HISTORY OF THE CAMP

In October 1985, Ronald Reagan met for the first time with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, where they discussed the need to curtail the arms race and limit strategic and nuclear weapons. At the end of the meeting, Reagan mentioned human rights and political prisoners in the USSR – like his predecessor Jimmy Carter, he had made these issues part of his election campaign. Gorbachev exploded: “I’m not your pupil, Mr. President, and you’re not my teacher!”

In February 1986, Gorbachev announced in an interview with L’Humanité: “…concerning political prisoners. We do not have them in our country… we do not persecute citizens for their convictions.” But at the meeting between the leaders of the USA and the USSR held in Reykjavik on 11-12 October of the same year, the issue of political prisoners and human rights was officially placed on the agenda. In subsequent months, departments of human rights were formed under the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

On 28 November 1986, Anatoly Marchenko, who was serving his sixth prison sentence, stopped a hunger strike after 117 days, which he had begun with the demand to release all political prisoners. He had previously spoken with a representative of the Communist Party, who had flown specially to the Chistopol prison. But the hunger strike had seriously damaged Marchenko’s health, and on 8 December he died. On 16 December, Gorbachev called Andrei Sakharov to inform him that he had been released from his exile in Gorky.

Anatoly Marchenko

In early February 1987, the release of political prisoners began, and continued for 20 months. All prisoners whose main charge was anti-Soviet agitation was released from the Perm and Mordovian political camps, and also from exile. Initially, their release was dependent on amnesty, requiring a personal, written petition by the prisoner. This meant confessing to the crimes, and recognizing the lawfulness of the trial and the justice of the sentence. Far from all political prisoners were prepared to make this confession. Those who refused were then told: “If you don’t want to request forgiveness, at least write something”. But eventually they were all released without even this requirement.

Bogdan Klimchak, Perm-35 camp, 1990

The last political prisoner sentenced for anti-Soviet agitation, Bogdan Klimchak, was only released on 11 November 1990. The main charge in his sentence was treason – he had tried to flee the country. He was also carrying several dozen pages of “anti-Soviet and slanderous documents”, mainly of his own composition. The schedule and procedure for releasing the political prisoners were undoubtedly controlled by the KGB.

Perm-35 camp. 7 February 1992. Release of the last political prisoners

The mass release of political prisoners meant that all the political prisons of Mordovia, and also the Perm-36 and Perm-37 camps, were almost empty by the end of 1987. The prisoners remaining, mainly sentenced on charges for treason – collaboration, attempting to flee the USSR, espionage and revealing state or military secrets – and also anti-Soviet prisoners who the KGB were for some reason reluctant to release, were gathered together in the Perm-35 camp. The last “traitors” were released from this camp on 7 February 1992.

After the release of the highly dangerous state criminals, the Mordovian political camps and the Perm-37 camps were reformed in 1988 into conventional criminal corrective labor camps, and the Perm-36 camp was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Perm Oblast department of social welfare to house a neuropsychiatric care home.

Doctors in the Soviet Union did not give the Hippocratic oath. But they did give the oath approved by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR, which included the words: “…I solemnly swear: to devote all knowledge and efforts to protecting and improving human health…”

Information from the human rights bulletin “Chronicle of current events” (CCE):

“The medical commission removed the invalid status from the prisoner, the Lithuanian Kurkis, who was doing a 25-year sentence. Kurkis suffered from an ulcerous disease and had not worked for many years. After the commission’s decision, he was sent to do hard labor – to plough “no-man’s land”. In the first day the ulcer ruptured. The head of camp No. 35 Pimenov called lieutenant colonel T. P. Kuzntesov in Perm (the surgeon of this camp); he refused to make a call, saying the weather was bad. Kurkis died”

CCE, issue 30, December 1972

Oath of doctors of the USSR

Medicine is perhaps the most horrible and shameful thing that existed in the Perm political camps. The actions of the surgeon Kuznetsov were no exception, but rather the rule. The Chronicle of Current Events alone contains over 10 reports on the deaths of prisoners caused by refusing or delaying medical assistance. And how many deaths were not mentioned in the chronicle, and not noticed by anyone at all?

