![Dolinka Museum 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Dolinka_Museum_1.JPG)
Karlag (Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp, Russian: Карагандинский исправительно-трудовой лагерь, Карлаг) was one of the largest
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
labor camp
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
s, located in
Karaganda Oblast
Karaganda Region ( kk, Qarağandy oblysy; russian: Карагандинская область, translit=Karagandinskaja oblast′), also spelled Qaraghandy Region, is a region of Kazakhstan. Its capital is Karaganda.
On 17 March 2022 it was an ...
(now
Karaganda Region
Karaganda Region ( kk, Qarağandy oblysy; russian: Карагандинская область, translit=Karagandinskaja oblast′), also spelled Qaraghandy Region, is a region of Kazakhstan. Its capital is Karaganda.
On 17 March 2022 it was an ...
,
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
),
Kazakh SSR
; kk, Қазақ Советтік Социалистік Республикасы)
*1991: Republic of Kazakhstan (russian: Республика Казахстан; kk, Қазақстан Республикасы)
, linking_name = the ...
,
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. It was established in 1931 during the period of settlement of remote areas of greater USSR and its ethnic republics. Cheap labor was in high demand for these purposes. People were arrested and transported from west of the
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
to the gigantic labor camp in central Kazakhstan spanning from
Akmola Region
Akmola Region ( kz, Ақмола облысы, translit=Aqmola oblysy; russian: Акмолинская область, Akmolinskaya oblast) is a centrally located region of Kazakhstan. Its capital is Kokshetau. The national capital, Astana, is en ...
in the north to the
Chu River
The Chu (Shu or Chüy) ( kk, Шу, Shu, شۋ; ky, Чүй, Chüy, چۉي; dng, Чў, Chwu (from , ''Chǔ''); russian: Чу, Chu) is a river in Northern Kyrgyzstan and Southern Kazakhstan. Of its total length of ,[WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...]
, another wave of prisoners poured in, constituting Soviet former POWs held captive by the Nazis before the Red Army returned them to the Soviet Union. Many Karlag inmates were prisoners sentenced as "enemies of the people" under
Article 58
Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times. In particular, its Article 58-1 was updated by the listed sub-articles and ...
RSFSR
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
. Over 1,000,000 inmates in total served in Karlag over its history.
One of the main reasons for creating Karlag camp was the establishment of a large agricultural base supported by free labor for rapidly growing industry in central Kazakhstan -
Karaganda
Karaganda or Qaraghandy ( kk, Қарағанды/Qarağandy, ; russian: Караганда, ) is the capital of Karaganda Region in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is the List of most populous cities in Kazakhstan, fourth most populous city in Kaza ...
Coal Basin in particular. The camp was founded on uninhabited empty steppe and grew fairly quickly within the first couple of years with the help of neighboring regions of the north and south. The total territory of Karlag was about , out of which only was dedicated to agriculture, while the rest was used for pasture. As Karlag territory expanded, it absorbed some civilian settlements which included ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Germans who had moved to the area between 1906-1907. As a result, in 1931 those civilian settlements were forced to relocate by
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
forces.
Collectivization
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member ...
of the steppe, forced relocation, and confiscation pushed them to the city of Karaganda and its neighboring regions. Karaganda was just starting to build coal mines, so many of these resettled people were used as cheap labor. Confiscated sheep, camels, cattle, and horses were transported to the newly formed "Eastern Meats" (Vostok Myaso) organization, which processed it in order to feed the labor force.
The empty lands of resettled people were soon filled with thousands of rows of inmates. Echelons of new prisoners came one after another from the central parts of the
Russian SFSR
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
. They quickly spread across the steppe building railroads, housing for livestock, housing for camp employees, barracks, and isolation units.
Karlag wardens answered only to Gulag
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
in Moscow. No Soviet, state or local government organizations had any influence on the operations of the wardens and supervisors of the camp. It resembled a colony, with a heavy management apparatus. Its departments included: administrative-agricultural, planning and control, culture-educational, human resources, trade, supply-chain, transport, finance, political, medical, and more. In Karlag, the inmates' efforts built a meat-processing plant and a leather/fur-processing plant which produced leather products, furs and
valenki
Valenki ( rus, ва́ленки, p=ˈvalʲɪnkʲɪ; sg valenok ( rus, ва́ленок, p=ˈvalʲɪnək)) are traditional Russian winter footwear, essentially felt boots: the name ''valenok'' literally means "made by felting". They are not wate ...
.
In 2020 in Zhanalyk village (
Rus
Rus or RUS may refer to:
People and places
* Rus (surname), a Romanian-language surname
* East Slavic historical territories and peoples (). See Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia
** Rus' people, the people of Rus'
** Rus' territories
*** Kievan ...
. Жаналык) local farmers excavated remains of at least 55 victims of NKVD executions.
Notable inmates
*
Arkadiy Belinkov
Arkadiy Viktorovich Belinkov (russian: Арка́дий Ви́кторович Белинко́в, September 29, 1921, Moscow, USSR – May 14, 1970, New Haven, Connecticut) was a Russian writer and literary critic.
Biography
Belinkov was b ...
(1921–1970), writer
*
Alexander Grigoriev (1891–1961), painter
*
Nikolay Urvantsev
Nikolay Nikolayevich Urvantsev (russian: Николáй Николáевич Урвáнцев; – 20 February 1985) was a Soviet geologist and explorer. He was born in the town of Lukoyanov in the Lukoyanovsky Uyezd of the Nizhny Novgorod Gove ...
(1893–1985), geologist and explorer
*
Alexander Chizhevsky
Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (russian: Алекса́ндр Леони́дович Чиже́вский, also Aleksandr Leonidovich Tchijevsky) (7 February 1897 – 20 December 1964) was a Soviet-era interdisciplinary scientist, a biophysicist ...
(1897–1964), scientist
*
Margarete Buber-Neuman (1901–1989), German writer
*
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
(1918–2008), author and critic of the Gulag system
*
Mikulas Gacek (1895–1970), writer
References
{{Coord missing, Kazakhstan
Camps of the Gulag
Karaganda Region
Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic