3 History

After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 Lenin announced that any "class enemy", even in the absence of evidence of any crime against the state, could not be trusted and should not be treated better than a criminal. The Gulag began as a reformed extension of earlier labor camps ( katorgas), operated in Siberia as a part of penal system in Imperial Russia, and quickly overflowed with the enemies of the people, a designation used by the Bolshevik government for officials accused of corruption, sabotage and embezzlement, various political enemies and dissidents, as well as former aristocrats, businessmen and large land owners.

As an all- Union institution, the Gulag was officially established on April 25, 1930 as the "Ulag" by the OGPU order 130/63 in accordance with the Sovnarkom order 22 p. 248 dated April 7, 1930, and was renamed into Gulag in November. The Gulag boomed during Joseph Stalin's regime. Failed projects, bad harvests, accidents, poor production, and poor planning were routinely attributed to corruption and sabotage, and accused thieves and saboteurs on whom to put the blame were found en masse. At the same time the rapidly increasing need for natural resources and a booming industrialization program fueled a demand for cheap labor. Denunciations, quotas for arrest, summary executions, and secret police activity became widespread. The widest opportunities for an easy, in most cases automatic, conviction of any person of a crime were provided by the Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which gave the state virtually unlimited power over its citizens.

During the early and middle 1930s the Gulag began a "hardening" process. Meanwhile Stalin's power tightened and secret police activity expanded. Now under the harshest phase of totalitarianism the Soviet Union had ever known, the slightest sign of bourgeoisie trappings or dissent resulted in incarceration. The contemporary expression commonly attributed to Stalin was: "When the wood is chopped, splinters fly" ("Лес рубят — щепки летят"). The Gulag population boomed: in 1931–32, Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 1 million (including colonies), and after the Great Purge of 1937, nearly 2 million people. By contrast, the US prisoner laborer population (on chain gangs and in prisons) remained around a few hundred thousand prisoners.

During World War II, Gulag populations declined sharply, owing to mass "releases" of hundreds of thousands of prisoners who were conscripted and sent directly to the front lines, but mainly due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies rose again sharply and reached the number of approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s. While some of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also countless repatriated Russian prisoners of war who had served with honor, but were universally suspected of fraternizing with and aiding the enemy. Large numbers of civilians were also sent there after WWII, especially the ones from the Russian territories which came under foreign occupation, for any suspicion of assisting Germans.

For years after WWII, a significant minority of the inmates were Germans, Finns, Poles, Romanians and other POWs and persons from the foreign countries "liberated" by the Red Army. It was not uncommon for the survivors of Nazi camps to be transported directly to the Soviet labor camps.

The Communist leadership continued to sponsor Gulag for a while after Stalin's death in March of 1953. Large numbers of those convicted of common crimes were then freed in an amnesty program. The releases of political prisoners started in 1954 and became widespread, and also coupled with mass rehabilitations, after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in his Secret Speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February, 1956.

Officially Gulag was terminated by the MVD order 20 of January 25, 1960, as the MVD itself was officially eliminated by the order 44-16 of Presidium of Supreme Council of the USSR, to reemerge as the KGB.

The total documentable deaths in the corrective-labor system from 1934 to 1953 amount to 1 054 000, including political and common prisoners; note that this does not include nearly 800 000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries", as they were generally conducted outside the camp system. From 1932 to 1940, at least 390 000 peasants died in places of peasant resettlement; this figure may overlap with the above, but, on the other hand, it does not include deaths outside the 1932-1940 period, or deaths among non-peasant internal exiles. The number of people who were prisoners at one point or the other is, of course, much larger, and one may assume that many of the survivors suffered permanent physical and psychological damage.

4 Conditions

Prisoner labor at the construction of Belomorkanal, 1931—1933 Extreme production quotas, brutality, hunger and harsh elements were major reasons for Gulag's high fatality rate, which was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps.

Logging and mining were among the most common of activities, as well as the harshest. In a Gulag mine, one person's production quota might be as high as 29,000 pounds (13,000kg) of ore per day. Failure to meet a quota resulted in a loss of vital rations, a cycle that usually had fatal consequences through a condition of being emaciated and devitalized, dubbed "dohodyaga" (доходяга).

Inmates were often forced to work in inhuman conditions. In spite of the brutal climate, they were almost never adequately clothed, fed, or given medical treatment, nor were they given any means to combat the lack of vitamins that led to nutritional diseases such as scurvy. The nutritional value of basic daily food ration varied around 1200 calories, mainly from low-quality bread (distributed by weight and called "пайка", paika). According to the World Health Organization, the minimum requirement for a heavy laborer is in the range of 3100–3900 calories daily.

Administrators routinely stole from the camp stockpiles for personal gain, as well as to curry favor with superiors. As a result, inmates were forced to work even harder to make up the difference. Administrators and trusties (inmates assigned to perform the duties servicing the camp itself, such as cooks, bakers or stockmen, dubbed "pridurki") skimmed off the medicines, clothing and the most nutritious foodstuffs.

Some camps practiced culling: when prisoners lined up for work shift, the last one to show up would be shot as an example for others, or his or her food ration would be withdrawn for the day.

5 Geography

Vorkuta entrance circa early 1950s. The sign reads: "Labor in the USSR is a matter of honor, glory, pride and heroism". Compare with Arbeit macht frei.

In the early days of Gulag the locations for the camps were chosen primarily for the ease of isolation of prisoners. Remote monasteries in particular were frequently reused as sites for new camps. The site on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea is one of the earliest and also most noteworthy, taking root soon after the Revoluton in 1918. The colloquial name for the islands, " Solovki", entered the vernacular as a synonym for the labor camp in general. It was being presented to the world as an example of the new Soviet way of "re-education of class enemies" and reintegrating them through labor into the Soviet society. Initially the inmates, the significant part being Russian intelligentsia, enjoyed relative freedom (within the natural confinement of the islands). Local newspapers and magazines were edited and even some scientific research was carried out (e.g., a local botanical garden was maintained, unfortunately lost completely). Eventually it turned into a regular Gulag camp; in fact some historians maintain that Solovki was a pilot camp of this type. See Solovki for more detail.

