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'{{Other uses}} [[File:Gulag Location Map.svg|400px|thumb|A map of the Gulag camps, which existed between 1923 and 1961, based on data from [[Memorial (society)|Memorial]], a [[human rights group]]. Some of these camps operated only for a part of the Gulag's existence.]] {{Soviet Union sidebar}} The '''Gulag''' ({{lang-rus|ГУЛАГ|GULAG|ɡʊˈlak|ru-Gulag.ogg}}) was the [[government agency]] that administered the main [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[forced labor|forced]] [[labor camp]] systems during the [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] era, from the 1930s until the 1950s. The first such camps were created in 1918 and the term is widely used to describe any forced labor camp in the USSR.<ref>Other Soviet penal labor systems not formally included in GULag were: (a) camps for the [[prisoners of war]] captured by the [[Soviet Union]], administered by [[GUPVI]] (b) filtration camps created during [[World War II]] for temporary detention of Soviet [[Ostarbeiter]]s and prisoners of war while they were being screened by the security organs in order to "filter out" the black sheep, (c) "[[special settlement]]s" for [[internal exile]]s including "[[kulaks]]" and [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|deported ethnic minorities]], such as [[Volga Germans]], Poles, Balts, Caucasians, [[Crimean Tatars|Crimean Tartar]]s, and others. During certain periods of Soviet history, each of these camp systems held millions of people. Many hundreds of thousand were also sentenced to forced labor without imprisonment at their normal place of work. (Applebaum, pages 579-580)</ref> While the camps housed a wide range of [[convict]]s, from petty criminals to [[political prisoner]]s, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as [[NKVD troika]]s and other instruments of [[extrajudicial punishment]] (the [[NKVD]] was the Soviet secret police). The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of [[political repression in the Soviet Union]], based on [[Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)]]. The term is also sometimes used to describe big hairy men ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) "GULAG" was the [[acronym]] for '''''Г'''ла́вное '''у'''правле́ние '''лаг'''ере́й'' ('''''G'''lavnoye '''u'''pravleniye '''lag'''erey''), the "Main Camp Administration". It was the short form of the official name ''Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний'' (''Glavnoye upravleniye ispravityelno-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy''), the "Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements". It was administered first by the [[State Political Directorate|GPU]], later by the [[NKVD]] and in the final years by the [[MVD]], the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The first corrective labour camps after the revolution were established in 1918 ([[Solovki prison camp|Solovki]]) and legalized by a decree "On creation of the forced-labor camps" on 15 April 1919. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching population of 100,000 in the 1920s and from the very beginning it had a very high mortality rate.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/gula.html | title=Letter To the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) | date=1926-12-14 | accessdate=2015-04-15 | author=G. Zheleznov, Vinogradov, F. Belinskii}}</ref> Forced labor camps continued to function outside of the agency until late 80's ([[Perm-36]] closed in 1988). A number of Soviet dissidents described the continuation of the Gulag after it was officially closed: [[Anatoli Marchenko]] (who actually died in a camp in 1986), [[Vladimir Bukovsky]], [[Yuri Orlov]], [[Nathan Shcharansky]], all of them released from the Gulag and given permission to emigrate in the West, after years of international pressure on Soviet authorities. [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], who spent eleven years in the Gulag, winner of the 1970 [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], gave the term its international repute with the publication of ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to "a chain of islands" and as an eyewitness described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death.<ref name="Applebaum 2003">[[Anne Applebaum|Applebaum, Anne]] (2003) ''[[Gulag: A History]].'' [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]]. ISBN 0-7679-0056-1</ref> Many scholars concur with this view,<ref>[[Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev]]. ''A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia.'' [[Yale University Press]], 2002. ISBN 0-300-08760-8 [http://books.google.com/books?id=ChRk43tVxTwC&pg=PA15&dq=architect+of+the+gulag+system&lr=&ei=H860SrWnI4OAywTHjKyADw#v=onepage&q=architect%20of%20the%20gulag%20system&f=false p. 15]</ref><ref>[[Steven Rosefielde]]. ''[[Red Holocaust (2009 book)|Red Holocaust]].'' [[Routledge]], 2009. ISBN 0-415-77757-7 pg. 247: ''"They served as killing fields during much of the Stalin period, and as a vast pool of cheap labor for state projects."''</ref> though some argue that the Gulag was less substantial than it is often presented,<ref name="GRZ">Getty, Rittersporn, Zemskov. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence. The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 1017-1049</ref> although during much of its history mortality was high.<ref name="Applebaum 2003">[[Anne Applebaum|Applebaum, Anne]] (2003) ''[[Gulag: A History]].'' [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]]. ISBN 0-7679-0056-1. Quote: "Nevertheless, the Soviet camp system as a whole was not deliberately organized to mass produce corpses–even if, at times, it did." p. xxxix</ref> In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates (colloquially referred to as simply "camps") and 423 labor colonies in the USSR.<ref name="GRZ"/> Today's major industrial cities of the [[Russian Arctic]], such as [[Norilsk]], [[Vorkuta]], and [[Magadan]], were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.arlindo-correia.org/041003.html |title=Gulag: a History of the Soviet Camps |publisher=Arlindo-correia.org |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> Unlike the concentration camp system of [[Nazi Germany]], the Gulag did not have [[death camps]], in the sense of deliberate "death-inducing camps" established to murder a whole segment of the population.<ref>Stephen Wheatcroft. "The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45", ''Europe-Asia Studies'', Vol. 48, No. 8 (Dec., 1996), pp. 1319-1353</ref> Rather, Gulag camps could be described as "locations which had different degrees of death inducement [in the form of starvation, disease, etc.] at different times".<ref>Norman Davies. "Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory" (2006), pp. 328-329</ref> ==Brief history== [[File:Gulag Prisoner Stats 1934-1953.PNG|thumb|400px|Gulag prisoner population statistics from 1934 to 1953<ref>{{Wayback |date=20081228031043 |url=http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Staljin/articles/AHR/AHR.html }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema06.php |title=Демографические потери от репрессий |publisher=Demoscope.ru |date= |accessdate=2011-12-19}}</ref>]] About 14 million people were in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953 (the estimates for the period 1918-1929 are even more difficult to be calculated). A further 6–7 million were [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union#Timeline|deported and exiled]] to remote areas of the USSR, and 4–5 million passed through labor colonies, plus 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labor settlements'.<ref name="ConquestGRZ">Robert Conquest in [http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/CNQ-Victims_Stalinism.pdf "Victims of Stalinism: A Comment."] ''Europe-Asia Studies,'' Vol. 49, No. 7 (Nov., 1997), pp. 1317-1319 states: "We are all inclined to accept the Zemskov totals (even if not as complete) with their 14 million intake to Gulag 'camps' alone, to which must be added 4-5 million going to Gulag 'colonies', to say nothing of the 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labor settlements'. However taken, these are surely 'high' figures." There are reservations to be made. For example, we now learn that the Gulag reported totals were of capacity rather than actual counts,leading to an underestimate in 1946 of around 15%. Then as to the numbers 'freed': there is no reason to accept the category simply because the MVD so listed them, and, in fact, we are told of 1947 (when the anecdotal evidence is of almost no one released) that this category concealed deaths: 100000 in the first quarter of the year'</ref> According with some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953.<ref name="GRZ"/> According with other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465,000 were political prisoners.<ref>"Repressions". Publicist.n1.by. Retrieved 2009-01-06.</ref> The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the formal distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. GUPVI was the Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees (Russian: Главное управление по делам военнопленных и интернированных НКВД/МВД СССР, ГУПВИ, GUPVI), a department of NKVD (later MVD) in charge of handling of foreign civilian internees and POWs in the Soviet Union during and in the aftermath of World War II (1939–1953). (for [[GUPVI]], see [[Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees]]). In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=9539851382536|title=H-Net Reviews|publisher=}}</ref> Its major function was the organization of foreign [[forced labor in the Soviet Union]]. The top management of GUPVI came from GULAG system. The major noted distinction from GULAG was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both camp systems were similar: hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, high mortality rate<ref>http://www.memo.ru/HISTORY/POLAcy/g_3.htm</ref> For the Soviet political prisoners, like [[Solzhenitsyn]], all foreign civilian detainees and foreign POWs were imprisoned in the GULAG; the surviving foreign civilians and POWs considered themselves as prisoners in the GULAG. According with the estimates, in total, during the whole period of the existence of GUPVI there were over 500 POW camps (within the Soviet Union and abroad), which imprisoned over 4,000,000 POW.