*** Warning: This post contains mentions of events that some readers may find disturbing. ***
As we learn about Kazakhstan’s history in our classes, especially their history as part of the Soviet Union, we often touch on the ways in which the trauma inflicted on citizens of the USSR impacts the generations that live in post-Soviet countries today. One of these traumas is the gulag camps, which subjected millions to inhumane treatment and harsh physical labor during the 20th century. There were gulags spread throughout the entire Soviet Union, including in Kazakhstan; in order for us to fully understand Kazakhstan’s history, then, it’s also necessary for us to learn about this tragic historical phenomenon.
During our trip to Astana, the nation’s capital, we were able to visit Alzhir, one of the gulags that operated in Kazakhstan during the Soviet Union. The prisoners of the camp were all women and young children, and they hadn’t committed any crime at all– instead, they were the wives, mothers, and sisters of men who had been deemed traitors to the Soviet Union, and were sent to the camp to serve a sentence and renounce their husbands, sons, and brothers. The name itself is a Russian acronym of “Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors of the Motherland,” an unofficial name that the women themselves called the camp.
It was raining when we arrived at the site of the camp, which seemed to be a fitting mood for the topic of the day’s excursion. I immediately noticed a giant silver arch, which looked almost like some sort of alien spaceship with its long arched legs and metallic criss-cross design. This structure, called the“Arch of Sorrow,” is supposed to represent a woman grieving for her dead husband and lost children. It is supposed to show the intersection of the world of the living and the world of the dead, and symbolizes the entrance to a holy land. When walking under the arch, a sign instructs you to bow your head in respect for the victims of the camp.
Inside the museum, our tour guide led us around the exhibits and expertly gave us a history of the camp, which was opened in January of 1938 and didn’t close until after the death of Stalin in 1953. During that time, more than 18,000 women were imprisoned in the camp with their children, although they were only allowed to have their children until the age of three; after that, the children were sent to an orphanage, as their mothers were not deemed fit to properly raise their children according to Soviet ideas. Along with the separation from their families and children, women in the camps were subjected to hard labor, torture, and the fierce cold of northern Kazakhstan, and 1,507 of the women gave birth as a result of being raped by the guards.
The women arrived at the camp in “Stalin cars,” which were train cars that had small, barred windows and wooden planks to lay down (generously called bunk beds on the museum’s inscription of the exhibit). Instead of their names, the women were given a number by which they were identified. In addition, they were forced to make their own barracks using adobe bricks, which did little to keep out the cold of the winter.
Our tour guide then led us to a recreation of an interrogation room, where a mannequin prisoner sat with crossed legs and her hands on her lap. She was wearing a number sewn on the front of her winter jacket and a thin skirt. A framed picture of Stalin hung on the wall behind the mannequin interrogator, and another mannequin soldier kept guard at the door. During interrogations, our tour guide said, the women were forced to sit with their legs crossed for hours, which resulted in many women fainting. Many women were also raped in these interrogation rooms.
There were women from many countries imprisoned in Alzhir, and one of them, a German woman named Gertruda Platais, became a sort of heroine. She was once being stoned over the fence by the local residents, and fell onto the ground. That’s when she discovered that one of the small rocks had a milky smell– it seemed strange, and when she brought it back to the barracks, the Kazakh women immediately recognized it as kurt, a typical Kazakh fermented cheese. Women from the villages nearby had brought the small salty cheese balls for the prisoners and thrown them over the fence. These women continued to bring food for the prisoners, which helped to keep them alive. After she was released from Alzhir, she wrote a poem called “Kurt is a Precious Stone,” and the small, smelly Kazakh cheese became a legend.
At the end of our visit, we screened a short film, in which past prisoners of Alzhir and their children spoke about the camp and its lasting repercussions. I was struck by their emotions; one past prisoner, well into her old age, said that her husband and brother were shot so matter-of-factly that you would have thought that she was mentioning their recent departure to the grocery store. A daughter of one of the prisoners, though, recalled seeing her mother in the camp for the first time in years and being scared of how much older her mother looked, and immediately began to cry. Seeing the impact that the camp had on each generation was staggering, and I began to think about the various ways in which Kazakhstan’s history as a part of the Soviet Union has impacted generations even today. I left with a better understanding of the deep, tragic imprint the Soviet Union left on the country and its people, and that is certainly something that we never would have learned from a history textbook.
Until next time,
-Grace
Sources:
“Alzhir.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Apr. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALZhIR.
“Alzhir Memorial Complex near Astana.” Advantour,
https://www.advantour.com/kazakhstan/astana/alzhir.htm.
“Alzhir Camp History.” Музейно-Мемориальный Комплекс “АЛЖИР”,
https://museum-alzhir.kz/en/about-museum/alzshir-camp-history.
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