Work as Punishment
Punishing people through hard forced labor is not an invention of Soviet Russia. Even before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Tsarist Russia used a system called “Katorga”; however, the forced labor of convicts for the benefit of the state as a method of punishment was known and widespread even in the Roman Empire. The history of Russian katorga began to develop in the late 17th century and was initially linked to the expulsion of convicts.
It was only the Soviets who perfected this system into the lethally efficient form remembered by 20th-century history as the gulag.
The project for labor camps across the Soviet Union was developed in 1929 by Naftalij Frenkel, who personally presented the proposal to Stalin and gained his approval. Unlike, for example, the German extermination camps, the gulag represented camps that produced forced labor, with the main purpose of extracting cheap raw materials and constructing ambitious projects (such as digging the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Volga-Don Canal, building dams and railways, or constructing smelting plants in the Urals and Siberia).
Construction of the White Sea Canal, 1932:
People of the Gulag
Gulags were not only intended for citizens of the USSR; people of many other nationalities ended up there. Historians estimate the total number of gulag prisoners to be as high as 20 million, of whom approximately 2 million did not survive their time in the camps. The victims of the Soviet gulag included not only the nations of the USSR but also citizens of other countries – Czechoslovaks, Poles, Hungarians, French, Americans, and others. The prisoners interned here had no rights at all and were at the mercy of the guards. They suffered from a lack of quality food, clothing, and medical care.
From among the citizens of what was then Czechoslovakia, those individuals whom the communists deemed potentially “dangerous” were primarily dragged into labor gulags. They were accused in fabricated trials of treason or espionage and subsequently deported to inhospitable areas of the USSR.
For example, Bohumil Borecký, a legionnaire, officer of the Czechoslovak army, and resistance fighter during World War II, was arrested by State Security in June 1949, which handed him over to the NKVD authorities of the USSR. After being taken away from his homeland, he was accused of ordering the execution of five Bolsheviks during his service with the Czechoslovak legions. He was sentenced on March 25, 1950, under § 58 for armed anti-Soviet insurrection, organized attempts to seize power, and service in the Tsar’s secret police to death, which was later commuted to 25 years. He served his sentence in a Special Camp of the Ministry of State Security in eastern Siberia’s Tajšeti, where he also died.
Focusing solely on the area of Central Europe, historical documents clearly indicate that among the victims of the gulag, executions, and deportations were more than one million Germans, about 700,000 Poles, and over 20,000 Czechs, Slovaks, and other Czechoslovak citizens. During the entire existence of the USSR, at least 476 camp complexes were established, which housed thousands of individual camps. If you want more information and have half an hour, watch this video:
Development of the Gulag Camp System
According to the Gulag.Online website (source), the existence of these labor camps can be divided into the following stages:
1917: The Russian Bolshevik coup created a new type of criminal: the “class enemy,” who could be purposefully labeled as virtually anyone.
1918: Trotsky and Lenin considered the idea of establishing concentration camps for class enemies, where those punished would perform unskilled labor. Camps previously housing war prisoners released after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk were among those utilized. The administration of the camps was entrusted to the Cheka, the secret police, the predecessor of the NKVD and KGB.
1919: The Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a decree on the establishment of forced labor camps. The decree came into force on April 15, 1919.
1920: The first model camp of the future Gulag system was established in the White Sea area. The former Orthodox monastery on the Solovetsky Islands was gradually repurposed for this purpose. Initially, real political opponents of the Bolsheviks (members of anti-Bolshevik, especially left-wing political parties, intellectuals, and members of the “White” armies) were imprisoned here.
1923: The Solovetsky Islands became the center of the camp system in northern Russia, which was renamed the “Northern Special Purpose Camps.” They were referred to by the abbreviation SLON. At that time, it was the only camp complex managed by the state police GPU.
1929: Stalin introduced a program of rapid industrialization and five-year plans. The Politburo decided to establish a unified network of camps replacing the existing dual prison system for class enemies and criminal offenders. The secret police was tasked with managing the camps.
1931/2: The archipelago of camps grew where large economic projects were created, such as the canal from the White Sea to the Baltic Sea, gold mining in Kolyma, construction of communications, and in the second half of the 1930s, the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway, etc.
1934: The Main Camp Administration (Glavnoje upravlenije lagerej, GULAG – this abbreviation began to appear irregularly from 1930) was established under the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR, which took over the administration of practically all Soviet penitentiary facilities. The abbreviation of this administrative body later became a general term for Soviet prisons and camps (the Soviet prison system).
1936/8: The period of the Great Terror, initiated by Stalin. The purges primarily affected the highest leaders of the Communist Party, the army, state offices, and gulag leadership. Many people were executed, and the rest sent to camps, which could not manage the massive influx of prisoners. The mortality rate among prisoners rose to three times.
1939/40: The beginning of World War II brought both an influx of prisoners deported from territories newly occupied by the Soviet Union (eastern Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia) and the release of certain categories of prisoners for the needs of the Red Army.
1945: A new wave of arrests hits the ranks of the Red Army, former German prisoners of war, and ethnic minorities, including Soviet Jews.
1948/9: Stalin began the construction of new megalomaniac projects, such as the Volga-Don Canal, new power plants, dams, and communications. These include the Dead Track or the tunnel and railway to Sakhalin Island – both of which were halted immediately after Stalin’s death.
1953: Stalin dies, and Lavrentiy Beria briefly takes power, declaring an amnesty that primarily affects prisoners convicted of minor crimes while entirely ignoring political prisoners.
1954: Under Nikita Khrushchev, widespread releases occur, followed by a review of nearly four million political crime cases. This period is referred to as the thaw.
1957: Based on reforms, the gulag system is abolished. Many camps are closed. The economy of the USSR stops relying on the slave labor of prisoners.
1960: Political prisoners did not disappear, but their numbers decreased significantly, and dissidents are now imprisoned for genuine opposition to the regime. They are most often sent to labor camps in Mordovia or around Perm in the Urals. They also serve their sentences under horrendous conditions (hunger, diseases, rape), but the camps no longer have such a lethal form as in past periods. Many dissidents were forcibly placed in psychiatric hospitals, where they underwent cruel “treatment” procedures.
Map of the Locations of Gulag Correctional Labor Camps in the USSR
The World Learns About the Gulag
Western journalists wrote about the system of Soviet labor camps as early as the turn of the 20s and 30s of the 20th century. However, these facts did not particularly interest the general public, and moreover, the Soviet Union managed, through skillful cover-up maneuvers and propaganda tactics, to create the impression that it had abolished most labor camps (even though the number of camps and prisoners was actually rising steeply). New detailed information began to emerge only during the Khrushchev thaw at the end of the 1950s.
The subject became widely known only after the publication of works by Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose book The Gulag Archipelago is one of the most famous books describing the prison system of the Soviet Union. The author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, drew from his own imprisonment experience, extensive research, and contemporary authentic documents. The book was written between 1958 and 1968, published in the West in 1973, and circulated only in samizdat editions in Czechoslovakia before 1989 due to censorship. It was officially published in the Soviet Union in 1989.
The topic is now addressed by, for example, the Czech project Gulag.cz.
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