<ref>MVD of Russia: An Encyclopedia (МВД России: энциклопедия), 2002, ISBN 5-224-03722-0, p.541</ref> According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934–53 (there is no archival data for the period 1918-1934).<ref name="GRZ"/> However, taking into account frequently dubious record keeping, and the fact that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or on the point of death,<ref name="Ellman_SRS">Michael Ellman. [http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments.] ''Europe-Asia Studies'', Vol. 54, No. 7 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1151-1172</ref><ref name="Applebaum583">[[Anne Applebaum|Applebaum, Anne]] (2003) ''[[Gulag: A History]].'' [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]]. ISBN 0-7679-0056-1 pg 583: "both archives and memoirs indicate that it was common practice in many camps to release prisoners who were on the point of dying, thereby lowering camp death statistics."</ref> independent estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher. Some estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953,<ref name="Rosefielde7677">[[Steven Rosefielde]]. ''[[Red Holocaust (2009 book)|Red Holocaust]].'' [[Routledge]], 2009. ISBN 0-415-77757-7 pg. 67 ''"...more complete archival data increases camp deaths by 19.4 percent to 1,258,537"''; pg 77: ''"The best archivally based estimate of Gulag excess deaths at present is 1.6 million from 1929 to 1953." ''</ref> while other estimates go beyond 10 million.<ref>Robert Conquest, Preface, ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment: 40th Anniversary Edition'', Oxford University Press, USA, 2007. p. xvi</ref> Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of political prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time.<ref name="gulag2">{{cite web|url=http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag2.html |title=Repressions |publisher=Publicist.n1.by |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> Petty crimes and jokes about the Soviet government and officials were punishable by imprisonment.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/crimes.php |title=What Were Their Crimes? |publisher=Gulaghistory.org |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref><ref>Uschan, M. ''Political Leaders''. Lucent Books. 2002.</ref> About half of political prisoners in the Gulag camps were imprisoned [[By administrative means|without trial]]; official data suggest that there were over 2.6 million sentences to imprisonment on cases investigated by the secret police throughout 1921–53.<ref name="organy1">{{cite web|url=http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_organy1.html |title=Repressions |publisher=Publicist.n1.by |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> The GULAG was reduced in size following [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]’s death in 1953. In 1960 the [[Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del]] (MVD) ceased to function as the Soviet-wide administration of the camps in favor of individual republic MVD branches. The centralized detention facilities temporarily ceased functioning.<ref>[http://penpolit.ru/author-item+M5cd00dd4488.html ]{{dead link|date=December 2011}}</ref><ref>[http://www.nwtc.edu/Archives/LaborCamps05-30.htm News Release: Forced labor camp artifacts from Soviet era on display at NWTC]{{Dead link|date=January 2009}}</ref> ==Contemporary usage and other terminology== [[File:The fence at the old GULag in Perm-36.JPG|thumb|240px|The fence at the old Gulag in [[Perm-36]], founded in 1943]] Although the term ''Gulag'' originally referred to a government agency, in English and many other languages the acronym acquired the qualities of a common noun, denoting ''the Soviet system of [[prison]]-based, [[unfree labor]]''. <blockquote>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.<ref name="anneapplebaum">{{cite web| url = http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag/intro.html | title = GULAG: a history| accessdate = 2007-12-21 | author = Anne Applebaum|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20071013124127/http://anneapplebaum.com/gulag/intro.html |archivedate = October 13, 2007}}</ref></blockquote> Western authors use ''Gulag'' to denote all the prisons and internment camps in the Soviet Union. The term's contemporary usage is notably unrelated to the USSR, such as in the expression “[[Human rights in North Korea#Internment camps for political prisoners|North Korea's Gulag]]”<ref>{{cite web | title=The Hidden Gulag – Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps| work=The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea| url= http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_HiddenGulag2_Web_5-18.pdf | accessdate=2012-09-20}}</ref> for camps operational today.<ref name="guardianunlimitedkorea">{{cite news | 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 = 2004-02-01 | publisher = Guardian Unlimited | location=London }}</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''}}), usually 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. ==History== ===Background=== [[File:V.M. Doroshevich-Sakhalin. Part I. Prisoners on Steamship of Voluntary Fleet.png|thumb|Group of prisoners in [[Sakhalin]], remote prison island, c. 1903]] During 1920–50, the leaders of the Communist Party and Soviet state considered repression as a tool for securing the normal functioning of the Soviet state system, as well as preserving and strengthening positions of their social base, the working class (when the Bolsheviks took power, peasants represented 80% of the population).<ref name="Земсков">{{cite journal|last=Земсков|first=Виктор|title=ГУЛАГ (историко-социологический аспект)|journal=Социологические исследования|year=1991|issue=№ 6,7|url=http://scepsis.ru/library/id_937.html|accessdate=14 August 2011}}</ref> GULAG system was introduced to isolate and eliminate class-alien, socially dangerous, disruptive, suspicious, and other disloyal elements, whose deeds and thoughts were not contributing to the strengthening of the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]].<ref name="Земсков"/> According to historian [[Anne Applebaum]], approximately 6,000 [[katorga]] convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916.<ref name="Applebaum 2003"/><ref>"[http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/books/review/11MINERT.html {{-'}}Gulag': The Other Killing Machine]". ''The New York Times''. May 11, 2003.</ref> 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 VChK''}}) and forced labor camps ({{lang|ru|лагеря принудительных работ, ''lagerya prinuditel'nikh rabot''}}). Various categories of prisoners were defined: petty criminals, POWs of the [[Russian Civil War]], officials accused of corruption, sabotage and embezzlement, political enemies, dissidents and other people deemed dangerous for the state. In 1928 there were 30,000 individuals interned; the authorities were opposed to compelled labour. In 1927 the official in charge of prison administration wrote: <blockquote> The exploitation of prison labor, the system of squeezing ‘golden sweat’ from them, the organization 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 Labor in Soviet Russia'', London 1948, p. 153.</ref></blockquote> The legal base and the guidance for the creation of the system of "corrective labor camps" ({{lang-ru|исправи́тельно-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]] that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of [[Politburo]] meeting of June 27, 1929. {{Citation needed|date=June 2013}} After having appeared as an instrument and place for isolating counterrevolutionary and criminal elements, the Gulag, because of its principle of “correction by forced labor”, quickly became, in fact, an independent branch of the national economy secured on the cheap labor force presented by prisoners.<ref name="Земсков"/> Hence it is followed by one more important reason for the constancy of the repressive policy, namely, the state's interest in unremitting rates of receiving the cheap labor force that was forcibly used mainly in the extreme conditions of the east and north.<ref name="Земсков"/> The Gulag possessed both punitive and economic functions.<ref name="Ellman">{{cite journal|last=Ellman|first=Michael|title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|year=2002|volume=54|issue=2|pages=1151–1172|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf|accessdate=14 August 2011|doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177}}</ref> ===Formation and expansion under Stalin=== 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.&nbsp;248 dated April 7, 1930. It was renamed as the Gulag in November of that year.<ref name="memo"/> 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. Michael Jakobson, ''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. Galina M. Ivanova, ''Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Totalitarian System'', Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 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.{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}} 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. The plan to achieve these goals with "[[Forced settlements in the Soviet Union|special settlements]]" instead of labor camps was dropped after the revealing of the [[Nazino affair]] in 1933, subsequently the Gulag system was expanded.{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}} [[File:Belomorkanal.png|left|thumb|Prisoner labor at the construction of the [[White Sea – Baltic Canal]], 1931–33]] The 1931–32 archives indicate the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 800,000 in camps and 300,000 in colonies (annual averages).<ref name=Kozlov /> In the early 1930s, a tightening of Soviet penal policy caused significant growth of the prison camp population.