Gulag
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226144834
2008-07-17T00:49:37Z
Ron Ritzman
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Reverted edits by [[Special:Contributions/165.228.106.174|165.228.106.174]] (using [[WP:HG|Huggle]])
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[[Image:Moving Out.jpg|thumb|[[Nikolai Getman]]. Moving out.<ref>[http://www.jamestown.org/getman_paintings.php?painting_id=5 The Gulag Collection: Paintings of Nikolai Getman].</ref>]]
The '''Gulag''' was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the [[Soviet Union]]. "Gulag" is the Russian [[acronym]] for ''The '''C'''hief '''A'''dministration of Corrective Labor '''Cam'''ps and Colonies'' — '''Г'''лавное '''У'''правление Исправительно-Трудовых '''Лаг'''ерей и колоний, '''''G'''lavnoye '''U'''pravleniye Ispravitel'no-Trudovykh '''Lag'''erey i koloniy'' — of the [[NKVD]]. Eventually, by [[metonymy]], the usage of "Gulag" began generally denoting the entire penal labor system in the USSR, then any such penal system. In Russian, ''Gulag'' is pronounced: ({{lang-ru|ГУЛАГ}}, {{Audio|ru-Gulag.ogg|listen}})
''[[Gulag: A History]]'', by [[Anne Applebaum]], explains:
{{cquote|It was the branch of the [[NKVD|State Security]] that operated the penal system of [[Labor camp|forced labour camps]] and associated detention and transit camps and prisons. While these camps housed criminals of all types, the Gulag system has become primarily known as a place for [[political prisoners]] and as a mechanism for repressing political opposition to the [[Soviet Union|Soviet state]]. Though it imprisoned millions, the name became familiar in the West only with the publication of [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]]'s 1973 ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'', which likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands.}}
There were at least 476 separate camp complexes, each comprising hundreds, even thousands of camps.<ref>[http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2000/06_15_nyrb_gulag.html Anne Applebaum — Inside the Gulag]</ref> There may have been an estimated 7 million prisoners in these camps at a given time (although the documents show significantly lower numbers); possibly some 10% died yearly.<ref>[http://www.heritage.org/Research/RussiaandEurasia/HL-800.cfm Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened]</ref><ref>[http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/heroesvillains/background/g4_background.htm The National Archives Learning Curve]</ref> Probably the worst of the camp complexes were the three built north of the Arctic
Circle at [[Kolyma]], [[Norilsk]], and [[Vorkuta]].<ref>[http://www.arlindo-correia.com/041003.html ''Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps'', by Anne Applebaum]</ref><ref>[http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0921567.html Gulag] from InfoPlease.com</ref>
More than 18 million people passed through the ''Gulag'' from 1929 to 1953, with further millions being [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union#Timeline|deported and exiled]] to remote areas of the USSR.<ref name="anneapplebaum">{{cite web
| url = http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag/intro.html
| title = GULAG: a history
| accessdate = 2007-12-21
| author = Anne Applebaum
| language = English
| format = HTML
}}</ref><ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00EED61F3DF932A25756C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print The Other Killing Machine], ''The New York Times''.</ref><ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F03%2F02%2Fwgulag02.xml Stalin's forgotten victims stuck in the gulag], ''Telegraph''.</ref>
Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although the political prisoner population always was significant.<ref name="gulag2">[http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag2.html http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag2.html]</ref> People could be imprisoned in a Gulag camp for crimes such as unexcused absences from work, petty theft, or anti-government jokes. <ref> Often, one finds statements that Soviet PoW landed in the Gulag after release, which is a confusion with two other types of camps. During and after [[World War II]] freed PoWs went to special "filtration" camps. Of these, by 1944, more than 90 per cent were cleared, and about 8 per cent were arrested or condemned to [[penal battalion]]s.
