Opinion: Ghosts of the Gulag: Kazakhstan’s Uneasy Dance With Memory and Moscow
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By
Manon Madec
In May 2025, the authorities in Moscow unveiled a life-size bas‑relief sculpture of Josef Stalin in the Taganskaya metro station. The next month, a statue of Lenin was pulled down in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Between these two symbolic acts lies Kazakhstan, caught in a tug-of-war over the memory of Soviet-era repression.
Between 1920 and 1960, millions of prisoners were deported to more than fifty labor camps across what was later to become the Republic of Kazakhstan. Those who weren’t executed on the spot — political opponents, intellectuals, artists — were forced to work in mines, construction sites, or collective farms feeding Soviet industrial expansion. The death toll remains unknown but is believed to be in the millions.
Today, this dark past draws in history buffs and thrill-seekers. But darktourism.com, the go-to website on the topic, warns them: forgotten cemeteries, ghost villages, crumbling camps — this gulag archipelago is well hidden in the steppes. No sign points the way to the Museum of Political Repression in Dolinka, housed in the former headquarters of Karlag, one of the largest camps of the Soviet Gulag system.
The only other gulag transformed into a museum is ALZHIR, built on the ruins of the Akmola camp near Astana. It commemorates the 18,000 women imprisoned between 1939 and 1953 for being the wives of “traitors to the motherland.” These two museums now stand as official symbols of Soviet repression in Kazakhstan, and, more subtly, as frontline sites in a broader memory war across the former Soviet Union.
Selective Memory
When the museums were nationalized in the 2000s, their message became tightly controlled. Portraits and quotes from former president Nursultan Nazarbayev began to cover the walls. Guillaume Tiberghien, a specialist in dark tourism at the University of Glasgow, calls it a “selective interpretation of history.” The goal? To unify the country’s 160 ethnic groups under a shared narrative of collective suffering. At both Karlag and ALZHIR, guides emphasize acts of solidarity between Kazakh villagers and deportees — hospitality, compassion, bits of cheese tossed over barbed wire fences to feed the starving.
Execution scene recreated at the Karlag museum; image: Manon Madec.
The past is staged. Between wax statues with sunken faces, sound effects mimicking heartbeats, and torture room reconstructions, the visitor is drawn into a visceral experience, sometimes at the cost of accuracy. “You wonder if the museum overdoes it to trigger emotion,” Tiberghien remarks. Margaret Comer, a memory studies expert at the University of Warsaw, explains: “It’s sometimes easier to mourn victims than to identify perpetrators.”
Execution scene and fake blood, reconstructed in the Dolinka museum; image: Manon Madec.
The complicity of local Kazakhs is never addressed. Russian responsibility is blurred behind vague terms like “NKVD” or “Stalinist repression.” At ALZHIR, visitors learn only about Sergey Barinov — a Russian commandant described as cultured, discreet, and caring toward the women detained. The other two camp directors are never mentioned.
In other former Soviet republics — Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia — such neutrality would be unthinkable. “There, any figure linked to the Soviet regime is fiercely contested,” Comer notes.
Memory Wars
Tensions have sharpened since the war in Ukraine. In the background, Putin has accelerated the rehabilitation of Stalin, architect of the gulag archipelago. His busts are reappearing across Russia. Volgograd’s airport has been renamed “Stalingrad.” In occupied Melitopol, a new statue of the dictator was erected. “We’re witnessing a broad return of repressive memory politics in Russia,” says Tiberghien.
Former Soviet republics have taken note. “In Eastern Europe, especially the Baltics, every commemoration now includes a warning about today’s Russian threat,” Comer explains. Even in Central Asia — typically cautious — the decolonial narrative is gaining ground. In Kazakhstan, “some people now fear that Russia might one day cross the border,” she adds.
“The country is walking a tightrope,” Tiberghien explains. “It wants to keep things calm, to avoid upsetting Russia.” This balancing act was evident in President Tokayev’s speech on May 31, the official Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. While calling for the rehabilitation of victims and better access to archives, he also condemned the “instrumentalization” of history and urged the nation to look forward.
Museums mirror this caution. At ALZHIR, the May 31 commemorations are now held indoors, away from public view. A guide quietly admits she’s not allowed to comment on the closure of Russian memorial museums: “It might offend Russian tourists.” At Karlag, between two torture exhibits, visitors learn about inmate-led innovations: giant sunflowers, new cattle breeds, the Chizhevsky chandelier. “There’s an emphasis on what the prison system ‘contributed’ to the nation,” Comer notes. In this anniversary year of the Great Patriotic War, “the focus is more on Karlag’s role in victory than on mourning the victims,” adds Tiberghien.
Collective Amnesia
Why this insistence on what the gulag ‘contributed’? “There are conflicts of interest and truths people would rather not face. What tourists see is a compromise — one that works for the state and local communities,” Tiberghien emphasizes.
As a result, much of the Soviet legacy remains buried. Literally. “Around ALZHIR and in the Karaganda region, there are mass graves everywhere,” Tiberghien notes. The Mamochkino cemetery, near Karlag, is one of the few memorial sites dedicated to women and children who perished in the camps. It, too, lies neglected. Tiberghien speaks of a “collective amnesia” that obstructs historical reckoning.
The Mamochkino cemetery, left abandoned near the Karlag museum; image: Manon Madec
In Karaganda, Dimitry Kalmykov, director of the local Ecological Museum, sees an unspoken deal: “The state doesn’t want to reopen the file, and the Kazakhs aren’t demanding it.” The fear of speaking out, he says, has been passed down across generations. Kalmikov himself learned little about the USSR at school. What he knows, he read on his own.
But resources are fading. The archives are sealed by Russia. “The question isn’t when we’ll get access, but whether we ever will,” says one museum historian.
Gulags are not the only legacy at risk of being forgotten. The Soviet nuclear past is quietly vanishing too. “The Kurchatov museum has been closed to the public since 2023,” says Tiberghien. There, deformed animals preserved in jars bore witness to radiation damage. In Semipalatinsk, visits are increasingly rare, bogged down in bureaucracy. “Even the website listing radiation data has disappeared,” confirms Kalmykov.
In Karaganda, Lenin’s statue, stripped of its name, still stands; image: Manon Madec
What path will Kazakhstan choose? The future of its memory may lie in the hands of researchers, citizens, and akimats — those determined not to repeat the past. For now, the statue of Lenin still stands watch over Karaganda. But for how much longer?
