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Prison Colony in Russia’s North Celebrates Gulag Foundation

Russia’s Federal Prison Service

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.  

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