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Serpantinka
Serpantinka () or Serpantinnaya () is the informal name for the place of detention and execution at the times of Stalinism. Though never officially found by any expedition it is believed to be located somewhere in the Kolyma region. It was under control of Sevvostlag (a directorate of the Gulag), and the local NKVD troika used it as the second major place for the enforcement of their death sentences during the Great Terror. The few survivors recall "Serpantinka" as one of the most brutal sites, even among Stalin's camps in the Kolyma area. Background In the early thirties, the Soviet leadership decided to start accelerated development of the Kolyma River basin in a very remote and sparsely populated region in the north-east of the USSR, where rich deposits of gold and tin were found. To accomplish this task, a "special type industrial complex" was created, known under the abbreviation "Dalstroy". An important role in these plans was played by the so-called Corrective labor camps, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mask Of Sorrow
The Mask of Sorrow () is a monument located on a hill above Magadan, Russia, commemorating the many prisoners who suffered and died in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It consists of a large concrete statue of a face, with tears coming from the left eye in the form of small masks. The right eye is in the form of a barred window. The back side portrays a weeping young woman and a man on a cross with his head hanging backwards. Inside is a replication of a typical Stalin-era prison cell. Below the Mask of Sorrow are stone markers bearing the names of many of the forced-labor camps of the Kolyma, as well as others designating the various religions and political systems of those who suffered there. The statue was unveiled on June 12, 1996 with the help of the Russian government The Russian Government () or fully titled the Government of the Russian Federation () is the highest federal executive governmental bod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extermination Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site. Additionally, camps operated by Nazi allies have also been described as extermination or death camps, most notably the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hairpin Turn
A hairpin turn (also hairpin bend or hairpin corner) is a bend in a road with a very acute inner angle, making it necessary for an oncoming vehicle to turn about 180° to continue on the road. It is named for its resemblance to a bent metal hairpin. Such turns in ramps and trails may be called switchbacks in American English, by analogy with switchback railways. Description Hairpin turns are often built when a route climbs up or down a steep slope, so that it can travel mostly across the slope with only moderate steepness, and are often arrayed in a zigzag pattern. Highways with repeating hairpin turns allow easier, safer ascents and descents of mountainous terrain than a direct, steep climb and descent, at the price of greater distances of travel and usually lower speed limits, due to the sharpness of the turn. Highways of this style are also generally less costly to build and maintain than highways with tunnels. On occasion, the road may loop completely, using a tunnel or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandarmokh
Sandarmokh (; ) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where an unknown number, estimated in the thousands, of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and buried there by the NKVD in 236 communal pits over a 14-month period in 1937 and 1938. 1000 victims were from the Solovki special prison in the White Sea. It was long thought that the barges carrying them were deliberately sunk on the way to the mainland, drowning all the prisoners on board. Others were rounded up during the Great Terror in Karelia, in accordance with quotas for prisoners, 'enemies of the regime', and a variety of "national operations". According to available documentation at least 6,000 were shot and buried at Sandarmokh."Half those shot in 1937–1938 ..." < ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Varlam Shalamov
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (; 18 June 1907 – 17 January 1982), baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the Arctic region of Kolyma, due in part to his support of Leon Trotsky and praise of writer Ivan Bunin. In 1946, near death, he became a medical assistant while still a prisoner. He remained in that role for the duration of his sentence, then for another two years after being released, until 1953. From 1954 to 1978, he wrote a set of short stories about his experiences in the labor camps, which were collected and published in six volumes, collectively known as ''Kolyma Tales''. These books were initially published in the West, in English translation, starting in the 1960s; they were eventually published in the original Russian, but only became officially available in the Soviet Union in 1987, in the post-glasnost era. ''The Kolyma Tales'' are considere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Repression In The Soviet Union
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, tens of millions of people suffered political repression, which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution. It culminated during the History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), Stalin era, then declined, but it continued to exist during the "Khrushchev Thaw", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Era of Stagnation, Brezhnev era, and it did not cease to exist until late in Mikhail Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev's rule when it was ended in keeping with his policies of glasnost and perestroika. Origins and early Soviet times Secret police had a long history in Tsarist Russia. Ivan the Terrible used the Oprichnina, Oprichina, while more recently the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, Third Section and Okhrana existed. Early on, the Leninism, Leninist view of the class conflict and the resulting notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat provided the theoretical basis of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kolyma Highway
