The Gulag Hunters
- By Amos Chapple
A group of Czech friends is venturing into the wilderness of the former U.S.S.R. to capture what remains of Soviet forced-labor camps.
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The tools of an abandoned uranium mine left behind by gulag prisoners in Russia's Kodar Mountains.
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A barrow in a labor camp standing where it was apparently dumped by a prisoner some 67 years ago.
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These rare images were made by a group of Czech adventurers dedicated to recording what remains of Josef Stalin’s network of gulag camps.
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In 2009, after several backpacking-style adventures inside Russia, Stepan Cernousek made what he calls a “pilgrimage” into the Siberian arctic with a band of Czech friends to uncover the nearly unknown remains of Stalin’s abortive Dead Road railway project.
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Cernousek told RFE/RL the trip was a revelation. “There were letters of prisoners,... objects of the normal life of prisoners. It was amazing somehow, because I can’t imagine Nazi camps of Europe that would be abandoned in the same way.”
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And with that, the Gulag.cz project -- dedicated to carefully surveying the former U.S.S.R.’s forced-labor camps -- was born.
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Since the 2009 expedition, the Gulag.cz crew has made three more trips, including to Russia’s Kodar Mountains (led by Radek Svetlik and Lukas Holata), where uranium for the Soviet Union’s fledgling nuclear-weapons program was once scraped out of the rock by gulag prisoners.
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The kennel of one of the “terrible” dogs that once guarded gulag prisoners in northern Russia. As a result of the expeditions, the Gulag.cz project has created a “virtual museum” featuring a precisely recreated gulag camp.
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But in the far-flung wilds of Russia, expeditions can go badly wrong.
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During a well-planned trip in 2013, Cernousek and his team arrived exhausted at a gulag camp, only to find it had been destroyed by a bushfire. Soon afterward, the boat in which the team was traveling broke down, setting them adrift for four days.
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With no cellphone coverage and hundreds of kilometers from the nearest settlement, Cernousek told RFE/RL, the experience was like being “prisoners of the taiga.” Eventually a passing speedboat appeared and saved the team.
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There are also the very real dangers from wildlife. Cernousek said the teams go into the forest unarmed but have thus far been lucky not to have encountered any bears.
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An abandoned locomotive once intended for Stalin’s dead road. Cernousek recently won a Fulbright scholarship to the United States to demonstrate the use of 3D mapping technology for museums.
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Toilets in a prisoners’ barracks. Cernousek told RFE/RL there are “many” plans for further expeditions to some of Russia’s loneliest corners once the scholarship is finished.
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A cross above a gulag camp with a signboard reading “New Russian martyrs.” Cernousek said the expeditions are driven by the importance of remembering history’s dark chapters and a love for the people and landscapes of Russia.
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A riverside scene during the 2009 expedition to Siberia. Cernousek said, “We wanted to show people that the camps are not from the distant past, and that they really existed.”
