Staline-napoThe website, created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, depicts the unforgivingly brutal surroundings of the many prisons and work camps, not only through prisoners’ words, culled from memoirs, but also the visual arts—drawings and paintings. Artists used anything available for materials—even pig’s blood—as did musicians, who fabricated primitive instruments. This retreat into the life of the mind—writing, reciting poetry, holding discussions on history and philosophy, creating chess sets—was one means of survival.