Prisoners’ cemetery outside the Perm-35 camp

Every political camp had its own medical unit, and the Perm-35 camp had a two-storey hospital for all three of the political camps, which had been built recently and had all the necessary equipment. The hospital was always fully staffed with medical personnel. The camp medics were paid a considerable extra salary for the “hazardous nature” of their service, but of the almost 2,000 reports in the “Chronicle” about incidents at the Perm political camps, over 150 are connected with medical problems.

The hospital for prisoners of all three Perm political camps. Perm-35

Some publications:
“10 people, including two with one leg, were found eligible for work by the medical commission. Many prisoners had their invalid status of many years removed. Lieutenant colonel of the medical service T.P. Kuznetsov was appointed chairman of the medical commission, who did not ask medical questions, but only asked: “What sentence? What charge?” The replies were sufficient to make a decision” – CCE, issue 30
“In the camp the prisoner Skobas died. Shortly before his death he went to see a doctor, but was not put in hospital ‘because there were no places’. He was doing hard physical labor,” CCE, issue 38.

Medical unit of Perm-36

“It was learned that the administration of the camp and the UKGB in Skalny asked head doctor Kuverden not to give prisoners exemptions from work, as the camp was not fulfilling the plan,” CCE, issue 42.

“S. Kovalyov went to the camp doctors requesting to be sent to the Leningrad hospital for prisoners, to have an operation. The head of the camp medical unit Petrov told Kovalyov: ‘We’ll treat you if you behave well,’” CCE, issue 42.

“The patient I. Ogurtsov was sent to work at the boiler room. The doctor Chepkasova initially exempted him from work, but then at the demand of the administration cancelled the exemption,” CCE, issue 51.

The SHIZO was one of the severest punishments for camp prisoners. In the maximum-security section, the only punishment more severe was being put in the chamber-type cell (PKT), and in solitary confinement in the special security section.

“For violating prison regulations, the following measures may be applied: a warning or reprimand; extra duty for tidying quarters and camp territory: deprivation of a meeting; deprivation of the right to receive a parcel or package and prohibition from buying groceries for a period of up to one month; cancellation of improved prison conditions; transfer to the punishment cell with or without being sent to work”

Article 53 of the Corrective labor code of the RSFSR, 1970

In the punishment cell, prisoners did not have matrasses or sheets, and they slept on bare boards of a fold-out bunk, which was fixed to the wall at 6 a.m. and taken down at 10 p.m. They were not taken out for walks, they were forbidden to smoke, they did not have books or newspapers, and they were not given letters they received.

Building of the punishment cell in the Perm-36 camp

The walls of the cell were covered in rough cement, a so-called “fur coat”. It was impossible to lean against them. Initially, the period of detainment in the cell was limited to 15 days, but a secret order of the USSR Interior Ministry No. 20 of 14 January 1972 permitted for this term to be extended with new orders for holding prisoners. The total period for holding prisoners in the cell was only limited by the state of their health. The PKT cells with the same fold-up bunks were different in that they had smooth walls, and at night prisoners were given matrasses and sheets.

“.., in the cell, in solitude: no books, no newspaper, no paper, no pencil. You’re not taken out for walks, or to the bathhouse, you’re fed every two days, there’s practically no window, there’s a lamp somewhere in a niche, in the wall, right by the ceiling, it barely illuminates the ceiling. There’s one hollow in the wall – your table, another is a chair, you can’t sit on it for more than ten minutes. Instead of a bed for the night you’re given a bare wooden board. You’re not given any warm clothing. In the corner there’s a slop bucket, or just a hole in the floor, which stinks all day. In short, it’s a cement bag. And smoking is prohibited. The dirt is eternal. There’s blood spattered across the walls, because tuberculosis patients are also held here. And so you start to sink beneath the water, to the very bottom, into the ooze. That’s what it’s called in prison: to sink into the cell, to rise from the cell.”

Vladimir Bukovsky “And the wind returns…”

SHIZO cell in the Perm-36 camp

“Persons moved to the punishment cell… to the chamber-type cell… and also to the solitary confinement cell receive food according to reduced norms,” – article 56 of the corrective labor code of the RSFSR for 1970. Meat and animal fats were completely excluded from their ration. If the prisoner in the cell did not work – if he refused to work himself or was put in the cell with the instructions “without being taken to work”, he received food based on the punishment norm established in 1939: one hot meal every second day, and every other day 450 grams of bread and 20 grams of salt. After a few days of this food, the smell of acetone appeared on the prisoner’s breath – the muscle tissues began to break up. International law has declared this norm to be torture by starvation.

