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Camp commander's uniform, ca. 1940

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Camp commander's uniform, ca. 1940

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Camp commander's uniform, ca. 1940

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Camp commander's uniform, ca. 1940

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The Camp Personnel

The inmates were at the mercy of the camp and guard personnel. Not infrequently, the camp commanders ruled over their domains like local sovereigns. They were given a lot of leeway for making decisions, for example with regard to the imposition of penalties. The camp administration was in charge of rationing the food and drawing up the work plans. The guard units consisted of involuntarily conscripted, poorly trained and often violent personnel and, in part, of former inmates who had risen to the status of guards. Physical abuse, brutal punishments and arbitrary shootings were par for the course.

What was everyday life like for a guard platoon captain in a Soviet forced labour camp?

Diary of Ivan Chistyakov

Diary of Ivan Chistyakov, guard platoon captain in a camp on the Baikal-Amur Mainline, 1933

I. Chistyakov (d. 1941), drafted to the NKVD troops in 1935, captain of a camp guard platoon on the Baikal-Amur Mainline from 1935 to 1936, service at the front during World War II

Source: “Memorial” Collection, Moscow

Translation of diary

"16.11.35. It's 26 degrees below zero and a hurricane is blowing. It's cold. It's cold outside and inside. There's more ventilation in this house than construction material. The administrative manager who has just come in says: 'Never mind, guys, don't be so upset about this frost; it's going to be twice as cold.' Cheered us up. How evident the inept management is. They didn't manage to get the railway embankment finished before it started freezing and now they are torturing people by making them cut a thirty-centimetre layer of frozen clay which is as tough as stannum. Day follows day, and what lies ahead? I don't feel like serving in the army, let alone on the BAM. But what's to be done? If it were at least warm in the quarters where one could have rest. No chance, though. One side is heated by the small stove; the other side is freezing. A kind of indifference is spreading - OK, we'll manage somehow. And every day is a fragment of a life that could have been spent living instead of vegetating. There's nobody to talk to here; we are prohibited from talking to the convicts, nor may we talk to the guards; as soon as you start getting too familiar you're no longer a commanding officer. We're mere workhorses and will humbly leave the scene once construction is finished. The full burden of the construction - or at least a good part of it - rests with us, i.e. the simple guards, sq[uad] com[manders], and platoon commanders."

How did a Gulag inmate see his guards?

Officers of the camp guard

The handwritten memos on the photo translate as: "Murderers!", "Head of the camp on the Olka, Yagodnoye Settlement", "Zygankov, undercover agent, killed by prisoners", "Fyodorov, MGB officer", "Prison director".

Officers of the camp guard, camp near the Yagodnoye Settlement (Kolyma Region), 1940s.

These captions were written by a former camp inmate who later gave the photo to the staff of the "Memorial" Society.

Source: "Memorial" Collection, Moscow

Lew Razgon describes a camp commander

[...] Lieutenant Belousov [...] was an unbelievable money-grubber, a cheerful brute and brazen liar [...]

Report by Lev Razgon, 1992. (1 min.) in German

L. Razgon (1908–1999), Russian writer and publicist, served in the secret police as a high-ranking authorized operative agent from 1933 to 1936, sentenced in 1938 to five years of forced labour, sentenced again in 1949, released before completion of term in 1955, involved in the founding of the “Memorial” human rights organization in 1988

Source: Lew Razgon: True Stories, Ann Arbor, 1997