From 1942 until 1954 colony No. 147 of the Gulag was based not far from Lynga. Men and women prisoners felled trees and unloaded and loaded timber and railway sleepers. Those who died were buried in the colony cemetery about one kilometre to the west. During the war years they were buried in common graves. Later they each received an individual grave. How many lie there is unknown. In 1947 German POWs, about 200 people, were transferred to the colony; 20 of them died there. The remaining Germans were sent back to Germany a year later.

In 1985 the German government put up memorials in Lynga: stone crosses where the colony had stood and a memorial plaque in the settlement that reads, in Russian and German: “Here lie POWs, victims of the Second World War”. In September 2013 Professor S.I. Vorobyov, director of the Pavlov charitable foundation in Moscow, erected and consecrated a six-metre commemorative cross where the colony formerly stood. At its base (click photo to see full picture) it bears an inscription on a plaque: “In memory of the political prisoners and POWs of Gulag colony No. 147”.