses the experience of women in the Soviet Gulag. The author starts from the premise that the suffered pain and violence in Eastern Europe during the socialist period do not fit into the dominant paradigm with regard to the interpretation of suffering in the Christian tradition as God’s pedagogy or temptation. Instead she accepts four paradigms of the Protestant theologian, Susan Nelson which she considers to be more appropriate for understanding the suffering of the innocent. Based on the memoirs and documented narratives of three Lithuanian women who were imprisoned in the Gulag, the author shows how the experience of women “after the Gulag” can become a contribution to the theology of suffering and hope. On a similar note, the article by Márta Bodó based on the autobiography of two women from Transylvania shows all their sufferings under socialism because of their religious beliefs and activities. The author focuses specifically on the religious interpretation of their suffering and on this basis draws theological conclusions. The final three articles in this part on the contexts of women’s suffering relate to contemporary society.