In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the [[NKVD]]. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated ''[[Ostarbeiter]]'', PoWs, and other [[displaced person]]s, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80 per cent civilians and 20 per cent of PoWs were freed, 5 per cent of civilians, and 43 per cent of PoWs re-drafted, 10 per cent of civilians and 22 per cent of PoWs were sent to [[labor battalion]]s, and 2 per cent of civilians and 15 per cent of the PoWs transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the Gulag. — (“Военно-исторический журнал” (“Military-Historical Magazine”), 1997, №5. page 32)</ref> About half of the political prisoners were sent to Gulag prison camps [[By administrative means|without trial]]; per official data, there were more than 2.6 million imprisonment sentences in cases investigated by the secret police, 1921-1953.<ref name="organy1">[http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_organy1.html http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_organy1.html]</ref>
[[Image:Kersnovskaya Entering Camp5 54.jpg|thumb|460px|right|Entering Gulag (a leaf from [[Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya]]'s notebook)]]
==Modern usage and other terminology==
Although ''Gulag'' originally was the name of a government agency, the acronym acquired the qualities of a noun, denoting: ''the Soviet system of [[prison]]-based, [[unfree labor]]'' — including specific labor, punishment, criminal, political, and transit camps for men, women, and children. Thus, "Gulag" means the repressive Soviet "meat-grinder" procedural system and its consequences — arrests, interrogations, transport (in unheated rail road cattle cars), forced labor, familial separation, [[exile]], and early death, <ref name="anneapplebaum" /> while other authors use ''gulag'' as denoting all the prisons and internment camps in Soviet history (1917–1991) with the plural ''gulags''. The term's contemporary usage is notably unrelated to the USSR, such as in the expression "[[North Korea]]'s Gulag"<ref name="guardianunlimitedkorea">{{cite web
| url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,1136483,00.html#article_continue
| title = Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag
| accessdate = 2007-12-21
| author = Antony Barnett
| date = 2004-2-1
| publisher = Guardian Unlimited
| language = English
}}</ref>.
The word "Gulag" was not often used in Russian — either officially or colloquially; the predominant terms were ''the camps'' ({{lang|ru|лагеря, ''lagerya''}}) and ''the zone'' ({{lang|ru|зона, ''zona''}}), ''always'' singular — for the labor camp system and for the individual camps. The official term, "corrective labor camp", was suggested for official [[politburo]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] use in the session of July 27, 1929, replacing ''[[concentration camp]]'', then the common usage {{Fact|date=December 2007}}.
== History ==
===Early Soviet period===
[[Image:GPU.jpg|GPU poster|left|thumb|Soviet poster of the 1920s: The GPU strikes the counter-revolutionary saboteur on the head]]
From 1918, camp-type detention facilities were set up, as a reformed analogy of the earlier system of [[penal labor]] (''[[katorga]]s''), operated in [[Siberia]] in [[Imperial Russia]]. The two main types were "[[Vechecka]] Special-purpose Camps" ({{lang|ru|особые лагеря ВЧК, ''osobiye lagerya VČK''}}) and [[forced labor camp]]s ({{lang|ru|лагеря принудительных работ, ''lagerya prinuditel'nikh rabot''}}). They were installed for various categories of people deemed dangerous for the state: for common criminals, for prisoners of the [[Russian Civil War]], for officials accused of corruption, sabotage and embezzlement, various political enemies and dissidents, as well as former aristocrats, businessmen and large land owners. These camps, however, were not on the same scale as those in the Stalin era. In 1928 there were 30,000 prisoners in camps, and the authorities were opposed to compelling them to work. In 1927 the official in charge of prison administration wrote that: “The exploitation of prison labour, the system of squeezing ‘golden sweat’ from them, the organisation of production in places of confinement, which while profitable from a commercial point of view is fundamentally lacking in corrective significance – these are entirely inadmissible in Soviet places of confinement.”<ref>D.J. Dallin and B.I. Nicolayesky, ''Forced Labour in Soviet Russia'', London 1948, p. 153.</ref>
===Convict labour system expansion under [[Stalin]]===
[[Image:Belomorkanal.png|left|thumb|250px|Prisoner labour at the construction of [[Belomorkanal]], 1931–33]]
The legal base and the guidance for the creation of the system of "corrective labor camps" ({{lang-ru|исправительно-трудовые лагеря, ''Ispravitel'no-trudovye lagerya''}}), the backbone of what is commonly referred to as the "Gulag", was a secret decree of [[Sovnarkom]] of [[July 11]] [[1929]] about the use of [[penal labor]] (see its [[#wikisource|wikisource reference]]) that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of [[Politburo]] meeting of [[June 27]], [[1929]].
As an all-[[Soviet Union|Union]] institution and a main administration with the [[OGPU]] (the Soviet [[secret police]]), 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.
In the early 1930s a drastic tightening of Soviet penal policy caused a significant growth of the prison camp population. During the period of the [[Great Purge]] (1937–38) mass arrests caused another upsurge in inmate numbers. During these years hundreds of thousands of individuals were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms on the grounds of one of the multiple passages of the notorious [[Article 58]] of the Criminal Codes of the Union republics, which defined punishment for various forms of "counterrevolutionary activities."