PKT cell in the SHIZO of the Perm-36 camp

The SHIZO at the Perm-36 camp was especially harsh. The punishment cells and the chamber-type cells were in the same brick building built in the late 1940s, and were sometimes mutually interchangeable if necessary. The building was constructed in such a way that it was even cool during the July heat, and very cold in winter, while prisoners only wore a light cotton robe and slept on bare bunk boards painted with enamel.

The founders of the museum often heard people say: “Here even the old Lithuanians cried,” – the unbending Lithuanian partisans who grew old in the camp, serving their incredible 25-year sentences and preserving their dignity to such an extent that they refused to talk with the camp officers in Russian – but even they were unable to hold back the tears from the cold, pain and sense of helplessness.

A toilet in a punishment cell of the Perm-36 camp

As the requirements for maximum isolation at the Perm political camps did not allow prisoners to spend any time outside the camp territories, they had to work exclusively inside the camp perimeters. In the first months there were considerable problems in both camps in organizing work for the prisoners, but soon a solution was found when the camps received a contract for production work from industrial companies.

At the Perm-35 camp, the former sewing factory of the colony for underage offenders was re-equipped for sewing canvas bags to hold tools and spare parts for power saws manufactured at the Dzerzhinsky factory in Perm, and knitting netted bags for holding vegetables. In Perm-36, the workshops were equipped for manufacturing electronic components for irons manufactured by the Lysvensky turbine-generator factor. The majority of prisoners were employed at these workshops.

Production workshops at the Perm-36 camp. 1994, before restoration

Production workshops at the Perm-36 camp. 1994, before restoration

The manufacture of components for irons consisted of several operations for producing thermal electric heaters, contact panels and assembly of all components of the electrical circuit, which included the following steps: winding heating coils, placing the spirals and sand in copper tubes; packing the contents into tubes on the vibration bench; shaping the thermal electric heaters on the press; cutting contact panels out of the laminate, placing copper contacts in them; cutting screw threads in contacts; cutting metal components for the lightbulb; winding the resistance wire for the lightbulb; assembling all elements of the contact panel; final assembly of all components in a single chain, which was then delivered to the factory. In their memoirs, former prisoners wrote about how torturous this routine work was.

Prisoner’s workplace at the Perm-36 workshops

Crates with contact panels at the museum exhibition

Contact panels for the iron electrical circuit

Iron manufactured by the Lysvensky turbogenerator factory

The production norms were exactly the same as they were at the factory itself, but prisoners rarely fulfilled them completely. Sometimes this was for physiological reasons – for example, not everyone could cut a screw of 3 millimeters in diameter or screw components and contacts with 3- millimeter bolts to panels, without special equipment and in a poorly lit room. But mainly it was because the work went against their principles. “We didn’t resist the Soviet regime to do this.” They usually only produced enough to avoid being punished “for non-fulfillment of the norm” by being placed in the punishment cell.

The sawmill of the Perm-36 camp

Besides manufacturing iron parts, several other metalworking and lathing works were carried out on commissions from companies, there was heavy labor at the sawmill and at the camp boiler room, work on repairing camp buildings, plowing the boundary strip and repairing camp fences. The last two tasks were primarily carried out by prisoners sentenced on charges of collaborationism and espionage, as political prisoners faithfully observed the old maxim: “a prisoner does not build his own prison”. Rather than doing this, they were prepared to go on hunger strikes, be put in the punishment cell and even face death.

Smithy of the Perm-36 camp. 1994

In ordinary camp settlements there was always a great deal of work outside the camp zones, traditionally done by prisoners: repairs, new construction, auxiliary work etc. As political prisoners were not permitted outside the perimeter, every political camp had a so-called “small zone” for this purpose with ordinary criminals, some of whom were brought in specially. But the political prisoners never came into contact with them.

The life of prisoners in political camps was organized according to the corrective labor codes, standard rules of internal order and decrees of the USSR Interior Ministry. The daily routine for the Perm-36 camp stipulated eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work with a two-hour break for meals – these two hours included searching prisoners as they were moved from the work zone to the living zone and back, two hours for assembly for work and dismissal from work, again with a long search in moving from one zone to another, and two hours for political lessons and compulsory unpaid work to tidy and “improve” the territory.

