The Kengir Uprising

However, the initial steps to ease the harsh camp regime fell short of expectations, instead becoming one of the key factors behind the largest uprising in the Gulag system—the Norilsk revolt, which involved over 16,000 prisoners, between 26 May and 4 August 1953. In addition, around the same time, from late July to early August 1953, another uprising took place in Rechlag, near Vorkuta.

The Steppe Camp, or Steplag, was classified as a special camp that primarily housed political prisoners and consisted of six separate camp divisions spread across a 75-kilometer radius. The camp administration was based near the third division—the site of the uprising—in the settlement of Kengir near the city of Zhezkazgan. Today, this area is part of the city.

In June 1954, Steplag’s six divisions held around 20,000 inmates. Among them were people of over thirty nationalities, including Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Germans, Kazakhs, Moldovans, Uzbeks, Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Chechens, Azerbaijanis, Turkmens, Ingush, Chinese, Tajiks, Koreans, Kyrgyz, Japanese, Romanians, Greeks, Udmurts, Iranians, Finns, Karelians, Bashkirs, Afghans, Turks, and Mongols. Ukrainians made up about 46 per cent of the total population, while roughly 22 per cent were from the Baltic states.

The majority of Steplag’s prisoners, approximately 70%, had been convicted of treason through Article 58.1 of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) Penal Code (1926–1961). In the third camp division, where the uprising occurred, there were 5,617 inmates, made up of 3,203 men and 2,414 women. The men lived in the second and third camp compounds while the women were housed in the first. The compounds were separated by tall adobe walls, with a service yard (khoz-dvor) dividing the men’s and women’s sections.

Historians have differing interpretations of what triggered the Kengir uprising, and one widely accepted theory points to the growing tensions between the prisoners and the camp administration, which, despite the Communist Party’s stated promise of more humane treatment, continued to crack down harshly on inmates. Beginning in early 1954, Steplag’s authorities opened fire on prisoners several times, resulting in fatalities.

The situation worsened when common criminals were transferred into the third camp division, a tactic commonly used by camp administrators to sow discord, as the criminals were expected to dominate or undermine the political prisoners. Instead, the groups united in solidarity.

In mid-May, guards once again opened fire with automatic weapons, killing and injuring several inmates. This became the final spark. On the night of 17 May, the first stage of the Kengir uprising began.

The first stage of the uprising ended on 19 May when senior officials from the Gulag system, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kazakh SSR, and the Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR arrived in Kengir. Negotiations began between the authorities and a commission representing the prisoners, and soon the inmates temporarily resumed work.

However, after several days of negotiations, it became clear that the administration had no intention of honoring its promises. In the early hours of 24 May, the uprising resumed with renewed force. As a guarantee that their demands would be taken seriously, the prisoners insisted on the presence of a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee or one of the secretaries of the Communist Party.

According to Marta Craveri in her article titled ‘The Crisis of the Gulag: The Kengir Uprising of 1954 in MVD Documents’, the prisoners’ list of demands included the following:

On the night of 25–26 June, acting on orders from higher authorities, a special commission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor’s Office launched a full-scale operation to retake the camp. They sent 1,600 troops and 98 guard dogs with handlers into the residential area of the camp’s third division. For the first time in Soviet history, tanks—five T-34s—were used to suppress a prison uprising.

According to official figures, 37 people were killed in the operation and 61 were hospitalised with injuries, nine of whom later died. Some 40 soldiers were injured and concussed.

Although the Kengir uprising was brutally crushed, it became a turning point that led to improvements in camp conditions, with authorities beginning to pay more attention to prisoners’ needs. Most importantly, a decree issued on 16 September 1954 ordered the dissolution of the special camps and their reorganization into corrective labor camps (known as the ITL corrective labor camps). And in April 1956, the Steplag Camp was officially closed.

Seven members of the prisoners’ commission who had negotiated with the authorities were sentenced to death. Some had their sentences commuted to twenty-five years in prison, such as Kapiton Kuznetsov, the commission chairman, whose testimony during the investigation spared him execution. One of the three women on the commission, Lidiya Suprun, was killed during the crackdown on the night of 26 June.

The Kengir Uprising ended in massacre, but its legacy endures—not as a defeat, but as a fragile testament to courage. In the shadow of the Gulag’s brutality, the prisoners’ defiance and resilience still whispers a potent lesson for our times: even the mightiest chains can be challenged.