A museum documenting political oppression during the Soviet era has formally opened in the central Kazakh town of Dolinka, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.
Dolinka became infamous in the 1930s as the center of the Qaraghandy Labor Camps system (KarLAG). The Museum of Political Oppression occupies the building that served as KarLAG headquarters.
The children and grandchildren of former KarLAG inmates, representatives of Kazakh political parties and nongovernmental organizations, and foreign diplomats attended the opening ceremony of the museum on May 31.
This is the same date on which Kazakhstan also marks the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Soviet Oppression.
Millions of people from all over the Soviet Union, including an estimated 4 million from the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, were sent to KarLAG prison camps during the purges in the 1930s launched by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.