The “search building” in the maximum-security section

Photo: renovated search building for transfer from the living zone to the work zone, during which all prisoners were searched at each transfer, four times each day. One search of a group of 80-100 prisoners took up to one hour: they were searched thoroughly, in groups of five; sometimes they had to take their clothes off and had the seams of their clothing checked, while the rest of the prisoners stood in formation in front of the building or behind it, no matter what the weather was like.

The secret decree of the USSR Interior Ministry of 14 January 1972 established additional restrictions for highly dangerous state criminals: all movements of prisoners, apart from the morning toilet and an hour of “private” time in the evening, were only allowed in groups, even at a distance of several dozen meters from the barracks to the canteen. Prisoners were prohibited from entering the rooms of other groups, were prohibited to wear beards, and the names of the prisoners and the numbers of their groups were printed on labels sewn to their clothing. Prisoners were obliged to remove their hats in front of camp administration employees.

The list of products permitted in packages and parcels was limited, and also the assortment of products and goods at the camp shop, censorships rules for correspondence were toughened, and the periods that prisoners were held in punishment isolation cells were increased.

Unheated toilet in the living zone

When employees of the law-enforcement bodies sentenced on criminal charges were held in this camp, toilets were installed in the barracks

The daily norms for nutrition for prisoners were determined by a decree of the USSR Interior Ministry of 16 August 1958. The changes made to it later were insignificant.

   This ration was the minimum sufficient to maintain vital activity: in political camps, apart from prisoners held in punishment isolation cells, the prisoners did not starve, unlike in the general prison camps, where groceries were often stolen. But they were constantly hungry.

“You couldn’t say that the hunger was particularly painful – it wasn’t severe hunger, but slow, chronic underfeeding. So you soon stopped feeling it very strongly, you just felt a monotonous pain, like a toothache. You even stopped realizing that it was hunger, and after a few months, you suddenly noticed that you found it painful and uncomfortable to sit on a bench, and at night, you felt something squeezing and pressing you – you shook the mattress a few times, and you turned from side to side, you felt uncomfortable. You feel as though your bones were sticking out of you. But you didn’t really care anymore. And you couldn’t get up abruptly from the bunk – your head would start spinning.”

Vladimir Bukovsky “And the wind returns…”

Constant annoyances were the tasteless food, the monotony of the ration and the lack of fresh vegetables – fermented, sour cabbage and dried potatoes was almost always used. Even in autumn. Prisoners tried to diversify the ration with wild grass growing in the camp territory, which often caused stomach upsets and poisoning, and some tried to grow edible herbs, but these plants were mercilessly stomped on. The food sometimes contained worms…

Ration. From the State Archive of the Russian Federation

Another severe problem was the cold. In the winter the temperature in the barracks and workshop hardly ever rose above the level of 18 degrees, which was stipulated by the rules for internal order.

The entire life of the prisoners took place within the camp perimeter – they were never taken outside the camp fences. They were transported from camp to camp in closed vehicles – avtozaks. There was not enough color – everything around them was gray. The prisoner Lev Timofeev found a solution – he asked for colorful stamps to be placed on the letters sent to him. When the administration employees realized this, they started cutting the stamps off the envelopes.

“…Or you receive a colorful postcard from home and you keep staring at it like an idiot, it’s so amazing to see different unfamiliar colors than you can’t take your eyes off it.”

Vladimir Bukovsky “And the wind returns…”

In the special security corrective labor camps, men serve their sentences who have been declared highly dangerous recidivists, and men who had the death penalty mitigated to imprisonment under amnesty. The prisoners in the special corrective labor camps are held in conditions of strict isolations in cell-type rooms; they can go to buy groceries and essential items of a sum of up to four rubles a month; they have the right to one short and one long meeting in a year; they can receive not more than two parcels a year and send one letter a month; after serving half their sentence they are permitted to receive one package per year,” – article 65 of the Corrective labor code of the RSFSR of 1970.

Cell for two prisoners in the special barracks

Photo: cell for two prisoners. In 1985 it held the Ukrainian poet Vasil Stus and the Russian writer Leonid Borodin

“By sentence of the court, a highly dangerous recidivist may be: a person previously sentenced to prison for highly dangerous state crimes, gangsterism, premeditated murder. (other grave crimes are listed)… and who has committed any of these crimes once again…”

Article 24-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1960

In the Mordovian camps, highly dangerous recidivists from the group of highly dangerous state criminals were held in a barracks building separately from the other recidivists, while they all worked together either outdoors or in common workshops, and were locked in cells for the night. The barracks was an old wooden building with stove heating, and the cells did not have toilets – they only had a slop bucket. The prisoners heated the stoves and took out the slop buckets themselves.