With the new emphasis on Gulag as the means of concentrating cheap labor, new camps were then constructed throughout the Soviet sphere of influence, wherever the economic task at hand dictated their existence (or was designed specifically to avail itself of them, such as Belomorkanal or Baikal Amur Mainline), including facilities in big cities — parts of the famous Moscow Metro and the Moscow State University new campus were built by forced labor. Many more projects during the rapid industrialization of the 1930s, war-time and post-war periods were fulfilled on the backs of convicts, and the activity of Gulag camps spanned a wide cross-section of Soviet industry.

The majority of Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of north-eastern Siberia (the best known clusters are Sevvostlag (The North-East Camps) along Kolyma river and Norillag near Norilsk) and in the south-eastern parts of the Soviet Union, mainly in the steppes of Kazakhstan (Luglag, Steplag, Peschanlag). These were vast and uninhabited regions with no roads (in fact, the construction of the roads themselves was assigned to the inmates of specialized railroad camps) or sources of food, but rich in minerals and other natural resources (such as timber). However, camps were generally spread throughout the entire Soviet Union, including the European parts of Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine. There were also several camps located outside of the Soviet Union, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Mongolia, which were under the direct control of the Gulag.

Not all camps were fortified; in fact some in Siberia were marked only by posts. Escape was deterred by the harsh elements, as well as tracking dogs that were assigned to each camp. While during the 1920s and 1930s native tribes often aided escapees, many of the tribes were victimized by escaped thieves. Tantalized by large rewards as well, they began aiding authorities in the capture of Gulag inmates. Camp guards were also given stern incentive to keep their inmates in line at all costs; if a prisoner escaped under a guard's watch, the guard would often be stripped of his uniform and become a Gulag inmate himself.

In some cases, teams of inmates were dropped to a new territory with a limited supply of resources and left to initiate a new camp or die. Sometimes it took a few attempts before the next wave of colonists could survive the elements.

The area along the Indigirka river was known as the Gulag inside the Gulag. The Oymyakon (Оймякон) village there registered the record low temperature of −71.2°C (−96°F).

6 Influence

6.1 Culture

The Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet history and affected millions of individuals, its impact has been enormous.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago was not the first literary work about labor camps. But it was the first to demonstrate Gulag as an instrument of governmental repression against its own citizens on a massive scale.

Gulag has become a major influence on contemporary Russian thinking, and an important part of modern Russian folklore. Many songs by the authors-performers (known as the bards), most notably by Alexander Galich and Vladimir Vysotsky, none of whom ever served time in the camps, describe life inside the Gulag.

The memoirs of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, Eugenia Ginzburg , among others, became a symbol of defiance in Soviet society. The writings, particularly those of Solzhenitsyn, harshly chastised the Soviet people for their tolerance and apathy regarding Gulag, but at the same time provided a testament to the courage and resolve of those who were imprisoned.

See also samizdat, dissident, human rights, Helsinki Accords.

6.2 Life after term served

Persons who served a term in a camp or in a prison were restricted from taking a wide range of jobs. A concealment of a previous imprisonment was a triable offense. Persons served as "politicals" were of nuisance for " First Departments ("Pervyj Otdel", outlets of the secret police at all enterprises and institutions), because former "politicals" had to be monitored.

Many released from camps were restricted from settling in larger cities.

When the most part of the term was served a well-behaved person could be released for "free settlement" (вольное поселение, "volnoye poseleniye") outside the confinement of the camp. They were known as "free settlers" (вольнопоселенцы, "volnoposelentsy", not to be confused with the term "ссыльнопоселенцы"). After serving long terms, many people had lost their former job skills and social contacts. Therefore upon final release many of them voluntarily decided to become (or stay) "free settlers" as well. This decision was also influenced by the knowledge about the restrictions for them everywhere else. When a lot of the formerly released prisoners were re-seized during the wave of arrests that began in 1947, this happened much more often to those who had chosen to move back to their home town proximity rather than those who remained around the camps as the free settlers.

7 Latest developments

Anne Applebaum's monograph (see below) describes the releases of political prisoners from the camps as late as 1987. In November 1991 the new Russian parliament, the Duma, passed the "Declaration of Rights and Freedoms of the Individual" which guaranteed, among other liberties, the freedom to disagree with the government.

8 References

• BooksEnthsiast.com Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pages
• BooksEnthsiast.com Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 660 pp.
• BooksEnthsiast.com Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: Two, Harper & Row, 712 pp.
• Solzhenitsyn's, Shalamov's, Ginzburg's works at Lib.ru (in original Russian)
• BooksEnthsiast.com J. Arch Getty , Oleg V. Naumov , The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939, Yale University Press, 1999, 635 pages.

9 Related articles

• Memorial
• Concentration camp
• History of the Soviet Union
• List of Gulag camps
• Troika (triumvirate)
• Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)
• 101st km
• Evil empire
• Social parasitism
• Norilsk Uprising , an uprising in Norilsk "Gorlag" ( mining camp), 1953

9.1 People

• Naftaly Frenkel
• Vassily Grossman
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Notable sharashka inmates

10 External links

• Map of Gulag
• New York Times article of June 11, 2003, "Camps of Terror, Often Overlooked", by Michael Mcfaul
• The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (ed. by Paul Gregory, Valery Lazarev), Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003

Prisons and detention centres Soviet political repressions Soviet phraseology

<Hide>