By the time of its closure in 1988, the prison camp "Perm-36" had two sectors: the high security area and the special treatment area. At the site of the high security area the camp was first established back in 1946 when the timber-logging ITK-6 (corrective labor colony) of the Molotovsky UITLK (Board of corrective labor camps and colonies) was transferred from the Selyanka settlement to the village of Kutchino. At that time four log hutments, an infirmary, a bathhouse, and a solitary confinement block were built at the site of the present residential area of the camp. The camp was encircled with barbed-wire fences with four watchtowers at the corners. In addition to the base camp compound at the village of Kutchino, there were also four so-called "komandirovki" ("business trips") which were camp outposts located directly in the woods. ITK-6 was a prison camp typical of its time. In 1930s GULAG was comprised mostly of large camps which were built at large distances from one another. Each of them held up to ten thousand prisoners and sometimes more. By the later 1940s, however, the camp system incorporated predominantly clusters of small camp posts located close to each other. On the average, such a camp post held a thousand prisoners, the camps were cheap and easy to build and to abandon after performing the economic tasks for which they had been established.

The lifetime of the timber-logging camps such as ITK-6 was typically short. They were removed to new sites after the woods in their vicinity had been cleared. That didn't happen to ITK-6 after the timber resources in the vicinity had been exhausted. As near the camp there was the most convenient location for a base timber storage site (the site where all the timber logged throughout the year was brought and accumulated for floating down the river with spring high water) the authorities decided to let the camp remain at its original location but supplied it with tractors and trucks for hauling timber from far-away logging sites. Garages, mechanical and blacksmith workshops, and other repair and maintenance facilities were built near the camp area. The establishment was now officially known as the timber-logging mechanized ITK-6 camp. It was the first mechanized camp in the region and one of the first in the country.

After Stalin's death in 1953, many prison camps were closed down but ITK-6 was preserved precisely because it had much more assets and a better infrastructure than most other camps. The authorities did not want to waste the substantial assets. This is why the camp was not closed down. Starting from 1954, the personnel of the law-enforcement agencies sentenced to prison terms were sent to serve their terms as inmates here. Some of the inmates sent down during that period were among those few who had been brought to court and sentenced for their part in the brutal repression during Stalin's rule. Rather soon those prisoners were released and it was primarily the employees of the law-enforcement agencies convicted for ordinary crimes who were sent to serve their sentences to the camp.

The security arrangements in ITK-6 were significantly upgraded because many of new inmates through their previous work experience had an excellent knowledge of the standard security precautions in Russian prison camps. New multilayered barbed-wire fences reinforced with timber board enclosures were constructed and alarm and signaling systems were installed. The territory of the mechanical workshops directly adjacent on the camp was also fenced off and incorporated into the camp area as an industrial area. In the period between 1954 and 1972 ITK-6 was a unique prison camp serving special purposes.

In early 1970s, the Soviet authorities started preparing to unleash a new wave of repression against political dissidents, and making arrangements for a greater isolation and harsher punishments for political prisoners. The ITK-6 camp with its superior security arrangements was a natural choice for a new camp for political prisoners. The police officers convicted for crimes were transferred to another camp in the town of Nizhni Tagil and the ITK-6 camp was prepared for admitting political prisoners.

One of the old wooden hutments was demolished, and a brick building for the camp administration was built in its place. The work-shop building was refurbished, and a boiler plant was built in the industrial area. The wood-burning stoves were removed from all premises and a central heating system was installed. The purpose was not to ensure more comfortable living conditions for the prisoners, of course. The stoves and stacks of firewood gave prisoners additional opportunities for hiding prohibited items and exchange messages.

The security systems, barriers, and fences were once again strengthened and refurbished. Construction work started on a large new building for the camp administration. In order to keep the location and designation of the camp even more secret it was given a new code designation VS-389/36. The human rights activists referred to it as Perm-36 camp for political prisoners.

The special treatment area was established in the camp VS-389/36 on the site of the former timber store. A building of the wood-working shop stood there in the late forties-early fifties. The building was repeatedly refurbished to be ultimately used as a special treatment detention block. The "especially dangerous repeater criminals" from the group of the "especially dangerous State criminals" were held there in the cells locked 24 hours a day. These were the prisoners who had been convicted for the crimes against the Soviet State, had finished serving their sentences, and were again arrested and sentenced for similar political crimes. Each cell in the isolation block was equipped with a lavatory in addition to central heating. Again the purpose of better sanitary arrangements was enhancing isolation of the prisoners and stricter security, rather than ensuring more comfortable living conditions. In the cells where prisoners had to use slop buckets the prisoners assigned to taking them out had greater opportunities for clandestine information exchanges. The detention block was, in fact, the harshest prison with the most cruel treatment in the USSR in the period of "advanced socialism". At the time it was the only "special-treatment" camp for political prisoners in the country.

