Encyclopedia
Gulag is an acronym for
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Glavnoye
Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh
Lagerey i kolonii", "The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies" of the
NKVD. Anne Applebaum, in her book
Gulag: A History, explains:
Terminology
Literally, the word GULAG is an acronym, meaning
Glavnoe
Upravlenie
Lagerei, or Main Camp Administration. Over time, the word "Gulag" has also come to signify not only the administration of the concentration camps but also the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women's camps, children's camps, transit camps. Even more broadly, "Gulag" has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the "meat-grinder": the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths.
Some authors refer to all prisons and camps throughout Soviet history as the
Gulags. Also, the term's modern usage is often notably unrelated to the USSR: for example, in such expressions as "". Note that the original Russian acronym , described not a single camp, but the government department in charge of the entire camp system. The word was also never used in Russian - officially or colloquially - as the predominant term either for the system of labor camps or for the individual camps, which are usually referred to in Russian as simply "the camps" or "the zone" .
The term "corrective labor camp" was suggested for official use by the politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union session of July 27, 1929, as a replacement of the term
concentration camp, commonly used until that time.
A colloquial name for a Soviet Gulag inmate was "
zeka", "
zek". In
Russian, "inmate", "incarcerated" is "???????????",
zakliuchyonnyi, usually abbreviated to '?/?' in paperwork, pronounced as '????' , gradually transformed into '???' and to '???'. The word is still in colloquial use, irrelevant to labour camps. '?/?' initially was an acronym standing for "??????????? ???????????????", "
zakliuchyonnyi
kanalostroitel'" , originating to the Volga-Don Canal slave workforce members. Later the term was backronymed to mean just "zakliuchyonnyi".
Variety
In addition to the most common category of camps that practiced hard physical labour and prisons of various sorts, other forms also existed.
- Sharashka 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.
- Psikhushka , the forced medical treatment in psychiatric imprisonment was used, in lieu of camps, to isolate and break down political prisoners. This practice became much more common after the official dismantling of the Gulag system. See Vladimir Bukovsky, Pyotr Grigorenko.
- Special camps or zones for children , for disabled , and for mothers with babies.
- Camps for "wives of traitors of Motherland" .
- 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, among other sites. Reports even state that Gulag prisoners were used in early nuclear tests in decontaminating radioactive areas and nuclear submarines.
History
From 1918 camp-type detention facilities were set up, as a reformed extension of earlier labour camps , operated in
Siberia as a part of the penal system in
Imperial Russia. The two main types were "
Vechecka Special-purpose Camps" and forced labor camps . 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.
The legal base and the guidance for the creation of the system of "corrective labor camps" , the backbone of what is commonly referred to as the "Gulag," was a secret decree of Sovnarkom of July 11 1929 about the utilization of penal labor , that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of Politburo meeting of June 27, 1929.
As an all-
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.
Creation of the GULAG system is widely attributed to the ingenuity of Naftaly Frenkel, a Turkish-born merchant with close ties with the
OGPU.
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 Terror , mostly arbitrary 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."
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. Nevertheless, the development of the camp system followed economic lines. The growth of the camp system coincided with the peak of the Soviet industrialization campaign. Hence, 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 1931–1932, the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 800,000 in camps and 300,000 in colonies , and in 1939 — about 1.3 millions in camps and 350,000 in colonies.
During
World War II, Gulag populations declined sharply, owing to 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 1942–1943. After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies again rose sharply, reaching approximately 2.5 million people by the early
1950s . While some of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also 339,000 Soviet citizens repatriated from DP camps in Germany charged with treason and aiding the enemy. Tens of thousands of these were eventually convicted and transferred to prison camps. Large numbers of civilians from Russian territories which came under foreign occupation and territories annexed by the
Soviet Union after the war were also sent there. It was not uncommon for the survivors of
Nazi camps to be transported directly to the Soviet labour camps. 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 , which resulted in hundreds of thousands of convictions to lengthy prison terms, not seldom on the basis of cases of petty theft or embezzlement.
For years after WWII, a significant minority of the inmates were
Balts and
Ukrainians from lands newly incorporated into the USSR, as well as Finns,
Poles,
Romanians and others.
POWs, in contrast, were kept in a separate camp system, which was managed by a separate main administration with the NKVD/MVD.
