"Gulag", Barry Lewis (1948)

Wooden houses, built by prisoners in the 1950s, near the port of Magadan.

Statue of a guard, with his gun, overlooking the city of Magadan from the roof of the Maxim Gorky Theatre.

Military vehicles used as a play area for the Podvig Boys Club, Magadan.

Public housing on the outskirts of Magadan.

Galina Levinson, 87, an ex-political prisoner from the Soviet Gulag, works from her apartment in Moscow for Memorial, an organisation investigating lives in the camps.

Asir Sandler, in the entrance to his old cell in Magadan prison, holding his original arrest papers, file no. 2-5469, from 60 years earlier.

During his time in prison Asir documented his experiences by tying knots on string as a secret code, since writing materials in the camp were forbidden.

Our journey north out of Magadan was along the Kolyma Highway, a 2000 km road built by the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who were exiled to the region’s camps.

Built by prisoners over 20 years using hand tools, the Kolyma highway cuts through Siberian permafrost—now a memorial to the thousands buried beneath it.

Along the Kolyma highway, many residents are descendants of Gulag guards or exiled prisoners who never returned home.

Near Magadan, we found a “Mad Max” gold mine using a 1912 Mississippi paddle steamer to dredge a lake. Miners worked 16-hour days in darkness. Ironically, 1912 also saw the Lena massacre, sparked by worker mistreatment, fueling the Russian Revolution.

Ust’-Omchug, 271km north of Magadan, faces brutal winters with eight months of sub-zero highs and permafrost. Granted town status in 1953, its population fell from 11,343 in 1989 to 2,572 by 2021, risking extinction like other Kolyma settlements.

Young men hanging out on their Jupiter motorbikes and sidecars in Ust’-Omchug.

Winter darkness arrives early in Ust’-Omchug.

Escape from the camp was difficult due to the presence of armed guards, lookout towers, and high security fencing. The real deterrent, however, was the isolation, being alone in the middle of the great emptiness of a frozen Siberia.

Guards kept a special watch in the prison workshops.

Watched by the prison governor, an inmate displays severe burns received whilst in custody.

Prisoners in the sickbay, surrounded by family photographs seemed lost in their own world, thousands of miles away from the grim reality of prison life.

We reached Butugychag, a hidden Gulag uranium camp in the Kolyma mountains. Once marked as an agricultural base, it housed forced laborers in deadly conditions. Linked to local tales of radiation and secret research, the camp’s history was nearly erased.

Books

Gulag - A journey into the darkness of Stalin’s Siberian prison camps

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