{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}} During the [[Great Purge]] of 1937–38, mass arrests caused another increase in inmate numbers. Hundreds of thousands of persons 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 No. 00447]], tens of thousands of Gulag inmates were executed in 1937–38 for "continuing counterrevolutionary activities". Between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased more than eight times, and the number of prisoners with high education increased five times.<ref name="Земсков"/> It resulted in their increased share in the overall composition of the camp prisoners.<ref name="Земсков"/> Among the camp prisoners, the number and share of the intelligentsia was growing at the quickest pace.<ref name="Земсков"/> Distrust, hostility, and even hatred for the intelligentsia was a common characteristic of the Soviet leaders.<ref name="Земсков"/> Information regarding the imprisonment trends and consequences for the intelligentsia, derives from the extrapolations of [[Viktor Zemskov]] from a collection of prison camp population movements data.<ref name="Земсков"/><ref>{{cite web|title=Таблица 3. Движение лагерного населения ГУЛАГа|url=http://scepsis.net/library/misc/id-937_table3.html}}</ref> ===During World War II=== {{Repression in the Soviet Union}} [[File:Kolyma road00.jpg|thumb|Road construction by inmates of the ''[[Dalstroy]]'' (part of the '[[Road of Bones]]' from Magadan to Yakutsk).]] ====Political role of the Gulag==== On the eve of [[World War II]], Soviet archives indicate a combined camp and colony population upwards of 1.6 million in 1939, according to V. P. Kozlov.<ref name=Kozlov>See for example ''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> [[Anne Applebaum]] and [[Steven Rosefielde]] estimate that 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in Gulag system's prison camps and colonies when the war started.<ref name="rosenf">{{cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=L4s1H9v2yOwC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=gulag+population&source=bl&ots=1dI_8IlFub&sig=4F1DU0JHZ4YoGjp8ceznXM5Wals&hl=en&ei=odm0Tbn7Jo7EsAOHwdTzCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&sqi=2&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=gulag%20population&f=false|title=The Russian economy: from Lenin to Putin| first= Steven |last=Rosefielde}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url= http://books.google.com/books?id=8fIfmxAs_T0C&pg=PA446&lpg=PA446&dq=gulag+total+population&source=bl&ots=K8v68ALmEi&sig=PE8I4S5DjCEgyrgF60xC-RMH0Q8&hl=en&ei=H-G0TfnyFIqosQP-m733Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=gulag%20total%20population&f=false|title=Gulag: a history |first= Anne |last= Applebaum}}</ref> After the [[Invasion of Poland|German invasion of Poland]] that marked the start of World War II in Europe, the [[Soviet invasion of Poland|Soviet Union invaded and annexed eastern parts]] of the [[Second Polish Republic]]. In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied [[Estonia]], [[Latvia]], [[Lithuania]], [[Bessarabia]] (now the Republic of Moldova) and [[Bukovina]]. According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens<ref>Franciszek Proch, Poland's Way of the Cross, New York 1987 P.146</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/poland_WWII_casualties.htm |title=Project In Posterum |publisher=Project In Posterum |date= |accessdate=2011-12-19}}</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 and antistate (espionage, terrorism) crimes in USSR in 1939–41 was 211,106.<ref name="organy1"/> Approximately 300,000 [[Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union (after 1939)|Polish prisoners of war]] were captured by the USSR during and after the [[Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)|'Polish Defensive War']].<ref name="PWN_KW">[[Internetowa encyklopedia PWN|Encyklopedia PWN]] [http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/33490_1.html 'KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939'], last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language</ref> Almost all of the captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers were then murdered (see [[Katyn massacre]]) or sent to Gulag.<ref name="Chodakiewicz">{{en icon}} {{Cite book| author =[[Marek Jan Chodakiewicz]] | coauthors = | title =Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939–1947 | year =2004 | editor = | pages = | chapter = | chapterurl = | publisher =Lexington Books | location = | isbn =0-7391-0484-5| url = | accessdate = }}</ref> Of the 10,000-12,000 Poles sent to [[Kolyma]] in 1940–41, most [[prisoners of war]], only 583 men survived, released in 1942 to join the [[Polish Armed Forces in the East]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://my.telegraph.co.uk/beanbean/beanbean/4054641/A_Polish_life_5_Starobielsk_and_the_transSiberian_railway/ |title=A Polish life. 5: Starobielsk and the trans-Siberian railway |author=beanbean |date=2008-05-02 |work=[[My Telegraph]] |publisher= |accessdate=2012-05-08 |location=London}}</ref> Out of [[Władysław Anders|General Anders]]' 80,000 evacuees from Soviet Union gathered in Great Britain only 310 volunteered to return to Soviet-controlled Poland in 1947.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wajszczuk.v.pl/english/drzewo/czytelnia/michael_hope.htm |first= Michael |last=Hope |title=Polish deportees in the Soviet Union |publisher=Wajszczuk.v.pl |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> During the [[Great Patriotic War]], Gulag populations declined sharply due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. In the winter of 1941 a quarter of the Gulag's population died of [[starvation]].<ref>[http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag-a-history/ GULAG: a History], Anne Applebaum</ref> 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941–43.<ref>Zemskov, ''Gulag'', Sociologičeskije issledovanija, 1991, No. 6, pp. 14-15.</ref><ref name="gulag1">{{cite web|url=http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag1.html |title=Repressions |publisher=Publicist.n1.by |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> In 1943, the term ''[[katorga]] works'' (каторжные работы) was reintroduced. They were initially intended for [[Collaboration with the Axis Powers 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"/> ====Economic role of the Gulag==== Up until WWII, the Gulag system expanded dramatically to create a Soviet “camp economy”. Right before the war, forced labor provided 46.5% of the nation's [[nickel]], 76% of its [[tin]], 40% of its [[cobalt]], 40.5% of its chrome-iron ore, 60% of its gold, and 25.3% of its timber.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ivanova|first=Galina Mikhailovna|title=Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System|year=2000|publisher=Sharpe|location=Armonk, NY|pages=69–126}}</ref> And in preparation for war, the NKVD put up many more factories and built highways and railroads. The Gulag quickly switched to production of arms and supplies for the army after the war began. At first, transportation remained a priority. In 1940, the NKVD focused most of its energy on railroad construction.<ref name=khlev>{{cite book| last= Khevniuk |first= Oleg V.|title=The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror|year=2004|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=236–286}}</ref> This would prove extremely important in the face of the German advance. In addition, factories converted to produce ammunition, uniforms, and other supplies. Moreover, the NKVD gathered skilled workers and specialists from throughout the Gulag into 380 special colonies which produced tanks, airplanes, armaments, and ammunition.<ref name="Ivanova: labor camps">{{cite book|last=Ivanova|first=Galina Mikhailovna|title=Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System|year=2000|publisher=Sharpe|location=Armonk, NY|pages=69–126}}</ref> Despite its cheapness, the camp economy suffered from serious flaws. For one, actual productivity almost never matched estimates, because the estimates were far too optimistic. In addition, scarcity of machinery and tools plagued the camps, and the tools that the camps did have quickly broke. The Eastern Siberian Trust of the Chief Administration of Camps for Highway Construction destroyed ninety-four trucks in just three years.<ref name="Ivanova: labor camps" /> But the greatest problem was simple – forced labor is by nature less efficient than free labor. In fact, prisoners in the Gulag were, on average, half as productive as free laborers in the USSR at the time,<ref name="Ivanova: labor camps" /> which may be explained by malnutrition. To make up for this disparity, the NKVD worked prisoners harder than ever. To meet rising demand, prisoners worked longer and longer hours, and on lower food rations than ever before. A camp administrator said in a meeting, “There are cases when a prisoner is given only four or five hours out of twenty-four for rest, which significantly lowers his productivity.” Or, in the words of a former Gulag prisoner: “By the spring of 1942, the camp ceased to function. It was difficult to find people who were even able to gather firewood or bury the dead.”<ref name="Ivanova: labor camps" /> The scarcity of food stemmed in part from the general strain on the entire Soviet Union, but also lack of central aid to the Gulag during the war. The central government focused all its attention on the military, and left the camps to their own defenses. In 1942 the Gulag set up the Supply Administration to find their own food and industrial goods. During this time, not only was food scarce, the NKVD limited rations in an attempt to motivate the prisoners to work harder for more food, a policy that lasted until 1948.<ref name=ebacon>{{cite book|last=Bacon|first=Edwin|title=The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives|year=1994|publisher=New York University Press|location=New York, NY|pages=42–63, 82–100, 123–144}}</ref> In addition to food shortages, the Gulag suffered from labor scarcity in the beginning of the war. The Great Terror had provided a large supply of free labor, but by the start of WWII the purges had slowed down. In order to complete all of their projects, camp administrators moved prisoners from project to project.