Video Tour of Perm 36 Camp
Take a tour of the restored camp at the Perm 36 Gulag Museum in Perm, Russia. Filmed in December 2006, the footage begins with an overview of the main camp: a wooden barrack built in 1946 (the oldest building at the museum), a tree alley planted by prisoners in 1948, the outhouse, the infirmary, the solitary, and a panorama of the camp. The end of the video shows the second, high security “special treatment detention block” built in the 1970s, including a pit at the entrance to check underneath the cars for stowaways, the barbed-wire fence, and the barracks.
Audio Tour of Perm 36 Camp
Listen to Nadezhda, a museum guide at the Perm 36 Gulag Museum in Perm, Russia, tour the camp grounds. She describes how museum buildings were used for housing, labor, and punishment of Gulag prisoners. This audio tour was recorded in December 2006 (in Russian).
Transcripts
English Transcription
History of the Camp
… I am happy to welcome you on the territory of our unique Museum of the History of Political Repressions Perm-36. My name is Nadezhda and I will be conducting your one-hour tour. I will begin with the unique feature of our museum, the fact that only here on Kuchino territory we have preserved a complex of Gulag buildings going back to Stalin’s times. Although on the territory of the former Soviet Union there were thousands and thousands of similar camps and colonies, only our camp is available for mass visitors. Our museum is a memorial for the entire Soviet era. I think that you will confirm that several times during my story. I should also say that the International Museum Fund included our museum in the list of one hundred most important monuments of the world, together with the Great Chinese Wall. The history of this camp began in 1946; the camp closed in 1987. Its 40-year-old history can be divided into three periods that differ mostly in the kind of prisoners kept here and their conditions of life and labor.
So, period number one. It lasted from 1946 till 1953 and during this time the camp had all kinds of prisoners. Before all, it housed “bytoviki” and “ukazniki.” It also included criminals and political prisoners, but in this early period politicals comprised only 10-12 percent. Should I explain who were bytoviki and ukazniki? Bytoviki were incarcerated for small-time crimes, believe me, in our times they would not have been convicted. For example, they were convicted for making moonshine, for riding public transport without a ticket, for a small fight without significant injuries, and so on. Ukazniki from the point of view of the state were a very serious category of prisoners. If a person was caught collecting wheat, potatoes, or carrots in a field for a collective farm, even after the harvest, this person could be sentenced to 10 years with full confiscation of possessions, because this was considered theft of socialist property. That’s why this crime was so severely punished. We have in our archives examples of such ukazniki, called that because they were convicted according to decrees (ukazy). For example, there was a woman who was incarcerated for over 20 years. Our researchers are collecting materials in different towns and villages of our area, and they uncovered this story. This woman was in prison for over 20 years because she carried a bottle of milk from the collective farm. The collective farm took her cow, and she the had to go and milk this cow herself. She had three children, her youngest girl was not even a year old, and she secretly brought a bottle of milk every evening and once when she was coming back from the farm the chairman of the collective saw her and she got eight years. She was supposed to get out during the war, but they didn’t let anyone one during the war and she stayed in prison till the war was over. When the woman got out, she found neither her husband nor her children.
In 1953 Stalin died and some camps were closed, but this camp remained open. It became a prison for Beria’s entourage. These were usually high-ranking officials, colonels, lieutenant colonels, and even generals stayed here. In December 1953 Beria was executed by gunfire as a Japanese spy. But senior officials Beria brought in also needed to go, and they were brought here. They were convicted for unfair repressions. This punishment was symbolic, these people lived here for 5-7 years, in very good conditions. They had many privileges, and one of them is right before us—this orchard. This is not at all a typical feature of labor camps, you won't see this beauty in any other camp, because it was set up here because of this privileged category of prisoners. They were fed better than other prisoners, and they had other privileges—you will see. The history of this orchard begins earlier than these prisoners were brought here.
After these people left the camp, the camp housed legal officials—former MVD, KGB, police, prosecutors, and judges. This kind of prisoners were brought here till 1972. In 1972 they started bringing prisoners from other camps, first were prisoners from Mordovsky political camps. Prisoners there were able to set up contacts with their comrades outside the Gulag, and sent information to these comrades, their friends, and then this information through the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and ABC was transmitted to the whole country. Soviet officials did not like this, and decided to send this prisoners far away, and that far away turned out to be our Perm region, Chasovskoi disctrict. There were three such political camps—Polovinka, Kuchino, and Vsesvyatsckoe. Thus on the territory of the Perm region there appeared a notorious triangle of political camps—35, 36, and 37. 35 and 37 are still active camps, but now they are criminal camps, because officially we don't have political camps any more.
Camp Buildings
We are now in the residential zone of the camp Perm-36. The residential section is separated from the industrial zone with this double fence called a «shoot-through corridor.» There were once four barracks on this territory, but only one is left. But this is a real, unique barrack of the Stalin period. There was a second barrack, the third stood on the opposite side of the second, and the fourth was in place of that building until the early 1970s. Every barrack housed 250 prisoners. So the zone contained one thousand prisoners. In the early 1970s the fourth barrack was the first to break down and in its place they built another building which became a headquarters for the zone. It was a headquarters for 7 years and in the early 1980s they build a new building—the one that you saw when you drove into the area, a two-story building, not a very pretty one, and it became the headquaters. The second floor housed the camp officials, the accounting office, a group that counted prisoners, and the first had a visiting room. At the same time they set up a camp dining room there. In this dining room sometimes they had film screenings. This booth, it's a booth for the film projector, it has a special window, you'll see it later. They also moved the library there and several other offices, for example a KGB office.
