The Moscow Times: Prison colony in Russia's North celebrates Gulag foundation - Oct. 27, 2016

The Moscow Times: Prison colony in Russia’s North celebrates Gulag foundation

Published Oct. 27, 2016 at 7:06 pm

(FILES) A Visitor attends the opening ceremony of new museum dedicated to the Soviet Gulag labour camp system on the national day commemorating the victims of Stalin-era repression on Oct. 30, 2015 in Moscow.

Photo by AFP PHOTO / VASILY MAXIMOV

A prison colony in Russia’s Komi Republic has celebrated the anniversary of its foundation as a Stalinist Gulag in 1937.

Colony number 31 in the village of Mikun held a Prison Day, Russia’s Federal Prison Service reported on its website. The prison celebrated its 79th anniversary, when Stalin’s NKVD opened it as a forestry labour camp. Today, the prison settlement (a penal colony in a remote area where prisoners are free to roam the village but under the guards’ watch) holds female inmates.