<ref name=khlev /> To improve the situation, laws were implemented in mid-1940 that allowed short camp sentences (4 months or a year) to be given to those convicted of petty theft, hooliganism, or labor discipline infractions. By January 1941, the Gulag workforce had increased by approximately 300,000 prisoners.<ref name=khlev /> But in 1942 the serious food shortages began, and camp populations dropped again. The camps lost still more prisoners to the war effort. Many laborers received early releases so that they could be drafted and sent to the front.<ref name=ebacon /> Even as the pool of workers shrank, demand continued to grow rapidly. As a result, the Soviet government pushed the Gulag to “do more with less”. With less able-bodied workers and few supplies from outside the camp system, camp administrators had to find a way to maintain production. The solution they found was to push the remaining prisoners still harder. The NKVD employed a system of setting unrealistically high production goals, straining resources in an attempt to encourage higher productivity. Labor resources were further strained as the German armies pushed into Soviet territory, and many of the camps were forced to evacuate Western Russia. From the beginning of the war to halfway through 1944, 40 camps were created, and 69 were disbanded. In these evacuations, machinery received priority, leaving prisoners to reach safety on foot. Due to the speed of [[Operation Barbarossa]]’s advance, not all laborers could be evacuated in time, and many were [[NKVD prisoner massacres|massacred by the NKVD to prevent them from falling into German hands]]. While this practice denied the Germans a source of free labor, it also further restricted the Gulag’s capacity to keep up with the Red Army’s demands. When the tide of the war turned however, and the Soviets pushed the Germans back, the camps were replenished with fresh laborers. As the Red Army recaptured territories from the Germans, an influx of Soviet POW’s greatly increased the Gulag population.<ref name=ebacon /> ===After World War II=== <!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Labor camp.jpg|thumb|Upper Debin Camp, painted by former prisoner [[Nikolai Getman]].]] --> [[File:Transpolar Railway between Salekhard and Nadym.jpg|thumb|[[Salekhard–Igarka Railway|Transpolar Railway]] was a project of the Gulag system that took place from 1947 to 1953.]] 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 in Europe ended in May 1945, as many as two million former Russian citizens were [[Operation Keelhaul|forcefully repatriated 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">{{cite web|url=http://www.fff.org/freedom/0895a.asp |title=Repatriation - The Dark Side of World War II |publisher=Fff.org |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> One interpretation of this agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets. [[United Kingdom|British]] and [[United States|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 the Russian Empire and established different citizenship years before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945–47.<ref name="forced">{{cite web|url=http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=1988&month=12 |title=Forced Repatriation to the Soviet Union: The Secret Betrayal |publisher=Hillsdale.edu |date=1939-09-01 |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> Multiple sources state that [[German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war|Soviet POW]]s, on their return to the Soviet Union, were treated as [[traitor]]s (see [[Order No. 270]]).<ref name="warlords">{{cite web|url=http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/t-z/warlords1stalin.html |title=The warlords: Joseph Stalin |publisher=Channel4.com |date=1953-03-06 |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref><ref name="remembrance">{{cite web|url=http://www.stsg.de/main/zeithain/geschichte/gedenken/index_en.php |title=Remembrance (Zeithain Memorial Grove) |publisher=Stsg.de |date=1941-08-16 |accessdate=2009-01-06}} {{Dead link|date=September 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/world_war_2/3037296.html |title=Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of World War II |publisher=Historynet.com |date=1941-09-08 |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</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">{{cite web|url=http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3063246.html |title=Sorting Pieces of the Russian Past |publisher=Hoover.org |date=2002-10-23 |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref><ref name="brutality">{{cite news|url=http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/patriots-ignore-greatest-brutality/2007/08/12/1186857342382.html?page=2 |title=Patriots ignore greatest brutality |publisher=Smh.com.au |date=2007-08-13 |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref><ref name="moreorless">{{cite web|url=http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/stalin.html |title=Joseph Stalin killer file |publisher=Moreorless.au.com |date=2001-05-23 |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> However, that 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 percent were cleared, and about 8 percent were arrested or condemned to penal battalions. 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 persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, the major part of the population of these camps were cleared by NKVD and either sent home or conscripted (see table for details).<ref name="ZemscovRep">Земсков В.Н. К вопросу о репатриации советских граждан. 1944-1951 годы // История СССР. 1990. № 4 (Zemskov V.N. On repatriation of Soviet citizens. Istoriya SSSR., 1990, No.4</ref> 226,127 out of 1,539,475 POWs were transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the Gulag.<ref name="ZemscovRep"/><ref>(“Военно-исторический журнал” (“Military-Historical Magazine”), 1997, №5. page 32)</ref> {| class="wikitable" |- !Results of the checks and the filtration of the repatriants (by 1 March 1946)<ref name="ZemscovRep"/> |- |Category ||Total || % || Civilian|| % ||POWs || % |- |Released and sent home (this figure included those who died in custody) || 2,427,906 || 57.81 || 2,146,126 || 80.68 || 281,780 || 18.31 |- |Conscripted || 801,152 || 19.08 || 141,962 || 5.34 || 659,190 || 42.82 |- |Sent to labour battalions of the Ministry of Defence || 608,095 || 14.48 || 263,647 || 9.91 || 344,448 || 22.37 |- |Sent to NKVD as ''spetskontingent'' (i.e. sent to GULAG) || '''272,867''' || '''6.50''' || '''46,740''' || '''1.76''' || '''226,127''' || '''14.69''' |- |Were waiting for transportation and worked for Soviet military units abroad || 89,468 || 2.13 || 61,538 || 2.31 || 27,930 ||1.81 |- |Totally: ||4,199,488 || || 2,660,013 || || 1,539,475 || |- |} After [[Nazi Germany]]'s defeat, [[NKVD special camps|ten NKVD-run "special camps"]] subordinate to the Gulag were set up in the [[Soviet Occupation Zone]] of [[Allied Occupation Zones in Germany|post-war Germany]]. These "special camps" were former [[Stalag]]s, prisons, or [[Nazi concentration camps]] such as [[Sachsenhausen concentration camp|Sachsenhausen (special camp number 7)]] and [[Buchenwald|Buchenwald (special camp number 2)]]. According to German government estimates "65,000 people died in those Soviet-run camps or in transportation to them."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6D61131F937A1575AC0A964958260&sec=&spon=&scp=13&sq=Sachsenhausen&st=cse Germans Find Mass Graves at an Ex-Soviet Camp] New York Times, September 24, 1992</ref> According to German researchers, Sachsenhausen, where 12,500 Soviet era victims have been uncovered, should be seen as an integral part of the Gulag system.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEFDA163EF934A25751C1A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 Ex-Death Camp Tells Story Of Nazi and Soviet Horrors] New York Times, December 17, 2001</ref> [[File:Magadan seen from mountain.jpg|thumb|220px|During the Stalin era, [[Magadan]] was a major transit center for prisoners sent to the [[Kolyma]] camps.]] For years after World War II, a significant{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}} portion of the inmates were [[Ukrainians]], [[Belarusians]], [[Lithuanians]], [[Latvians]] and [[Estonians]] from lands newly incorporated into the Soviet Union, as well as [[Finns]], [[Poles]], [[Volga Germans]], [[Romanians]] and others.{{Citation needed|date=October 2008}} POWs, 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]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2008}} 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 465,000 were political prisoners.<ref name="gulag1"/> 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]]; [[Vorkuta 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. The ''Gulag'' institution was closed by the [[MVD (Russia)|MVD]] order No 020 of 25 January 1960<ref name="memo">[[Memorial (society)|Memorial]] http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/GULAG/r1/r1-4.htm</ref> but forced labor colonies for political and criminal prisoners continued to exist. Political prisoners continued to be kept in one of the most famous camps [[Perm-36]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.russianmuseums.info/M3029 |title=The museum of history of political repressions "Perm-36"}}</ref> until 1987 when it was closed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://rt.com/news/gulag-memorial-museum-perm-955/ |title=Gulag revisited: Barbed memories |year=2012 |publisher=Russia Today}}</ref> (See also [[Foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union]]) The Russian penal system, despite reforms and a reduction in prison population, informally or formally continues many of practices endemic to the ''Gulag'' system, including forced labor, inmates policing inmates, and prisoner intimidation.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21588130-russias-prison-colonies-resemble-old-soviet-camps-slave-labour-and-criminal-cultures |title=Slave labour and criminal cultures |publisher=The Economist |date=2013-10-19}}</ref> ==Conditions== [[File:Canal Mer Blanche.jpg|thumb|left|The [[White Sea–Baltic Canal]] was the first major project constructed in the Soviet Union using forced labor.]] 