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Gulag
GULAG provides a rare glimpse into a dark corner of Soviet history. The fact that Vladimir Putin's Russia has returned to Stalinist autocracy with those who oppose or protest being imprisoned gives this book of photographs and interviews from over 30 years ago a tragic relevance.
In the last months of Mikhail Gorbachev’s period of reform and his policy of ‘glasnost’ (openness), photographer Barry Lewis was allowed to explore, in 1991, the Gulag regions of north-eastern Siberia and speak with survivors.
Barry's mid-winter journey in 1991 began in the grim port of Magadan, a cold, isolated place on the Sea of Okhotsk where prisoners had been transported from all over the Soviet Union. From this administrative city, largely built by prisoners, Barry and a writer from the German magazine Geo travelled north into the freezing interior, following the routes of the prisoners on the infamous Kolyma highway, known as the “Road of bones”. The remote towns of the interior, bleak centres for the mining of gold and uranium, were set on the original sites of the prison camps. Many of the inhabitants were descendants of the original prisoners who had been forbidden to leave after completion of their sentence.
Barry's journey north out of Magadan was along the Kolyma Highway, a 2000 km road built by the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who were exiled to the region’s camps from the 1930s to the 1950s. Known as the “Road of Bones”, it was named after the thousands of Gulag prisoners who died building it, with many of their bodies buried just beneath its surface.
“We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months - after that we don’t need him anymore.”
Camp commander Naftaly Frenkel, The Gulag Archipelago
In the last months of Mikhail Gorbachev’s period of reform and his policy of ‘glasnost’ (openness), photographer Barry Lewis was allowed to explore, in 1991, the Gulag regions of north-eastern Siberia and speak with survivors.
Barry's mid-winter journey in 1991 began in the grim port of Magadan, a cold, isolated place on the Sea of Okhotsk where prisoners had been transported from all over the Soviet Union. From this administrative city, largely built by prisoners, Barry and a writer from the German magazine Geo travelled north into the freezing interior, following the routes of the prisoners on the infamous Kolyma highway, known as the “Road of bones”. The remote towns of the interior, bleak centres for the mining of gold and uranium, were set on the original sites of the prison camps. Many of the inhabitants were descendants of the original prisoners who had been forbidden to leave after completion of their sentence.
Barry's journey north out of Magadan was along the Kolyma Highway, a 2000 km road built by the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who were exiled to the region’s camps from the 1930s to the 1950s. Known as the “Road of Bones”, it was named after the thousands of Gulag prisoners who died building it, with many of their bodies buried just beneath its surface.
“We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months - after that we don’t need him anymore.”
Camp commander Naftaly Frenkel, The Gulag Archipelago
128 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2024
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September 14, 2024
This photobook makes good the old adage that an image is worth a thousand words. I don't think a review by me could add any substantial after this brilliant piece by Neal Ascherson.
Totally recommended.
Totally recommended.
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