Possibly 150.000 convicts* worked on the project, digging 37 km. of the canal through hard rock and building 19 large wooden locks, with little mechanical equipment. They were 'enemies of the people' - farmers, political prisoners and criminals - and lived in guarded camps. The hard labor was officially meant to 'reforge' them, to make new men of them who would be good Soviet citizens. In reality, their life was cheap. Tens of thousands of convicts died under the harsh conditions.
Pravda and Izvestija
The opening of the canal, a showpiece in the Soviet Union's first Five Year Plan, was accompanied by a huge propaganda campaign. Newspapers such as Pravda and Izvestija published articles, propaganda cartoons and portraits of 'reforged' workers.
A group of 120 writers and artists was sent to the canal to produce a memorial book eulogizing the efforts. It was published in 1934, edited by Maksim Gorki and features articles by well-known writers such as Aleksei Tolstoy, Boris Pilniak, Ilf and Petrov, Viktor Shklovsky and Mikhail Zoshchenko, as well as photographs by Aleksandr Rodchenko.
The pictures are heavily retouched. Many of them have dynamic compositions and are accompanied by flowery captions.
Documentary photographs in the Karelian State Regional Museum in Petrozavodsk provide a more realistic image. The harsh environment, primitive working conditions and lack of mechanical equipment are visible. But even here, the true horrors of the project are not shown.
Besides the pictures, you can find here a longer text in Dutch on the backgrounds of the Belomorkanal and a list of source material related to the Belomorkanal and the GULAG in the collections of the IISH.
Bastiaan Kwast, Delft
Iurii Dmitriev, Petrozavodsk
Karel'skii gos. kraevedcheskii muzei (Karelian State Regional Museum), Petrozavodsk
*) The number of convicts is estimated between 128.000 and 180.000. Some believe that 100,000 died on the project.