Cultural and educational work in the camps of the gulag in the construction of transpolar railway Chum - Salekhard - Igarka (1947-53)

A unique prison camp subculture that can be characterized as compensational-creative mechanism of individual adaptation and self-realization under extreme conditions of imprisonment emerged with the emerging and developing of the soviet criminal-executive system, with the USSR NKVD - MVD prison camp and settlement net broadening. Many artistic groups were functioning in the terms of cultural and educational work in GULAG prison camps.The emerging of theatrical-musical institutions in the Northern Administration of the prison camps of railroad constructing that was conducting businesses in building the Transpolar Railway Chum (Vorkuta) - Salekhard - Igarka became one of the most bright phenomena of the post-war phase at the GULAG’s evolution in the sphere of ideological and cultural work among the masses.In the conditions when the adjusted mechanism of construction became to glitch and because of the great infrastructural project’s localization in zones of minimal industrial production activity, the theater was quickly closed, as a rudiment, left by accident from the period of rapid development of the construction. The theater was closed in 1950, and two years later the construction of Transpolar Railway was completely abandoned.