Honor 6-6-1944
- Thread starter sunsagleaming
- Start date
World War II ?
World War II ?
World war 2 was the war as a whole . D-day was European conflict. The Pacific conflict was in the Pacific ,with a different bad guy. To different conflicts .
Last edited:
Uncle Cracker
Member
You is wastin yer time with these pimple faced scatter brains
fuck outta here with your defeatist attitude.
Uncle Cracker
Member
Na I reckon I'll stay awhile
I'm not the one here who said that the D-day and pacific conflicts were the same . I still can't believe you even conceived that . LOL...
Uncle Cracker
Member
we need a sub to get down that low
Uncle Cracker
Member
deep deep down
Do I think you're smarter than Sunsa? No..Do I think you're smarter than truthBtold? No..so why in hell should I even consider trying to get anything across to you after they failed? go back and reread everything that's been said in this thread.Let it marinate in that hollow head of yours..and maybe then,you'd realize what fucken retard you are.
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
((((part 1))))))LMMFAO!!!!! you only prove what an ignorant ass idiot you are for worshiping communism and the likes of these "great" leaders....lets look at some history..this will be a few fkn posts so i hope you can follow this!!!
LETS START WITH what the west was up against INCLUDING HITLER AND THE AXIS OF EVIL....
from your IDOLS....they gave thier ppl the GULAG...
Introduction: Stalin?s Gulag
The term ?GULAG? is an acronym for the Soviet bureaucratic institution, Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel?no-trudovykh LAGerei (Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps), that operated the Soviet system of forced labor camps in the Stalin era. Since the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?s The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, the term has come to represent the entire Soviet forced labor penal system. Concentration camps were created in the Soviet Union shortly after the 1917 revolution, but the system grew to tremendous proportions during the course of Stalin?s campaign to turn the Soviet Union into a modern industrial power and to collectivize agriculture in the early 1930s.
Gulag camps existed throughout the Soviet Union, but the largest camps lay in the most extreme geographical and climatic regions of the country from the Arctic north to the Siberian east and the Central Asian south. Prisoners were engaged in a variety of economic activities, but their work was typically unskilled, manual, and economically inefficient. The combination of endemic violence, extreme climate, hard labor, meager food rations and unsanitary conditions led to extremely high death rates in the camps.
While the Gulag was radically reduced in size following Stalin?s death in 1953, forced labor camps and political prisoners continued to exist in the Soviet Union right up to the Gorbachev era.
Work in the Gulag
GULAG was the acronym for the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps.
Gulag prisoners could work up to 14 hours per day. Typical Gulag labor was exhausting physical work. Toiling sometimes in the most extreme climates, prisoners might spend their days felling trees with handsaws and axes or digging at frozen ground with primitive pickaxes. Others mined coal or copper by hand, often suffering painful and fatal lung diseases from inhalation of ore dust. Prisoners were barely fed enough to sustain such difficult labor.
Balany (Logs, Inferior to a Horse)?After eleven and a half hours of labor (not including time needed to assign a task, receive tools and give them back), Professor Kozyrev commented: ?How far Man is still from perfection. Just to think how many people and what minds are needed to do a job of one horse.??
?In this case the four incompetent workers were: Epifanov, who was until the Great Purge of 1937 a professor of Marxism-Leninism in the Academy of Mining in Moscow; Colonel Ivanov, a chief of a major Red Army division; Professor Kozyrev, director of research at the Pulkovo Space Observatory in Leningrad; and myself, a secret agent of the Comintern.?
Drawing and memoir excerpt by Jacques Rossi.?In this case the four incompetent workers were: Epifanov, who was until the Great Purge of 1937 a professor of Marxism-Leninism in the Academy of Mining in Moscow; Colonel Ivanov, a chief of a major Red Army division; Professor Kozyrev, director of research at the Pulkovo Space Observatory in Leningrad; and myself, a secret agent of the Comintern.?
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
In the eyes of the authorities, the prisoners had almost no value. Those who died of hunger, cold, and hard labor were replaced by new prisoners because the system could always find more people to replenish the labor camps.
Prisoners work at Belbaltlag, a Gulag camp for building the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal .From the 1932 documentary film, Baltic to White Sea Water Way. Courtesy of the Central Russian Film and Photo Archive.
WheelbarrowCourtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Built between 1931 and 1933, the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal was the first massive construction project of the Gulag. Over 100,000 prisoners dug a 141-mile canal with few tools other than simple pickaxes, shovels, and makeshift wheelbarrows in just 20 months. Initially viewed as a great success and celebrated in a volume published both in the Soviet Union and the United States, the canal turned out to be too narrow and too shallow to carry most sea vessels. Many prisoners died during construction.
Prisoners work at Belbaltlag, a Gulag camp for building the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal.From the 1932 documentary film, Baltic to White Sea Water Way. Courtesy of the Central Russian Film and Photo Archive.
With such picks, millions of Gulag prisoners manually unearthed rocks and dug frozen ground during the massive Gulag projects in the 1930s and 1940s.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Kolyma was a name that struck fear into the Gulag prisoner. Reputedly the coldest inhabited place on the planet, prisoners spoke of Kolyma as a place where 12 months were winter and all the rest summer. Kolyma was so remote that it could not be reached by an overland route. Prisoners traveled by train across the length of the Soviet Union only to spend up to several months on the Pacific coast waiting for the few months each year when the waterways were free of ice. Then, they boarded ships for their trip past Japan and up the Kolyma River to their gold-mining destination. Surviving Kolyma was more difficult than any other Gulag locale.
Prisoners mine gold at Kolyma, the most notorious Gulag camp in extreme northeastern Siberia.From the 1934 documentary film Kolyma. Courtesy of the Central Russian Film and Photo Archive.
This shovel was found in one of the Gulag camps in remote Kolyma. It was one of many tools sent by the United States government to the Soviet Union during World War II. These items often found their way to the Gulag camps.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
part 2
Women in the Gulag
Women suffered greatly in the Gulag. Male camp employees, guards, and even other male prisoners sometimes raped and abused women. Some female prisoners took on ?camp husbands? for protection and companionship. Some were pregnant on arrival or became pregnant while in the Gulag. Occasionally, Gulag authorities released pregnant women and women with young children in special amnesties.
Gulag women living in overcrowded, poorly heated barracks.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
More frequently, mothers had little respite from forced labor to give birth, and Gulag officials took babies from their mothers and placed them in special orphanages. Often these mothers were never able to find their children after leaving the camps.
A drawing by Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia, a former Gulag prisoner.
part 3
Living in the Gulag
During their non-working hours, prisoners typically lived in a camp zone surrounded by a fence or barbed wire, overlooked by armed guards in watch towers. The zone contained a number of overcrowded, stinking, poorly-heated barracks. Life in a camp zone was brutal and violent. Prisoners competed for access to all of life?s necessities, and violence among the prisoners was commonplace. If they survived hunger, disease, the harsh elements, heavy labor, and their fellow prisoners, they might succumb to arbitrary violence at the hands of camp guards. All the while, prisoners were watched by informers?fellow prisoners always looking for some misstep to report to Gulag authorities.
Jacques Rossi, the artist who made the following drawings in the 1960s based on his memories, spent 19 years in the Gulag after he was arrested in the Stalin purges of 1936-37. He later published several writings, including his most important, The Gulag Handbook, in 1987 (published in English in 1989).
Layout of Barracks
Drawing by Jacques Rossi.