Under [[NKVD Order № 00447]] tens of thousands of GULAG inmates who were accused of "continuing anti-Soviet activity in imprisonment" were executed in 1937-38.
The hypothesis that economic considerations were responsible for mass arrests during the period of Stalinism has been refuted on the grounds of former Soviet archives that have become accessible since the 1990s, although some archival sources also tend to support an economic hypothesis.<ref name=Jakobson>See, e.g., Jakobson, Michael. ''Origins of the GULag: The Soviet Prison Camp System 1917–34''. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), p. 88.</ref><ref name=Ivanova>See, e.g., Ivanova, Galina M. ''Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Totalitarian System.'' (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 70 (and, in fact, almost all of Chapter 2).</ref> In any case the development of the camp system followed economic lines. The growth of the camp system coincided with the peak of the Soviet [[industrialization]] campaign. Most of the camps established to accommodate the masses of incoming prisoners were assigned distinct economic tasks. These included the exploitation of natural resources and the colonization of remote areas as well as the realization of enormous infrastructural facilities and industrial construction projects.
In 1931–32 the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 800,000 in camps and 300,000 in colonies (annual averages), and in 1939 — about 1.3 millions in camps and 350,000 in colonies. <ref>Cf, e.g., ''Istorija stalinskogo Gulaga: konec 1920-kh - pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov''; sobranie dokumentov v 7 tomakh, ed. by V. P. Kozlov et al., Moskva: ROSSPEN 2004, vol. 4: Naselenie GULAGa</ref> (all data about the numbers of prisoners here and below are taken from formerly secret documents produced by the [[NKVD]]).
===GULAG during World War II===
After the [[Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)|Soviet invasion of Poland]] following the corresponding [[invasion of Poland (1939)|German invasion]] that marked the start of [[World War II]] in 1939, the [[Soviet Union]] annexed eastern parts (so-called "''[[Kresy]]''") of the [[Second Polish Republic]]. In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied [[Estonia]], [[Latvia]], [[Lithuania]], [[Bessarabia]] and [[Bukovina]]. Hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens<ref name=>Franciszek Proch, Poland's Way of the Cross, New York 1987 P.146</ref><ref name=>Project In Posterum [http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/poland_WWII_casualties.htm]</ref> and inhabitants of the other annexed lands, regardless of their ethnic origin, were arrested and sent to the GULAG camps. However, according to the official data, the total number of sentences for political crimes in USSR in 1939-41 was only 211,106.<ref name="organy1"> [http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_organy1.html http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_organy1.html]</ref>{{Verify credibility|date=January 2008}}
During the [[Great Patriotic War]], Gulag populations declined sharply, as a consequence of the mass releases of hundreds of thousands of prisoners who were conscripted and sent directly to the front lines and a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941-43.<ref name="gulag1"> [http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag1.html http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag1.html]</ref>
In 1943, the term "katorga works" (каторжные работы) was reintroduced. They were initially intended for [[Collaboration during World War II|Nazi collaborators]], but then other categories of political prisoners (for example, members of [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|deported peoples]] who fled from exile) were also sentenced to "katorga works". Prisoners sentenced to "katorga works" were sent to Gulag prison camps with the most harsh regime and many of them perished.<ref name="gulag1">[http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag1.html http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag1.html]</ref>
===GULAG after WWII===
[[Image:Aleksandr solzhenitsyn gulag search.jpg|right|thumb|240px|[[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] gives his re-enactment of a search to which the inmates were subjected - this picture was not taken in a prison camp.]]
After World War II the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies again rose sharply, reaching approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s (about 1.7 million of whom were in camps).