Special security section in the process of restoration. 2005

In 1980, all highly dangerous state criminals sentenced to special security sections were moved from Mordovia to the Perm-36 political camp, where a special security section was organized, reconstructed from the former sawmill IT No. 6 at the former camp log storage area. It was located 700 meters away from the maximum-security section.

Half of the building was divided into 19 cells, a kitchen and 5 offices, and the second half was divided into two non-cell holding rooms, a bathhouse with a laundry and a linen storage room, a boiler room, an emergency diesel generator, a common toilet for prisoners not held in cells, a small cinema and a storage room for production materials. Two yards for walks were located at the back of the barracks.

Map of the barracks of the Perm-36 special security camp

The barracks had a system of central heating and all cells had toilets. This was not for the comfort of the prisoners, of course, but for their special isolation. Prisoners were held in cells that were permanently locked – some cells were for habitation, others for work, and prisoners were moved from one to another strictly by one cell at a time, so they did not meet prisoners from other cells.

Work cell in the special security barracks

Prisoners were taken out for walks to the yards by one cell at a time and taken to compulsory film screenings and the bathhouse. The isolation was almost total – for years, the prisoners did not see anyone apart from their fellow cellmates, wardens and “supervisors” – prisoners outside the cells who brought food and production materials to cells and collected finished products – and sometimes the heads of camp administration. The views from the windows of all the cells looked out on to special fences or gates, so that prisoners could not even see the tops of trees growing around the section – only the sky… Nothing apart from the sky and the guards looking down on them were visible from the yard either.

Yards for walks at the special security section

Inside the yard for walks

Practically all the political prisoners of these barracks had the same sentence – ten years.

Condition of the special security barracks in spring 2023

Criminal and corrective labor legislation established four systems for holding prisoners in collective labor camps in the early 1960s: general, high-security, maximum security and special. But for particularly dangerous state criminals there were only two systems – maximum security and special.

Ruins of the maximum-security section of the Perm-36 camp in 1994

In the current museum complex, it is the maximum-security section that visitors see first of all. Here are unique wooden buildings from the time of the Stalinist GULAG – the only ones in the world that have been preserved in their entirety.
The maximum-security section was for prisoners “sentenced to imprisonment for particularly dangerous state crimes or who had previously served prison sentences… In maximum security camps, prisoners are held in ordinary living quarters; they can go to buy groceries and essential items of a sum of up to five rubles per month; they have the right to two short or one long meeting during the year; they can receive not more than two parcels a year and send not more than two letters a month; after serving half their sentence they are permitted to receive one package” – article 64 of the Corrective labor code of the RSFSR of 1970.

View of the maximum-security section from an observation point. 2002

In 1972, the living zone of the maximum-security section had three wooden barracks buildings dating from 1946, a brick building of the punishment cell from the 1940s, a brick internal staff building with a club for prisoners, built in summer of 1972, and an unheated brick toilet built at the same time, a bathhouse with a laundry and medical unit, rebuilt in 1968 from a medical unit from the late 1940s, and also a storeroom for the prisoners’ personal items. The prisoners themselves were housed in two barracks, and the third had a canteen with a kitchen, a grocery storeroom and a shop.

Maximum security section in the process of restoration. 2005

The old barracks were so rotten that in 1978 one of them was knocked down because of its extreme dilapidation, and all prisoners were moved to one barracks, while the canteen was put in the same building as the club, and the kitchen was moved to occupy half of the internal staff building. The new two-storey staff building with a checkpoint, rooms for prisoners’ meetings, a passage way to search equipment entering the camp and buildings for the daily change of the guard were located in the northeast corner of the camp.

Map of the maximum-security section of the Perm-36 camp

The work zone had a large workshop built in the 1940s, with a later concrete section added to it, a second wooden workshop, which previously served as the chief mechanic’s office, an old wooden smithy, a brick boiler room from the late 1950s and an emergency diesel generator power station. The work zone was separated from the living zone by two picket fences with a “shooting” corridor between them, a checkpoint and a steel gate from the work zone to the residential zone.

