- KRASNOYARSK, Siberia -- They
have become synonymous with the worst of the Great Terror of Stalin's reign,
desolate places where millions perished, a shameful past the Russian state
has since tried to ignore. But now the gulags of Siberia are back in business
- this time as tourist attractions.
-
- Some of the most remote and brutal labour camps will
be opened up as Siberia, the new Klondike of Russia's rampant capitalism,
tries to reinvent itself as a holiday destination.
-
- The targeted area is a cluster of camps in the northern
part of Krasnoyarsk in north-east Siberia, which has been almost perfectly
preserved in the cold of the tundra. Also on show will be the remotest
parts of the Trans-Siberian railway, built, it is said, "on the bones
of the forgotten".
-
- A 44-berth boat with the looks of a decaying gin palace,
the Anton Chekhov, is being refurbished for the 950-mile trips up the muddy
waters of the Yenesi river to the camps.
-
- Because of the extreme weather conditions this will be
possible only in June and July. However, for those wishing to indulge in
this new chapter of "dark tourism" the costs are not exorbitant.
A local travel company, Dula Tours, is offering a 12-day package from around
£400 per head.
-
- The same journey was made by inmates. They were on their
way to Norilsk - north of the Arctic Circle, where they dug nickel - or
Kraslag, a forestry camp which produced furniture. These were among a dozen
camps, including some with women and children, in northern Krasnoyarsk,
identified by number rather than by name.
-
- Although most of them were emptied following Stalin's
death in 1953, some prisoners were not freed until the late 1960s. Many
were stuck in the system because their paperwork had disappeared. Others
had nowhere to go to, having lost contact with their families, and drifted
along, their health broken through years of hardship and neglect, dying
before ever reaching home.
-
- There is no shortage of literature about life in the
gulags - an acronym from Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei or Main Camp Administration
- by survivors including, of course, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But despite
the fact the camps had been technically available for visits for the past
decade, there has been a remarkable lack of interest in doing so.
-
- One reason is the sheer logistical difficulties in reaching
the places. Also, obtaining permission to visit has involved a morass of
bureaucratic paperwork.
-
- All that, says Vladimir Demidov, managing director of
Dula Tours, will change. "We will be able to organise these visits
properly. There will be no problems, the local government is totally behind
us," he said. "Nothing has been done to preserve these sites.
But it's so cold that nature has preserved them perfectly.
-
- "Most visitors have been Russians. We want to make
this an international destination. People in the West know about the gulags
and on the way up the river they can enjoy the wildlife and landscape of
Siberia."
-
- At Perm, on the western edge of the Urals, and the model
for the fictionalised Siberian city where Dr Zhivago ended up in Boris
Pasternak's novel, a museum has been built by local historians on the site
of a former camp. The Russian government turned down requests for financial
help, so a logging business using rusting machinery formerly used by inmates
was set up to pay for the project.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=537858
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