When the war ended in May 1945, as many as two million former Russian citizens were [[Operation Keelhaul|forcefully repatriated (against their will) into the USSR.]]<ref>Mark Elliott. "The United States and Forced Repatriation of Soviet Citizens, 1944-47," ''Political Science Quarterly'', Vol. 88, No. 2 (June, 1973), pp. 253-275.</ref> On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the [[Yalta Conference]], the [[United States]] and [[United Kingdom]] signed a Repatriation Agreement with the Soviet Union.<ref name="darkside">[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0895a.asp Repatriation -- The Dark Side of World War II]</ref> One interpretation of this agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets. [[United Kingdom|British]] and [[U.S.]] civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the [[Soviet Union]] up to two million former residents of the Soviet Union, including persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship years before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945-1947.<ref name="forced">[http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=1988&month=12 ''Forced Repatriation to the Soviet Union: The Secret Betrayal'']</ref>
Soviet [[POW]]s on their return to the Soviet Union were often treated as [[traitor]]s (see [[Order No. 270]]).<ref name="warlords">[http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/t-z/warlords1stalin.html ''The warlords: Joseph Stalin'']</ref><ref name="remembrance">[http://www.stsg.de/main/zeithain/geschichte/gedenken/index_en.php Remembrance (Zeithain Memorial Grove)]</ref><ref>[http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/world_war_2/3037296.html Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of World War II]</ref> According to some sources, over 1.5 million surviving [[Red Army]] soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the Gulag.<ref name="sort">[http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3063246.html Sorting Pieces of the Russian Past]</ref><ref name="brutality">[http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/patriots-ignore-greatest-brutality/2007/08/12/1186857342382.html?page=2 Patriots ignore greatest brutality]</ref><ref name="moreorless">[http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/stalin.html Joseph Stalin killer file]</ref>
For years after World War II, a significant minority{{vague}} of the inmates were [[Ukrainians]], [[Lithuanians]], [[Latvians]] and [[Estonians]] from lands newly incorporated into the Soviet Union, as well as [[Finnish people|Finn]]s, [[Poles]], [[Romania]]ns and others. [[POW]]s, in contrast, were kept in a separate camp system (see [[POW labor in the Soviet Union]]), which was managed by [[GUPVI]], a separate main administration with the [[NKVD]]/[[MVD (Russia)|MVD]].
Yet the major reason for the post-war increase in the number of prisoners was the tightening of legislation on property offences in summer 1947 (at this time there was a famine in some parts of the Soviet Union, claiming about 1 million lives), which resulted in hundreds of thousands of convictions to lengthy prison terms, sometimes on the basis of cases of petty theft or embezzlement. At the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465 thousand were political prisoners.<ref name="gulag1"/>{{Verify credibility|date=January 2008}}
The state continued to maintain the extensive camp system for a while after Stalin's death in March 1953, although the period saw the grip of the camp authorities weaken and a number of conflicts and uprisings occur (''see'' [[Bitch Wars]]; [[Kengir uprising]]).
The [[amnesty]] in March 1953 was limited to non-political prisoners and for political prisoners sentenced to not more than 5 years, therefore mostly those convicted for common crimes were then freed. The release of political prisoners started in 1954 and became widespread, and also coupled with mass [[rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitation]]s, after [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s denunciation of [[Stalinism]] in his [[Secret Speech]] at the 20th Congress of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|CPSU]] in February 1956.
By the end of the 1950s, virtually all "corrective labor camps" were dissolved. Colonies, however, continued to exist. Officially the GULAG was liquidated by the [[MVD (Russia)|MVD]] order 20 of [[January 25]], [[1960]].
Altogether, according to some recent estimates on the basis of archival documents, between 28 and 50 million people had been prisoners in camps and colonies throughout the period of Stalinism at one point or another.{{Fact|date=January 2008}}
== Conditions ==
[[Image:Gulag mortality rate 1934 1953.PNG|left|thumb|400px|Gulag prisoner [[mortality rate]]s from 1934 to 1953]]
Living and working conditions in the camps varied significantly across time and place, depending, among other things, on the impact of broader events ([[World War II]], countrywide [[Droughts and famines in Russia and the USSR|famines]] and shortages, waves of terror, sudden influx or release of large numbers of prisoners). However, to one degree or another, the large majority of prisoners at most times faced meagre food rations, inadequate clothing, overcrowding, poorly insulated housing; poor hygiene, and insufficient or inadequate health care. The overwhelming majority of prisoners were compelled to perform harsh physical labor. In most periods and economic branches, the degree of mechanization of work processes was significantly lower than in the civilian industry: tools were often primitive and machinery, if existent, short in supply. Officially established work hours were in most periods longer and days off were fewer than for civilian workers. Often official work time regulations were extended by local camp administrators.
