Akatuy

katorga Katorga ( rus, ка́торга, p=ˈkatərɡə; from medieval and modern Greek: ''katergon, κάτεργον'', "galley") was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Prisoner ...

prison (

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

: Акатуйская каторжная тюрьма, Akatuyskaya katorzhnaya tyur'ma) was part of the

Nerchinsk katorga Nerchinsk katorga (Russian: Нерчинская каторга, Nerchinskaya katorga) was a ''katorga'' system of the Russian Empire in the area of the , which embraced a large part of eastern Transbaikalia (today's Chita Oblast), near the border ...

system of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, and was situated in today's

Alexandrovo-Zavodsky District Alexandrovo-Zavodsky District (russian: Алекса́ндрово-Заво́дский райо́н) is an administrativeRegistry of the Administrative-Territorial Units and the Inhabited Localities and municipalLaw #316-ZZK district (raion), one ...

Transbaikalia Transbaikal, Trans-Baikal, Transbaikalia ( rus, Забайка́лье, r=Zabaykalye, p=zəbɐjˈkalʲjɪ), or Dauria (, ''Dauriya'') is a mountainous region to the east of or "beyond" (trans-) Lake Baikal in Far Eastern Russia. The steppe and ...

. It was constructed in 1888 at the Akatuyskom mine, what is now the village of New Akatuy (Новый Акатуй). Originally labor convicts (mostly criminal) were used here for extraction of lead-silver ores. After the closing of the

Kara katorga Kara katorga (Russian: Карийская каторга, Kariyskaya katorga) was the name for a set of katorga prisons of extremely high security located along the Kara River in Transbaikalia (a tributary of the Shilka River, flowing into it at ...

in 1890, it became one of the main centers of detention of

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

s. It was turned into a women's penal camp in 1911 and was finally shut down after the

February Revolution The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...

of 1917.

George Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histo ...

visited the remnants of the mine in 1885. He noted, "Lunin, one of the Decembrist conspirators of 1825, lived and died in penal servitude at this mine, and somewhere in the neighborhood lie buried many of the Polish patriots sent to Akatui after the insurrection of 1863. The Russian Government does not take pains to perpetuate the memory of the political offenders whom it tortures to death in its Siberian prisons, and over moldering bodies of most of them there is not so much as a mound. If there is in Siberia a more lonely, a more cheerless, a more God-forsaken place than Kara, it is the snowy, secluded valley of Akatui."

References

External links

Ruins of prison - list of monuments of history, culture and places of memory Chita region
(Russian) {{coord, 51, 2, N, 117, 47, E, display=title 1888 establishments in the Russian Empire Defunct prisons in Russia History of Siberia Cultural heritage monuments in Zabaykalsky Krai Objects of cultural heritage of Russia of federal significance