Svobodny is a town in Amur Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Zeya River, 167km north of Blagoveshchensk, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: 63,889 ;HistoryIt was founded in 1912 in conjunction with the construction of the Amur Railway. It was originally named Alexeyevsk (Алексе́евск), in honor of the then crown prince Alexey. In 1917, the town was renamed Svobodny, Russian for free.During the Stalin era, the BAMLag prison camp was built in Svobodny, with the intention of providing forced labor for the planned construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline. The camp became one of the largest in the gulag system, with ca. 190,300 convicts in October 1935. The camp claimed the lives of thousands of political and clerical prisoners.Administrative and municipal statusWithin the framework of administrative divisions, Svodobny serves as the administrative center of Svobodnensky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as Svobodny Urban Okrug—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, this administrative unit also has urban okrug status.