In general, the central administrative bodies showed a discernible interest in maintaining the labor force of prisoners in a condition allowing the fulfillment of construction and production plans handed down from above. Besides a wide array of punishments for prisoners refusing to work (which, in practice, were sometimes applied to prisoners that were too enfeebled to meet production quota), they instituted a number of positive incentives intended to boost productivity. These included monetary bonuses (since the early 1930s) and wage payments (from 1950 onwards), cuts of sentences on an individual basis, general early release schemes for norm fulfillment and overfulfillment (until 1939, again in selected camps from 1946 onwards), preferential treatment and privileges for the most productive workers ([[Udarnik|shock workers]] or [[Stakhanovite]]s in Soviet parlance). <ref name="borodkin">Leonid Borodkin and Simon Ertz 'Forced Labour and the Need for Motivation: Wages and Bonuses in the Stalinist Camp System', ''Comparative Economic Studies'', June 2005, Vol.47, Iss. 2, pp. 418–436. </ref>
A distinctive incentive scheme that included both coercive and motivational elements and was applied universally in all camps consisted in standardized "nourishment scales": the size of the inmates’ ration depended on the percentage of the work quota delivered. [[Naftaly Frenkel]] is credited for the introduction of this policy. While it was effective in compelling many prisoners to make serious work efforts, for many a prisoner it had the adverse effect, accelerating the exhaustion and sometimes causing the death of persons unable to fulfill high production quota.
Immediately after the [[Operation Barbarossa|German attack on the Soviet Union]] in June 1941 the conditions in camps worsened drastically: quotas were increased, rations cut, and medical supplies came close to none, all of which led to a sharp increase in mortality. The situation slowly improved in the final period and after the end of the war.
Considering the overall conditions and their influence on inmates, it is important to distinguish three major strata of Gulag inmates:
*people used to physical labor: "[[kulak]]s", [[osadnik]]s, "[[ukaznik]]s" (people sentenced for violation of various [[ukase]]s, such as [[Law of Spikelets]], decree about work discipline, etc.), occasional violators of [[criminal law]]
*dedicated criminals
*people unused to physical labour sentenced for various political and religious reasons.
<!-- in progress -->
Mortality in GULAG camps in 1934-40 was 4-6 times higher than average in Russia. The estimated total number of those who died in imprisonment in 1930-1953 is 1.76 million, about half of which occurred between 1941-1943 following the German invasion.<ref>[http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema06.php "Demographic Losses Due to Repressions"], by [[Anatoly Vishnevsky]], Director of the Center for Human Demography and Ecology, [[Russian Academy of Sciences]], {{ru icon}}</ref><ref>[http://www.ialhi.org/news/i0602_6.php "The History of the GULAG"], by [[Oleg V.Khlevniuk]]</ref>
== Geography ==
{{Refimprove|date=September 2007}}
<!-- Unsourced image removed: [[Image:Vorkuta entrance Labor in the USSR is a matter of honor, glory, pride and heroism.jpg|right|thumb|280px|[[Vorkuta]] entrance circa early 1950s. The sign reads: ''"[[Labour]] in the USSR is a matter of honour, glory, pride and heroism"''.]] -->
[[Image:Ru200008020027.jpg|thumb|Part of 'Project 503' to build a railroad from [[Salekhard]] to [[Igarka]] near [[Turukhansk]] on the [[Yenisey]]]]
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 Revolution in 1918. The [[colloquial]] name for the islands, "[[Solovki]]", entered the [[vernacular]] as a [[synonym]] for the labour camp in general. It was being presented to the world as an example of the new Soviet way of "re-education of [[class enemy|class enemies]]" and reintegrating them through labour 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, but unfortunately later lost completely). Eventually it turned into an ordinary Gulag camp; in fact some historians maintain that Solovki was a pilot camp of this type. See [[Solovki]] for more detail. [[Maxim Gorky]] visited the camp in 1929 and published an apology of it.
With the new emphasis on Gulag as the means of concentrating cheap labour, 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 [[White Sea-Baltic Canal|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 labour. Many more projects during the rapid industrialization of the 1930s, [[World War II|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 [[steppe]]s of [[Kazakhstan]] (''[[Luglag]]'', ''[[Steplag]]'', ''[[Peschanlag]]''). These were vast and sparsely inhabited 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|Byelorussia]], and [[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 also 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. Further, if an escaping prisoner was shot, guards could be fined amounts that were often equivalent to one or two weeks wages.
In some cases, teams of inmates were dropped to a new territory with a limited supply of resources and left to set up a new camp or die. Sometimes it took several 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''. In 1926, the [[Oimiakon]] (Оймякон) village in this region registered the record low temperature of −71.2 °C (−96 °F).
Under the supervision of [[Lavrenty Beria]] who headed both NKVD and the Soviet [[Atom bomb]] program until his demise in 1953, thousands of ''zeks'' were used to mine [[uranium]] [[ore]] and prepare test facilities on [[Novaya Zemlya]], [[Vaygach Island]], [[Semipalatinsk Test Site|Semipalatinsk]], among other sites.
