Sentenced

The Resolution on “The Use of Prison Labor of Criminal Detainees” (from July 11, 1929) was the first step to create the General Directorate of camps and prisons widely known as GULAG. From that moment on, its labor branches would spread all over the vast territory of the USSR and would stay in place for the next 30+ years. This would be the place where people convicted for counter-revolutionary actions would be sent to in droves.

In the wake of the Stalinist repressions, more than half a million of soviet citizens were serving their sentences in prison labor camps all across the country. Many of them were arrested and later convicted as a result of denunciations and fabricated cases put together by the so-called “NKVD Triples”, against all possible law proceedings. They were sent to remote areas of the country where they would then have to face severe climate, psychological, and physical challenges.  

In this series, the spectators will be able to take a glimpse at the lives of the children of political convicts who are still here to tell the story of those brutal times. They still keep the photographs, documents, and stories of their loved ones convicted and sentenced by the soviet government as enemies of the nation.