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 meager food rations, inadequate clothing, overcrowding, poorly insulated housing, poor hygiene, and inadequate health care. Most prisoners were compelled to perform harsh physical labor.<ref>[http://www.jamestown.org/getman_paintings.php?painting_id=29 The Gulag Collection: Paintings of Nikolai Getman]{{Dead link|date=January 2009}}</ref> 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.{{Citation needed|date=February 2014}} [[Andrei Vyshinsky]], procurator of the Soviet Union, wrote a memorandum to [[NKVD]] chief [[Nikolai Yezhov]] in 1938 which stated: <blockquote> Among the prisoners there are some so ragged and liceridden that they pose a sanitary danger to the rest. These prisoners have deteriorated to the point of losing any resemblance to human beings. Lacking food . . . they collect orts [refuse] and, according to some prisoners, eat rats and dogs.<ref>Jonathan Brent. ''Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia.'' Atlas & Co., 2008 (ISBN 0977743330) pg. 12 [http://atlasandco.com/images/uploads/samples/pdf/InsideStalinArchives-web.pdf Introduction online] ([[PDF]] file)</ref></blockquote> 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 individual sentences, 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 movement|Stakhanovites]] in Soviet parlance).<ref name="borodkin">Leonid Borodkin and Simon Ertz 'Forced Labor 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> [[File:Shack from Gulag - Museum of the Occupation of Latvia.JPG|thumb|Shack from Gulag - reconstruction in [[Museum of the Occupation of Latvia]]]] 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 work harder, 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.{{Citation needed|date=February 2014}} 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: *"[[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: "[[thieves in law]]" *People sentenced for various [[political prisoner|political]] and religious reasons. 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 1930–53 is at least 1.76 million, about half of which occurred between 1941–43 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://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300092844 "The History of the GULAG"], by [[Oleg V. Khlevniuk]]</ref> If prisoner deaths from labor colonies and special settlements are included, the death toll rises to 2,749,163, although the historian who compiled this estimate (J. Otto Pohl) stresses that it is incomplete, and doesn't cover all prisoner categories for every year.<ref name="Applebaum583"/><ref>Pohl, ''The Stalinist Penal System'', p. 131.</ref> Other scholars have stressed that internal discrepancies in archival material suggests that the NKVD Gulag data are seriously incomplete.<ref name="Rosefielde7677"/> Adam Jones wrote: <blockquote> It was these Siberian camps, devoted either to gold-mining or timber harvesting, that inflicted the greatest toll in the Gulag system. Such camps “can only be described as extermination centres,” according to Leo Kuper. The camp network that came to symbolize the horrors of the Gulag was centered on the Kolyma gold-fields, where “outside work for prisoners was compulsory until the temperature reached −50C and the death rate among miners in the goldfields was estimated at about 30 percent per annum.<ref>Adam Jones (2010). "''Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction''". Taylor & Francis. p.195. ISBN 0-415-48618-1</ref></blockquote> ===Social conditions=== {{Refimprove section|date=February 2014}} [[File:Воркута, Юршор Памятник погибшим эстонцам.jpg|thumb|[[Vorkuta Gulag]]]] The convicts in such camps were actively involved in all kinds of labor with one of them being [[logging]] (''lesopoval''). The working territory of logging presented by itself a square and was surrounded by forest clearing. Thus, all attempts to exit or escape from it were well observed from the four towers set at each of its corners. When investigating the shooting of these "escaping" prisoners, the position of the dead body was usually the only factor considered{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}}. That the body would lie with its feet to the camp and its head away from it was considered sufficient evidence of an escape attempt. As a result, it was common practice for the guards to simply adjust the position of the body after killing a "runner" to ensure that the killing would be declared justified.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} There is some evidence that money rewards were given to any guards who shot an escaping prisoner, but the official rules (as seen below) state guards were fined if they shot escaping prisoners.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} Locals who captured a [[Fugitive|runaway]] were given rewards.<ref>"[http://www.jamestown.org/aboutus/getmanpaintings/getmancatalog/ Nikolai Getman: The Gulag Collection]"</ref> It is also said that Gulags in colder areas were less concerned with finding escaped prisoners as they would die anyhow from the severely cold winters. Prisoners who did escape without getting shot were often found dead kilometres away from the camp. ==Geography== {{further|List of Gulag camps}} {{Refimprove section|date=September 2007}} [[File:Ru200008020027.jpg|thumb|Part of 'Project 503' to build a railroad from [[Salekhard]] to [[Igarka]] near [[Turukhansk]] on the [[Yenisey]]]] [[File:ArkhipelagGulag.jpg|250px|left|thumb|Detailed Russian map of all camps in the 1950s, since "Memorial" foundation.]] In the early days of Gulag, the locations for the camps were chosen primarily for the isolated conditions involved. 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.<ref name="Applebaum 2003"/> The [[colloquial]] name for the islands, "[[Solovki prison camp|Solovki]]", entered the [[vernacular]] as a [[synonym]] for the labor camp in general. It was presented to the world as an example of the new Soviet method for "re-education of [[class enemy|class enemies]]" and reintegrating them through labor into Soviet society. Initially the inmates, largely Russian [[intelligentsia]], enjoyed relative freedom (within the natural confinement of the islands). Local newspapers and magazines were published and even some scientific research was carried out (e.g., a local botanical garden was maintained but unfortunately later lost completely). Eventually Solovki turned into an ordinary Gulag camp; in fact some historians maintain that it was a pilot camp of this type. In 1929 [[Maxim Gorky]] visited the camp and published an apology for it. The report of Gorky’s trip to Solovki was included in the cycle of impressions titled “Po Soiuzu Sovetov,” Part V, subtitled “Solovki.” In the report, Gorky wrote that “camps such as ‘Solovki’ were absolutely necessary.”<ref name=Yedlin>{{cite book|last=Yedlin|first=Tova|title=Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography|year=1999|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=0-275-96605-4|pages=188 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Zxt5_vI_ozcC&pg=PA188}}</ref> 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 the [[White Sea-Baltic Canal]] or the [[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, [[World War II|war-time]] and post-war periods were fulfilled on the backs of convicts. The activity of Gulag camps spanned a wide cross-section of Soviet industry. [[Image:Yagoda kanal Moskva Volga.jpg|thumb|180px|left|[[Genrikh Yagoda]] (middle) inspecting the construction of the [[Moscow Canal|Moscow-Volga canal]].]] The majority of Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of northeastern Siberia (the best known clusters are ''[[Sevvostlag]]'' (''The North-East Camps'') along [[Kolyma]] river and ''[[Norillag]]'' near [[Norilsk]]) and in the southeastern parts of the Soviet Union, mainly in the [[steppe]]s of [[Kazakhstan]] (''[[Luglag]]'', ''[[Steplag]]'', ''[[Peschanlag]]''). A very precise map was made by the Memorial Foundation.<ref>Map of Gulag, made by the Memorial Foundation on: [http://www.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://www.g-to-g.com/picts/user/repressed/mapgulag_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.g-to-g.com/showpict.php%3Fpict%3D/repressed/mapgulag_1.jpg%26at%3DCorrective%2520Labor%2520Camps%2520%28GULAG%29%2520map%2520%281:%252025%2520000%2520000%29%2520-%2520by%2520Magazine%2520Map%2520and%2520Ryazan%2520Memorial%2520Society%26caption%3DCorrective%2520Labor%2520Camps%2520%28GULAG%29%2520map%2520%281:%252025%2520000%2520000%29%253CBR%253Eby%2520Magazine%2520Map%2520and%2520Ryazan%2520Memorial%2520Society&usg=__HktMeLxUyIicCykfQtiNhzBMdvI=&h=1020&w=1516&sz=150&hl=fr&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=22GAI-e-k3ouhM:&tbnh=147&tbnw=227&ei=M0XqTa3EFISV8QPN7-WPAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3DGulag%2Bmap%26hl%3Dfr%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:fr:official%26biw%3D1108%26bih%3D615%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=795&vpy=97&dur=4204&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=153&ty=97&page=1&ndsp=13&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0&biw=1108&bih=615].</ref> 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]], and [[Ukraine]]. There were several camps outside the Soviet Union, in [[Czechoslovakia]], [[Hungary]], [[Poland]], and [[Mongolia]], which were under the direct control of the Gulag. Not all camps were fortified; 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 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.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} Further, if an escaping prisoner was shot, guards could be fined amounts that were often equivalent to one or two weeks wages.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} [[File:Talkessel von Werchojansk.JPG|thumb|Siberian taiga in the river valley near [[Verkhoyansk]]. The lowest temperature recorded there was −68°C (−90°F).]] In some cases, teams of inmates were dropped off in new territory with a limited supply of resources and left to set up a new camp or die. Sometimes it took several waves of colonists before any one group survived to establish the camp.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} 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&nbsp;°C (−96&nbsp;°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. Throughout the [[history of the Soviet Union]], there were at least 476 separate camp administrations.