Photograph taken March 2006 at the Gulag Museum at Perm 36 in the Maximum Security Zone which in the post-Stalin era held many of the most famous prisoners from the Soviet human rights (dissident) movement.

Black and wh ite photograph of corridor inside the notorious Vladimir Prison. Taken in 1989, the photo shows the prison which dates back to first half of the nineteenth century and held a great many prisoners throughout the Soviet era.

Painting by Nikolai Getman. Two armed secret police men lead a prisoner with his arms restrained behind his back down a prison corridor, possibly back to his cell, possibly to his execution.

Mug shot of prisoner Genrikh Kazimirovich Pozharskii.

Mug shot of N. N. Vinogradov, who was the director of the museum at the Solovetskii camp.

Mug shot of Vladimir Petrovich Kushmir taken in 1929.

A Black Maria or Black Raven--a truck specially equipped with tiny prison cells for hauling prisoners around while appearing to be a regular delivery truck. This Black Maria is in the collection of the Gulag Museum at Perm 36.

Photograph of two men exiting a "Black Maria," [sometimes translated as a "Black Raven"] a truck specially equipped with tiny prison cells that was designed to appear as a delivery truck.

Sketch by Michail Distergeft. A woman comforting a child, as they stand in line waiting hoping for news of the fate of their family member who has been arrested. Such lines formed outside every prison during the years of mass terror, as it was the only hope for family members to learn of the fate of the arrested. The lines are memorialized in Anna Akhmatova's famous poem "Requiem." The sketch is from Distergeft's series "Those Years".

Sketch by Michail Distergeft. Families who sought information on the fate of family members who had been executed were often greeted with the lie that their loved one had been sentenced to a forced labor camp "without the right of correspondence." Consequently, the phrase become a synonym for execution in prisoner language. In the sketch, a guard with a gun stands looking down at a prisoner who has been shot in the head.