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Baraki (Barracks)
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Odinochka (Solitary Confinement Cell)
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Soup Ration
Drawing by Jacques Rossi.
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Self-Portrait
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Typical winter overcoat worn by most of the Soviet population in the 1930s through 1950s. The coat is very similar to the type provided to Gulag prisoners.
Camp jacket of maximum security prisoner.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Paika. ?Ration.? Prisoners in the Gulag received food according to how much work they did. A full ration barely provided enough food for survival. If a prisoner did not fulfill his daily work quota, he received even less food. If a prisoner consistently failed to fulfill his work quotas, he would slowly starve to death.
Prisoners? Eating Utensils
Varlam Shalamov
Russian author who was imprisoned in the Gulag for more than 20 years. He wrote the celebrated Kolyma Tales, a series of short stories based on his life in the Gulag.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Prisoners? daily bread ration.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Dokhodiaga (Goner)
Goners were extremely emaciated prisoners on the verge of death from starvation. Their presence constantly reminded prisoners of their potential fate if they failed to fulfill work quotas and thus were deprived of their full food rations.
Drawing by Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia, former Gulag prisoner.
Courtesy of Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia Foundation, Moscow.
Women in the Gulag
Women suffered greatly in the Gulag. Male camp employees, guards, and even other male prisoners sometimes raped and abused women. Some female prisoners took on ?camp husbands? for protection and companionship. Some were pregnant on arrival or became pregnant while in the Gulag. Occasionally, Gulag authorities released pregnant women and women with young children in special amnesties.
Gulag women living in overcrowded, poorly heated barracks.Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
More frequently, mothers had little respite from forced labor to give birth, and Gulag officials took babies from their mothers and placed them in special orphanages. Often these mothers were never able to find their children after leaving the camps.
A drawing by Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia, a former Gulag prisoner.?The arrival at the corrective labor camp turned out to be the culmination of the humiliation. First we were made to strip naked and were shoved into some roofless enclosures made out of planks. Above our heads the stars twinkled; below our bare feet lay frozen excrement. An enclosure measured 3 square feet. Each held three to four naked, shivering, and frightened men and women. Then these ?kennel cages? were opened one after the other and the naked people were led across a courtyard?the camp version of a foyer?into a special building where our documents were ?formulated? and our things were ?searched.?
The goal of the search was to leave us with rags, and to take the good things ?sweaters, mittens, socks, scarves, vests, and good shoes?for themselves. Ten thieves shamelessly fleeced these destitute and barely alive people.
?Corrective? is something that should make you better, and ?labor? ennobles you. But ?camp?? A camp wasn?t a jail. So then what on earth was going on? ?
Courtesy of Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia Foundation, Moscow. The goal of the search was to leave us with rags, and to take the good things ?sweaters, mittens, socks, scarves, vests, and good shoes?for themselves. Ten thieves shamelessly fleeced these destitute and barely alive people.
?Corrective? is something that should make you better, and ?labor? ennobles you. But ?camp?? A camp wasn?t a jail. So then what on earth was going on? ?
part 3
Living in the Gulag
During their non-working hours, prisoners typically lived in a camp zone surrounded by a fence or barbed wire, overlooked by armed guards in watch towers. The zone contained a number of overcrowded, stinking, poorly-heated barracks. Life in a camp zone was brutal and violent. Prisoners competed for access to all of life?s necessities, and violence among the prisoners was commonplace. If they survived hunger, disease, the harsh elements, heavy labor, and their fellow prisoners, they might succumb to arbitrary violence at the hands of camp guards. All the while, prisoners were watched by informers?fellow prisoners always looking for some misstep to report to Gulag authorities.
Jacques Rossi, the artist who made the following drawings in the 1960s based on his memories, spent 19 years in the Gulag after he was arrested in the Stalin purges of 1936-37. He later published several writings, including his most important, The Gulag Handbook, in 1987 (published in English in 1989).
Layout of BarracksDrawing by Jacques Rossi.
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Baraki (Barracks)?The Gulag was conceived in order to transform human matter into a docile, exhausted, ill-smelling mass of individuals living only for themselves and thinking of nothing else but how to appease the constant torture of hunger, living in the instant, concerned with nothing apart from evading kicks, cold and ill treatment.?
Drawing and memoir excerpt by Jacques Rossi.
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Odinochka (Solitary Confinement Cell)?A lesson to learn: How to distribute your body on the planks trying to avoid excessive suffering? A position on your back means all your bones are in direct painful contact with wood... To sleep on your belly is equally uncomfortable. Until you sleep on your right side with your left knee pushed against your chest, you counterbalance the weight of your left hip and relieve the right side of your rib cage. You leave your right arm along the body, and put your right... cheekbone against the back of your left hand.?
Drawing and memoir excerpt by Jacques Rossi.
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Soup RationDrawing by Jacques Rossi.
Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Self-Portrait?There is nothing you can do to protect yourself against cold.?
Drawing and memoir excerpt by Jacques Rossi.Courtesy of Regina Gorzkowski-Rossi.
Typical winter overcoat worn by most of the Soviet population in the 1930s through 1950s. The coat is very similar to the type provided to Gulag prisoners.
Camp jacket of maximum security prisoner.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Paika. ?Ration.? Prisoners in the Gulag received food according to how much work they did. A full ration barely provided enough food for survival. If a prisoner did not fulfill his daily work quota, he received even less food. If a prisoner consistently failed to fulfill his work quotas, he would slowly starve to death.
Prisoners? Eating Utensils
Dish from labor camp Stvor, Perm region, 1950s. Before the 1950s, camps did not provide dishes, and prisoners ate food from small pots.
Portion of hand-made spoon from labor camp Bugutychag, Kolyma, 1930s. Spoons were considered a luxury in the 1930s and 1940s, and most prisoners had to eat with their hands and drink soup out of pots.
Pot made out of a tin can from a labor camp in Kolyma, 1930s. Such pots were made in the camp workshops by prisoners who exchanged them for food.
Camp mug from labor camp Bugutychag, Kolyma, 1930s. Originally manufactured as a kerosene measuring cup, this mug is unusually durable. It was probably stolen from the camp workshop by a prisoner to use as his personal mug.
Varlam ShalamovRussian author who was imprisoned in the Gulag for more than 20 years. He wrote the celebrated Kolyma Tales, a series of short stories based on his life in the Gulag.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
"Each time they brought in the soup... it made us all want to cry. We were ready to cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup was thick we couldn?t believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick soup in a warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; we?d been hungry for too long. All human emotions?love, friendship, envy, concern for one?s fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty?had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies...?
V.T. Shalamov, ?Dry Rations,? from Kolyma Tales.
Prisoners? daily bread ration.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Dokhodiaga (Goner)Goners were extremely emaciated prisoners on the verge of death from starvation. Their presence constantly reminded prisoners of their potential fate if they failed to fulfill work quotas and thus were deprived of their full food rations.
Drawing by Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia, former Gulag prisoner.
Courtesy of Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia Foundation, Moscow.
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
part 4
What Were Their Crimes?
The Gulag held many types of prisoners. It served as the Soviet Union?s main penal system: robbers, rapists, murderers, and thieves spent their sentences not in prisons but in the Gulag.
In addition, the Gulag held political prisoners, a group including not only real opponents of the Soviet regime but also many innocents caught up in the paranoid clutches of the Soviet secret police. Most prisoners were the victims of arbitrary and severe legal campaigns under which petty theft, lateness, or unexcused absences from work were punished by many years in these concentration camps.
