correctional labor camps for those sentenced to imprisonment for more than three years. They operated in 1930-1960. On February 21, 1948, the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR «On the organization of camps and prisons with a strict regime for keeping especially dangerous state criminals» for «spies, saboteurs, terrorists, Trotskyists, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, White emigrants and members of other anti-Soviet groups» was issued, according to which special camps were created, including on the territory of the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan (Karlag).