ALZHIR

On 15 August 1937, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (abbreviated as NKVD) of the USSR issued Operational Order No. 00486, ‘On the Repression of Wives and the Placement of Children of Convicted Traitors to the Motherland’, marking the beginning of mass arrests of women and children. The order allowed for people to be imprisoned for years without any proof of guilt.

The first prisoners arrived at ALZHIR on 6 January 1938, when a convoy transported 1,600 women from Moscow’s notorious Butyrka prison. Over time, the camp housed women of 62 different nationalities, among them 4,390 Russians, 855 Jews, 740 Belarusians, and 146 Georgians. There were also Hungarians, Koreans, Poles, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Armenians, and about twenty women of unidentified nationality. Only eighty-seven of the women were Kazakh.

First, the men were arrested—allegedly ‘sent away on business’. Then, under the pretext of meeting their husbands, the wives were summoned. Expecting a reunion, the women dressed in their finest clothes and arrived at the designated buildings, where they were taken to hidden holding cells in the basements. There, they were locked up and told that the meeting would happen any minute, while time was deliberately dragged out under various excuses. Interrogations followed, and the women were kept under arrest for anywhere from three to six months. After the verdict was announced, they were briefly allowed to return home—not as free individuals, but to prepare themselves to serve their prison terms.

Mothers with multiple children were forced to choose which child to take with them and which to leave behind. For example, one woman had a four-year-old daughter and a six-month-old son. Unable to decide, she was compelled to take the younger child. Children over the age of three were typically sent to orphanages. Heartbreakingly, some mothers left their children in the care of nannies and never heard from them again.

After their arrests, these women were completely cut off from the outside world. They endured agonizing uncertainty, not knowing what had become of their children or where their husbands were—whether they were alive or had faced the firing squads.

The railway leading to ALZHIR was built only later. In the early years, after being processed at the nearest station, the women had to walk the remaining thirty-three kilometers to the camp. Before this, they had already endured a grueling train journey, crammed seventy to a car in suffocating conditions with barely enough air to breathe. The journey in these ‘boxes’ could last up to two months. Though a small stove was installed in each car, no coal was provided. Sanitary facilities were nonexistent—only a crude toilet in one corner—and the barred windows let in little light. Sleeping arrangements consisted of two-tiered wooden bunks, and those who didn’t fit had to sleep sitting up, leaning against one another and taking turns to sleep.

The women knew they were being taken to Kazakhstan, but not the exact destination. The journey was especially difficult for pregnant women and mothers with infants. Children died from cold and malnutrition, and their bodies were buried at nearby stations, leaving the mothers without the precise locations of their children's graves, unsure if they’d ever be able to return to them.

In the summer, the ordeal was no less cruel: they were denied water, and instead, guards would take a garden hose and spray them down, leaving them soaked but still thirsty.

When the first women arrived at the camp in January 1938, there were only two barracks on the entire site, and each was soon packed with 300 people. In the harsh January cold, temperatures inside the barracks did not rise above 6–7 °Celsius (43–45 °Fahrenheit). Although stoves were installed in the barracks, again, no fuel was provided. To keep warm, the women had to walk to Lake Zhalanashkol and gather reeds in the freezing water. But the reeds retained heat poorly and the stoves had to be fed constantly, and some did not survive their first winter.

As the camp population grew, the women were ordered to build more barracks themselves. Among them were trained architects, who designed and oversaw the construction. The prisoners mixed clay with their feet, combined it with reeds, and molded bricks weighing between five and twenty kilograms. In total, twenty-six barracks, each housing 300 women, were constructed. There were no blankets or bedding—only reeds laid over wooden bunks. Reeds served every purpose: fuel for heating, makeshift bedding, and even building material. In winter, the barracks were bitterly cold; in summer, they were stifling, with barely enough air to breathe.

The barracks were not only a place to sleep but also the only living spaces available. Here, the women of ALZHIR ate and managed daily chores. They woke up between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., and breakfast was a single ladle of porridge. Those who ate, ate, and those who didn’t went to hard labor hungry. The diet at the camp didn’t change for years, and of course, due to the lack of vitamins and nutrients, the women's health deteriorated rapidly. Their bodies weakened and they began to develop diseases. Exhausting labor and hunger claimed many lives.

Discipline in the camp was strict. After breakfast, the women were sent to cut reeds or assigned to sewing and woodworking workshops. Some herded livestock, even in frost and blizzards, while others planted gardens. Skilled agronomists grew all the fruit—from watermelons to grapes—and harvested raspberries, currants, and strawberries. In fact, the former name of the village Akmol—Malinovka, from malina, meaning raspberry—is partly connected to this harvest. The apple trees planted by the prisoners still stand today, their branches still heavy with fruit.

In the evenings, the women would return exhausted—too weak to do anything but collapse into bed. Those who refused or were unable to work were punished. Their sentences could be extended: three years became five, five became eight, and eight became ten. During the Second World War, ALZHIR’s sewing workshop received military orders from Leningrad and other cities. The women, who had arrived at the camp in nothing but a single dress, first sewed themselves each a set of warm clothing, and then began sewing the military uniforms for soldiers at the front. (Interestingly, the linings were often embroidered with messages like ‘You will be victorious!’ and ‘The Motherland believes in you!’)

By the light of a single lamp, the women worked fourteen hours a day. Due to overexertion, they lost their eyesight, their health, and sometimes their sanity. Even so, they found hope in sewing and embroidery.