Have you ever been late to work?
In the Stalin era, a person who arrived late to work three times could be sent to the Gulag for three years.
Have you ever told a joke about a government official?
In the Stalin era, many were sent to the Gulag for up to 25 years for telling an innocent joke about a Communist Party official.
If your family was starving, would you take a few potatoes left in a field after harvest?
In the Stalin era, a person could be sent to the Gulag for up to ten years for such petty theft.
part 5 mthrfkr
Perm-36 Gulag Camp
The Soviets established Perm 36, called ITK-6 camp, in 1946 as a logging camp in the forested region of the Ural Mountains near the Siberian border. Here, prisoners cut down trees throughout the year and sent the lumber down river during the spring thaw to help rebuild Soviet cities damaged in the war. This camp was typical of thousands throughout the country.
Perm Region Camps, 1948-1953
About 150,000 inmates were imprisoned in more than 150 camps in the Perm region during the late 1940s. This made up about one-third of the total working population of the region.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Siberian Hinterland
To the east of the Perm region lies the vast Siberian hinterland.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Saw
A typical frame-saw used by the timber camp prisoners.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Typical Day at the Camp
Daily Schedule of a Gulag Prisoner Time Activity 6:00 AM Wake up call 6:30 AM Breakfast 7:00 AM Roll-call 7:30 AM 1 1/2 hour to march to forests, under guarded escort 6:00 PM 1 1/2 hour return march to camp 7:30 PM Dinner 8:00 PM After-dinner camp work duties (chop firewood, shovel snow, gardening, road repair, etc.) 11:00 PM Lights out
ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36)
ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36) in 1946. The camp had four barracks for 250 prisoners each, a punishment block (for prisoners who disobeyed the harsh camp rules), a hospital, outhouses, and a headquarters building. Drawing by Oleg Petrov.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Prison Plan of Perm-36
Plan of Perm-36 made by Lett Gunar Astra (in Latvian).
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
What Were Their Crimes?
The Gulag held many types of prisoners. It served as the Soviet Union?s main penal system: robbers, rapists, murderers, and thieves spent their sentences not in prisons but in the Gulag.
In addition, the Gulag held political prisoners, a group including not only real opponents of the Soviet regime but also many innocents caught up in the paranoid clutches of the Soviet secret police. Most prisoners were the victims of arbitrary and severe legal campaigns under which petty theft, lateness, or unexcused absences from work were punished by many years in these concentration camps.
Have you ever been late to work?
In the Stalin era, a person who arrived late to work three times could be sent to the Gulag for three years.
Have you ever told a joke about a government official?
In the Stalin era, many were sent to the Gulag for up to 25 years for telling an innocent joke about a Communist Party official.
If your family was starving, would you take a few potatoes left in a field after harvest?
In the Stalin era, a person could be sent to the Gulag for up to ten years for such petty theft.
part 5 mthrfkr
Perm-36 Gulag Camp
The Soviets established Perm 36, called ITK-6 camp, in 1946 as a logging camp in the forested region of the Ural Mountains near the Siberian border. Here, prisoners cut down trees throughout the year and sent the lumber down river during the spring thaw to help rebuild Soviet cities damaged in the war. This camp was typical of thousands throughout the country.
Perm Region Camps, 1948-1953About 150,000 inmates were imprisoned in more than 150 camps in the Perm region during the late 1940s. This made up about one-third of the total working population of the region.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Siberian HinterlandTo the east of the Perm region lies the vast Siberian hinterland.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
SawA typical frame-saw used by the timber camp prisoners.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Typical Day at the Camp
Daily Schedule of a Gulag Prisoner Time Activity 6:00 AM Wake up call 6:30 AM Breakfast 7:00 AM Roll-call 7:30 AM 1 1/2 hour to march to forests, under guarded escort 6:00 PM 1 1/2 hour return march to camp 7:30 PM Dinner 8:00 PM After-dinner camp work duties (chop firewood, shovel snow, gardening, road repair, etc.) 11:00 PM Lights out
ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36)ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36) in 1946. The camp had four barracks for 250 prisoners each, a punishment block (for prisoners who disobeyed the harsh camp rules), a hospital, outhouses, and a headquarters building. Drawing by Oleg Petrov.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Prison Plan of Perm-36Plan of Perm-36 made by Lett Gunar Astra (in Latvian).
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
part 6
Introduction: Dissidents
In the years after Joseph Stalin?s death, official and unofficial criticism of his dictatorial rule significantly altered the political atmosphere in the Soviet Union. While Stalin?s successor Nikita Khrushchev ushered in a period of official criticism that abruptly came to a halt with his own ouster in 1964, a new era of critical thinking about the Soviet system had begun.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a group of intellectuals emerged with a principled opposition to Soviet repression. This group, often called dissidents, built a small but thriving underground society in which they circulated information on the state of human rights in the Soviet Union. The former Stalinist labor camps in Perm would be turned into prisons to isolate and punish these activists.
part 7
Death of Stalin
Josef Stalin died on March 5, 1953. The Gulag had reached its maximum size of more than three million.
Convinced that forced labor was inefficient and wasteful, Stalin?s successors immediately moved to curb the size of the system by issuing an amnesty that released over one million non-political prisoners. The political prisoners left behind in the camps engaged in a series of mass uprisings in 1953 and 1954, which contributed to the decision to reduce the size of the Gulag further.
Mass meeting held at a factory in Leningrad after Stalin?s death, March, 1953.
Courtesy of the Central Russian State Film and Video Archive.
The new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, despite his own personal involvement in carrying out Stalin?s terror, moved to ease Soviet repression. In addition to continuing the reduction of the Gulag?s size and curbing political repression, Khrushchev took limited but definitive steps to denounce Stalin in a 1956 declaration.
In 1962, this "thaw" went even further as Khrushchev authorized open discussion of the Gulag. He allowed Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to publish his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the journal Novyi Mir. This description of one typical day in a Gulag camp is read around the world to this day. The "thaw" in Soviet culture was only temporary, as Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 and the subject of the Gulag once again became a forbidden topic until the 1980s.
Propaganda Poster, 1963.
?Our goals are clear. Our tasks are certain. Get to work, comrades!?
Khrushchev denounced Stalin and attempted to tie his own policies to the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
part 8
Dissident Movement
Samizdat was the name for underground literature that opponents to the Soviet government secretly wrote and distributed within the Soviet Union. Intellectual opposition to Communist rule emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and formed into a human rights movement.
From the late 1960s, these "dissidents" systematically collected and attempted to publicize Soviet human rights violations and conditions in labor camps for political prisoners. This information circulated among intellectuals in typescript and handwritten samizdat bulletins. Frequently, dissidents sent samizdat materials to Western countries in hopes of publicizing the situation in the Soviet Union.
In 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?s samizdat book The Gulag Archipelago was published abroad. The book was a sensation, as it laid out for the world the history of the Gulag. Soon after, Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his citizenship and exiled from the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities constantly battled to stop the actions of human rights activists, arresting and imprisoning many of them.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?s The Gulag Archipelago was first published in France in 1973. Solzhenitsyn used the word archipelago as a metaphor for the camps, spread throughout the Soviet Union like a chain of islands.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Examples of samizdat bulletins.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
The following is a translation of ?Moscow Appeal,? a protest lodged by noted human rights activists against the repression of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for the publication of The Gulag Archipelago abroad.
