How is it Remembered?

Of the thousands of Stalinist-era labor camps, Perm-36 is the only one still standing. At the end of the 1950s, after most of the camps were closed, Perm-36 became a prison for those arrested from the military and the police, and then for political prisoners. Until 1987, the most important dissidents of the period were imprisoned there, in near isolation from the outside world and each other.

Conservation of Perm-36 began after the collapse of the Communist Party in 1992. It is now home to the Gulag Museum, a joint project of the Memorial Society (founded by Andrei Sakharov) and the Perm regional administration.

Using the original woodshop of the prison, the Museum is reconstructing and preserving two separate sections of the site; the harsh Maximum Security Camp (where “unreformed” dissidents serving repeat sentences were held) and the less severe Strict Regiment Camp.

In the Maximum Security Camp, barricades, watchtowers, cells for sleeping, working and exercise, and other camp structures have been restored.

Visitors walk the same paths as the former prisoners and feel the terrifying atmosphere of isolation. There is also a permanent exhibit, “Prisoners of the Maximum Security Barrack,” dedicated to those imprisoned at Perm-36.

For decades, labor camps were an ordinary feature of the landscape. The Strict Regiment Camp is in the process of being preserved and will be interpreted to reflect how, under communism, imprisonment and other forms of political repression were simply a “normal” aspect of life.

The Gulag Museum is not only a symbol of the totalitarian past, but of resistance – of the continuous, fearless struggle against the criminal essence of authority.

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How is it Remembered?