Perm-36

Perm-36 (also known as ITK-6) was a Soviet forced labor colony located near the village of Kuchino,[1] 100 km (60 miles) northeast of the city of Perm in Russia.

It was part of the large prison camp system established by the former Soviet Union during the Stalin era, known as the Gulag.

[5] Later various bodies of Perm Krai administration withdrew support and funding, forcing the museum to close in April 2014.

All of them, as a rule, were sentenced to 10 years.Groups and individuals in the Perm camps were described in a 1974 report[6] published by the samizdat periodical A Chronicle of Current Events.

After the death of Stalin the number of camps in the USSR decreased, but the communist political system remained repressive till its collapse.

[10] From 2005 onwards there was an annual international forum at Perm-36, called "Pilorama" ("The Sawmill" (more precisely "Power-saw bench") ru:Пилорама (форум), with meetings It brought together famous people, film screenings, exhibitions and concerts and attracted thousands of people, including former prisoners and human rights activists, including the Human Rights Commissioner in Russia Vladimir Lukin.

They argued that the forum organizers deliberately exaggerated the severity of custody "for anti-Soviet propaganda", while ignoring, as they said, prison records and evidence of the guards themselves.

[13] Coming at a period of nostalgia for the Soviet Union in Russia and patriotism due to the annexation of Crimea, these changes were seen by many as an organized campaign against the original museum "of political repression".

Official Russian media and some nationalist organisations (e.g. the Sut' Vremeni) began describing the museum established in 1995 as a fifth column.