Many hundreds of "highly dangerous State criminals" were processed through Perm-36 camp between July 13, 1972, when the first political prisoners had been brought over from the Mordovia prison campsб and December 29, 1987 when most political prisoners were pardoned and those who were not were transferred to the Perm-35 camp.

Among the prisoners were those sentenced to very long prison terms for collaboration with the German occupation authorities during the years of the Second World War. There were some other prisoners sentenced for "high treason", typically for trying to flee to the West. A few prisoners were convicted for espionage. But the majority were charged with purely political crimes, such as the "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". The names of many of the political dissenters became well-known in the world. As a rule, they were sentenced to the longest prison term possible for this crime - seven years of imprisonment in the high security labor camp. The "repeater offenders" held in the special treatment area were sentenced to ten years of imprisonment.

When the camp was closed down in 1988, most of its assets were given to the regional welfare department to be used for a shelter for mentally disabled patients who were to be accommodated in the old camp hutments. Later the shelter administration made most of the camp buildings available for accommodating the newly created museum. But the shelter is still using some of the camp buildings, as well as the former guards' barracks, and the settlement where the guards officers and the civilian camp employees had lived.

In the high security area the following former camp buildings have been preserved: one of the four barracks built in 1946, the punishment detention block, the infirmary, the bathhouse and the laundry, the camp administration building, the water tower, and the lavatory. All of them are in the residential camp area, that is the part of the camp where the prisoners lived. The alley and the grove of the trees planted by prisoners in 1948 in the period of GULAG reforms have been preserved. The following buildings are preserved in the work area of the high security camp area: the mechanical workshops, the forge shop, the boiler plant, power-saw plant, work area administration quarters, the diesel electric power plant, the lavatory, and the log cabin accommodating the so-called duty checkpoint at the gate from the residential are to the work area, and the camp administration building. Most buildings in the residential and work areas date back to the period of Stalin's GULAG.

The high security area still preserves the general appearance of the GULAG-period camp. Its uniqueness is emphasized by the fact that there are simply no other intact prison camp complexes of that epoch left in the country preserved in such a state that makes it possible to restore them for further preservation and use as a museum. Only some decaying ruins and archeological materials have been left from the many thousands of the GULAG camps that operated throughout the country in the past. Labor camps were all ramshackle wooden structures that had been haphazardly knocked together from low quality timber by prisoners themselves who lacked proper training, skills, experience, or any motivation for the job. Therefore, the structures rapidly broke down when left to themselves even if they were not specially destroyed.

The Perm-36 camp was preserved only because it had its own rather special history and unique destiny.

Both sectors of the camp were surrounded with security enclosures and alarm and signaling systems. By late 1980s, they included several rows of board fences, complicated security systems of barbed-wire and fine mesh wire, the alarm systems, etc. covering a span of 30 m or more and encircling the entire camp territory with watch towers at the corners. The residential area was separated from the work area with board fences and barbed-wire screens.

By the present time only one of the board fences of the high security area has been preserved in a more or less intact state; it is the external fence referred to as the "concealment" fence because its purpose was to conceal the security and alarm system equipment from observation from the outside. Only separate fragments of the other fences and security systems have been preserved.

Only a few pillars have been left from the fences separating the residential area from the work area.

In the special treatment area both original camp buildings have been preserved-the greater hutment in which prisoners lived and worked without ever leaving it and where all the service facilities were located, and the building of the check-point where the duty guards of the sector were accommodated. In this sector all the security and alarm systems have been completely dismantled.

Most camp buildings were constructed of timber. Many of them date back to 1940s-1950s. By early 1990s, they were in an extremely poor state.

* In early 1960s the criminal legislation introduced the high security and the special treatment imprisonment, in addition to the general treatment and enhanced treatment. The differences between the treatments consisted in the terms and conditions of imprisonment. The high security was the harshest one. Prisoners were kept in permanently locked cells, similar to prison cells. In contrast to conventional prison the special treatment prisoners had to work and meet the prescribed production quotas.