Tour to Alzhir

Tour to Alzhir memorial complex, located 40 km away from the city.

Alzhir was the biggest concentration camp in USSR for country traitors’ wives and their children.

In the first half of 20th century a monstrous tragedy on all cruelty and by a scale developed on the long-suffering Kazakh earth. Soviet power, as it seemed, was acknowledged to set the world, justice and equality, good and light, brought enormous suffering to the people. The totalitarian mode crippled the fates of millions of people.

Powerful structures actively intruded in the life of any family and individual. Getting equal political rights in a number of legislative acts, women equally with men were subjected to repression and isolated from society. The same articles of prosecution as for men were foreseen for them, but there was one article on which only women could serve in jail – who were CHSIR-(members of families of traitors of motherland). Not committing crime, they had to serve sentence in special camps only for the fact that they were mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of those, who was accused of betrayal of Motherland.

Concentration camp was built in the middle of vast Kazakh steppe in 1938 and stopped functioning in 1953, the year Stalin died. For 15 years, just as much as 20,000 women were brought to the camp from different regions of USSR. In 2007, memorial complex was opened on the territory of the former camp Alzhir to commemorate those who have fallen under Stalin repressions.

In the evening, return to Astana.