In this office at the Karlag labour camp in Karaganda, the only decoration is a portrait of Lenin hanging on the wall. Some historians believe that Stalin’s Gulag was a natural extension of the labour camps run by Lenin’s Cheka. What is certain is that the article of the Soviet Criminal Code that would most often be invoked to imprison the regime’s real or supposed enemies in the camps was, in its original form, drafted by Lenin.

Credits : Mathilde Ramkissoon (France, @sovietblocs)

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