Ransom Riggs
Gulags: Then and Now
by Ransom Riggs - August 4, 2008 - 10:33 AM

schienen.jpgAleksandr Solzhenitsyn was the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gulag Archipelago and many other works critical of Stalinism and Russian life, which earned him both the scorn and the praise of his people, depending on who was in power. Stalin’s regime threw him in a Siberian Gulag for eight years for referring to the dictator sarcastically in a private letter; Kruschev liked him, and personally okayed the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which in 1962 was the strongest indictment of Stalinist repression to date. Both the semi-autobiographical Denisovich and the non-ficiton Archipelago described Gulag life in harrowing detail, and forced the West to finally acknowledge the grave human rights abuses perpetrated inside Stalin’s brutal work camps, which at their peak housed more than two million prisoners.

To mark Solzhenitsyn’s passing — he died yesterday at the age of 89 — we’re taking a look at Gulags as they were, and given our penchant for the creepy and the abandoned, how some of them remain today, moldering in the remote wilds of Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan. Rather than relying on blurry black-and-white pictures to depict life inside the camps, we’re using a much more colorful source: the drawings of Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya, a gifted artist who spent more than a decade in the Gulags and illustrated her memoirs upon release.

Entering CampKersnovskaya_Entering_Camp5.jpg

You are healthy, go to work6.jpg

Prison hospitalKersnovskaya_Prizon_Hospita.jpg

Digging graves491px-Kersnovskaya_Tombs_9_8.jpg

You do not want to work491px-Kersnovskaya_Yo_Do_No.jpg

Night search7.jpg

Let me feed my child for the last time8.jpg

The gulags now

Built in remote corners of Siberia, many camps were simply abandoned and left standing after the Gulag system was disbanded in the 1950s. What was left behind is a grim reminder of Stalin’s legacy of terror, repression and death.

russian-gulag-abandoned-historical-buildings.jpg

Ru200008020027.jpg

Pile of shoes34.jpg

Beds in an abandoned Siberian Gulag, by Dr. A. HugentoblerTaiga_Gulag_Pritsche_Turuchansk_08020035.jpg

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Comments (24)

  1. the photo of the watchtower appears to have a guard standing eerily below it.

    posted by mike on 8-4-2008 at 10:50 am

  2. This could really help one of my friends with her summer English assignment. Thanks mental_floss!

    posted by Eileen on 8-4-2008 at 11:50 am

  3. Those drawings are haunting.

    posted by Bethany on 8-4-2008 at 1:54 pm

  4. That is a real person under the watch tower right? Creeeeepppyyyy….

    ReCaptcha: Dragon Burns. Ouch.

    posted by Tricia on 8-4-2008 at 1:56 pm

  5. It occurs to me that where earlier regimes made piles of skulls, the oppressors of the 20th century made piles of shoes instead.

    posted by Joanna on 8-4-2008 at 3:06 pm

  6. Okay this is too weird. The ad below the article is of Odessa Darlings and my reCaptcha is voted refused

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 8-4-2008 at 6:50 pm

  7. Apparently some of the gulags were turned into facilities for the disabled and/or mentally ill. This was in the 1990s. The conditions were terrible, and the administrator of the facilities went on the news to talk about it, even though it would have cost him his job. He was one of the bravest people I’ve ever seen.

    posted by Leetz on 8-4-2008 at 7:13 pm

  8. Joanna, the regime your talking about I’m assuming is Pol Pot’s in Cambodia. His regime was actually later than Stalin’s. He ruled from 1975 to 1979. Much closer than you think!

    posted by Josiah on 8-4-2008 at 11:13 pm

  9. Strange, my Recapatcha says Armament Schindler. I am freaked out.

    posted by missjoules on 8-5-2008 at 6:34 am

  10. anyone who compares this to guantanamo bay is a fool.

    posted by Jerry Juan Jose on 8-5-2008 at 11:53 am

  11. odd, my reCaptcha is 2D shrine

    posted by Rob on 8-5-2008 at 12:10 pm

  12. People may be interested in Karlo Steiner, a former Austrian communist exiled to the USSR and his brush with the gulags, as written in his Seven Thousand Days in Siberia book.

    posted by Tom on 8-5-2008 at 1:16 pm

  13. Wow, those shoes and those drawing, any translations?

    posted by MacroPhotos.net on 8-5-2008 at 1:25 pm

  14. Thank you for a great post in honour of the passing of one of the 20th centuries most important writers of fiction AND non-fiction. I can honestly say that reading THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO changed my life. It is one of the few books that I re-read on a regular basis. Anyone with even a passing interest in 20th century history and how it affected the common man should read A DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH.
    For another perspective on Stalin’s Gulag system you should read KOLYMA TALES by Varlam Shalamov. The Kolyma camps were some of the worst, where life expectancy was measured in weeks. And yet, Shalamov has gathered a collection of stories that celebrate the enduring spirit of humanity.

    posted by Karen on 8-5-2008 at 1:45 pm

  15. Try this as well, an essay on the regrettably limited film record of death and deportation from the Baltic states and the Ukraine. See the website.

    posted by Rafe Champion on 8-5-2008 at 5:33 pm

  16. Their own fault.
    You blaspheme you go to hell.
    You talk down Stalin you go to Gulag.
    One in the same isn’t it?

    posted by Supernovah on 8-5-2008 at 7:36 pm

  17. @ Supernovah.
    It would be one thing if you could just avoid saying anything bad about Stalin and avoid the Gulags. However, often the Gulags were unavoidable. Regions had to fill quotas like our police have quotas to hand out speeding tickets. If you failed to turn enough people in, you were a traitor and sent instead (or killed).

    posted by PeleKen on 8-6-2008 at 8:19 am

  18. Don’t be surprised when Erik Estrada is hawking Home sites in this area.

    posted by Bill on 8-6-2008 at 2:32 pm

  19. Those drawings are plain scary and really emphasize the terror that occurred there.

    posted by BoredQuiz on 8-12-2008 at 3:24 pm

  20. the photo of the watchtower appears to have a guard standing eerily below it.

    posted by ie on 8-12-2008 at 11:09 pm

  21. The pictures are haunting. For further reading, check out the book “Remember Us: Letters from Stalin’s Russia”. The corresponding web site has a collection of letters written IN THE MOMENT, not memoirs, that somehow traveled out of the country. Some further disturbing info.

    posted by Jenn on 8-13-2008 at 6:01 pm

  22. I really recomend you to read A Journey Into the Whirlwind, a womans account of her experiences within the Gulags. As well Cannibal Island is a really good book to read about how brutal these Gulags were. They are very disturbing accounts of the Gulags, but the more people know and are aware of the terrible things in this world, I truly believe the less likely they are to occur again.

    posted by Pkallis on 6-18-2011 at 4:55 pm

  23. I agree. We have to saturate ourselves with the past to learn from it so it will never be repeated. My grandparents and parents had a different view. They were taught to forget. If we do forget all the atrocities, it will easily happen again with a different people in a different time.

    posted by Hally on 7-7-2011 at 12:21 am

  24. I wish someone would translate the commentary into english so we can learn further.

    posted by Hally on 7-7-2011 at 12:22 am

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