Children of KARLAG: conditions of detention based on materials from archives and memoirs

Abstract

One of the contingents of Karlag prisoners were children who shared the tragic fate of their mothers, many of whom ended up in the camp as “MFTM” – “members of the families of traitors to the Motherland”. The article considers the historiography of the children's camp theme in Karlag, the authors summarize that the problem of “children of Karlag” in domestic historiography has been studied fragmentarily and superficially, there are no systemic, fundamental works. In this publication, an attempt is made, based on archival materials,memoirs, and interviews of former little prisoners of the Karaganda FLC, to trace the conditions of detention and fragments of camp life that ended up in one of the most sinister camps in Kazakhstan. The source base of the article is represented by three main types of written historical sources of the 30s-50s. of the 20th century: legal documents on the GULAG camps, records management documentation of the Karlag and statistical materials from the archival funds of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation on the number, mortality of children, etc. The article uses fragments of the memories of the prisoners of Karlag from published collections, as well as interview materials taken by one of the authors of this publication from former prisoners of the Karaganda FLC. The article involves documents from the archival funds of the Republic of Kazakhstan (the fund of the Political Department of the Karlag from the State Archive of the Karaganda region; the fund of the Karlag Administration from the Archive of the Office of the Committee for Legal Statistics and Special Records of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the Karaganda region) and the Russian Federation (the fund of the Main Directorate of Places of Detention (GUMZ) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR from the State Archive of the Russian Federation).