I used to work with SOviets. The most feared/joked about prison was “Magadan” (sp?). Not featured in this video.
Great video though.
Finished the vid. As unbelievably harsh as the conditions are - they might result in people who emerge from prison as intended (unwilling to risk being imprisoned again) as opposed to our hard security prisons where men are raped daily and then released with the expectation that they will blend in with normal people.
In fact Magadan is not a prison but a territory - a Russian North Pacific. Magadan is a remote city, there is a Kolyma river known to have a permafrost bottom. In order to get there you have to drive on “the road of bones” (of the prisoners who built it). In fact Magadan district was a place of numerous prison camps until 1950s notorious for it’s high death rate due to a harsh climate conditions. Most of them were closed in 1950s with a dismantling of Stalin’s gulag system.