In 2015, we made a physical map of the location of the camps for the exhibition of the Gulag History Museum. It turned out that in printed version It is impossible to contain all the data: there are too many camps, they appeared, moved and disappeared. We then decided to create a web version of the map to show the chronological and geographical development Gulag systems. It was important to collect all the information in one place, because physical map the dots overlapped each other and could not convey the full scale of the tragedy.
The user can change the scale of the map, select a specific time period, or see how many camps were built over the entire period of history
Our project is a web application with a database scientific information, statistics, documents. Employees of the museum's scientific department were responsible for the concept and filling of the map - they worked with sources and analyzed data. The technical implementation and design were undertaken by the contractor.
The map shows three types of camps: forced labor, special and testing and filtration. The design of a card is closely related to its meaning. We took into account the theme and context of the project: the main background of the map and interface elements are made in dark colors. We selected the remaining colors so that they would be combined with the base one. color scheme, but at the same time they were not bright and cheerful. I think we succeeded, and the card design creates the desired effect.
The user can choose the number of items displayed: for example, disable the display of data about special camps if he is interested in something else
The project is accessible to any user, regardless of their level of preparation. Despite its simplicity, the map is very informative and its data will be useful to researchers of the Gulag system.
About the heart of the project and the convenient “admin panel”
The project was implemented on the mapping platform Mapbox. In the administrative panel created for us by the contractor, we can independently update the map content without programming. This is a very simple and convenient interface, but if something doesn’t work out for us, we can always write to the developers.
The contractor's team used following technologies: React, Redux, Immutable, Saga, D3, Docker, Node.js with Koa and PostgreSQL with PostGIS. At the heart of the project is the developers' own component @urbica/ react‐map‐gl . They use it to manage layers and check the state of the map.
Live feedback is the best reaction
In addition to the developers and employees of the Gulag History Museum, many regional colleagues, independent researchers and museum employees of the Association of Memory Museums helped us in working on the project. They shared data, gave advice, looked for information and helped analyze it. It is important to talk about the work done before us. The basis of the map is the research of the Memorial Society and their reference book “ System of forced labor camps in the USSR».
The Gulag history map was conceived as a resource with verified research information about the camps, so the interest of the professional community is important to us. We are glad that colleagues from regional museums are paying attention to the project and want to display the map in their exhibitions.
Historical, technical and cartographic media wrote about the release of the map, and Meduza did a test for us on our knowledge of the geography of the Gulag.
We evaluate the success of the project by the live responses of people for whom our map is not historical reference, but something more - they write a lot of thanks, advice, wishes. Some readers send us scanned documents and photographs from family archives, others - thanks to our project, they will find out what happened to their family in the twentieth century. We plan to use the card in educational programs museum and will recommend it as a resource for schoolchildren and students.
Sadly famous period from 1930 to 1950, the history of the USSR is written in bloody ink. On October 1, 1930, the GULAG - the Main Directorate of Camps - was established. Throughout all the republics of the USSR, the GULAG had a network of forced labor camps, in which during the period 1930-1953. About 6.5 million people visited. Unable to withstand the inhuman conditions, about 1.6 million people died there.
The prisoners not only served their time - their labor was used for the benefit of the USSR and was considered as economic resource. Gulag prisoners carried out the construction of a number of industrial and transport facilities. With the death of the “leader of all nations” Comrade Stalin, the Gulag camps began to be abolished at a fairly rapid pace. The survivors sought to quickly leave their places of imprisonment, the camps were emptying and falling into disrepair, and the projects on which so much had been thrown human lives, quickly fell into disrepair. But on the map former USSR It is still possible to come face to face with evidence from that era.
A former camp located near the city of Perm. Currently this correctional labor colony strict regime for those convicted of “especially dangerous state crimes” it was turned into a museum – Memorial Museum stories political repression"Perm-36". Barracks, towers, signal and warning structures and utility lines were restored and recreated here.
Solovki
Solovetsky camp special purpose(ELEPHANT) was the first and most famous camp in the territory Soviet Union. It was located in the White Sea, on the archipelago Solovetsky Islands and quickly became a symbol of the repressive system. SLON ended its existence in 1937 - over 20 years, several tens of thousands of prisoners passed through Solovki. In addition to the “political”, ordinary criminals and clergy were massively exiled to the archipelago. Nowadays there is only a monastery on the island, which last years carefully restored.
Dneprovsky mine
The Dnieper mine is located in Kolyma, just three hundred kilometers from Magadan. When rich gold deposits were discovered in Kolyma in the 1920s, prisoners began to be exiled here en masse. In subzero weather (in winter the thermometer dropped below -50 ˚С), “traitors to the motherland” mined tin in this mine using picks, crowbars and shovels. In addition to Soviet citizens, there were also Finns, Japanese, Greeks, Hungarians and Serbs in the camp.
