Title: Gulag
Photographer(s): Tomasz Kizny
Writer(s): Varlam Shalamov, Norman Davies, Jorge Semprun, Sergei Kovalev
Designer(s):
Publisher(s): Firefly Books NewYork, U.S.A.
Year: 2004
Print run:
Language(s): English
Pages: 496
Size: 15,5 x 20 cm
Binding: Hardcover with dustjacket
Edition:
Print: Printed in France
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Russia,1920-1950
ISBN:
After the end of World War II, Stalin decided, mainly for strategic reasons, to build a large port on the Siberian Arctic coast. A few months later, near the coast of Ob, a contingent of several hundred prisoners landed.
During the summer, they unloaded tons of construction material onto the shore.
In the autumn, it became apparent that the Gulf of the Ob was not deep enough for large-tonnage ships to come in. No one had bothered to check this.
A year of futile preparations. Stalin then decided on Igarka, located 1,300 km further east at the mouth of the Enisej. The execution was entrusted to a specialised Gulag structure, the General Directorate of Railway Construction Camps, headed by Naftalij Frenkel', former director of, among others, the White Sea Canal and the Volga-Don Canal. Frenkel', who had miraculously survived the Great Purge, while all his fellow Czechists had been shot, knew that if he failed, Stalin would condemn him to death.
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