Open air museum Shorsky Gulag

The open air museum Shorsky Gulag in Ust-Kabyrza village was founded in 2011. Its exposition is dedicated to the victims of repressions and deported, subjected to dekulakization or convicted people. One of the main sections of the exhibition is devoted to the repressed Soviet Germans. Prisoners’ housewares, clothes and tools can be found there. The visitors will not only see the history of the region, but will also have a chance to try on prisoners’ clothes, take part in the hardest work of logging, spend some hours in a cell and visit a “black banya”.

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labour camp systems during the Stalin era. The first camps were created in 1918 and recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. About 14 million people were in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953. Over 1 million people died in the Gulag from 1934–1953. There is no archival data for the period 1918–1934.