Samizdat materials were created on such portable typewriters. Dissidents could not use larger typewriters because they were all registered by the KGB, the secret police.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Using very thin paper and carbons, samizdat writers were often able to type eight to ten copies at a time. Many who received copies of samizdat materials themselves retyped additional copies for distribution to their friends. Participation in the creation and distribution of samizdat could result in imprisonment.
Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner. Prominent figures in the Soviet human rights movement. In 1980, Sakharov was forcibly exiled from Moscow to the closed city of Gorky to live under KGB surveillance and to disrupt his contact with activists and foreign journalists. His wife was permitted to travel between Moscow and Gorky. With her help, Sakharov was able to send appeals and essays to the West until 1984 when she was also arrested and confined by court order to Gorky.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Human rights activists managed to publish the Chronicle of Current Events, an underground samizdat human rights bulletin, continuously from 1968 to 1982 despite violent persecution of its creators and distributors in labor camps and forced psychiatric imprisonment. The Chronicle documented human rights violations throughout the Soviet Union.
This map displays the locations of human rights violations in the Soviet Union as reported in the Chronicle of Current Events.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
With such radios produced in Latvia, one of the Soviet republics, people living in the Soviet Union could receive the signals of Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and the BBC. They could hear in their native languages news of the human rights movement and other forbidden subjects. Radio Liberty regularly broadcast reports from the Chronicle of Current Events. Radios produced in other regions could not receive the transmission of these signals.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Members of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights: Sergei Kovalev, Tatiana Khodorovich, Tatiana Veilikanova, Grigorii Pod?iapolskii, and Anatolii Krasnov-Levitin, 1974.
Kovalev, Khodorovich, and Veilikanova openly took responsibility for distribution of the Chronicle of Current Events in May 1974 after the KGB had arrested several of their colleagues and threatened others.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Introduction: Dissidents
In the years after Joseph Stalin?s death, official and unofficial criticism of his dictatorial rule significantly altered the political atmosphere in the Soviet Union. While Stalin?s successor Nikita Khrushchev ushered in a period of official criticism that abruptly came to a halt with his own ouster in 1964, a new era of critical thinking about the Soviet system had begun.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a group of intellectuals emerged with a principled opposition to Soviet repression. This group, often called dissidents, built a small but thriving underground society in which they circulated information on the state of human rights in the Soviet Union. The former Stalinist labor camps in Perm would be turned into prisons to isolate and punish these activists.
part 7
Death of Stalin
Josef Stalin died on March 5, 1953. The Gulag had reached its maximum size of more than three million.
Convinced that forced labor was inefficient and wasteful, Stalin?s successors immediately moved to curb the size of the system by issuing an amnesty that released over one million non-political prisoners. The political prisoners left behind in the camps engaged in a series of mass uprisings in 1953 and 1954, which contributed to the decision to reduce the size of the Gulag further.
Mass meeting held at a factory in Leningrad after Stalin?s death, March, 1953.Courtesy of the Central Russian State Film and Video Archive.
The new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, despite his own personal involvement in carrying out Stalin?s terror, moved to ease Soviet repression. In addition to continuing the reduction of the Gulag?s size and curbing political repression, Khrushchev took limited but definitive steps to denounce Stalin in a 1956 declaration.
In 1962, this "thaw" went even further as Khrushchev authorized open discussion of the Gulag. He allowed Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to publish his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the journal Novyi Mir. This description of one typical day in a Gulag camp is read around the world to this day. The "thaw" in Soviet culture was only temporary, as Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 and the subject of the Gulag once again became a forbidden topic until the 1980s.
Propaganda Poster, 1963.?Our goals are clear. Our tasks are certain. Get to work, comrades!?
Khrushchev denounced Stalin and attempted to tie his own policies to the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
part 8
Dissident Movement
Samizdat was the name for underground literature that opponents to the Soviet government secretly wrote and distributed within the Soviet Union. Intellectual opposition to Communist rule emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and formed into a human rights movement.
From the late 1960s, these "dissidents" systematically collected and attempted to publicize Soviet human rights violations and conditions in labor camps for political prisoners. This information circulated among intellectuals in typescript and handwritten samizdat bulletins. Frequently, dissidents sent samizdat materials to Western countries in hopes of publicizing the situation in the Soviet Union.
In 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?s samizdat book The Gulag Archipelago was published abroad. The book was a sensation, as it laid out for the world the history of the Gulag. Soon after, Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his citizenship and exiled from the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities constantly battled to stop the actions of human rights activists, arresting and imprisoning many of them.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?s The Gulag Archipelago was first published in France in 1973. Solzhenitsyn used the word archipelago as a metaphor for the camps, spread throughout the Soviet Union like a chain of islands.Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Examples of samizdat bulletins.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
The following is a translation of ?Moscow Appeal,? a protest lodged by noted human rights activists against the repression of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for the publication of The Gulag Archipelago abroad.
MOSCOW APPEAL
...anyone who is acquainted with Solzhenitsyn?s book that aroused such anger among the USSR?s leaders, knows that his ?betrayal? lies in the fact that with breathtaking force he exposed to the whole world the monstrous crimes committed in the recent past in the USSR. Tens of millions innocent people: communists and non-communists; atheists and believers; intelligentsia, workers and peasants; people of different nationalities all fell victim to the terror that hid itself under the slogans of social justice.
We demand:
A. Sakharov, E. Bonner, V. Maksimov, M. Agurski, B. Shragin, P. Litvinov, Y. Orlov, priest S. Zheludkov, A. Marchenko, L. Bogoraz.
February 13, 1974
Moscow
Samizdat. ?Self-publishing.? Opposition intellectuals circulated their bulletins and manuscripts like those pictured above in small editions manually copied and retyped. Samizdat appeared in nearly every language of the Soviet Union. ...anyone who is acquainted with Solzhenitsyn?s book that aroused such anger among the USSR?s leaders, knows that his ?betrayal? lies in the fact that with breathtaking force he exposed to the whole world the monstrous crimes committed in the recent past in the USSR. Tens of millions innocent people: communists and non-communists; atheists and believers; intelligentsia, workers and peasants; people of different nationalities all fell victim to the terror that hid itself under the slogans of social justice.
We demand:
- publish GULAG Archipelago in the USSR and make it available to each person in the country;
- publish archival and other materials giving a full picture of the activities of the Cheka, GPU, NKVD, MGB;
- establish an international public tribunal for investigation of the crimes committed;
- protect Solzhenitsyn from persecution and grant him the possibility to work in his homeland.
A. Sakharov, E. Bonner, V. Maksimov, M. Agurski, B. Shragin, P. Litvinov, Y. Orlov, priest S. Zheludkov, A. Marchenko, L. Bogoraz.
February 13, 1974
Moscow
Samizdat materials were created on such portable typewriters. Dissidents could not use larger typewriters because they were all registered by the KGB, the secret police.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Using very thin paper and carbons, samizdat writers were often able to type eight to ten copies at a time. Many who received copies of samizdat materials themselves retyped additional copies for distribution to their friends. Participation in the creation and distribution of samizdat could result in imprisonment.
Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner. Prominent figures in the Soviet human rights movement. In 1980, Sakharov was forcibly exiled from Moscow to the closed city of Gorky to live under KGB surveillance and to disrupt his contact with activists and foreign journalists. His wife was permitted to travel between Moscow and Gorky. With her help, Sakharov was able to send appeals and essays to the West until 1984 when she was also arrested and confined by court order to Gorky.Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Human rights activists managed to publish the Chronicle of Current Events, an underground samizdat human rights bulletin, continuously from 1968 to 1982 despite violent persecution of its creators and distributors in labor camps and forced psychiatric imprisonment. The Chronicle documented human rights violations throughout the Soviet Union.
This map displays the locations of human rights violations in the Soviet Union as reported in the Chronicle of Current Events.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
With such radios produced in Latvia, one of the Soviet republics, people living in the Soviet Union could receive the signals of Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and the BBC. They could hear in their native languages news of the human rights movement and other forbidden subjects. Radio Liberty regularly broadcast reports from the Chronicle of Current Events. Radios produced in other regions could not receive the transmission of these signals.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Members of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights: Sergei Kovalev, Tatiana Khodorovich, Tatiana Veilikanova, Grigorii Pod?iapolskii, and Anatolii Krasnov-Levitin, 1974.Kovalev, Khodorovich, and Veilikanova openly took responsibility for distribution of the Chronicle of Current Events in May 1974 after the KGB had arrested several of their colleagues and threatened others.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
part 9
Political Prisoners at Perm
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet government cracked down on the dissident movement. Several camps in the Perm region were transformed into the harshest camps for political prisoners. The prisoners were repeat offenders who had continued to criticize the Soviet government even after being released from prison. During the last years of the Soviet regime, the most prominent leaders and opposition activists from all over the Soviet Union were kept in these camps. Some of them perished there.
Armenian Political Prisoners
List of Armenian political prisoners in the camp (in Armenian).
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Perm-35
Ivan Kovalev
Russian human rights activist, was editor of the underground human rights bulletin V and the Chronicle of Current Events. For his ?anti-Soviet activities,? the KGB arrested him in 1981 and sentenced him to five years in the Gulag and five years of internal exile.
Courtesy of Ivan Kovalev.
At Perm-35, political prisoner Ivan Kovalev tried but could not fulfill his terribly demanding work quota. Camp authorities punished him even though the rules did not allow punishment if a prisoner was making his best effort. He then refused to work at all and was confined to the punishment cell continuously for 13 months on a severely reduced food ration. At the time, Soviet law dictated that prisoners could not be subjected to such conditions for more than 15 days. Because Kovalev was stubborn and because he had become an internationally recognized human rights activist, he eventually won his protest and no longer was forced to work.
Political prisoner Valerij Senderov also spent almost 13 months in the adjoining punishment cell to Ivan Kovalev for insisting on keeping his Bible. Camp authorities finally gave in to his demands as well.
Tatiana Osipova
Tatiana Osipova, Ivan Kovalev?s wife, was arrested in 1980 for similar ?crimes.? She was an active and vocal member of the human rights organization, Helsinki Group. When her term was over in 1985, the authorities charged her with breaking camp rules and kept her there for two more years.
Courtesy of Tatiana Osipova.
Ivan Kovalev etched a secret love message to his wife, Tatiana Osipova, on a toothbrush so that he could get it past the camp guards. She sent him a toothbrush with her message one year later, after he too had been arrested and sent to prison.
Glass Vials
Glass vials to hold secret messages.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Sergei Kovalev
Ivan?s father, was one of the founders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union and also a political prisoner at Perm-36.
Prison cell bar from the window of the Perm-36 solitary confinement cell in which human rights activist Kovalev and others were held for lengthy periods for violation of camp rules.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Perm-36
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Perm-36 housed the only maximum security facilities for political prisoners in the entire Soviet Union. Perm-36 held repeat offenders?those who had already served sentences for ?anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda? and nonetheless sustained their political work after release. Repeat offenders usually served a term of ten years.
Balis Gayauskas
A former Perm-36 prisoner. One of the leaders of the struggle for Lithuanian freedom and independence, he spent two years in a Nazi concentration camp, thirty-five years in Soviet camps, and three years in exile. In 1978 Soviet authorities sentenced him to ten years in Perm-36 for two ?crimes.? First, he translated Solzhenitsyn?s book The Gulag Archipelago into Lithuanian. Second, he maintained historical records of human rights activities and the Lithuanian independence movement. When Lithuania became independent, he became a member of Parliament and Minister of Security.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Levko Lukjanenko
A former Perm-36 prisoner. One of the leaders of the struggle for Ukrainian freedom and independence, he spent twenty-five years in Soviet camps and three years in exile. In 1956 Soviet authorities sentenced him to death for ?creation of an anti-Soviet organization? but revised the sentence to fifteen years in the camps. His ?crime? was establishing an organization calling for a referendum on Ukrainian self-determination, activity in fact sanctioned by the Soviet Constitution. In 1978 he received a ten-year sentence in Perm-36 for leading the activity of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, a human rights organization. After his release he was the Ukraine Republic?s ambassador to Canada and a member of Parliament.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Leonid Borodin
Writer Leonid Borodin received two sentences in the political camps. After a camp term from 1967 to 1972, he received a ten-year sentence in Perm-36 in 1982. A winner of many prizes in literature, he is currently editor-in-chief of one of Russia?s leading journals.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Vasyl Stus and His Grave
Poet Vasyl Stus twice received sentences for ?anti-Soviet propaganda.? Nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1985, he died in Perm-36 on September 5 of that year.
This is the camp grave site of Vasyl Stus in 1988. Political prisoners who died in the camps were buried in the special camp cemeteries. Only the prisoner identification number on the tin plate nailed to the grave site?s post marks where his body lies. Friends and relatives of the poet tied the embroidered Ukranian towel to the post.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Perm-36 Barrack Cell
Perm-36 barrack cell where Russian writer Leonid Borodin and Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus were kept.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
part 10
Introduction: After the USSR
In 1985, a new, idealistic leader came to power in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was a great believer in the superiority of socialism and in the possibility to create a socialist system without the violence and repression of the earlier Soviet era. Seeking to animate Soviet society and to decisively end Soviet reliance on repression, Gorbachev called for openness about the dark sides of Soviet history. To his surprise, an unprecedented era of historical truth-telling about the history of the Gulag and Soviet repression undermined the legitimacy of the entire system?first in the Eastern European ?satellites? and then in the Soviet Union itself. Unwilling to use violence to suppress the popular movements in these countries, Gorbachev had unwittingly begun a process that led to the collapse of first the Soviet empire and then the Soviet Union itself.
part 11
The Fall of the Soviet Union
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader and started a process of reforming the Soviet Union that would eventually result in its collapse. Faced with an economic crisis and seeking better relations with the West, Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, engaged in a series of arms control talks with the United States and closed the remaining labor camps for political prisoners.
In 1989, Gorbachev chose not to use force to quell the popular uprisings in Eastern Europe, allowing the Berlin Wall to fall and ending Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Two years later, Gorbachev presided over the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Destruction of the Berlin Wall, 1989. Since the end of World War II, Germany stood divided between East and West. The city of Berlin, located inside East Germany, also stood divided. In 1961 the Communist government of East Germany formalized the division by building the Berlin Wall. The Wall symbolized the Cold War and its destruction in 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War.
These images are from a news-reel showing the destruction of the Berlin Wall.
Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
These images are from a news-reel showing the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, 1988. From 1979 to 1988, Soviet troops fought a bloody war in Afghanistan to support the country?s failing pro-Soviet regime.
Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
Andrei Sakharov
Physicist and human rights activist. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking as a delegate to the Congress of People?s Deputies?the first Soviet parliament with democratically elected representatives. Late 1980s. Only a few years before, Sakharov was still under house arrest in Gorky.
Courtesty of Yuri Rost.
Boris Yeltsin (holding papers), the first Russian President, surrounded by defenders of the Russian government headquarters during the failed hard-line Communist coup attempt on August 19, 1991.
Political Prisoners at Perm
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet government cracked down on the dissident movement. Several camps in the Perm region were transformed into the harshest camps for political prisoners. The prisoners were repeat offenders who had continued to criticize the Soviet government even after being released from prison. During the last years of the Soviet regime, the most prominent leaders and opposition activists from all over the Soviet Union were kept in these camps. Some of them perished there.
Armenian Political PrisonersList of Armenian political prisoners in the camp (in Armenian).
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Perm-35
Ivan KovalevRussian human rights activist, was editor of the underground human rights bulletin V and the Chronicle of Current Events. For his ?anti-Soviet activities,? the KGB arrested him in 1981 and sentenced him to five years in the Gulag and five years of internal exile.
Courtesy of Ivan Kovalev.
At Perm-35, political prisoner Ivan Kovalev tried but could not fulfill his terribly demanding work quota. Camp authorities punished him even though the rules did not allow punishment if a prisoner was making his best effort. He then refused to work at all and was confined to the punishment cell continuously for 13 months on a severely reduced food ration. At the time, Soviet law dictated that prisoners could not be subjected to such conditions for more than 15 days. Because Kovalev was stubborn and because he had become an internationally recognized human rights activist, he eventually won his protest and no longer was forced to work.
Political prisoner Valerij Senderov also spent almost 13 months in the adjoining punishment cell to Ivan Kovalev for insisting on keeping his Bible. Camp authorities finally gave in to his demands as well.
Tatiana OsipovaTatiana Osipova, Ivan Kovalev?s wife, was arrested in 1980 for similar ?crimes.? She was an active and vocal member of the human rights organization, Helsinki Group. When her term was over in 1985, the authorities charged her with breaking camp rules and kept her there for two more years.
Courtesy of Tatiana Osipova.
Ivan Kovalev etched a secret love message to his wife, Tatiana Osipova, on a toothbrush so that he could get it past the camp guards. She sent him a toothbrush with her message one year later, after he too had been arrested and sent to prison.?To my one and only husband. Be strong, my darling. I love you and miss you. Tusha?
?Tusha. I am crazy about you. Hold on there baby. I am here for you.?
Courtesy of Tatiana Osipova and Ivan Kovalev. ?Tusha. I am crazy about you. Hold on there baby. I am here for you.?
Glass VialsGlass vials to hold secret messages.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Sergei KovalevIvan?s father, was one of the founders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union and also a political prisoner at Perm-36.
Prison cell bar from the window of the Perm-36 solitary confinement cell in which human rights activist Kovalev and others were held for lengthy periods for violation of camp rules.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Perm-36
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Perm-36 housed the only maximum security facilities for political prisoners in the entire Soviet Union. Perm-36 held repeat offenders?those who had already served sentences for ?anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda? and nonetheless sustained their political work after release. Repeat offenders usually served a term of ten years.
Balis GayauskasA former Perm-36 prisoner. One of the leaders of the struggle for Lithuanian freedom and independence, he spent two years in a Nazi concentration camp, thirty-five years in Soviet camps, and three years in exile. In 1978 Soviet authorities sentenced him to ten years in Perm-36 for two ?crimes.? First, he translated Solzhenitsyn?s book The Gulag Archipelago into Lithuanian. Second, he maintained historical records of human rights activities and the Lithuanian independence movement. When Lithuania became independent, he became a member of Parliament and Minister of Security.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Levko LukjanenkoA former Perm-36 prisoner. One of the leaders of the struggle for Ukrainian freedom and independence, he spent twenty-five years in Soviet camps and three years in exile. In 1956 Soviet authorities sentenced him to death for ?creation of an anti-Soviet organization? but revised the sentence to fifteen years in the camps. His ?crime? was establishing an organization calling for a referendum on Ukrainian self-determination, activity in fact sanctioned by the Soviet Constitution. In 1978 he received a ten-year sentence in Perm-36 for leading the activity of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, a human rights organization. After his release he was the Ukraine Republic?s ambassador to Canada and a member of Parliament.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Leonid BorodinWriter Leonid Borodin received two sentences in the political camps. After a camp term from 1967 to 1972, he received a ten-year sentence in Perm-36 in 1982. A winner of many prizes in literature, he is currently editor-in-chief of one of Russia?s leading journals.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Vasyl Stus and His GravePoet Vasyl Stus twice received sentences for ?anti-Soviet propaganda.? Nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1985, he died in Perm-36 on September 5 of that year.
This is the camp grave site of Vasyl Stus in 1988. Political prisoners who died in the camps were buried in the special camp cemeteries. Only the prisoner identification number on the tin plate nailed to the grave site?s post marks where his body lies. Friends and relatives of the poet tied the embroidered Ukranian towel to the post.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Perm-36 Barrack CellPerm-36 barrack cell where Russian writer Leonid Borodin and Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus were kept.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
part 10
Introduction: After the USSR
In 1985, a new, idealistic leader came to power in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was a great believer in the superiority of socialism and in the possibility to create a socialist system without the violence and repression of the earlier Soviet era. Seeking to animate Soviet society and to decisively end Soviet reliance on repression, Gorbachev called for openness about the dark sides of Soviet history. To his surprise, an unprecedented era of historical truth-telling about the history of the Gulag and Soviet repression undermined the legitimacy of the entire system?first in the Eastern European ?satellites? and then in the Soviet Union itself. Unwilling to use violence to suppress the popular movements in these countries, Gorbachev had unwittingly begun a process that led to the collapse of first the Soviet empire and then the Soviet Union itself.
part 11
The Fall of the Soviet Union
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader and started a process of reforming the Soviet Union that would eventually result in its collapse. Faced with an economic crisis and seeking better relations with the West, Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, engaged in a series of arms control talks with the United States and closed the remaining labor camps for political prisoners.
In 1989, Gorbachev chose not to use force to quell the popular uprisings in Eastern Europe, allowing the Berlin Wall to fall and ending Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Two years later, Gorbachev presided over the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.
- Perestroika?Reconstruction
- Demokratizatsiia?Democratization
- Uskorenie?Acceleration
- Glasnost?Openness
Destruction of the Berlin Wall, 1989. Since the end of World War II, Germany stood divided between East and West. The city of Berlin, located inside East Germany, also stood divided. In 1961 the Communist government of East Germany formalized the division by building the Berlin Wall. The Wall symbolized the Cold War and its destruction in 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War.
These images are from a news-reel showing the destruction of the Berlin Wall.Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
These images are from a news-reel showing the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, 1988. From 1979 to 1988, Soviet troops fought a bloody war in Afghanistan to support the country?s failing pro-Soviet regime.Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
Andrei SakharovPhysicist and human rights activist. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking as a delegate to the Congress of People?s Deputies?the first Soviet parliament with democratically elected representatives. Late 1980s. Only a few years before, Sakharov was still under house arrest in Gorky.
Courtesty of Yuri Rost.
