The Soviet steppe city — Gulag history, Eagle Festival, and Kazakhstan's coal capital
Karaganda is Kazakhstan's fourth-largest city and one of the most unexpected destinations in Central Asia — a Soviet-built coal mining city in the middle of the Kazakh steppe that carries a surprisingly diverse cultural heritage. The city was built largely by Gulag prisoners (the Karaganda Gulag complex was one of the largest in the Soviet system), and the ALZHIR memorial site 35km north has become one of Central Asia's most significant memory sites. The steppe around Karaganda is hauntingly beautiful in its emptiness, and the nearby Karkaraly National Park offers dramatic granite inselberg l…
Karaganda was established in 1934 as a company town for the Karaganda Coal Basin — one of the Soviet Union's primary coal sources. The city was built in large part by prisoners of the Karaganda Corrective Labour Camp (Karlag), one of the largest Gulag camps in the system, which operated from 1930 to 1959 and at its peak held 65,000 prisoners. The camp's women's branch (ALZHIR) held the 'wives of traitors to the homeland' — families of purge victims. Post-independence Kazakhstan has grappled seriously with this history, and Karaganda's memorials are among the most honest in the former Soviet s…