Gulag camp with traces of Czechoslovaks operated longer than previously believed

Czech and Kazakh researchers have found evidence that Steplag, a Stalin-era special-regime camp near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan, close to the village of Terekty, remained in operation far longer than official historiography suggests. According to official records the camp was shut down in 1956, yet glass bottles discovered at the site are dated 1959–1961, said Štěpán Černoušek, chairman of the organization Gulag.cz.

The researchers managed to speak with 78-year-old local resident Mizambai Bralin, who moved to the area in 1959. He recalled that at the time a women's camp was still standing there, holding prisoners from the Baltic states. "This shows that although, according to archival documents, Steplag was officially dissolved by an order from Moscow as a named structure in 1956, not all the prisoners were released — many camps likely continued operating for several more years under a different administration," Černoušek explained. He added that these facts never made it into history books written solely on the basis of Moscow archives compiled by the very organizers of the repressions.

A women's barrack, cartridge cases and a forgotten cemetery

Following a preliminary expedition last year, archaeologists have now launched a full-scale investigation of the site. The head of the excavation, archaeologist Pavel Vařeka of the University of West Bohemia, said the team found the remains of a women's camp, a men's camp with preserved buildings and artifacts, a settlement for the guards, and a command building later occupied by residents of a neighboring village that has since vanished.

The remains of a work zone, where male and female prisoners performed forced labor, have also survived, along with a forgotten cemetery for camp victims. Bullet casings found at the site speak volumes. Witness Bralin told the researchers: "They kept those women there like animals — I can't imagine how any man could shoot a woman."

According to Vařeka, the old man's testimony helped clarify many uncertainties: without him, the team would have had to merely speculate about the layout of the camp buildings and the daily life of the prisoners. The scholar believes the current research offers a fresh perspective on the very last phase of the Stalinist Gulag system.

Such research is no longer possible in Russia

Kazakh historians and archaeologists are also taking part in the expeditions. "A study like this would be impossible in Russia today," Černoušek noted. He said Putin's regime is working to erase the memory of the Gulag and Soviet-era repressions from public discourse, while at the same time justifying certain Soviet crimes. Kazakhstan, by contrast, is increasingly opening up to such scholarly projects, the researcher said.

Archaeologists from Plzeň had previously studied the remains of communist-era camps near Jáchymov in Czechia. Now, according to Vařeka, they have a unique opportunity to compare the original Soviet system with its "copy" — the Czechoslovak version of the camps.

The word "Gulag" itself originally referred to one of the departments of the Soviet secret police that administered a network of concentration and labor camps; construction of this system began as early as 1919, under Lenin. The Gulag administration, along with the camps themselves, was officially abolished in January 1960, but similar institutions, under different names and with somewhat milder conditions, persisted right up until the fall of the communist regime. The largest number of prisoners — up to 14 million people — passed through the system during World War II.

Source: novinky.cz