The restored “shooting” corridor between the living and work zones

The restored “shooting” corridor between the living and work zones.
Later a sawmill was installed in the work zone, and the fence on the western side was shifted by several dozen meters. A garden was dug in the space that appeared in the living zone, where collaborator prisoners grew vegetables for camp officers.

The largest group of prisoners of the Perm political camps, numbering 348 people, were those whose sole or primary charge determining the measure of their punishment was “agitation or propaganda conducted with the aim of undermining or weaking the Soviet regime or committing individual particularly dangerous crimes against the state, spreading slanderous lies defaming the Soviet state and public system, and also spreading or preparing or storing for these goals in written, printed or other form works of this content.”

This charge was introduced by the USSR Law “On criminal liability for state crimes” of 25 December 1958, and included in the new criminal codes of all republics of the USSR, coming into effect in 1961. Some prisoners were also charged under the previous article of “propaganda or agitation containing calls for overthrowing, undermining or weakening the Soviet regime, or carrying out individual counter-revolutionary crimes, and also distributing, preparing or storing literature with this content,” according to the criminal codes in force until 1959.

The largest group among the “anti-Soviet prisoners” (91 people) were sentenced on individual charges of committing various acts classified by the investigations and trials as “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”. The specific charges against them may be divided into several sub-groups, while a number of prisoners were incriminated on several of these charges, such as writing “anti-Soviet” books, articles or poems and distributing samizdat; distributing leaflets and listening to foreign radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union; writing and sending “anti-Soviet” letters and “verbal statements of an anti-Soviet nature” etc.

The second largest category included 45 prisoners sentenced for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in group court trials, or in individual trials, but for participation in group actions, who were not charged with “organized activity, directed towards preparing or carrying out highly dangerous crimes against the state, for creating an organization with the goal of committing these crimes, and also participating in an anti-Soviet organization”. The groups were usually small: there were 17 groups of two people and seven groups of three people. Five prisoners were sentenced in individual trials as heads of groups which were not declared to be anti-Soviet, but which were not officially registered or permitted by other means, so they were regarded as unlawful: four of them were religious groups, and one was an educational and cultural group. Only one group, the Leningrad “Communists’ Union”, had five members.

The list of “anti-Soviet prisoners” of Perm political camps should also include 30 prisoners who were sentenced on charges of treason without being charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. This usually concerned heads or leaders of organizations, whose other members were sentenced on charges of anti-Soviet agitation, and also several dozen “nationalists” and escapees from the USSR whose sentences included anti-Soviet agitation.

Igor Ogurtsov, prisoner of the Perm-36 camp (1978-1979)

Photo: Igor Ogurtsov, sentenced in 1961 to 15 years in prison on charges of treason and creating the anti-Soviet organization “All-Russian Social-Christian Union of People’s Liberation”. 17 members of this union were sentenced on charges of anti-Soviet agitation.

Lev Lukyanenko, prisoner of the Perm-36 camp (1980-1986)

Photo: Lev Lukyanenko, sentenced in 1961 to execution on charges of treason for creating the anti-Soviet organization “Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union”, mitigated to 15 years in prison.

297 of the 378 prisoners charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda and serving their sentences in Perm political camp were sentenced after the creation of the Perm political zone. And these camps were created specifically for them. Over a third of the anti-Soviet prisoners were human rights defenders or people with similar values who sympathized with them, helped them and became active human rights defenders themselves while in prison.

Sergei Kovalyov, prisoner of the Perm-36 camp (1980-1986)

Photo: Sergei Kovalyov, dissident, human rights advocate, member of the Initiative group for protection of human rights in the USSR (from 1969), editor of the human rights bulletin “Chronicle of Current Events” (1972-1974).

Perm political camps were created for the maximum possible isolation of prisoners, but human rights defenders found methods of sending information about the situation in the camps out into the wider world. The most reliable and effective method, but also the most difficult and unpleasant, was to pass on notes during long meetings – up to three days – between prisoners with relatives, when security guards locked them up in in special meeting rooms. As the prisoners and their relatives were thoroughly searched and examined, and even gynecologists searched the women, the notes could only be carried by swallowing them. The notes were wrapped around matches and sealed in several layers of plastic film. Several layers were required so that the upper layer could be torn off when the note was excreted, and then swallowed again. In this way, information was sent to the outside world about dozens of alarming incidents taking place in the camps: this news was published in samizdat, sent abroad and returned to the USSR in broadcasts by foreign radio stations in various languages of the country. The truth was revealed to the world.

