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Three points on the map — where, in the last century, labor camps for political prisoners once stood near Karaganda and Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan — were already known to researchers thanks to a previous Gulag.cz expedition and declassified American military spy satellite images. The discovery of three more camps, however, during the first ground surveys and drone reconnaissance, took both historians from the organization and scientists from the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň — as well as local experts — by surprise.

Two of the newly identified camps lie on the outskirts of existing settlements; another, a uniquely preserved camp complete with its economic zone, was found in the steppe. “On site we found remains of prisoners’ barracks and other buildings, barbed wire fencing, and a large number of discarded or lost objects documenting everyday life in a special camp for political prisoners,” said archaeologist and lead researcher Pavel Vařeka from the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia.

The Steppe Camp, or Steplag for short, was a postwar complex of special camps for political prisoners under an intensified regime. Detainees from more than forty nations were held there, primarily Lithuanians, Latvians, and Ukrainians, but also Czechoslovaks, who mined copper, manganese, and coal near Zhezkazgan. It was there, in 1954, that the Kengir uprising broke out, later crushed in blood by Soviet tanks. “An archaeological study of Gulag camps combining both non-destructive methods and excavation has never been carried out before. Our Czech team plans to begin such research at selected sites documented during this expedition next year,” added Štěpán Černoušek from Gulag.cz.

Not far from the camp, the team also managed to map a forgotten cemetery of victims in the steppe, where individual graves are marked by wooden posts and broken crosses. “It’s a unique and very moving discovery that shows just how tragic this chapter of history was — and how much remains unknown and unresolved. We don’t know who is buried in these graves or what nationality they were, but given the diverse makeup of Steplag’s prisoners, we cannot rule out a Czech presence,” explained Černoušek. According to him, the planned research — aided by Kazakh archives — could help uncover individual fates of the prisoners. “We estimate that hundreds of Czechs and Czechoslovak citizens were held in Soviet camps in Kazakhstan, but so far we know only a few of their specific stories,” he added.

The first historical artefacts were already found on the surface during the initial survey, fragments of dishes and bottles, an aluminum mug, pieces of prisoners’ clothing and shoes. At the site of a former guard tower, the team even found a spent cartridge. “That proves guards actually fired from the towers — whether as a warning or at prisoners attempting to escape. We documented an identical situation at the remains of a guard tower in the Nikolaj camp in the Jáchymov area, dating from the same period,” noted Vařeka.

The archaeological survey in Kazakhstan is part of a long-term project called Wild Land: Archaeological and Transdisciplinary Research of Resilience Strategies in the 20th Century. “The differing preservation conditions of camps in the Kazakh steppes and in the Ore Mountains around Jáchymov offer exceptionally interesting opportunities for comparative research into the material imprints of these sites. The discovered remains of structures and artefacts make it possible to compare both the architectural form of the camps and the living conditions within them,” Vařeka concluded.