GULAG: a journey into the darkness of Stalin's Siberian prison camps

In 1991, after Glasnost, when the Soviet history under Stalin was being re-examined, there was an opening up of the former Soviet Union under Mikhael Gorbachev. I was commissioned by Geo Magazine, to visit the Gulag of Siberia during the harsh winter. The Gulag was the Soviet network of forced labour camps, reaching its peak of carceration through the 1930s to the early 1950s and recognized as a major instrument of political repression. During the Soviet period, Magadan was the entry port where Stalin’s gulag ships would arrive with their human cargoes brought in to work in Kolyma’s gold and uranium mines. We travelled up into the bleak interior following the ‘Road of Bones’ and visiting prisons and talking to survivors, many who formed part of Memorial, an organisation investigating life in the camps. In 2021 it was banned as a “terrorist organisation” alongside a significant increase in the number of political prisoners. Political trials are among the basic tools the current government uses to tackle any political opposition. This was brought into sharp focus in recent months by Putin’s imprisonment of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny after failing to poison him. I am in the process of crowdfunding and producing a book based on this work.