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.memo.ru/history/nkvd/gulag/gulag3.htm |title=Система исправительно-трудовых лагерей в СССР |publisher=Memo.ru |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref><ref name="Ivanova 2000">{{cite book|last1=Ivanova|first1=Galina|last2=Flath|first2=Carol|last3=Raleigh|first3=Donald|title=Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System|year=2000|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|location=London|isbn=0-7656-0426-4|pages=188|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=q3y8D69IyG4C&pg=PA188}}</ref> The Russian researcher Galina Ivanova stated that, <blockquote>"to date, Russian historians have discovered and described 476 camps that existed at different times on the territory of the USSR. It is well known that practically every one of them had several branches, many of which were quite large. In addition to the large numbers of camps, there were no less than 2,000 colonies. It would be virtually impossible to reflect the entire mass of Gulag facilities on a map that would also account for the various times of their existence."<ref name="Ivanova 2000"/></blockquote> Since many of these existed only for short periods, the number of camp administrations at any given point was lower. It peaked in the early 1950s, when there were more than 100 camp administrations across the Soviet Union. Most camp administrations oversaw several single camp units, some as many as dozens or even hundreds.<ref name="Anne Applebaum — Inside the Gulag">[http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2000/06_15_nyrb_gulag.html Anne Applebaum — Inside the Gulag]{{Dead link|date=January 2009}}</ref> The infamous complexes were those at [[Kolyma]], [[Norilsk]], and [[Vorkuta]], all in arctic or subarctic regions. However, prisoner mortality in Norilsk in most periods was actually lower than across the camp system as a whole.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939423_75.pdf |title=Coercion versus Motivation: Forced Labor in Norilsk |format=PDF |date= |accessdate=2009-01-06}}</ref> ==Special institutions== * 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: ''ChSIR, Chlyen sem'i izmennika Rodini''}}). * ''[[Sharashka]]'' ({{lang|ru|шарашка}}) 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. ==Historiography== ===Archival documents=== Statistical reports made by the [[OGPU]]-[[NKVD]]-[[Ministry for State Security (USSR)|MGB]]-[[MVD]] between the 1930s and 1950s are kept in the [[State Archive of the Russian Federation]] formerly called Central State Archive of the October Revolution (CSAOR). These documents were highly classified and inaccessible. Amid [[glasnost]] and [[democratization]] in the late 1980s, [[Viktor Zemskov]] and other Russian researchers managed to gain access to the documents and published the highly classified statistical data collected by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD and related to the number of the Gulag prisoners, special settlers, etc. In 1995, Zemskov wrote that foreign scientists have begun to be admitted to the restricted-access collection of these documents in the State Archive of the Russian Federation since 1992.<ref name="К вопросу">{{cite journal|last=Земсков|first=Виктор|title=К вопросу о масштабах репрессий в СССР|journal=Социологические исследования|year=1995|issue=№ 9|pages=118–127|url=http://scepsis.ru/library/id_957.html|accessdate=20 August 2011}}</ref> However, only one historian, namely Zemskov, was admitted to these archives, and later the archives were again “closed”, according to Leonid Lopatnikov.<ref name="Лопатников">{{cite journal|last=Лопатников|first=Леонид|title=К дискуссиям о статистике "Большого террора"|journal=Вестник Европы|year=2009|issue=№ 26–27|url=http://magazines.russ.ru/vestnik/2009/26/ll28.html|accessdate=20 August 2011}}</ref> While considering the issue of reliability of the primary data provided by corrective labor institutions, it is necessary to take into account the following two circumstances. On the one hand, their administration was not interested to understate the number of prisoners in its reports, because it would have automatically led to a decrease in the food supply plan for camps, prisons, and corrective labor colonies. The decrement in food would have been accompanied by an increase in mortality that would have led to wrecking of the vast production program of the Gulag. On the other hand, overstatement of data of the number of prisoners also did not comply with departmental interests, because it was fraught with the same (i.e., impossible) increase in production tasks set by planning bodies. In those days, people were highly responsible for non-fulfilment of plan. It seems that a resultant of these objective departmental interests was a sufficient degree of reliability of the reports.<ref name="Репрессии">{{cite journal|last=Земсков|first=Виктор|title=Политические репрессии в СССР (1917–1990 гг.).|journal=Россия XXI|year=1994|issue=№ 1–2|pages=107–124|url=http://kob.rv.ua/doki-dai/dotu/other/zemskov/zemskov_politrepressii(1917-1990).pdf|accessdate=17 August 2011}}</ref> Between 1990 and 1992, the first precise statistical data on the Gulag based on the Gulag archives were published by [[Viktor Zemskov]].<ref name="Rousso, Golsan">{{cite book|last1=Rousso|first1=Henry|authorlink1=Henry Rousso|last2=Golsan|first2=Richard|title=Stalinism and nazism: history and memory compared|year=2004|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=0-8032-9000-4|page=92|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=CIt7fMp30sAC&printsec=frontcover#PPA92,M1}}</ref> These had been generally accepted by leading Western scholars,<ref name="ConquestGRZ"/><ref name=Ellman_SRS /> despite the fact that a number of inconsistencies were found in this statistics.<ref name= Vishnevsky/> It is also necessary to note that not all conclusion drawn by Zemskov based on his data had been generally accepted. Thus, Sergei Maksudov noted that although the literary sources, for example the books of [[Lev Razgon]] or [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], did not envisage the total number of the camps very well and markedly exaggerated their size. On the other hand, Viktor Zemskov, who published many documents by the NKVD and [[KGB]], is very far from understanding of the Gulag essence and the nature of socio-political processes in the country. Without distinguishing the degree of accuracy and reliability of certain figures, without making a critical analysis of sources, without comparing new data with already known information, Zemskov absolutizes the published materials by presenting them as the ultimate truth. As a result, his attempts to make generalized statements with reference to a particular document, as a rule, do not hold water.<ref name="Максудов">{{cite journal|last=��аксудов|first=Сергей|title=О публикациях в журнале "Социс"|journal=Социологические исследования|year=1995|issue=№ 9|pages=114–118|url=http://scepsis.ru/library/id_956.html|accessdate=17 August 2011}}</ref> [[File:Frenkel2.jpg|thumb|[[OGPU]] chiefs responsible for construction of the White Sea − Baltic Canal: Right: [[Naftaly Frenkel|Frenkel]]; Center: [[Matvei Berman|Berman]]; Left: Afanasev (Head of the southern part of BelBaltLag).]] In response, Zemskov wrote that the charge that Zemskov allegedly did not compare new data with already known information could not be called fair. In his words, the trouble with most western writers is that they do not benefit from such comparisons. Zemskov added that when he tried not to overuse the juxtaposition of new information with “old” one, it was only because of a sense of delicacy, not to once again psychologically traumatize the researchers whose works used incorrect figures, as it turned out after the publication of the statistics by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD.<ref name="К вопросу"/> According to French historian [[Nicolas Werth]], the mountains of the materials of the Gulag archives, which are stored in funds of the [[State Archive of the Russian Federation]] and are being constantly exposed during the last fifteen years, represent only a very small part of bureaucratic prose of immense size left over the decades of “creativity” by the dull and reptile organization managing the Gulag. In many cases, local camp archives, which had been stored in sheds, barracks, or other rapidly disintegrating buildings, simply disappeared in the same way as most of the camp buildings did.<ref name="Werth">{{cite journal|last=Werth|first=Nicolas|title=Der Gulag im Prisma der Archive. Zugänge, Erkenntnisse, Ergebnisse|url=http://dl.oe.dgo-online.org/issues/dl/0706de.pdf|journal=Osteuropa|date=June 2007|volume=57|issue=6|pages=9–30}}</ref> In 2004 and 2005, some archival documents were published in the edition ''Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh — Pervaya Polovina 1950-kh Godov. Sobranie Dokumentov v 7 Tomakh'' (''The History of Stalin’s Gulag. From the Late 1920s to the First Half of the 1950s. Collection of Documents in Seven Volumes'') wherein each of its seven volumes covered a particular issue indicated in the title of the volume: the first volume has the title ''Massovye Repressii v SSSR'' (''Mass Repression in the USSR''),<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 1|year=2004|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=5-8243-0605-2}}</ref> the second volume has the title ''Karatelnaya Sistema. Struktura i Kadry'' (''Punitive System. Structure and Cadres''),<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 2. Карательная система. Структура и кадры|year=2004|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=5-8243-0606-0}}</ref> the third volume has the title ''Ekonomika Gulaga'' (''Economy of the Gulag''),<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 3. Экономика Гулага|year=2004|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=5-8243-0607-9}}</ref> the forth volume has the title ''Naselenie Gulaga. Chislennost i Usloviya Soderzhaniya'' (''The Population of the Gulag. The Number and Conditions of Confinement''),<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 4. Население Гулага. Численность и условия содержания|year=2004|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=5-8243-0608-7}}</ref> the fifth volume has the title ''Specpereselentsy v SSSR'' (''Specsettlers in the USSR''),<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 5. Спецпереселенцы в СССР|year=2004|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=978-5-8243-0608-8}}</ref> the sixth volume has the title ''Vosstaniya, Bunty i Zabastovki Zaklyuchyonnykh'' (''Uprisings, Riots, and Strikes of Prisoners''),<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 6. Восстания, бунты и забастовки заключенных|year=2004|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=5-8243-0610-9}}</ref> the seventh volume has the title ''Sovetskaya Pepressivno-karatelnaya Politika i Penitentsiarnaya Sistema. Annotirovanniy Ukazatel Del GA RF'' (''Soviet Repressive and Punitive Policy. Annotated Index of Cases of the SA RF'').