The R504 Kolyma Highway (, ''Federal'naya Avtomobil'naya Doroga «Kolyma»,'' "Federal Automobile Highway 'Kolyma'"), part of the M56 route, is a road through the Russian Far East. It connects Magadan with the town of Nizhny Bestyakh, located on the eastern bank of the Lena River, opposite of Yakutsk. At Nizhny Bestyakh the Kolyma Highway connects to the Lena Highway. The Kolyma Highway has been colloquially called the Road of Bones ( Russian: ''Doróga Kostéy''). Locally, the road is known as the Kolyma Route ( Russian: ''Kolýmskaya trássa''). History The Dalstroy construction directorate built the Kolyma Highway during the Soviet Union's Stalinist era. Inmates of the Sevvostlag labour camp started the first stretch in 1932, and construction continued with the use of gulag labour until 1953. It has been widely claimed that an estimated 250,0001,000,000 imprisoned labourers who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road, although document ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fragment Of The "Mask Of Sorrow" Monument - Serpantinka Camp
Fragment(s) may refer to: Computing and logic * Fragment (computer graphics), all the data necessary to generate a pixel in the frame buffer * Fragment (logic), a syntactically restricted subset of a logical language * URI fragment, the component of a URL following the "#" that identifies a portion of a larger document Film and television * ''Fragments'' (film), or ''Winged Creatures'', a 2008 American film * '' Fragments: Chronicle of a Vanishing'', a 1991 Croatian film * "The Fragment" (''Dynasty''), a 1982 TV episode * "Fragments" (''Magnum, P.I.''), a 1984 TV episode * "Fragments" (''Sanctuary''), a 2009 TV episode * "Fragments" (''Steven Universe Future''), a 2020 TV episode * "Fragments" (''Torchwood''), a 2008 TV episode Literature and writing * Literary fragment, a brief or unfinished work of prose * Manuscript fragment, a remnant of a handwritten book * Sentence fragment, a sentence not containing a subject or a predicate * ''Fragment'' (novel), a 2009 novel by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulag Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' () is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian publisher YMCA-Press, and it was translated into English and French the following year. It explores a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system. Solzhenitsyn constructed his highly detailed narrative from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and his own experience as a Gulag prisoner. Following its publication, the book was initially circulated in the Soviet Union by ''samizdat'' underground publication. It was not widely published there until 1989. It appeared that year in the literary journal ''Novy Mir''; a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ''The Gulag Archipelago'' has been officially publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magadan
Magadan ( rus, Магадан, p=məɡɐˈdan) is a Port of Magadan, port types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative centre of Magadan Oblast, Russia. The city is located on the isthmus of the Staritsky Peninsula by the Nagaev Bay; it serves as a gateway to the Kolyma region. Magadan, founded in 1929, was a major transit centre for political prisoners during the Stalin era and the administrative centre of the Dalstroy forced-labor gold-mining operation. The town later served as a port for exporting gold and other metals. Magadan plays a significant role in transportation with the Port of Magadan and Sokol Airport. The local economy relies on gold mining and fisheries, although gold production has declined. The town has various cultural institutions and religious establishments, such as the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church of the Nativity (Magadan), Church of the Nativity. The Mask of Sorrow memorial commemorates Stalin's victims. Magadan experien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eduard Berzin
Eduard Petrovich Berzin (, ; 19 February 1894 – 1 August 1938) was a Latvian Bolshevik, Chekist and NKVD officer that set up Dalstroy, which instituted a system of slave-labor camps in Kolyma, North-Eastern Siberia, one of the most brutal Gulag regions, where hundreds of thousands of political prisoners died or were murdered in subsequent decades. Biography Early life Berzin was born in to a Latvian peasant family. Before World War I, Berzin studied painting at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin, where he met his wife, Elza Mittenberga, who was also an artist, from Riga. In 1915, he joined the Russian army and fought in the First World War, where he was awarded the Cross of St. George and became an officer. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917, he joined the communists. In 1918, Berzin became a commander of the First Artillery Division of the Red Latvian Riflemen with special responsibilities for Vladimir Lenin's protection. Gaining the trust of Fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NKVD Order No
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR, the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as a commissariat of the Soviet Union in 1934. D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