The state continued to maintain the camp system for a while after Stalin's death in March of 1953, although the period saw the grip of the camp authorities weaken and a number of conflicts and uprisings occur . The subsequent amnesty program was limited to those who had to serve at most 5 years, therefore mostly those convicted of common crimes were then freed. The release 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. Altogether, according to recent estimates on the basis of archival documents, about 18-20 million people had been prisoners in camps and colonies throughout the period of Stalinism at one point or another. 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 order 20 of January 25, 1960.
The total documentable deaths in the system of corrective-labor camps and colonies from 1930 to 1956 amount to 1,606,748, including political and common prisoners. This number does not include the more than 800,000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries" during the period of the "Great Terror", since they were mostly conducted outside the camp system and were accounted for separately. From 1932 to 1940, at least 390,000 peasants died in places of labor settlements. One may also assume that many of the survivors suffered permanent physical and psychological damage. Deaths at some camps are documented more thoroughly than those at others.
Conditions
Extreme production quotas, malnutrition, harsh elements, inadequate housing, hygiene, and medical care, as well as brutal treatment by camp officials, guards, and fellow prisoners were the major reasons for high fatality rates, which in extreme cases could be as high as 80%.
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 of ore per day, with quotas being pushed up by tufta , whereby more work would be reported than had actually been done either through bribery, good relations, sexual favours or deception. Failure to meet a quota resulted in a loss of vital rations . Lower rationing meant lower productivity, and this
vicious cycle usually had fatal consequences through a condition of being emaciated and devitalized, dubbed "dokhodiaga" , a term derived from the Russian verb "dokhodit" and roughly translated as "goners". However, the status of
dokhodyaga could also be reached despite having the status of
udarnik and receiving higher rations and other benefits such as better housing conditions. This is because the earned extra food often was insufficient to recompense the energy spent on the effort to fulfil the higher quotas, which exceeded the standard norms by 50% or more.
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 1,200
calories , mainly from low-quality bread distributed by weight. According to the
World Health Organization, the minimum requirement for a heavy labourer is in the range of 3,100–3,900 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
trustees skimmed off the medicines, clothing and foodstuffs.
Geography
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 enemies" and reintegrating them through labour into the Soviet society. Initially the inmates, the significant part being Russian intelligentsia, enjoyed relative freedom . Local newspapers and magazines were edited and even some scientific research was carried out . 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 , 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,
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 and in the south-eastern parts of the Soviet Union, mainly in the
steppes of
Kazakhstan . These were vast and uninhabited regions with no roads or sources of food, but rich in minerals and other natural resources . However, camps were generally spread throughout the entire
Soviet Union, including the European parts of
Russia,
Belarus, 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 initiate 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 village in this region registered the record low temperature of −71.2°C .
Influence
Culture
The Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet and East European history and affected millions of individuals. Its cultural impact was enormous.
Many eyewitness accounts of Gulag prisoners were published before WWII.
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 these times, immediately after World War II.
Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski 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. Written 10 years before Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it brought him an international acclaim .
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book
The Gulag Archipelago, probably the most powerful and certainly the most influential account of the ...
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, "Novij Mir", "New World", in November of 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 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
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 60's and 70's.
The memoirs of Alexander Dolgun,
Alexander 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 USSR 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.
Colonization
Soviet 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" outside the confinement of the camp. They were known as "free 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 offense. Persons who served terms as "politicals" were nuisances for "First Departments" , because former "politicals" had to be monitored.
Many people released from camps were restricted from settling in larger cities.
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 "free settlers". This decision was also influenced by the knowledge of the restrictions for them everywhere else. When many of the previously 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 to those who remained near the camps as free settlers.
Latest developments
Anne Applebaum's monograph described the releases of political prisoners from the camps as late as 1987. In November 1991 the Russian parliament, the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR, passed the
"Declaration of Rights and Freedoms of the Individual" which guaranteed theoretically, among other liberties, the right to disagree with the government.
References
- Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pp., ISBN 0-7679-0056-1.
- Stephane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, 858 pp., ISBN 0-674-07608-7.
- 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.
- Gustaw Herling, 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, full text available at
- Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, 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.
- 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.
- Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 660 pp., ISBN 0-06-080332-0.
- Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: Two, Harper & Row, 712 pp., ISBN 0-06-080345-2.
- , , works at Lib.ru
- 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
See also
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Wikisource
External links
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- Photoalbum at NYPL Digital Gallery
- "Moscow News"
- - Canadian film about Estonians in the GULAG
