The use of mass terror was one of the most representative characteristics of the Stalinist regime. The gulag was the embodiment of the Bolsheviks' constant and large-scale use of fear to control the population. Among the numerous accounts of life in the gulag, Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales and Fedor Mochulsky's Gulag Boss stand out for their treatment of the issue. Indeed, Shalamov, a writer who spent 17 years in the gulag, describes a cold, unforgiving environment that, when not killing you physically, sucks all humanity out of yourself until you turn into a soulless being. Shalamov recounts every aspect of the gulag through his prisoner's perspective, without politicizing his lyrics. On the other hand, Mochulsky's work is written by a former guard after the fall of the USSR. In his book, Mochulsky attempts to explain his past behavior, not to say exonerate himself. Thus, Kolyma Tales and Gulag Boss provide two valuable accounts of the gulags in the Stalinist era from two opposing perspectives and with different purposes. Kolyma Tales and Gulag Boss tell the same events, namely the daily routine of an Arctic gulag. However, these two works approach this topic from two diametrically opposed perspectives. In fact, Shalamov was a political prisoner while Mochulsky was a camp supervisor. Their experience of the gulag is different in almost every way. First, Shalamov writes of the impossibility of forming a true friendship in the gulag given the living conditions: “Cold, hunger and insomnia made any friendship impossible […] friendship could be tempered by misery and tragedy” . On the other hand, Mochulsky evokes the valorization of friendship between the guards: “they too very m...... middle of paper ......in Era (Studies in Russian and Eastern European history). Basingstoke: Palgrave.Lapidus, Gail Warshofky. 1978. Women in Soviet Society. Berkeley: University of California Press Berkeley 94720.Randall, Amy E. Fall 2011. ""Abortion will rob you of happiness! ": Soviet reproductive policy in the post-Stalin era." Journal of Women's History 13-38.Sacks, Michaael Paul. 1977. "Women in the Industrial Workforce." In Women in Russia, by Dorothy Atkinson, Alexander Dallin, and Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, 189-204. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.1920. "Constitution of the United States. Amendment. XIX." Viola, Lynne and Beatrice Farnsworth. 1992. Russian peasant women. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Z. Goldmann, Wendy. 1993. Women, state and revolution: Soviet family policy and social life, 1917-1936. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.