This paper provides an overview of a project entitled 'Central Asia's Gulag: Mapping and Managing Penal Heritage in Kazakhstan' run by Nazarbayev University and Karaganda State University. The paper broadly asks what was distinctive about the Gulag in steppe locations compared to areas more conventionally associated with the Gulag: Siberia, the Urals and Magadan. Utilizing an archaeological survey of one prison camp conducted in 2024 at the village of Aktailak in Ulutau Oblast, Central Kazakhstan, the paper examines how the Gulag was constructed in the steppe and with what purposes.
The paper examines barrack construction using clay-brick created by prisoners using production techniques likely learned from the indigenous population. The paper finds that prisoners at Aktailak were also engaged in extensive irrigation activities. The archival records confirm that a primary purpose in locating prison camps was irrigating the steppe for crop cultivation and livestock breeding. Aktailak was no exception as extensive evidence of water channel building and damming at the site reveals. It is argued that these activities were intended to provide resources for semi-free labourers in growing and industrializing centres such as Karaganda and Dzezkazgan and that this long pre-dated, but provided the grounds for, Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign in Kazakhstan in the 1960s. The paper concludes with some reflections on the possibilities for integrating archaeological methods with interdisciplinary approaches to the Gulag combining history, geography, sociology and (dark) tourism studies.
