Gulag (from the Russian ГУЛАГ: Главное Управление Исправительно-Трудовых Лагерей, "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey", "The Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps") was the branch of the Soviet internal police and security service (at various times named the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, MGB/MVD or KGB) that dealt with forced labor campss. A common name for an inmate was "zek" or "z/k" (from Russian "zaklyuchonny").
Exposed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago, the Gulag system was an example of some of the most brutal governmental activity against its own citizens in modern history.
After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 Lenin announced that any "class enemy" could not be trusted and should be treated worse than an ordinary criminal. The Gulag was a reformed extension of earlier labor camps (katorgas) operated in Siberia as a part of penal system in Imperial Russia, which quickly overflowed with the enemies of the people, a designation used by the Bolshevik government for corrupt officials, saboteurs, embezzlers, political enemies and dissidents.
Remote monasteries in particular were frequently reused as sites for new camps. Those on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea are most noteworthy, taking root in the late 1910s. One camp on the islands, "Solovki", gained notoriety for abuses and turned synonym for "torture" after 1918. New camps were constructed throughout the Soviet sphere of influence, including facilities in big cities such as Moscow. For example, the famous Moscow metropolitan was in large part built by prisoner labor.
Officially the Gulag was established on April 251930 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 were found en masse. Denunciations, quotas for arrest, summary executions, and secret police activity became widespread. The terror was legitimized by the Article 58, Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which gave the state virtually unlimited power over its citizens. The rapidly increasing need for natural resources and a booming industrialization program fueled a demand for cheap labor.
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". As a result of purges, 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 were in the prison ranks. By contrast,the US prisoner laborer population (on chain gangs and in prisons) remained in the region of a few hundred thousand prisoners.
During World War II, Gulag populations declined sharply due to mass releases of hundreds of thousands of prisoners, who were sent directly to military service, but also due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942-43. After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies rose again and reached a number of approximately 2.5 million people in the early 1950s. While many of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also countless repatriated Russian prisoners of war who had served with honor. They were universally suspected of fraternizing with and aiding the enemy.
A big part of the post-war contingent were Germans, Poles, Romanians and other POW s. It was not uncommon for survivors of Nazi death camps to be transported to the Soviet labor camps.
The Communist leadership continued to sponsor Gulag for a while after Stalin's death. Large numbers of non-political prisoners were released in 1953 during the months after Stalin's death. Mass releases and rehabilitations of political prisoners started in 1954 and continued after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism 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 was officially eliminated by the order 44-16 of Presidium of Supreme Council of the USSR, to reemerge as the KGB.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica 2004 edition, "Western scholarly estimates of the total number of deaths in the Gulag in the period from 1918 to 1956 range from 15 to 30 million."
Not all the camps in Siberia were heavily fortified; in fact some 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, they began aiding authorities in the capture of Gulag inmates.
Extreme production quotas were a major reason for the Gulag's brutality. In a Gulag mine, one person's production quota might be as high as 29,000 pounds of ore per day. Failure to meet a quota resulted in a loss of vital rations, a cycle that often ended with fatal consequences. Administrators routinely stole from camp stockpiles for personal gain, as well as to curry favor to avoid the Gulag themselves. As a result, inmates were forced to work even harder to make up the difference. Administrators and trusties (inmates with limited power) skimmed off the most nutritious foods and medicines, leaving little if at all for the camp population.
A unique form of Gulag camps called sharashka (шарашка) were in fact secret research laboratories, where anonymous scientists were developing new technologies, and also conducting basic research.
The Gulag, by building upon a form of slave labor, was a manifestation of the rise to power of an totalitarian form of rule in the presence of war and economic depression. As it spanned nearly four decades of Soviet culture and affected millions of individuals, the impact of Gulag has been enormous.
It 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) such as Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich and Alexander Gorodnitsky, none of whom incidentally ever served time in the camps, describe life inside the Gulag.
The memoirs of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, Eugenia Ginzburg, among other books became a symbol of defiance in Soviet society. The writings, particularly those of Solzhenitsyn, harshly chastized 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 and human rights movements, Helsinki Accords.
Exposed by