Dead Road
Construction of the railway along the Northern Arctic Circle Salekhard-Igarka was one of the most grandiose projects Gulag. The idea of construction belonged to Stalin himself: “We must take on the North, from the North Siberia is not covered by anything, but political situation very dangerous." Despite the tough weather: very coldy and swamps infested with midges, the road was built at a rapid pace - having started construction in 1947, by 1953 800 km of the planned 1,482 km had been built. In 1953, after the death of Stalin, it was decided to mothball the construction site. Along its entire length there were abandoned locomotives, empty barracks and thousands of dead construction workers from among the prisoners.
Vasilyevka
The Vasilyevka camp in the Aldan region was one of the largest. Five thousand people, sentenced to 25 years on criminal and political charges, were employed here in the mining of monazite (a mineral containing uranium-235) and logging. Distinctive feature the camp had strict discipline, even for the LUGaga camps: for attempting to escape, prisoners were sentenced to to the highest degree punishment - execution. The prisoners lived in complete isolation from outside world, since they were even deprived of the right to correspondence. On former territory camp, officially closed in 1954, two crosses were erected in memory of the victims of Stalin's repressions.
Target
The Svor camp on the banks of the Chusovaya River, 20 km from the city of Chusovoy, arose at the end of 1942. The Ponyshskaya hydroelectric power station was supposed to be built on the river by the forces of prisoners. Thousands of people, mostly convicted under the notorious Article 58, cleared the bed of the future reservoir, cut down forests and extracted coal from mines. Hundreds died, unable to withstand the intense pace of work - the hydroelectric power station was planned to be built in just two years. But in 1944, all work was mothballed - the dam was never built. Towards the end of the Great Patriotic War and after its completion the camp became a “testing and filtration camp.” Soldiers who went through fascist captivity were sent here.
Surmog
The main camp is on the site of the village of the same name, located on the banks of the Glukhaya Vilva River, where exiles from the Baltic republics were sent. It is noteworthy that until 1941 they were not considered political prisoners, but had the status of “temporarily displaced” persons. Many were imprisoned in Surmoga famous representatives social democratic and democratic parties, members of the government of Latvia. Among them are G. Landau, a famous journalist, leader of the Cadet Party of Latvia, and B. Khariton, the father of the “father atomic bomb» Y. Kharitona, editor of the Riga newspaper Segodnya. Today, on the site of the camp there is a correctional colony.
Camp near Mount Toratau
The Salavat Gulag camp system in Bashkiria included 10 camps, and the camp at Mount Toratau was the worst of them all. The prisoners were struck dumb with horror at the mere mention of him. Three thousand prisoners, whose shackles were never removed, quarried and burned limestone here. Mountain waters flooded the barracks of the prisoners, turning their lives into hell, and people died not only from hunger, cold and disease, but also by killing each other. They were buried there, not far from the limestone workings. In May 1953, the camp was abolished, but apparently, by that time there were very few prisoners left who had survived to this day.
KARLAG
The Karaganda forced labor camp, one of the largest camps, existed from 1930 to 1959. and was subordinate to the Gulag of the NKVD of the USSR. On the territory there were seven separate villages with a European population - over 20 thousand people. Currently in former building The Karlag camp administration in the village of Dolinka houses a museum in memory of the victims of political repression.
Road of Bones
The infamous abandoned highway leading from Magadan to Yakutsk. Construction of the road began in 1932. Tens of thousands of people who participated in laying the route and died there were buried right under the road surface. For this reason, the tract was nicknamed “the road with bones.” The camps along the route were named after kilometer marks. In total, about 800 thousand people passed through the “road of bones”. With the construction of the Kolyma federal highway, the old Kolyma highway fell into decay, and today it is in an abandoned state.
You can visit the camps along the “Dead Road” not only live, but also virtually, having studied satellite images or detailed military maps. Thanks to the cartographic data we collected, the considerable scale of the construction of the camps and the railway became obvious, and we have so far been able to describe only a small part of the entire complex.
Archival military topographic maps
The archival military maps used to create our museum were made in the 60s and 70s, and this is almost 20 years after the cessation of work on the camp complex. Despite this, it is marked on the maps as sama Railway, and most of the camps, which could not but serve us well when planning expeditions. Individual camps located at a distance of 5-10 km from each other are indicated on the maps as “ settlements» “settlements (non-residential)”, or “barracks”, next to it there is a mark indicating on which kilometer of the railway the camp is located.
On this moment We studied 44 scanned sheets of maps, including the entire section of the Dead Road from Salekhard to Igarka. Look at the one made up of these disparate pieces single map you can here (Old military...)