==Special insititutions==
* Special camps or ''zones'' for children (Gulag [[jargon]]: {{lang|ru|"малолетки", ''maloletki''}}, ''underaged''), for disabled (in [[Spassk]]), and for mothers ({{lang|ru|"мамки", ''mamki''}}) with babies.
* Camps for "wives of traitors of Motherland" — there was a special category of repression: "[[Traitor of Motherland Family Member]]" ({{lang|ru|ЧСИР, член семьи изменника Родины: ''ČSIR, člyen sem'i izmennika Rodini''}}).
* ''[[Sharashka]]'' ({{lang|ru|шарашка}}, ''the goofing-off place'') were in fact secret research laboratories, where the arrested and convicted scientists, some of them prominent, were anonymously developing new technologies, and also conducting basic research.
== Influence ==
=== Culture ===
<!-- this section is for the general influence on the Soviet culture of **Gulag itself**, not a list of publications about Gulag -->
The Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet and East European history and affected millions of individuals. Its cultural impact was enormous.
The 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 [[Bard (Soviet Union)|''bards'']], most notably [[Vladimir Vysotsky]] and [[Alexander Galich]], neither of whom ever served time in the camps, describe life inside the Gulag and glorified the life of "Zeks". Words and phrases which originated in the labor camps became part of the Russian/Soviet vernacular in the 1960s and 1970s.
The memoirs of [[Alexander Dolgun]], [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], [[Varlam Shalamov]] and [[Yevgenia Ginzburg]], among others, became a symbol of defiance in Soviet society. These writings, particularly those of Solzhenitsyn, harshly chastised the Soviet people for their tolerance and apathy regarding the Gulag, but at the same time provided a testament to the courage and resolve of those who were imprisoned.
Another cultural phenomenon in the Soviet Union linked with the Gulag was the forced migration of many artists and other people of culture to Siberia. This resulted in a Renaissance of sorts in places like [[Magadan]], where, for example, the quality of theatre production was comparable to [[Moscow]]'s.
====Literature====
Many eyewitness accounts of Gulag prisoners were published before World War II.
* [[Julius Margolin]]'s book ''[[A Travel to the Land Ze-Ka]]'' was finished in 1947, but it was impossible to publish such a book about the Soviet Union at the time, immediately after World War II.
* [[Gustaw Herling-Grudziński]] wrote ''A World Apart'', which was translated into English by Andrzej Ciolkosz and published with an introduction by [[Bertrand Russell]] in 1951. By describing life in the gulag in a harrowing personal account, it provides an in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet communist system.
* [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]]'s book ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' was not the first literary work about labour camps. His previous book on the subject, "[[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]", about a typical day of the GULAG inmate, was originally published in the most prestigious Soviet monthly, ''[[Novy Mir]]'', (''New World''), in November 1962, but was soon banned and withdrawn from all libraries. It was the first work to demonstrate the Gulag as an instrument of governmental repression against its own citizens on a massive scale. ''[[The First Circle]]'', an account of three days in the lives of prisoners in the ''[[Marfino]]'' ''[[sharashka]]'' or special prison was submitted for publication to the Soviet authorities shortly after ''One Day in the Life'' but was rejected and later published abroad in 1968.
* [[János Rózsás]], Hungarian writer, often referred to as the Hungarian Solzhenitsyn, wrote a lot of books and articles on the issue of GULAG.
*[[Zoltan Szalkai]], Hungarian documentary filmmaker made several films of gulag camps.
* [[Karlo Štajner]], an Austrian communist active in the former [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]] and manager of [[Comintern Publishing House]] in Moscow from 1932–39, was arrested one night and taken from his Moscow home under accusation of anti-revolutionary activities. He spent the following 20 years in camps from Solovki to Norilsk. After USSR–[[Yugoslavia]]n political normalization he was re-tried and quickly found innocent. He left the Soviet Union with his wife, who had been waiting for him for 20 years, in 1956 and spent the rest of his life in [[Zagreb]], [[Croatia]]. He wrote an impressive book entitled ''7000 days in Siberia''.
* ''Dancing Under the Red Star'' by [[Karl Tobien]] (ISBN 1-4000-7078-3) tells the story of Margaret Werner, a young athletic girl who moves to Russia right before the start of Stalin's terror. She faces many hardships, as her father is taken away from her and imprisoned. Werner is the only American woman who survived the Gulag to tell about it.
