A prison colony in Russia’s Komi Republic has celebrated the anniversary of its foundation as a Stalinist Gulag in 1937.
Colony number 31 in the village of Mikun held a Prison Day, Russia’s Federal Prison Service reported on its website. The prison celebrated its 79th anniversary, when Stalin’s NKVD opened it as a forestry labour camp. Today, the prison settlement (a penal colony in a remote area where prisoners are free to roam the village but under the guards’ watch) holds female inmates.
As part of the celebrations, prison authorities unveiled a plaque “in respect and gratitude to the founders of the colony.”
As part of the celebrations, they organized a beauty pageant “Miss Colony Number 13, 2016,” in which six female inmates took part.
Over a thousand political prisoners passed through the prison camp between 1937 and 1954. Russian writer and human rights defender Lev Razgon was among them.