The area around Ermakovo and Barabanikha on military maps of the 70s
Detailed satellite images
Thanks to old military topographic maps, we knew that north of the Turukhan River there were two camps (a camp at km 48 and a camp at km 51), which were not visible on publicly available satellite photo sites. Due to lack of time and the fact that we did not know if there was anything left in these camps, we did not visit them during last expedition. Multispectral images from the Landsat satellite lifted the curtain - at least one of these camps is well preserved. Therefore, we decided to purchase detailed panoramic photographs of this camp taken from the Worldview-1 satellite. We needed to find out what everything really looks like there. It turned out to be true: several barracks stand untouched. In the northern part of the camp, a quarry is clearly visible, connected to the railway by a lift. The entire processed image can be studied in this window (Detailed satellite...)
We began studying the camp at km 169 on the Bludnaya River in the same way as we began studying the two previous camps. It can be found at topographic map, but we were unable to get to it due to a breakdown motor boat. The mysterious camp could not leave our minds, and therefore we acquired photographs taken from the QuickBird satellite. Nothing was visible in the photo. after a long study, we managed to make out one single building (initially it was located outside the camp); everything else was destroyed. Even the boundaries of the camp were indistinguishable - everything was overgrown.
The remains of the Bludnaya camp in a photograph from the KwikBird satellite. (© COPYRIGHT 2015 DigitalGlobe, Inc.)
Somehow I haven’t seen before that the Memorial people made a map of the Gulag, in which there is regional level details and you can point at the concentration camp designation on the map and get brief and detailed information on it:
© NIPC "Memorial", with the assistance of the Feltrinelli Foundation and the Department of Cartography, Faculty of Geography, Moscow State University
A. Bashlachev - Absolute watchman
At the oral release of Roxy magazine in the Ilyich House of Culture on May 24, 1987 (Part 14/15)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Flv9USckXE
"Joseph Stalin Pure Evil"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ajqk875Xu0
Another map of concentration camps in the USSR - 1936
Writes Dmitrij_Chmelnizki ( dmitrij_sergeev)
@ 2010-02-21 22:24:00
Map Soviet camps 1936
Map published in the book mentioned below by Hermann Greife, “Forced Labor in the USSR”, Berlin, 1936.
The author estimates the total number of people employed in forced labor in the USSR in 1935 to be approx. 6 million people, including two categories - administratively deported (which includes deported peasants) and prisoners. 
"Distribution of camps forced labor in Soviet Union.
1. Solovki camp: logging, hydroelectric power station, fishing.
2. Camp Belomorkanal.
3. Northern camp: logging.
4. Camp in Svirsk: hydroelectric power station.
5. Camp in Volkhov: aluminum factory.
6a Camp in Dmitrov: Volga-Moscow Canal
6b. Camp in Sornovo: harbor.
7. Camp in Kotlas: railway.
8. Camp in Vishera: chemical factory and mining industry.
9. Camp in Kungul: mining and metallurgical plants.
10. Camp in the North Caucasus: grain “factories”.
11. Camp in Astrakhan: fishing.
12. Camp in Kazakhstan: livestock farming, canning factories.
13. Camp in Chardzhou: cotton and textile factories.
14. Camp in Tashkent: cotton and textile factories.
15. Camp in Siberia: coal and metallurgical plants.
16. Camp on Novaya Zemlya: lead.
17. Camp in Igarka: harbor, logging site. .
18. Camp in Narym: logging.
19. Camp "Lena": gold and precious metals.
20. Camp “Lena-Oymyakon”: logging and precious metals.
21. Camp "Amura-Zeya": gold, Agriculture, railway, fortification work on the Amur and work in the harbor.
22. Camp on Sakhalin: coal.
Map compiled: "Entente Internationale contre la III eme Internationale", Geneva."
"Zwangsarbeit in der Sowjetunion". Von Dr. Hermann Greife, Dozent an der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik, Berlin,1936
Well, the current prisons of the Russian Federation are a heap.
Writes _starley_ ( _starley_)
@ 2010-02-23 18:46:00
PR
chelapeuka2 created Google maps that show almost all penitentiary institutions in Russia, broken down by region.
http://chelapeuka2.livejournal.com/585284.html?format=light
This city is slipping and changing names.
It is cast in an icy, neutral mold.
He's a tight spring. He is mute and stern.
General master of the total storm
Drives dust along the fairway of red carpets.
It prints the step the way coins are minted.
He patrols his archipelago.
Echo of plaster forges in empty offices
Causes a commotion of dead papers.
The scarlet torch - the melody of the white dungeon -
He carries through the spare harmony of the walls.
He pumps out sounds with a rubber syringe
From the barbed wire of our veins.
Every anthem has its duty, every march has order.
Mechanical wolf in the ray arena.
An impeccable dancer of Magadan stages.
Hourly disc jockey of the Buchenwald ovens.
The lacquered octopus, it is friendly and lubricated,
And today he arranged a ball for you.
