Location: Ardatov, 160 kilometres from Nizhny Novgorod
Inmate numbers: 440 people
Ardatov is a small district town in the south of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, 25
kilometres from the Seraphim-Diveev Monastery, which is often called the spiritual heart
of Russia. The monastery was founded by Russian Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov in 1825.
Seraphim of Sarov helped to found several more monasteries in the vicinity. One of them,
the Monastery of the Protective Veil of the Virgin, was made into a camp in the 1930s. The
colony was established in 1943 at a former monastery. In
1943 the camp was rearranged into the labor camp for juveniles.
Three-quarters of the juvenile convicts of colony are
not provided with work. The colony's manufacturing
potential is very limited, and it cannot accommodate complex or high-tech production
activity. The number of parcels from relatives has decreased considerably in recent years.
Costs reduced the number of visits by relatives from 400 in 1994 to 255 in 1995. The range
of goods offered by the shop in the colony is very
limited. Most of the inmates serve sentences ranging from six months to two years.
The inmates have been under the wardship of members of the clergy and congregation of
the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign in the Nizhny Novgorod eparchy (Russian Orthodox
Church) since 1993. In 1997, the latter formed a public organization, Sretenye
(NGO’s)(Presentation of the Lord), which provides aid to the inmates. The colony gets numerous visits from representatives of public
and state organizations, which offer all kinds of aid, stage concerts, sporting events and
the like.
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