Concentration camps in former Moscow monasteries and churches that existed until 1954
Hard to imagine, but concentration camps were scattered all over Moscow. The young Soviet state needed as many prisons as it could get, so concentration camps took over the buildings of former monasteries and churches, from the Novospassky to the Ivanovsky in the very centre of the capital, where barbed wire and the regime of restricted access survive to this day; some of these sites still belong to structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to this day. The camps held ordinary criminals and those convicted under political articles alike. They existed until 1954.