The punishments in ALZHIR were brutal. One well-known case was Lidia Ruslanova, the famous Soviet-era singer and the first performer of the song ‘Katyusha’. Ordered to sing for the camp authorities, she refused, saying, ‘A nightingale doesn’t sing in a cage.’ For that act of defiance, she was sent back to the prison in Vladimir.

Beatings and physical violence were common in the camp. Women were assaulted and their children were taken from them. Armed NKVD guards with dogs patrolled the camp, forbidding prisoners from stepping more than a few paces beyond the barracks. In one account, a deaf woman walked farther than was allowed, and the guard, unable to call her back, shot her on the spot—without trial or investigation.

Another recorded case involved women shepherds, who were told, ‘If you want to live, save these animals.’ One day, in the freezing cold, two women tried to save a calf, wrapping it in everything they had and huddling around it for warmth. They fell asleep, and the calf, unfortunately, froze to death. The women were accused of ‘destroying livestock’ and executed. Their bodies were not buried but left next to the carcass ‘as a warning to others’.

One of the most heartbreaking chapters in ALZHIR’s history is that of the children born there. According to official data, 1,507 babies were born in the camp, most the result of sexual violence. On their birth certificates, the ‘father’ line was left blank, though in reality their fathers were often guards or NKVD officers.

As the children grew older, they would ask their mothers, ‘Who is my father? Where is he?’ The mothers often remained silent or said, ‘He’s dead’ or ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ In one case, a friend of the mother told a teenager, ‘Your father was a bad man.’ To which the young person replied, ‘Whatever he was, he’s still my father.’ The mother broke down and confessed: ‘He raped me. You are a child born from violence.’

After the ALZHIR museum opened, some of these children came forward to share their memories. Today, most of them are no longer alive.

During the Soviet repressions, the families of many Kazakh cultural and intellectual figures suffered. For example, Guljamal Mailina, the wife of Beimbet Mailin, was transferred from the Almaty prison to ALZHIR. She had five children, and her eldest son Auken went to the front and never returned. Her other children, Edil, Raziya, and Mereke, were raised in an orphanage in Semey. The youngest, Gulsim, was sent to the orphanage in the Osakarovsky (now Sarybel) district.

Gulzhamal received a five-year sentence, consisting of four years in ALZHIR and one year in Karaganda. She herded sheep, and in the winter, during blizzards, she was deliberately sent out into the fields. On one occasion, she lost fifty sheep and was told by a guard, ‘If you don’t find them, we’ll extend your sentence and kill your children.’ Gulzhamal had no choice but to keep searching. Her quest took her to a village in the Kirov district, where she knocked on doors to ask for help. When the village elders learned who she was and whose wife she had been, they took her in, fed her, helped find the sheep, and sent two men to escort her safely back to ALZHIR. It is said that this is how the Mailin children were able to survive.

In another instance, Aziza Ryskulova, the wife of Turar Ryskulov, was sentenced to eight years in ALZHIR, where she was transferred from Butyrka prison. Aziza’s mother, Aripa Yesenkulova, was also convicted for ‘espionage in favor of her son-in-law’. However, she died of a stroke just a few days before she was officially acquitted. Aziza herself was a veterinarian, and she arrived at the camp with her one-month-old daughter Rida. However, when the girl got older, she was taken to the Osakarov orphanage. Her older daughter Saule was also sent to an orphanage near Odessa. Like many others in the camp, Aziza suffered from severe hunger. To survive, she would hide meat from sick animals and share it with the other women, which is how they managed to stay alive.

Also among ALZHIR’s prisoners were Raziya, wife of Seitkali Mendeshev; Yelizaveta, wife of Janaidar Saduakasov; Gulandam, wife of Sultanbek Kojanov; and Damesh, wife of Temirbek Jurgenov. Like so many others, they endured the relentless hardship of years of forced labor. They began to be rehabilitated in 1956, and it was only then that they were able to find work again. But fear remained a constant companion, and they always kept a small bundle of belongings ready. At the sight of a stranger entering the house, panic would rise: ‘What if they’ve come to take us again?’

From 1956 onwards, the official rehabilitation of repressed political and public figures began. Decrees were issued, mistakes were acknowledged, and moral compensation was promised. The list included figures such as Beimbet Mailin, Saken Seifullin, and Turar Ryskulov. However, not everyone was rehabilitated, and the process was a gradual one.

Information about the camp itself was also withheld for a long time. Even after Stalin died in 1953, the camp continued to operate for two more years, and prisoners continued to be used as forced labor. Later, the camp was leveled and the barracks destroyed. Those who lived nearby, former inmates and guards, remembered but remained silent out of fear.

In 1989, on the eve of Kazakhstan’s independence, Oleg Stefashin, a correspondent for Izvestia newspaper, published an article about the women’s camp in the village of Akmol (then called Malinovka), which sparked further investigation. Excavations were conducted near Lake Zhalanashkol, where human skulls were discovered, confirmed to be women’s skulls. It was revealed that the bodies of the deceased had not been properly buried. In winter, corpses were left exposed; in spring, a pit was dug, the bodies thrown in, and the grave covered with earth.

This is only a portion of our in-depth interview about ALZHIR. Watch the full version on the Qalam Tarih YouTube channel.

The Qalam editorial team would like to thank the administration of the ALZHIR Museum and Memorial Complex for their cooperation.