The KarLag Museum in Dolinka, close to Karaganda, Kazakhstan.
Wikipedia: Karlag (Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp, Russian: Карагандинский исправительно-трудовой лагерь, Карлаг) was one of the largest Gulag labor camps, located in Karaganda Oblast (now Karaganda Region, Kazakhstan), Kazakh SSR, USSR. 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. Hundreds of thousands of inmates were creating wealth for the nation for a mere bowl of soup a day. People were arrested and transported from the West of the Ural Mountains to the gigantic labor camp in Central Kazakhstan spanning from Akmola Region in the North to the Chu River in the South. Later, after WWII, another wave of "enemies of the people" poured in from newly added territories. These were immigrants and Soviet POW's captured by Hitler's army and later "liberated" by the Soviet Army. An enormous part of Karlag inmates were political prisoners - "enemies of the people" who were victims of the Article 58 RSFSR. Over 1,000,000 inmates served in total in Karlag over its 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 Coal Basin in particular. The camp was founded on the territory of 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 6,800 sq. miles, out of which only 300 sq. miles was dedicated to agriculture, while the rest was used for pastures. As Karlag territory expanded, it absorbed some civilian settlements which included ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Germans who had moved to those parts between 1906-1907. As a result, in 1931 those civilian settlements were forced to relocate. This operation was enforced with the help of NKVD forces. The fate of the native Kazakh people was
Size: 4694px × 7034px
Location: Dolinka, Kazakhstan
Photo credit: © Bert de Ruiter / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: archipelago, bert, building, camp, de, dolinka, exhibition, gulag, headquarters, horizontal, horror, inmates, karaganda, karlag, kazakhstan, labor, landscape, museum, prisoners, repression, ruiter, soviet, travel
