“Sacral monuments of Karaganda region”

Assay – Эссе

“Sacral monuments of Karaganda region”

«Сакральные памятники Карагандинской области»

Savinov Vyacheslav

Руководитель: Заславская Людмила Алексеевна

When I saw it, it was a shock for me, because it was terrific imagine in my mind, how people can be cruel.

I want to tell you about one of the most importance sacral places of Karaganda, about Karlag. I really think that it is a real sacral place, because it has a lot of variety bad emotions, impressions and memories. “Karlag” it means - Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp of The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs – the NKVD - was one of the hundred camps that bore the collective name of GULAG (i.e. Central Administrative Board of Camps) and were organized by Josef Stalin in the period of mass political repressions. Aside from «Karlag”, there were also other camps on the territory of Kazakhstan with the help of which the Soviet totalitarian system was destroying the lives of people. However,“Karlag” stands out among them for its particular dimensions and significance.

The administrative center of «Karlag» was situated in Dolinka settlement (50 km to the southwest from today’s Karaganda). The whole camp system took an enormous territory (300 km from the north to the south and 200 km from the east to the west) and had numerous departments on the territory of Central Kazakhstan. The administration in Dolinka was also responsible for the control over slave labor of the political prisoners working on the provision of the rapidly developing coal and metallurgy industry. Besides that the prisoners worked on agriculture and cattle breeding, building the industrial giants and on mineral exploration.

Also there is Spassk Memorial is situated in 30 km to the south of Karaganda. In the nearby village called Spassk were kept the foreign prisoners of war after the end of World War II. Different countries, whose citizens were the prisoners in Karaganda camps had put their memorable sights not far from the village. Among them are Russia, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Italy, Romania, France, Finland, Lithuania, Philippines, and Japan. According to historians’ estimations, the remains of 5152 prisoners of different ethnicity were buried in this cemetery.

Here you can also find a maternity hospital and child cemetery, also known as “Mamochkino”, where remains of thousands of babies are kept, as well as the building of chapel and numerous ruins of beaten cobworks, which were built many years ago by force of prisoners. Many people, who were there, died, because of our government and there weren’t any hopeless for a life. There were a lot of people, who didn’t have any chance to live and rejoice to each vital moment and to breathe freely, to love and be darlings, to raise the children and every day to see their solar smile on their faces.

As for me, it is very difficult to imagine, what was happened there at that time. You should have a strong nervous system if you want to go there. When I saw it last year, there were a lot of crying people in the excursion. They were cried together with me. I can’t understand how people could live there, it is very difficult to imagine it in my mind. I proud of people who could work there and stay a people.