From today's Independent:
"For more than two decades it was a living hell for anyone Joseph Stalin deemed to be "an enemy of the people", but a Siberian mayor believes it is now time to cash in on his region's dark history - by reopening part of the Gulag for fee-paying tourists.
To the horror of prison camp survivors and human rights activists, Igor Shpektor, the mayor of Vorkuta, has floated the idea of re-opening one of the many Soviet prison camps whose network spread in the 1930s.
His vision would give the discerning history-conscious tourist, the hardy ones at least, exactly what the original inmates endured - suffering.
Tourists would be housed in re-creations of the camps, complete with watch towers, guards and fierce dogs, rolls of barbed wire, spartan living conditions and forced labour. If they tried to escape they would be shot - with paint balls rather than bullets.
Mr Shpektor told one American newspaper that blueprints for the camp had already been drawn up and an appropriate location, the site of an abandoned camp, identified. All he needed, he added, was to raise the necessary funding. Crucially he did not say how much tourists would have to pay in order to relive an experience that millions would rather forget."
Having said (or quoted) all that I am inclined to think, based on the vagueness of the plans, that this is a publicity stunt rather than a serious proposal. But then I am an eternal optimist.
Posted by Alan Allport at June 10, 2005 04:04 AMLet's just say he is serious. Does he honestly believe that people are so bereft of imagination that they'd want to pay to discover how terrible the gulag experience must have been?
What would you call it? GulagLand? GulagWorld? The Magic Gulag? No Flags Over Gulag?
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at June 10, 2005 05:02 AMI am amazed at the variety of ways we humans try to stay in touch with our dark sides. What is it with us? Like kicking snakes, we venture there, avoid death, and feel triumphant as we step back from the abyss. But that is the existential dilemma, I guess
Posted by: CarolGee at June 10, 2005 06:14 AMI can't find it now but I think some people have had the same idea for a prison-like vacation experience on an Adriatic island that was once used as a notorious prison by the Yugoslavian Communists. Something included about people testing their ability to endure the old tortures, though of course always having the option to leave. And people think Folsom Street is weird.
BTW on the subject of kicking snakes, I've heard the story that once upon a time the sidewalks of Klamath Falls, Oregon were elevated wooden structures of the old cowboy-movie type. Grass snakes would stick their heads up between the boards. People would make a game of kicking the heads of the snakes. The kicked snakes would fall down between the boards, die there, and stink. An ordinance had to be passed to stop the practice. I just had a look at the Klamath Falls City Code and in Chapter 5, yes, "Animal" is defined as "Any mammal, reptile, amphibian or insect," and the nuisances section prohibits allowing "an animal carcass...to remain upon public property... longer than is reasonably necessary to remove or dispose of the carcass." Similarly there are bans on slaughtering animals "except when done in a completely enclosed structure and when authorized by the City Zoning Ordinance." So, yes, the no-killing-snakes-on-the-sidewalk-nor-leaving-them-to-rot law is decorously phrased, but it's still there.
The definition drafting in that chapter is actually a little screwy in a way I won't bore you with, but it looks like the law could be read to say you can't swat a mosquito in Klamath Falls except in a completely enclosed structure and when authorized by the City Zoning Ordinance. But I wonder if anyone has tested the issue in court. People in Klamath Falls probably have better things to do.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 10, 2005 02:32 PMWhaddayknow, here's partial confirmation of the snake story.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 10, 2005 02:39 PM