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.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kengir_uprising
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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)
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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)