ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tomasz Kizny carried out a long term photographic project entitled “The Gulag” devoted to the system camps in the USSR. The project is an attempt to reveal photographic image of “The Gulag Archipelago” by research in archives, as well as photographing camps remains, post-gulags landscapes and recording eyewitness accounts. The main themes of this work were published in the book Gulag, Paris 2003, Hamburg, Milan, Ontario, Barcelona, 2004 and Moscow 2007.

At present, Tomasz Kizny carries out a similar project devoted to the Great Terror in the USRR 1937-38, the peak of Stalinist repression and crime against humanity which took at least 750,000 deaths toll. The book and exhibition project contains archival documentary photographs and contemporary pictures, taken by author, of the mass graves and soviet killing fields which have been kept top-secret for decades as well as portraits and accounts of the eyewitnesses of the Great Terror.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Gulag or Main Camps Administration was soviet security department that administered vast system of forced-labor camps in the USSR, also responsible for prisons, deportations and “special exiles” (internal banishment). The Gulag evolved into a devastating tool of political suppression and massive industrial production. In period 1930-1956, the total number of camps’ prisoners and exiled passed through the Gulag system is estimated for 28 million and 700 thousands. The death statistics for the Gulag camps and the “special exile” are estimated as 2 million 750 thousand people. (Ann Appelbaum GULAG. A History. 2003).

The Gulag exhibition presents documentary photographs from archives and private collections, as well as photographs of vanishing traces of “camp civilization” impressed on the post-soviet landscapes of Russia. The exhibition is designed in seven chapters bringing detailed historical and photographic account of camps and one chapter on theatre in Gulag:

Solovki – the monastery that was the birthplace of the Gulag system in 1923 and serves as a symbol of the destruction of Russian tradition, religion and culture.

The White Sea Canal – one of the first construction projects which relied exclusively on the forced labor of 100, 000 prisoners and 70, 000 special exiled.

Vaygach Expedition – one of the first Gulag settlements on the Far North beyond the Arctic Circle.

The Kolyma – complex of camps for gold extraction at the northeastern tip of the Soviet Union, the largest camp system in the USSR and one of the harshest places in Gulag.

Vorkuta – large industrial and camp complex for coal extraction located beyond the Arctic Circle. The prisoners’ photographs are telling a story of salvation from camps after Stalin’s death.

The “Dead Road” – never completed railroad in Siberia. The last “great communist construction project” of Stalinist times. Today, an extraordinary relict of the Gulag: 700 km of track among the ruins of over a 100 camps.

Theatre in Gulag – the theatre was very popular in the gulags. Many camp commanders made it a point of pride to have their own theatre group with actors recruited among prisoners. “After the performance, the actors took off their princes’, ladies’ and hussars’ costumes and changed into padded jackets and hats with earflaps. In the gloom of the Arctic night, an armed convoy escorted the conductor, the musicians, actors and dancers behind the barbed wire again. Here the performers went back to their real-life role as prisoners.” Memory of Lazar Sheryshevsky who, as a prisoner, worked in the camps’ theatre.