* ''"Alexander Dolgun's Story: An American in the Gulag."'' (ISBN 0-394-49497-0), of a member of the US Embassy, and ''"I Was a Slave in Russia"'' (ISBN 0-815-95800-5), an American factory owner's son, were two more American citizens interned who wrote of their ordeal. Both were interned due to their American citizenship for about 8 years circa 1946–55.
* '' "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom" '' In the camps of the Siberian gulag, friends said it was hopeless. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1942 [[Sławomir Rawicz]] and four companions walked into British India, having journeyed four thousand miles by foot over tundra, Gobi, frozen rivers, and Himalayan peaks. Along the way, they encountered what appeared to be a Yeti family. ( ISBN-13: 978-1592289448 )
=== Colonization ===
Soviet [[wikisource:Об использовании труда уголовно-заключенных|state documents]] show that among the goals of the GULAG was colonization of sparsely populated remote areas. To this end, the notion of "[[free settlement]]" was introduced.
When well-behaved persons had served the majority of their terms, they 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, "ssyl'noposelentsy", "[[Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union|exile settlers]]"). In addition, for persons who served full term, but who were denied the free choice of place of residence, it was recommended to assign them for "free settlement" and give them land in the general vicinity of the place of confinement.
This implement was also inherited from the [[katorga]] system.
=== 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. Concealment of a previous imprisonment was a triable offence. Persons who served terms as "politicals" were nuisances for "[[First Department]]s" ({{lang|ru|Первый Отдел, ''Pervyj Otdel''}}, outlets of the [[secret police]] at all enterprises and institutions), because former "politicals" had to be monitored.
Many people released from camps were restricted from [[101 km|settling in larger cities]].
==Lack of prosecution==
It has often been asked why there has been nothing along the lines of the [[Nuremberg Trials]] for those guilty of atrocities at the Gulag camps. Two recent books, reviewed by Peter Rollberg in the ''Moscow Times''<ref name="prosecuting">[http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/01/21/110.html Prosecuting the Gulag], ''Moscow Times'', [[January 21]], [[2005]], retrieved [[18 January]] [[2007]].</ref>, cast some light on this. Tomasz Kizny's
''Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps 1917-1990'' details the history of the labour camps over the years while Oleg Khlevniuk's ''The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror'' presents records of confidential memos, official resolutions, individual testimonies and tabulated statistics. Rollberg explains how both books contribute to our understanding of why there were no post-Communism trials. "The gulag had already killed tens of thousands of its own most ardent killers. Again and again, yesterday's judges were declared today's criminals, so that Soviet society never had to own up to its millions of state-backed murders."
==Gulag memorials==
[[Image:GulagMemorial.jpg|thumb|The Gulag Memorial]]
The Memorial pictured below in [[St Petersburg]] is made of a boulder from the [[Solovki camp]] — the first prison camp in the Gulag system. People gather here every year on the [[Day of Victims of the Repression]] (October 30).
== Literature ==
* [[Anne Applebaum]], ''[[Gulag: A History]]'', Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pp., ISBN 0-7679-0056-1.
* [[Walter Ciszek]], ''With God in Russia'', Ignatius Press, 1997, 433 pp., ISBN 0-8987-0574-6.
* [[Nicolas Werth]], "A State Against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union, in [[Stephane Courtois]] et al., eds., ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'', Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-674-07608-7, pp. 33-260.
* [[Alexander Dolgun]], Patrick Watson, "Alexander Dolgun's story: An American in the Gulag", NY, Knopf, 1975, 370 pp., ISBN 978-0394494975.
* [[Simon Ertz]], ''Zwangsarbeit im stalinistischen Lagersystem: Eine Untersuchung der Methoden, Strategien und Ziele ihrer Ausnutzung am Beispiel Norilsk, 1935-1953'', Duncker & Humblot, 2006, 273 pp., ISBN 9783428118632.
* [[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 pp., ISBN 0-300-07772-6.
* [[Yevgenia Ginzburg|Eugenia Ginzburg]], ''Journey into the whirlwind'', Harvest/HBJ Book, 2002, 432 pp., ISBN 0156027518.
* [[Yevgenia Ginzburg|Eugenia Ginzburg]], ''Within the Whirlwind'', Harvest/HBJ Book, 1982, 448 pp., ISBN 0156976498.
* [[Gustaw Herling-Grudziński|Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski]], ''A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II'', Penguin, 1996, 284 pp., ISBN 0-14-025184-7.