Boris Yeltsin (holding papers), the first Russian President, surrounded by defenders of the Russian government headquarters during the failed hard-line Communist coup attempt on August 19, 1991.sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
part 12
Emerging from the Gulag
In the mid-1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a period of openness, called glasnost, in Soviet society. The government allowed formerly banned books, like Solzhenitsyn?s works, to be published. A torrent of memoirs, articles, and books denounced Stalin and Soviet crimes.
The Soviet public devoured every new revelation that exposed Communist repression. Throughout the country, they also removed numerous Soviet statues and monuments as symbols of the repressive past.
Since the early 1990s, however, the public debate over the legacy of the Soviet Union has become more complicated. Should Soviet monuments be replaced or preserved? More broadly, how should the Soviet past be remembered?
Some of the most well-known books and articles in Russian about the Gulag and Soviet repression.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Ogonyok magazine containing articles about the crimes of Stalin and the Communist Party.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Activists removing the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky from its prominent place in Moscow next to the KGB offices. Dzerzhinsky founded the forerunner of the KGB under Lenin and helped to establish the Gulag.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
the International Memorial Society, a nationwide organization founded to document and remember the Soviet terror, set a stone from the Solovetsky Camp, the main Soviet concentration camp under Lenin, just off Lubianka Square in Moscow. The Society believes strongly that the cruelties of the Soviet past must be remembered and confronted. They intended the stone to symbolically replace the Dzerzhinsky statue with a memorial to the victims of the police organizations he created. Yet, symbolizing also Russian ambivalence about dealing with this history, the stone sits not in the central location of the former statue, but in an out-of-the-way location on the edge of the square.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
In 1993, seven percent of Russians approved of Stalin?s leadership. Ten years later, the former dictator?s approval rating jumped to 53 percent. Why?
Stalin
Monument to Stalin placed in Mirny, Yakutia, in May, 2005. It celebrates Stalin?s leadership during World War II. Ironically, during Stalin?s reign this remote Siberian region was home to some of the harshest Gulag camps. According to the Memorial Society, between 2002 and 2005 there were 30 monuments of Stalin erected in the former Soviet Union and plans made to erect 20 more.
Courtesy of the State Yakutskoe-Sakha Information Agency.
Bust of Josef Stalin, Soviet Dictator, 1929-1953. This bust was purchased in November 2005 at a souvenir shop in one of Moscow?s largest hotels.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
After years of brutal repression, Russians had great expectations for prosperity. Political and economic reforms could not quickly address the serious long-term structural problems of the Soviet system.
In the 1990s, Russia was exposed as an unstable, weak, and vulnerable nation. Widespread political corruption, the outright theft of public assets, and rapid erosion in the standard of living for most Russians brought despair and cynicism throughout the country.
Today, Russian textbooks have become less critical of Stalin. Nostalgia for an idealized past has replaced facing historical reality.
Homeless and poor people in Moscow, 2000.
Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
A homeless woman in Moscow.
Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
According to Forbes magazine, Russia ranks second only to the United States in the number of multi-millionaires. Among the 100 richest people in the world, 27 are Russians.
Ogonyok Magazine
A few well-connected Russians amassed fantastic fortunes during the period of widespread corruption when state-owned industries were privatized. These fortunes have been secreted away into off-shore bank accounts while most Russians have seen their standard of living decline precipitously.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
part 13
Introduction: Gulag Museum
part 14
Perm-36 Museum
Dialogue for Democracy Program
The Gulag Museum, along with all Coalition member sites, has designed a program called Dialogue for Democracy. The Dialogues for Democracy help visitors draw connections between the past and the present by using the histories of the sites to inspire new conversations and action on pressing contemporary issues.
Other Programs
Outreach and Traveling Exhibits
Perm-36 is 18 miles from the nearest town; in order to facilitate visitation for those unable to afford travel, the Museum provides sponsored excursions. Several traveling exhibits have been developed to reach out to people in distant areas of the region.
School Projects
There is virtually no mention of totalitarianism and repression in textbooks on Russian history. To rectify this, the Museum has developed a curriculum on 20th-century Russian history for secondary schools and conducts on-site programs for students.
Publishing Projects
The Museum is preparing three publications on the camps and political repression.
Video Archives
Several videos and a multimedia show on Gulag history, human rights, and other related themes have been produced. These will be shown in a new video hall that is being developed.
Oral History and Archeology
Between 1998 and 2000, the museum conducted more than 300 interviews with victims and witnesses of political repression. Transcripts are available as teaching aids and for historical research. The Museum is also involved in archeological digs at the sites of other former camps.
part 15
Memorials to Victims
On the eve of the Soviet Union?s collapse, some Russian historians, human rights activists, former Gulag prisoners, and others created civic organizations to help foster remembrance. One of the most prominent, the Memorial Society, erected small monuments throughout the country to commemorate victims of totalitarianism. Scientist, political activist, and Nobel Peace Price winner, Andrei Sakharov became the orgranization?s first president.
Locations of regional branches and some of the monuments erected by the Memorial Society.
Map courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Monuments in honor of political repression victims.
Sergei Kovalev
One of the founders and leaders of the Memorial Society and the human rights commissioner under Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Kovalev, a former prisoner at Perm-36, served as chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the Russian Parliament. Because of his adamant opposition to the Russian war in Chechnya, he was removed from his official government positions in 1995. Currently, Sergei Kovalev serves on the Gulag Museum Board of Directors.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Memorial Society activists providing humanitarian aid to Chechnyan refugees, Iman Refugee Camp, Ingushetia, Russia, 1999.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
One of the International Memorial Society?s projects is the creation of the Memorial Museum of Political Repression History at Perm-36.
Perm-36 camp buildings before and after the restoration.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Emerging from the Gulag
In the mid-1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a period of openness, called glasnost, in Soviet society. The government allowed formerly banned books, like Solzhenitsyn?s works, to be published. A torrent of memoirs, articles, and books denounced Stalin and Soviet crimes.
The Soviet public devoured every new revelation that exposed Communist repression. Throughout the country, they also removed numerous Soviet statues and monuments as symbols of the repressive past.
Since the early 1990s, however, the public debate over the legacy of the Soviet Union has become more complicated. Should Soviet monuments be replaced or preserved? More broadly, how should the Soviet past be remembered?
Some of the most well-known books and articles in Russian about the Gulag and Soviet repression.
Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
Ogonyok magazine containing articles about the crimes of Stalin and the Communist Party.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Activists removing the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky from its prominent place in Moscow next to the KGB offices. Dzerzhinsky founded the forerunner of the KGB under Lenin and helped to establish the Gulag.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
the International Memorial Society, a nationwide organization founded to document and remember the Soviet terror, set a stone from the Solovetsky Camp, the main Soviet concentration camp under Lenin, just off Lubianka Square in Moscow. The Society believes strongly that the cruelties of the Soviet past must be remembered and confronted. They intended the stone to symbolically replace the Dzerzhinsky statue with a memorial to the victims of the police organizations he created. Yet, symbolizing also Russian ambivalence about dealing with this history, the stone sits not in the central location of the former statue, but in an out-of-the-way location on the edge of the square.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
In 1993, seven percent of Russians approved of Stalin?s leadership. Ten years later, the former dictator?s approval rating jumped to 53 percent. Why?
StalinMonument to Stalin placed in Mirny, Yakutia, in May, 2005. It celebrates Stalin?s leadership during World War II. Ironically, during Stalin?s reign this remote Siberian region was home to some of the harshest Gulag camps. According to the Memorial Society, between 2002 and 2005 there were 30 monuments of Stalin erected in the former Soviet Union and plans made to erect 20 more.
