Georgs Avetisjans. Motherland. Far Beyond the Polar Circle

This is a journey far beyond the polar circle that brings to light memories of Soviet deportees and contemporary stories through a photobook.

The book "Motherland. Far Beyond the Polar Circle" is a visual and investigative journey to understand secrets guarded in the past. Using a Soviet-made medium format camera, the Salut, Georgs narrates the story of a town built upon the bones of Soviet prisoners 163 kilometres beyond the polar circle where many deportees once lived. Considered enemies of the USSR, many were taken to the Gulag camps and left to die from cold, starvation, and poverty.

Georgs went to a town Far North in Siberia, where his mom was born in 1952 and where his grandma spent 15 years in exile. She was deported in 1941. The author went on the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk, where he boarded a small plane to Igarka. It was his journey through the past on the railroad tracks of exile.

We believe this book and inclusive materials, letters, and found diary entries will raise awareness of these political crimes, propaganda, and history that repeats itself in modern-day Russia, where deportations are still a political tradition of the Soviet Union. The book shows how quickly the past is forgotten.

Title: Motherland. Far Beyond the Polar Circle
Published by: Milda Books
Design: Georgs Avetisjans
Size: 237 x 285 mm, 120 pages. Silk-screen printed linen box and cardboard hardcover with section sewn open spine Swiss binding
Language: Latvian, English, Russian
Edition: First edition of 500
Release date: 2023

Photobook / 120 pages
107 photographs / including archives
Riso printed case folder / 4 pages
Letter #1 / 8 pages
Letter #2 / 4 pages;
Diary (Memories about Siberia by Valija Kampins) / 32 pages
Top-secret USSR document / 22 pages
Newspaper (interviews and newspaper clippings)
(RU/EN) / 80 pages
Newspaper (interviews and newspaper clippings)
(LV) / 72 pages
Newspaper cuts "The Polar Communist" / 42 pages
Family archives / 4 pages
Inclusive archival documents and photographs / 28 pages.