ABSTRACT
Gulags or secret prisons were major features of the political landscape of the USSR. These were places where dissidents, revolutionaries and others deemed threats to the state were forced to live and work on major projects (roads, railroads, dams, etc.), often in extreme hardship locations. Many prisoners were kept in such places, often for a long time, unknown to their family and friends. During the Cold War it was not uncommon for these gulags, along with military testing stations and weapons factories, not to appear on maps, the thinking being that if these locations were not on maps, they did not exist.