You can also see the bathhouse, which also housed a laundry room, and a so-called haircuttery, where all the prisoners's heads were shaved once a month. This is a clinic. Its purposed was not to heal the prisoners but to send as many of them as possible to work, because every camp had a strict work plan, which the prisoners had to fulfill, and if it was not done, both the prisoners and the camp officials would have problems. Here is another building—a toilet. It served all prisoners in the residential section, and there was another one in the work section. It was very hard to smuggle anything from the camp, but prisoners found ways, usually during family visits, although these visits were closely guarded, even to the extent that women were searched on the gynecological table.
Inside the Barrack
To the right there is a changing room for half of the inhabitants of this barrack--125 people.
Here are two toilets and a basin for washing one's feet—it was used during the incarceration of colonels and generals. It wasn't used after that.
This room is a so-called Leninist corner. It had a long table with benches, some bookshelves with books and newspapers. Here prisoners studied materials from Communist Party congresses, listened to political information sessions, and so on. Here prisoners could also write a letter to their relatives. They could write one letter a month. An assistant to the head of the camp on duty read these letters carefully. He was behind this door—it is now closed and stores shelved books. If the assistant didn't like the content of the letter, he could rip it apart and throw it away, and the prisoner lost the right to write a letter until the following month. They just reported that the letter was not political trustworthy, censorship was very strict.
Here camp officials also tried to conduct political information sessions, with question and answer sessions for prisoners at the end. Especially in the last period, the camp had pretty smart people, who had several higher education degrees, and they had the right to order any literature, three editions a year—newspapers, magazines, books. They used this privilege, read and shared with one another, so they were well informed about current events, were never behind the times. Understandably, after the lecture, they would ask questions that the lecturer had a hard time answering. Then the higher officials would be informed that this audiences is impossible to work with, please send us new lecturers. They would send others, even sometimes from Moscow—this was rare but it happened. These lectors also had a hard time, because the situation happened again and again, lectors still had to field questions that they could not answer.
Here are the sleeping quarters for over 60 people. It contained two-tiered plank beds, night stands, several stools. During the first periold it had also a wood stove that heated these rooms. When colonels and generals came here the officials built a boilerhouse and set up a water heating system.
The Exhibit
We just set up an exhibit «One Camp's History.» You can see the evolution of our camp in these charts. Here is the original view of the camp. It was pretty simple—four barracks, ancillary buildings, one row of barbed wire. The entire population of the camp worked in the woods. The main natural resource here is the forests, so they collected wood. At first they worked with their hands only, felled the trees, even carried logs without machinery.
The position of this camp was very advantageous. During the summer when you drive up to the camp you can see on the left that the river Chusovaya curves here. The best feature is the huge flat bank; it is a very convenient place to store logs. So people brought the logs to this big space and then during the period of high water—usually the second half of May—these logs floated deep into the country. Here is the chart showing the production cycle in ITK-6—this is the first name of the camp, Correction Labor Colony #6. Number 1 denotes this camp, ITK-6. Number 2 are other camps—these are also wood collection points, they worked for this camp, meaning that the logs they collected also came here, to the Chusovaya river bank, and then was floated down the river. The camp to the north was a women's camp. This is a photograph of that camp. Women, like men, also worked without mechanical equipment. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the camps start getting some machines, because they have to work deeper and deeper in the forest, they got some tractors. These machines needed to be serviced, so they build repair shops, garages, smithies, and ancillary buildings. The last chart of the camp, in the last period, is the final version of the camp, including the shoot-through corridor with the double fence. It divides the zone into two parts, the residential and the work part. The latter had many buildings by then. The biggest difference from the earlier plans is the guard system. It becomes very strong because the population is special, including measures against tunnel digging and electric current.
Look at this map, «Places of Isolation for Political Prisoners in the USSR, 1960-1991.» It includes political camps, jails, and mental institutions, there are many of those. If one could leave a camp or a jail, a mental institution meant a life sentence, because the effect of mind-altering drugs could not be reversed.
Special Treatment Detention Block
This camp includes two zones—the high block, where we are now, and 400 meters from here there is another barrack, a special treatment detention block. This second zone was the most terrifying jail on the entire territory of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. First, for the the entire dayprisoners stayed in locked cells housing two, four people, and two cells could hold six people. All prisoners received a standard sentence of 10 years. After that they went into exile for another 5 years, usually to the Soviet Far East, Kolyma, or Kazakhstan. To spend ten years with two, four, six people and no one else was a great psychological strain. People practically did not go out at all. They were let out to breath some fresh air. They came out for a walk into small courtyards, immediately adjacent to the barracks, only for forty-five minutes to an hour from their cells. These courtyards were very small and iron-plated.