WNAM REPORT: Researchers delve into the vestiges of the Karagandy corrective labor camp, also known as Karlag, to preserve untold stories. Their work sheds light not only on the camp’s structure but also creates a digital database of Kazakhstan’s Gulag sites, providing future generations with a better understanding of this dark chapter in history.
Two researchers from Nazarbayev University, Associate Professor in Sociology Gavin Slade and Instructor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Katherine Erdman, united in a project titled Central Asia’s Gulag: Mapping and Managing Penal Heritage in Kazakhstan. As part of the project, they are developing a website called Gulag in Kazakhstan, designed to serve as an educational resource.
Opened in 1931, the Karagandy corrective labor camp was one of 478 camps in the Soviet Gulag system, but its significance, in terms of its size and longevity, is not widely known. During the 28 years of operation, the camp held over a million people, including hundreds of thousands of European descent. At its peak during World War II, Karlag held more than 65,000 captives at once.
How did it all start?
Slade’s initial research focused on people’s attitudes towards punishment based on the hypothesis that living near a former Gulag site might influence their views. This led him to investigate the locations of former camps, particularly Karlag. But after looking at documents and maps and completing archival research, Slade found out that their locations are mostly unknown. He had names of the camps and places of their administrative centers, but very few documents revealed where people were actually held.
The only clues to the whereabouts of camps lay in satellite images that provided some GPS coordinates; however, the on-site inspection was still necessary. Slade brought in archaeologist Erdman to the project, who could read the landscape in a way that people could not.
For the past two years, they have conducted on-site inspections in nearby villages, including Aktaylak and Volkovskaya villages in the Karagandy Region, reconstructing the broader landscape and inner structures of labor camps.
Combining satellite imagery with historical and archival knowledge, Erdman conducts the so-called “ground truthing” – walking the sites, examining the remnants of mud brick, saman and stone structures, and foundations – all in an effort to unpick the story of Karlag.
But even for Erdman, the evidence on sites was not always glaringly apparent.
“Sometimes we see things that are basically holes in the ground. Other times – and we saw a lot of this at Volkovskaya this year – I would see discoloration. I would see lines in the vegetation, and that’s indicative of a structure that had been there, because plants and grass – they grow differently where the soil has been disturbed, or if there’s stone underground that we can’t see, the grass grows differently,” Erdman said.
The aftermath of Karlag
The research reveals not only what camps were like at the time but also the little-known story of their fate after Karlag was dismantled in 1959. The remaining sites and buildings were repurposed for new functions.
“One of the more interesting things about this is that a lot of the villages that you find in the Karagandy oblast [region] and Ulytau oblast began as Gulag camps, and they just became villages. They became sovkhozy [Soviet farms], and then during the tselina period, under Khrushchev, a lot of the camp structures just became repurposed,” said Slade.
“So you could take a barrack that was intended for 100-200 prisoners, maybe that would be divided up, and a few families would live in that for some time after the Gulag was disbanded,” he said.
Time has taken its toll on most of the saman constructions. “But there’s one structure in particular that doesn’t weather away in the campsites, and that is the so-called kartzers [punishment cell],” said Slade.
Those isolation units made of really tough stone were also repurposed – sometimes in a very extraordinary way. “For example, in Aktayla, the kartzer became a site for smoking fish. The villagers smoked fish in there. It was used as a wall for climbing practice for kids. It was used for banya [bathhouse] in Volkovskaya,” said Slade.
The major difference between Soviet camps and those built in the West, according to him, is the blurring of boundaries between the Gulag and the village.
“You’ve got villages growing up alongside Gulag camps, Gulag camps turning into villages, parts of Gulag camps turning into villages and parts not. And you’ve got prisoners, some of whom are freer than others. Some prisoners are behind barbed wire. Some prisoners are not. Some prisoners are free to move around and can live relatively freely. You’ve also got special settlers. They have a different status. They’re also not kept behind barbed wire. So for us, this is one of the more interesting aspects of the whole thing,” said Slade.
What does mapping tell us about Karlag?
One of the researchers’ primary goals is to create maps to have an understanding of the layout of the camps. The real value of the research remains in discovering how various structures connect to each other: where the guards were, where some of the freer prisoners were living, and how the working and living spaces were differentiated. From single data points, Erdman tries to build a web of understanding.
“At Volkovskaya, for example, we had a factory where they were drying fruit and vegetables within it during the [Second World] War and then shipping it to the front line to feed the soldiers. We learned a bit of that from Gavin’s interviews, but we were able to work out the structure of the factory. We’re seeing within the camp work areas versus habitation areas versus the punishment zones, which are usually in a separate area. So we’re getting that spatial understanding of what a typical camp looks like,” said Erdman.
Mapping also helps recreate what the labor division looked like.
“Recently, I just worked on calculating how many mud bricks were required to make a single barrack, and it is anywhere between 13 to almost 15,000 bricks for one structure. And that’s a lot. That’s really time-consuming. At Aktaylak, there are at least eight barracks, so that’s a lot of labor,” said Erdman.
From a sociological point of view, they can’t be sure of all the answers, but the questions are compelling. “We’re interested in the sociology of memory here, rather than the accuracy of what people tell us. We find it interesting that people have certain beliefs about the buildings,” said Slade.
Preserving heritage for future generations
Reflecting on the relevance of their research, Slade highlighted the global significance of studying Karlag, one of the largest Gulag camps, particularly in comparative terms with other camps.
“We might think that this is just a discussion about Kazakhstan and Kazakhs, but there’s a global dimension to what we’re talking about. This is the biggest system of punishment in the history of the world: 24 million people passing through this system within a 25-year period. Karlag is one of the biggest camps within the biggest camp system in the world. It is one of the longest-standing,” said Slade.
The landscapes of the Karagandy and Ulytau regions are still marked by the traces of their camp history. Erdman acknowledges the importance of exploring the landscapes, but even more important is conveying the meaning it represents to the locals.
“The people that are most likely to rally around it are local people. So by going to these sites and bringing that attention and that awareness to the places, ideally, that’s kind of a ripple effect we hope to have. People will take ownership of that and realize ‘oh, this is something important,’” said Erdman.
She teaches it as part of the Applied Public Heritage course at Nazarbayev University, engaging students in both fieldwork and exploring heritage and asking their “whys.”
“I’m putting a little bit of that responsibility back on them, because they’re the ones that are going to be most ready to have those conversations, and I want them to take that ownership of it in the future,” Erdman said.