Note from prisoners in Armenian. Face and reverse side

Photo: note in Armenian, which was never sent out of the prison. Discovered during restoration of the barracks in the Perm-36 camp.

Human rights defenders in Perm political camps were not only irreconcilable fighters for prisoners’ rights, primarily prisoners who refused to work and declared hunger strikes, but also the main initiators of collective protests – strikes and hunger strikes which other prisoners took part in. The mass protest forced the camp administration at least partially to satisfy protestors’ demands. Human rights defenders upheld the dignity of all prisoners of political camps whose rights were violated, including those sentenced on charges connected with the Second World War.

Room for long meetings

The list of prisoners of the Perm-36 camp numbered 514 people, eight of whom served a sentence at this camp twice on different charges, so the total number of prisoners in this camp came to 522 people for the entire period of its operation from 13 July 1972 to 28 December 1987. 985 people in total served sentences at all three Perm political camps, ten of them twice. In these camps, as was also the practice previously in the Mordovian camps, prisoners were often moved from one camp to another, and then to a third, or returned to the original one. This could be done several times, so the same prisoners can be found on the lists of several camps. This makes it difficult to analyze the list of prisoners for each camp separately.

List of prisoners at the Perm-36 camp

What were these people imprisoned for? In all three Perm camps, 370 prisoners (eight of them twice) were sentenced on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, sometimes on other charges, but anti-Soviet agitation was the main charge that determined the measure of punishment.

Registration card of prisoner S. Kovalyov

216 prisoners were sentenced on charges of nationalism – they were usually accused of treason and anti-Soviet activity or participation in an anti-Soviet organization. Some sentences included participation in carrying out acts of terrorism or anti-Soviet agitation, but the main charge determining the measure of punishment was treason. They were all anti-Soviet to a greater extent than members of the first group, as they were sentenced on charges of carrying out an active struggle against the Soviet regime, or having the intention to do so.

The majority of them – 180 prisoners – came with the first convoy from Mordovia, and for the remaining 20 years that the Perm political camps operated, only 36 prisoners joined them, the majority of them also transferred from Mordovia, who were not included in the first Mordovian convoy.

Registration card of prisoner I. Pokrovsky

Treason was also the main charge for prisoners sentenced for attempts to flee, or who had fled but then returned or been forcibly returned. To 25 of these prisoners in the first convoy, another 58 newly sentenced prisoners were added. Ten of them were also charged with anti-Soviet agitation, but of course all of them were anti-Soviet. Fleeing the USSR was their method of struggle.

Registration card of prisoner V. Kalinichenko

The 49 collaborators sent in 1972 from the Mordovian political camps to the Perm camps had another 87 people added to them during the years of the camps’ operation. Collaborators began to be found and charged immediately after the occupied territories were liberated. At the same time, after the end of the war, those found responsible for murder and torture were executed – they were hanged or shot, and so-called “accomplices”, who sometimes even included the cleaners and stable keepers of occupied institutions, were given lengthy prison sentences.

The amnesty of 1955 freed the vast majority of collaborators. Only “punishers” were left in prison, sentenced “for murder and torture of Soviet citizens” and who had avoided execution since it was abolished in 1947. The amnesty also left “murder and torture” as the only grounds for sentencing collaborators on criminal charges. Courts deemed that all collaborators sentenced after 1955 were punishers. There is a large amount of evidence that many charges against village police officers were invented, who did not take part in any punitive acts and confessed to crimes under threat of execution.

Collaborators played a special role in the political camps. They were almost all allies of camp administrations in the battle with political prisoners. Almost all of them were informants. They broke down the solidarity of political prisoners through rumors, gossip and informing, violated their rights, tormented them and sometimes even brutally beat them.

Registration card of prisoner G. Nurkaev

46 prisoners were sentenced on charges of treason or revealing state or military secrets, 28 on other articles from the section of particularly dangerous crimes against the state: from individual acts of terrorism and diversions to “counter-revolutionary sabotage”. Specific charges against the remaining prisoners have not yet been established.

Details on the case of each prisoner of the Perm political camps can be found in the Database of our museum.