The Kengir uprising was a prisoner uprising that took place in the Soviet prison labor camp Kengir in the spring of 1954. It was distinct from other Gulag uprisings in the same period in its duration and intensity. After the murder of some of their fellow prisoners by guards, Kengir inmates launched a rebellion and proceeded to seize the entire camp compound, holding it for weeks and creating a period of freedom for themselves unique in the history of the Gulag. This situation lasted for an unprecedented length of time and gave rise to a panoply of colourful and novel activity, including the democratic formation of a provisional government by the prisoners, prisoner marriages, the creation of indigenous religious ceremonies, a brief flowering of art and culture, and the waging of a large, relatively complex propaganda campaign against the erstwhile authorities. After 40 days of freedom within the camp walls, intermittent negotiation, and mutual preparation for violent conflict, the uprising was brutally suppressed by Soviet armed forces. The story of the uprising was first committed to history in The Gulag Archipelago, a nonfiction work by former-prisoner and Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1803: As part of the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans was transferred from France to the United States. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase)
1860: South Carolina seceded from the United States, leading to the American Civil War. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War)
1917: The Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, was founded. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was appointed as its leader. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka)
1995 The NATO-led IFOR began peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFOR)
1999: Portugal transferred sovereignty of Macau to the People's Republic of China. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau)
_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:
Learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. -- Edwin Abbott Abbott (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edwin_Abbott_Abbott)