Volume 37, Number 15 · October 11, 1990
Stalin's Dumping Ground
By Jeri Laber
As representatives of Helsinki Watch, a colleague and I traveled southeast in the Soviet Union, almost to the Chinese border, to visit the vast and little-known Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, where serious abuses of human rights have occurred, not just in recent years but also in the past.[1] Kazakhstan's steppelands were among Stalin's favored sites for labor camps and exile communities, and we had been told, accurately as it turned out, that the region would reveal the scars of the Stalin years more vividly perhaps than any other Soviet republic. We also wanted to learn more about demonstrations that had turned violent in Kazakhstan in December 1986—the first such outbreak of violence in recent Soviet history, although not the last, as subsequent events in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere testify.
Feature, 4967 words
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