<ref>{{cite book|title=История сталинского Гулага. Конец 1920-х — первая половина 1950-х годов. Собрание документов в 7 томах. Том 7. Советская репрессивно-карательная политика и пенитенциарная система. Аннотированный указатель дел ГА РФ|year=2005|publisher=Российская политическая энциклопедия|location=Москва|isbn=978-5-8243-0611-8}}</ref> The edition contains the brief introductions by the two “patriarchs of the Gulag science”, [[Robert Conquest]] and [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], and 1431 documents, the overwhelming majority of which were obtained from funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation.<ref name="Полян">{{cite journal|last=Полян|first=Павел|title=Новые карты архипелага ГУЛАГ|journal=Неприкосновенный запас|year=2006|issue=№2 (46)|url=http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2006/2/po32.html|pages=277–286|accessdate=20 August 2011}}</ref> ===History of Gulag population estimates=== During the decades before the dissolution of the USSR, the debates about the population size of GULAG failed to arrive at generally accepted figures; wide-ranging estimates have been offered,<ref name="Bacon">Edwin Bacon. Glasnost' and the Gulag: New Information on Soviet Forced Labour around World War II. ''Soviet Studies'', Vol. 44, No. 6 (1992), pp. 1069-1086</ref> and the bias toward higher or lower side was sometimes ascribed to political views of the particular author.<ref name="Bacon"/> Some of those earlier estimates (both high and low) are shown in the table below. The final estimates of the Gulag population will be available only when all the Soviet archives will be opened. {| class="wikitable" |- |+Historical estimates of the GULAG population size (in chronological order) |- |GULAG population || Year the estimate was made for ||Source|| Methodology |- |15 million || 1940-42 || Mora & Zwiernag (1945)<ref>Cited in David Dallin and Boris Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 59-62.</ref> || -- |- |2.3 million || December 1937 || Timasheff (1948)<ref>N. S. Timasheff. The Postwar Population of the Soviet Union. ''American Journal of Sociology'', Vol. 54, No. 2 (Sep., 1948), pp. 148-155</ref> || Calculation of disenfranchised population |- |Up to 3.5 million || 1941 || Jasny (1951)<ref>Naum Jasny. Labor and Output in Soviet Concentration Camps. ''Journal of Political Economy'', Vol. 59, No. 5 (Oct., 1951), pp. 405-419</ref> || Analysis of the output of the Soviet enterprises run by NKVD |- |50 million || total number of persons<br>passed through GULAG|| Solzhenitsyn (1975)<ref name=GARCH>Solzhenitsyn, A. ''The Gulag Archipelago Two'', Harper and Row, 1975. Estimate was through 1953.</ref> || Analysis of various indirect data, <br>including own experience and testimonies of numerous witnesses |- |16 million || 1938 || Antonov-Ovseenko (1980)<ref>Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, Portret tirana (New York: Khronika, 1980), p. 387</ref> || This author confused monthly average with annual figures thereby producing estimates 12 times too high.<ref>Michael Ellman. Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54, No. 7 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1151-1172)</ref> |- |4-5 million || 1939 || Wheatcroft (1981)<ref>S. G. Wheatcroft. On Assessing the Size of Forced Concentration Camp Labour in the Soviet Union, 1929-56. ''Soviet Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), pp. 265-295</ref> || Analysis of demographic data.{{ref|ros_note|a}} |- |10.6 million || 1941 || Rosefielde (1981)<ref>Steven Rosefielde. An Assessment of the Sources and Uses of Gulag Forced Labour 1929-56. ''Soviet Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 51-87</ref> || Based on data of Mora & Zwiernak and annual mortality.{{ref|ros_note|a}} |- |5.5-9.5 million || late 1938 || Conquest (1991)<ref>Robert Conquest. Excess Deaths and Camp Numbers: Some Comments. ''Soviet Studies'', Vol. 43, No. 5 (1991), pp. 949-952</ref> || 1937 Census figures, arrest and deaths<br> estimates, variety of personal and literary sources.{{ref|ros_note|a}} |- |4-5 million || every single year || Volkogonov (1990s)<ref name=Rappaport>Rappaport, H. Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO Greenwood. 1999.</ref> || |- |colspan="6" style="text-align: center;" |a.{{note|ros_note}}''Note: Later numbers from Rosefielde, Wheatcroft and Conquest were revised down by the authors themselves.''<ref name="ConquestGRZ"/><ref name="rosenf" /> |} [[File:Захоронения 1953 года на ш. Юр-Шор.jpg|thumb|Yurshor, Vorkuta area]] Political reforms in the USSR in late 1980s ("glastnost'") and subsequent dissolution of the USSR had led to release of a large amount of formerly classified archival documents,<ref>Andrea Graziosi. The New Soviet Archival Sources. Hypotheses for a Critical Assessment. ''Cahiers du Monde russe'', Vol. 40, No. 1/2, Archives et nouvelles sources de l'histoiresoviétique, une réévaluation / Assessing the New Soviet Archival Sources (Jan. - Jun., 1999),pp. 13-63</ref> including new demographic and NKVD data.<ref name=Ellman_SRS /> Analysis of the official GULAG statistics by Western scholars immediately demonstrated that, despite their inconsistency, they do not support previously published higher estimates.<ref name="Bacon"/> Importantly, the released documents made possible to clarify terminology used to describe different categories of forced labour population, because the use of the terms "forced labour", "GULAG", "camps" interchangeably by early researchers led to significant confusion and resulted in significant inconsistencies in the earlier estimates.<ref name="Bacon"/> Archival studies revealed several components of the NKVD penal system in the Stalinist USSR: prisons, labor camps, labor colonies, as well as various "settlements" (exile) and of non-custodial forced labour.<ref name="GRZ"/> Although most of them fit the definition of forced labour, only labour camps, and labour colonies were associated with punitive forced labour in detention.<ref name="GRZ"/> Forced labour camps ("GULAG camps") were hard regime camps, whose inmates were serving more than three-year terms. As a rule, they were situated in remote parts of the USSR, and labour conditions were extremely hard there. They formed a core of the GULAG system. The inmates of "corrective labour colonies" served shorter terms; these colonies were located in less remote parts of the USSR, and they were run by local NKVD administration.<ref name="GRZ"/> Preliminary analysis of the GULAG camps and colonies statistics (see the chart on the right) demonstrated that the population reached the maximum before the World War II, then dropped sharply, partially due to massive releases, partially due to wartime high mortality, and then was gradually increasing until the end of Stalin era, reaching the global maximum in 1953, when the combined population of GULAG camps and labour colonies amounted to 2,625,000.<ref name="Anatoly Vishnevsky">[http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema05.php "The Total Number of Repressed"], by [[Anatoly Vishnevsky]], Director of the Center for Human Demography and Ecology, [[Russian Academy of Sciences]], {{ru icon}}</ref> The results of these archival studies convinced many scholars, including [[Robert Conquest]]<ref name="ConquestGRZ"/> or Stephen Wheatcroft to reconsider their earlier estimates of the size of the GULAG population, although the 'high numbers' of arrested and deaths are not radically different from earlier estimates.<ref name="ConquestGRZ"/> Although such scholars as Rosefielde or Vishnevsky point at several inconsistencies in archival data,<ref name= Vishnevsky>Vishnevsky, Alantoly. Демографические потери от репрессий (The Demographic Loss of Repression), Demoscope Weekly, December 31, 2007, [http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema06.php retrieved] 13 Apr 2011</ref> it is generally believed that these data provide more reliable and detailed information that the indirect data and literary sources available for the scholars during the Cold War era.<ref name=Ellman_SRS /> These data allowed scholars to conclude that during the period of 1928–53, about 14 million prisoners passed through the system of GULAG ''labour camps'' and 4-5 million passed through the ''labour colonies''.<ref name="ConquestGRZ"/> Thus, these figures reflect the number of convicted persons, and do not take into account the fact that a significant part of Gulag inmates had been convicted more than one time, so the actual number of convicted is somewhat overstated by these statistics.<ref name=Ellman_SRS /> From other hand, during some periods of Gulag history the official figures of GULAG population reflected the camps' capacity, not the actual amount of inmates, so the actual figures were 15% higher in, e.g. 1946.<ref name="ConquestGRZ"/> ==Influence== {{Refimprove section|date=December 2010}} ===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 (writer)|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. [[File:Getman collage.jpg|thumb|right|210px|Ukrainian prisoner [[Nikolai Getman]] who spent the years 1945-1953 in Siberia, records his testimony in pictures rather than words.