WCL Children of the Gulag ENPRO

A large portion of our interviews are connected with the so-called “Children of the Gulag”, (Gulag = Russian abbreviation for the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps, Labor Settlements and Places of Detention). They are informative interviews with both people who were repressed, passing through the camps system, and the children of prisoners – the “sons of enemies of the people” – some of whom personally experienced the many burdens of exile and imprisonment during the Soviet period of Russia's history. 

The stories told by former political prisoners are frightening and arouse indignation, but even among them, lyrical notes and hints of self-irony can slip through. 

The difficult conditions of being imprisoned alongside ordinary criminals, hard labor, hunger and separation from loved ones were just some of the hardships they lived through, but overcoming those difficulties made people all the stronger in their love for what's dear to them and their faith in God. 

There were some who maintained their communist views and ideals to the very end. And therein lies one of the biggest paradoxes of that era: people, who spent considerable parts of their lives imprisoned or exiled, who lost their families and friends, nonetheless preserved their humanity. Former political prisoners do not hate their jailers, and childhoods spent in exile by our contemporaries in places like Kolyma, where winter temperatures can fall as low as -60 degrees Celsius, were happy. 

The children of the Gulag include several generations of not only Russians, but also Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Latvians, Tatars, Germans, Armenians, Jews, Poles and other nationalities, who in one way or another influenced the fate of Russia.