* [[Paul Gregory]], [[Valery Lazarev]], eds, ''The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet Gulag'', Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8179-3942-3, full text available online at [http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/gulag.html "Hoover Books Online"]
* [[Oleg V. Khlevniuk]], <cite>The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror</cite>, Yale University Press, 2004, hardcover, 464 pp., ISBN 0-300-09284-9.
* [[Tomasz Kizny]], ''Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps 1917-1990'', Firefly Books Ltd., 2004, 496 pp., ISBN 1-55297-964-4.
* [[John H. Noble]], ''I Was a Slave in Russia'', Broadview, Illinois: Cicero Bible Press, 1961).
* [[Jacques Rossi]], ''The Gulag Handbook: An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Soviet Penitentiary Institutions and Terms Related to the Forced Labour Camps'', 1989, ISBN 1-55778-024-2.
* [[Varlam Shalamov]], ''Kolyma Tales'', Penguin Books, 1995, 528 pp., ISBN 0-14-018695-6.
* [[Danylo Shumuk]],
** <cite>Life sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian political prisoner</cite>, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Study, 1984, 401 pp., ISBN 978-0920862179.
** <cite>Za Chidnim Obriyam -(Beyond The Eastern Horizon)</cite>,Paris, Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1974, 447 pp.
* [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]]
**<cite>[[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]</cite>, Signet Classic, 158 pp., ISBN 0-451-52310-5.
**<cite>The Gulag Archipelago</cite>, Harper & Row, 660 pp., ISBN 0-06-080332-0.
**<cite>The Gulag Archipelago</cite>: Two, Harper & Row, 712 pp., ISBN 0-06-080345-2.
**<cite>The First Circle</cite>, Northwestern University Press, 580 pp., ISBN 978-0810115903.
* [http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/ Solzhenitsyn's], [http://lib.ru/PROZA/SHALAMOW/ Shalamov's], [http://lib.ru/PROZA/GINZBURG_E/ Ginzburg's] works at Lib.ru (in original Russian)
* ''Istorija stalinskogo Gulaga: konec 1920-kh - pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov; sobranie dokumentov v 7 tomach'', ed. by V. P. Kozlov et al., Moskva: ROSSPEN 2004-5, 7 vols. ISBN 5-8243-0604-4
* Chabua Amirejibi, გორა მბორგალი (''Gora Mborgali''). Tbilisi, Georgia: Chabua, 2001, 650 pp., ISBN 99940-734-1-9.
==See also==
*[[List of Gulag camps]]
*[[Kolyma]]
*[[101st kilometre]]
*[[Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)]]
*[[Population transfer in the Soviet Union]]
*[[Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union]]
*[[Mass graves in the Soviet Union]]
*[[Memorial (society)]]
*[[Kengir uprising]]
*[[Norilsk uprising]], an uprising in [[Norilsk]] "Gorlag" ([[mining]] camp), 1953
*Forced labor camps elsewhere
**[[The Vietnamese Gulag]]
**[[Extermination through labour]] ([[Nazi Germany]])
**[[Danube-Black Sea Canal]] ([[Communist Romania]])
**[[Katorga]] ([[Russian Empire]])
**[[Laogai]] ([[China]])
**[[The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot]]
=== Wikisource ===
*[[s:ru:Декрет ВЦИК Советов о лагерях принудительных работ|Decree about labor camps of 1919]] {{ru icon}}
*[[s:ru:Постановление СНК СССР от 11.07.29 об использовании труда уголовно-заключённых|A decree about penal labor, 1929]] {{ru icon}}
== References ==
{{reflist}}
== External links ==
{{commons|ГУЛАГ}}
* [http://gulaghistory.org GULAG: Many Days, Many Lives, Online Exhibit, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University]
* [http://www.osa.ceu.hu/gulag/ Gulag: Forced Labor Camps, Online Exhibition, Open Society Archives]
* [http://www.ieie.nsc.ru/~parinov/svecha/AG1.jpg Map of labour camps all over the USSR]
* [http://www.gulagmuseum.org/index_eng.htm Virtual Gulag Museum]
* [http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/gulag.html The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet Gulag (ed. by Paul Gregory, Valery Lazarev), Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003]
* [http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?parent_id=288285&word= Gulag prisoners at work, 1936-1937] Photoalbum at NYPL Digital Gallery
* [http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/gula.html The GULAG], Revelations from the Russian Archives at [[Library of Congress]]
* [http://www.realworldpictures.ca GULAG 113], Canadian documentary film about Estonians in the GULAG, website includes photos video.
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[[Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union]]
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