Courtesy of the State Yakutskoe-Sakha Information Agency.
Bust of Josef Stalin, Soviet Dictator, 1929-1953. This bust was purchased in November 2005 at a souvenir shop in one of Moscow?s largest hotels.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
After years of brutal repression, Russians had great expectations for prosperity. Political and economic reforms could not quickly address the serious long-term structural problems of the Soviet system.
In the 1990s, Russia was exposed as an unstable, weak, and vulnerable nation. Widespread political corruption, the outright theft of public assets, and rapid erosion in the standard of living for most Russians brought despair and cynicism throughout the country.
Today, Russian textbooks have become less critical of Stalin. Nostalgia for an idealized past has replaced facing historical reality.
Homeless and poor people in Moscow, 2000.Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
A homeless woman in Moscow.Courtesy of the ITAR-TASS News Agency.
According to Forbes magazine, Russia ranks second only to the United States in the number of multi-millionaires. Among the 100 richest people in the world, 27 are Russians.
Ogonyok MagazineA few well-connected Russians amassed fantastic fortunes during the period of widespread corruption when state-owned industries were privatized. These fortunes have been secreted away into off-shore bank accounts while most Russians have seen their standard of living decline precipitously.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
part 13
Introduction: Gulag Museum
?To promote democratic values and civic consciousness in contemporary Russia through preservation of the last Soviet political camp as a living reminder of repression and as an important historical and cultural monument.?
Mission statement of the Gulag Museum.
A dedicated group of activists has turned the last Soviet-era labor camp for political prisoners into a museum and historic site, as they seek to shape a just Russian present by remembering the legacy of past Soviet injustice.Mission statement of the Gulag Museum.
part 14
Perm-36 Museum
Dialogue for Democracy Program
The Gulag Museum, along with all Coalition member sites, has designed a program called Dialogue for Democracy. The Dialogues for Democracy help visitors draw connections between the past and the present by using the histories of the sites to inspire new conversations and action on pressing contemporary issues.
Other Programs
Outreach and Traveling Exhibits
Perm-36 is 18 miles from the nearest town; in order to facilitate visitation for those unable to afford travel, the Museum provides sponsored excursions. Several traveling exhibits have been developed to reach out to people in distant areas of the region.
School Projects
There is virtually no mention of totalitarianism and repression in textbooks on Russian history. To rectify this, the Museum has developed a curriculum on 20th-century Russian history for secondary schools and conducts on-site programs for students.
Publishing Projects
The Museum is preparing three publications on the camps and political repression.
Video Archives
Several videos and a multimedia show on Gulag history, human rights, and other related themes have been produced. These will be shown in a new video hall that is being developed.
Oral History and Archeology
Between 1998 and 2000, the museum conducted more than 300 interviews with victims and witnesses of political repression. Transcripts are available as teaching aids and for historical research. The Museum is also involved in archeological digs at the sites of other former camps.
part 15
Memorials to Victims
On the eve of the Soviet Union?s collapse, some Russian historians, human rights activists, former Gulag prisoners, and others created civic organizations to help foster remembrance. One of the most prominent, the Memorial Society, erected small monuments throughout the country to commemorate victims of totalitarianism. Scientist, political activist, and Nobel Peace Price winner, Andrei Sakharov became the orgranization?s first president.
Locations of regional branches and some of the monuments erected by the Memorial Society.Map courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Monuments in honor of political repression victims.
Sergei KovalevOne of the founders and leaders of the Memorial Society and the human rights commissioner under Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Kovalev, a former prisoner at Perm-36, served as chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the Russian Parliament. Because of his adamant opposition to the Russian war in Chechnya, he was removed from his official government positions in 1995. Currently, Sergei Kovalev serves on the Gulag Museum Board of Directors.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Memorial Society activists providing humanitarian aid to Chechnyan refugees, Iman Refugee Camp, Ingushetia, Russia, 1999.Courtesy of the International Memorial Society.
One of the International Memorial Society?s projects is the creation of the Memorial Museum of Political Repression History at Perm-36.
Perm-36 camp buildings before and after the restoration.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
part 16
Issues of Conscience
Perm-36 closed in 1988, one of the last camps to close in the Soviet Union. In 1991, Memorial Society activists, who wanted to preserve a forced-labor camp to serve as a memorial to the Gulag victims, organized to save the former camp.
By the early 1990s, Perm-36 lay in ruins. KGB officicals had destroyed much of the facility after Ukrainian Television crews filmed and broadcast the facility where internationally renowned poet Vasyl Stus had died from neglect in 1985. Reconstruction efforts allowed the Museum to open in 1996, although rehabilitation of the early wooden structures continues today.
Today Perm-36 is open to the public as a historic site and museum. The Gulag Museum has focused much of its energy on reaching out to school-age Russians, many of whom know little of the Gulag past. These students, and thousands of others from Russia and abroad, come to visit this restored Gulag camp. Here they can see first hand the punishment cell, the cramped Stalin-era barracks, the exercise yards, and the guard towers. They can also participate in workshops about the history of Soviet totalitarianism.
The Museum received international recognition for its preservation and educational work when the World Monument Fund placed Perm-36 on the list of 100 Most Endangered Sites in 2004.
Giving a history lesson at the Gulag Museum. Students in the Perm region travel to the Gulag Museum to learn about the Soviet Union?s repressive past.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Gulag Museum traveling exhibitions.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Repression, a traveling exhibition focusing on the 1930s and 1940s.
Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/
god bless the soldiers who fought and died on D Day which turned the tide of the war into our favor!!!!
[youtube]KdQ2sg23GlE[/youtube]
Issues of Conscience
Perm-36 closed in 1988, one of the last camps to close in the Soviet Union. In 1991, Memorial Society activists, who wanted to preserve a forced-labor camp to serve as a memorial to the Gulag victims, organized to save the former camp.
By the early 1990s, Perm-36 lay in ruins. KGB officicals had destroyed much of the facility after Ukrainian Television crews filmed and broadcast the facility where internationally renowned poet Vasyl Stus had died from neglect in 1985. Reconstruction efforts allowed the Museum to open in 1996, although rehabilitation of the early wooden structures continues today.
Today Perm-36 is open to the public as a historic site and museum. The Gulag Museum has focused much of its energy on reaching out to school-age Russians, many of whom know little of the Gulag past. These students, and thousands of others from Russia and abroad, come to visit this restored Gulag camp. Here they can see first hand the punishment cell, the cramped Stalin-era barracks, the exercise yards, and the guard towers. They can also participate in workshops about the history of Soviet totalitarianism.
The Museum received international recognition for its preservation and educational work when the World Monument Fund placed Perm-36 on the list of 100 Most Endangered Sites in 2004.
Giving a history lesson at the Gulag Museum. Students in the Perm region travel to the Gulag Museum to learn about the Soviet Union?s repressive past.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Gulag Museum traveling exhibitions.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
Repression, a traveling exhibition focusing on the 1930s and 1940s.Courtesy of the Gulag Museum at Perm-36.
http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/
god bless the soldiers who fought and died on D Day which turned the tide of the war into our favor!!!!
[youtube]KdQ2sg23GlE[/youtube]
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
sunsagleaming
Legendary Poster
the greatest generation....a prayer from FDR
[youtube]v6_DxENgHLo[/youtube]
[youtube]v6_DxENgHLo[/youtube]
