List of labor camps in the Kolyma area
This is a list of labor camps in the Kolyma area in what is now Magadan Oblast and part of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in northeastern Russia . All camps were summarized as SewWostLag (Russian: Северо-восточные исправительно-трудовые лагеря, Севвостлаг, СВИТЛ, Northeast corrective labor camps ).
History and Development
The camps were in the time of Stalin's repressions in the Soviet Union from the 1930s in the system of central administration of corrective labor camp ( Gulag ) in the area of the upper reaches of the eponymous Kolyma and its tributaries, the Kolymagebirges and its offshoots, as well as on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea built . The Kolyma area was one of the regions in the country with the largest number of camps and at the same time with the most difficult conditions. The prisoners were primarily employed in the mining of gold and other mineral resources such as uranium or tin, both in open-cast mining and underground. The economic activities were subordinate to the Dalstroi , the main building administration of the Far North existing from 1931 to 1957 (Russian Glawnoje uprawlenije stroi telstwa Dal newo Severa , GUSDS), which from 1938 to 1953 to the Interior Ministry of the USSR (NKVD, later MWD), then to the Ministry of metallurgical industry. Most recently, the Dalstroi's area of activity included the entire mainland territory of the Soviet Union east of the rivers Lena - Aldan - Maja to Chukotka , with the exception of Kamchatka, in addition to the Kolyma area . At the beginning of the 1940s, the number of prisoners employed by Dalstroi - mainly in the Kolyma area - reached its maximum level of almost 100,000; at that time that was almost half of the total number of employees. In 1950 around 20% of the now more than 250,000 Dalstroi employees were prisoners, but a significant proportion of the other 80% were those released from the camps, who were not allowed to leave the area until further notice.
After Dalstroi and Gulag were dissolved and their direct successors were incorporated into the restructured penal system of the Soviet Union by the end of the 1950s, several penal camps continued to exist in the Kolyma area, the last until 1987.
Overview of the warehouse
In the notorious Kolyma area there were mainly a number of ITL corrective labor camps , most notably SewWostLag , and then the special camp of the MWD BerLag ; they all belonged to the large Dalstroi complex operating here . The individual camps were in the following locations:
literature
- Adam Hochschild : Stalin's shadow. Conversations with Russians today , Steidl, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-88243-326-4
Web links
- Labor camp in the northeast of the Russian SFSR on the GULAG website of Memorial Deutschland e. V. (overview map with links to the descriptions of the individual camp complexes)
- Mappa dei gulag della Kolyma - solosiberia.com