The GuLag

I've had some trouble accessing my blog, but will try now to catch up on some things over the next few days.

On the Sunday after Christmas, some of my new international friends and I went on a tour of the village of Dolinka, which was formerly the administrative center of a KarLag (GuLag prison labour camp network). Although it was snowing and very cold and most of the tour took place from the van, it was an excellent history lesson. We also visited the former location of Spassk, one of the most notorious of the KarLag camps, where there now stand a series of monuments memorializing the victims of political oppression and prisoners who died here from countries ranging from France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russian, to Korea and Japan. These memorials are located just off the road in an isolated spot on the steppe (dry, barren grasslands that dominate the rural landscape of Kazakhstan). The steppe tends to be very windy, and this was a bitterly cold location.

Above are some pictures of the Karlag buildings, Lenin statue, and the memorials at Spassk.