An elderly gramophone, obeying orders,
The nostalgic waltz picks up the needle.
A ball for all times! Oh, how sentimental...
And the spider - the rusty cross - sleeps in the ashes of our stars.
And the melody of the waltz is so documentary,
Like an ordinary arrest, like a banal denunciation.
Like free dancing at every interrogation,
Like a Tatar on a tower who burst the shutter.
The Absolute Watchman is neither Adolf nor Joseph,
Dusseldorf butcher and Pskop flayer.
Striped rhythms syncopate on the pass.
Blues gas chambers and swing raids.
The quiet cry of a fat doll, broken during a search,
An endless pause of scorched chapters.
How cruel are the romances of patrol regulations
And the canzons of the concentration camp bunks.
The chords of crunchy joints beat in a waltz
And the gratings ring like a cast-iron string.
Howl of GB oboes in Gestapo saxophones
And still the same caliber of the same notes on the sheets.
This life line is a chain of sorrowful stages
On invisible and ghostly eerie fronts.
The Absolute Watchman is just a sterile scheme.
Combat mechanism, guard unit.
Chaos sunny days night brings in system
Under the name... yes, but who cares?
After all, this city slides and changes names,
Someone carefully erased this address long ago.
This street does not exist, and there is no building on it,
Where the Absolute Watchman rules the roost all night long.
Operating on the territory of the USSR until the 1960s. These are not just points on the map of the country - historians, designers and developers have created a growing database that allows us to assess the scale of Stalin's repressive system in time and space.
1930
In the USSR, the OGPU Directorate was created, which was soon renamed the Main Directorate - GULAG. According to the resolution “On the use of labor of criminal prisoners” adopted a year earlier, the camps become a source of free work force. In 1930, there were eight camps, the largest being the Solovetsky ITL OGPU with a “population” of 65 thousand people.
1937
NKVD order No. 00447 “On the repression operation” was signed former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements,” mass arrests and the rapid expansion of the Gulag system began. In 1937, there were 29 camps operating in the Soviet Union, the largest in the city of Dmitrov, Moscow region. Prisoners of Dmitlag are building the Moscow-Volga Canal. There are 146 thousand 920 people in this camp alone.
1949
Arrests of “repeaters” began: mainly those who were arrested during the years of the Great Terror and had already managed to be released. Most receive a new sentence for an old case and are sent into exile. There are many “traitors to the motherland” in the camps - mainly those who went through German captivity or lived in the occupied territories. There are more than a hundred camps on the territory of the USSR. And for a year now there have been special camps created on the basis of convict departments. In 1949, there were nine such camps: Coastal camp in the Khabarovsk Territory; Lake camp in Irkutsk region; Sandy, Stepnoy and Meadow camps in Kazakhstan; Mountain camp in Norilsk and River camp in Vorkuta; Mineral camp in Inta (Komi Republic); Oak camp in Mordovia.
1953
There are eleven special camps, and the largest one houses 67 thousand 889 people. New camps are appearing in Yakutia and Transbaikalia, camps have been created on the territory Murmansk region, even in Crimea there are as many as two camps: ITL “EO” and Gagarinsky LO - and in total there are more than 150 camps throughout the country with a “population” of from one and a half thousand to several tens of thousands of people in each.
But already in the first months after Stalin’s death, the system stopped growing: in 1956, only 51 camps were functioning, and they continued to be disbanded.
“Map of the Gulag” is a project of the Gulag History Museum, which tells and clearly demonstrates where camps were located, how they grew up, changed their location and were disbanded on the territory of the USSR from the 1920s to 1960. Every camp. Every year. Full statistics, location, work of prisoners in the camp - all this can be viewed in detail on the map.
White Sea-Baltic ITL. gulagmap.ru
“The Gulag is, first of all, space: the space of a barracks, the space of a camp zone, the space of a camp, and finally, the space of a country. Without the development of geographical thinking, it is impossible to imagine the history of the Gulag, the space of which stretched from Baltic Sea and Crimea to Chukotka and Sakhalin"- says the elder Researcher Museum Ilya Udovenko, who, together with his colleagues, has been working on creating a map for three years.
Now the map shows not only forced labor and special camps, but also testing and filtration camps that appeared during the war; the museum plans to add information about special settlements and camps on the territory East Germany, as well as expand the map reference book with documents and photographs. Main source data on the number of prisoners - summary documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the NKVD, statistics of individual camps and, of course, data collected by the Memorial society.
“The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the NKVD provided summary statistics in 1953 and 1956, and we relied on them. For more early periods There are statistics for specific camps. If we compare general statistics according to the years when it exists, and the statistics of specific camps, there will always be contradictions. There are several reasons for this: transfers of prisoners from one camp to another and within the camp throughout the year; mortality; the arrival of new stages.”