Kolyma

Episode number 3 of Series “The Hand of Stalin”.
Kolyma is in North-East Russia, on the wild Pacific Coast and under Stalin’s reign it was a Gulag prison camp. The Gulags were a network of forced labour-camps throughout the Soviet Union and literally tens of millions of Soviet citizens were imprisoned in the camps during the 1930s and 1940s. Kolyma is a gold mine territory and the prisoners were forced to work the mines, clear the forests while enduring horrific climatic conditions in the freezing Siberian terrain. Interviews with ex-prisoners who served sentences ranging from ten to twenty-five years, detail the miserable conditions in which they lived and worked, while interviews with the camp administrators make it clear that throughout the prison system it was wide-spread knowledge that the majority of prisoners where innocent of their crimes. This final episode of “The Hand of Stalin” documents with ferocious passion, the damage done by a totalitarian ruler in his thirst for personal power and by his blind adherance to the dogmas of a Communist faith.