Museum of Memory of Victims of Political Repression

Located in Dolinka, Kazakhstan, the Museum of Memory of Victims of Political Repression preserves the history of the Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp (Karlag), one of the largest Soviet-era labor camps, and honors its victims.

Planning your visit

Karlag was one of the largest camps in the Gulag system — a complex covering an area the size of a small country in the Kazakh steppe, through which around a million people passed between 1931 and 1959. The museum occupies its former administrative headquarters at Dolinka, a neoclassical building constructed by prisoners.

The exhibitions cover the camp's operation, the categories of prisoner sent there, and the wider Soviet repression that filled it: the collectivisation famine that killed a substantial proportion of the Kazakh population in the early 1930s, the deportation of entire nationalities to Kazakhstan — Volga Germans, Chechens, Koreans, Poles — and the purges. Reconstructed cells, interrogation rooms and a basement torture area are part of the route.

ALZHIR, a nearby camp specifically for wives of men declared enemies of the people, has its own memorial and appears in some itineraries.

Kazakhstan's engagement with this history is comparatively open, and the museum is unflinching. Dolinka is near Karaganda, some way from Astana. Bookable options include day tours from Astana. Current availability is listed below.