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jamestown.org/aboutus/getmanpaintings/getmancatalog/ |title=Nikolai Getman: The Gulag Collection |publisher=The Jamestown Foundation |date= |accessdate=2012-04-29}}</ref>]] 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 have been published: * [[Varlam Shalamov]]'s ''[[The Kolyma Tales|Kolyma Tales]]'' is a short-story collection, cited by most major works on the Gulag, and widely considered one of the main Soviet accounts. * [[Victor Kravchenko (defector)|Victor Kravchenko]] wrote ''I Chose Freedom'' after defecting to the [[United States]] in 1944. As a leader of industrial plants he had encountered forced labor camps in across the Soviet Union from 1935 to 1941. He describes a visit to one camp at [[Kemerovo]] on the [[Tom River]] in Siberia. Factories paid a fixed sum to the [[KGB]] for every convict they employed. * [[Anatoli Granovsky]] wrote ''I Was an NKVD Agent'' after [[Defection|defecting]] to [[Sweden]] in 1946 and included his experiences seeing gulag prisoners as a young boy, as well as his experiences as a prisoner himself in 1939. Granovsky's father was sent to the gulag in 1937. * [[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 labor 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 of Ivan Denisovich'' but was rejected and later published abroad in 1968. * [[János Rózsás]], Hungarian writer, often referred to as the Hungarian Solzhenitsyn, wrote many books and articles on the issue of the Gulag. *[[Zoltan Szalkai]], Hungarian documentary filmmaker made several films of gulag camps. * [[Karlo Štajner]], a Croatian communist active in the former [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]] and manager of [[Comintern Publishing House]] in Moscow 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 titled ''7000 days in Siberia''. * ''Dancing Under the Red Star'' by [[Karl Tobien]] (ISBN 1-4000-7078-3) tells the story of Margaret Werner, an 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), by 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. They were interned due to their American citizenship for about eight years c. 1946–55. * [[Yevgenia Ginzburg]] wrote two famous books of her remembrances, ''Journey Into the Whirlwind'' and ''Within the Whirlwind''. *[[Savić Marković Štedimlija]], pro-[[Croatia]]n Montenegrin ideologist and [[Ustasha]] regime collaborator. Caught on the run in [[Austria]] by the [[Red Army]] in 1945, he was sent to the USSR and spent ten years in Gulag. After release, Marković wrote autobiographic account in two volumes titled ''Ten years in Gulag'' (''Deset godina u Gulagu'', Matica crnogorska, Podgorica, Montenegro 2004). * [[Sławomir Rawicz]]'s book, ''The Long Walk'' is a controversial account of his escape from the gulag during [[World War II]]. * [[Anița Nandriș-Cudla]]'s book, ''20 Years in Siberia [20 de ani în Siberia]'' is the own life's account written by a Romanian peasant woman from Bucovina (Mahala village near Cernăuți) who managed to survive the harsh, forced labour system together with her three sons. Together with her husband and the three under aged children, she was deported from Mahala village to the Soviet Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, at the Polar Circle, with no trial or even communicated accusation. The same night of 12th to 13 June 1941, (that is before the breakout of the Second World War), overall 602 fellow villagers were arrested and deported, without any prior notice. Her mother had the same sentence but was spared from deportation after the fact she was paraplegic was acknowledged by authorities. As later discovered, the reason for deportation and forced labour was the fake and nonsensical heads that, allegedly, her husband had been mayor in the Romanian administration, politician and rich peasant, none of the later being at least true. Separated from her husband, she brought up the three boys, overcame typhus, scorbutus, malnutrition, extreme cold and harsh toils, to later return to Bucovina after rehabilitation. Her manuscript was written toward the end of her life, in the simple and direct language of a peasant with 3 years of school education, and was secretly brought to Romania before the fall of Romanian communism, in 1982. Her manuscript was first published in 1991. Deportation was shared mainly with Romanians from Bucovina and Basarabia, Finnish and Polish prisoners, as token that Gulag labour camps had also been used for shattering/ extermination of the natives in the newly occupied territories of the Soviet Union. ====Movies and television==== *[http://realworldpictures.ca/GULAG_113/ '' GULAG 113'' (documentary)] *''[[As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me]]'' *''Gulag'' (1985), U.S. [[Showtime (TV network)|Showtime]] film *''[[I Am David]]'' (2003 U.S., 2004 U.K.) *''[[The Edge (2010 film)|The Edge]] (2010) *''[[Lost in Siberia]]'' *''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067530/ One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]'' *''[[My Way (2011 film)|My Way]]'' (2001) *''[[The Way Back]]'' *''[http://www.docsonline.tv/doc/533 Agapitova and the rescued ones]''documentary film by Dzintra Geka (2009) *''[[Within the Whirlwind]]'' (2009) ===Colonization=== [[File:Vorkuta r.jpg|thumb|The city of [[Vorkuta]]]] Soviet [[wikisource:Об использовании труда уголовно-заключенных|state documents]] show that the goals of the gulag included 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. The gulag inherited this approach from the [[katorga]] system. It is estimated that of the 40,000 people collecting state pensions in [[Vorkuta Gulag|Vorkuta]], 32,000 are trapped former gulag inmates, or their descendants.<ref>Robert Conquest, Paul Hollander: Political violence: belief, behavior, and legitimation p.55, Palgrave Macmillan;(2008) ISBN 978-0-230-60646-3</ref> ===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 [[101st kilometre|settling in larger cities]]. ==Gulag memorials== [[File:GulagMemorial.jpg|thumb|Memorial in [[St. Petersburg, Russia|St. Petersburg]]]] <!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Magadan, 09.06 019.jpg|220px|right|thumb|''[[Mask of Sorrow]]'' monument in the Russian Far Eastern city of [[Magadan]], in memory of the Gulag prisoners that died in the [[Dalstroi]] [[labor camps]]]] --> {{main|Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions}} Both Moscow and St. Petersburg have memorials to the victims of the Gulag made of boulders from the [[Solovki camp]] — the first prison camp in the Gulag system. Moscow's memorial is on [[Lubyanka Square]], the site of the headquarters of the NKVD. People gather at these memorials every year on the [[Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions|Day of Victims of the Repression (October 30)]]. ==Gulag Museum== [[File:GULag 2 Museum Moscow Russia.jpg|thumb|Gulag Museum in [[Moscow]]]] Moscow has the State Gulag Museum whose first director was [[Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko]].<ref name="Гальперович">{{cite web|last=Гальперович|first=Данила|title=Директор Государственного музея ГУЛАГа Антон Владимирович Антонов-Овсеенко|url=http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/transcript/2085640.html|publisher=[[Radio Liberty]]|accessdate=19 August 2011|date=27 June 2010}}</ref><ref name="Banerji">{{cite book|last=Banerji|first=Arup|title=Writing history in the Soviet Union: making the past work|year=2008|publisher=[[Berghahn Books]]|isbn=81-87358-37-8|page=271|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=NqJS-H-odnYC&printsec=frontcover#PPA271,M1}}</ref><ref name="Museum">{{cite web|title=About State Gulag Museum|url=http://www.gmig.ru/o-muzee|publisher=The State Gulag Museum|accessdate=19 August 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://thegulag.org|title=Gulag - Museum on Communism|publisher=}}</ref> ==See also== {{Portal|Soviet Union|Criminal justice|Human rights}} * [[101st kilometre]] * [[Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)]] * [[Federal Penitentiary Service|Federal Prisons System of the Russian Federation]] * [[:Category:Gulag detainees|Gulag detainees]] * [[Forced settlements in the Soviet Union]] * [[Mass graves in the Soviet Union]] * [[Memorial (society)|Memorial Society]] * [[Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union]] * [[Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union]] * [[Political repression in the Soviet Union]] * [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union]] * [[USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–41)]] ;Forced labor camps elsewhere: *[[Danube-Black Sea Canal]] (Communist Romania) *[[Devil's Island]] (France) *[[Extermination through labor]] (Nazi Germany) *[[Goli otok]] (Yugoslavia) *[[Hoeryong concentration camp]] (North Korea) *[[Katorga]] (Russian Empire) *[[Laogai]] (China) *[[Nazi concentration camp]] *[[Reeducation camp]] (Vietnam) *[[Spaç Prison]] (Albania) *[[The Vietnamese Gulag]] *[[Yodok concentration camp]] (North Korea) ==References== {{Reflist|30em}} ==Further reading== ;Books * [[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 0-89870-574-6. * Pavel Kravchuk ''Gulag far and near. The story of the penitentiary system'' [http://pda.novayagazeta.ru/letters/181.html] * 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 978-3-428-11863-2. * [[Orlando Figes]], ''The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia'', Allen Lane, 2007, hardcover, 740 pp., ISBN 0-14-101351-6. * [[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. * Jehanne M. Gheith and Katherine R. Jolluck. ''Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Detention and Exile (Palgrave Studies in Oral History).'' [[Palgrave Macmillan]], 2010. ISBN 0-230-61063-3 *[[Slawomir Rawicz]]. "The Long Walk". 1995. ISBN 1-55821-684-7 * Paul R. Gregory, Valery Lazarev, eds, ''The Economics of Forced Labor: 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"] * [[Jan T. Gross]] (intro) and Nicolas Werth, ''Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity).'' [[Princeton University Press]], 2007. 248 pp., ISBN 0-691-13083-3. * [[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. * [[Adam Hochschild]], ''The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 304 pp., paperback: ISBN 0-618-25747-0. * 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. * ''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 * [[Jacques Rossi]], ''The Gulag Handbook: An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Soviet Penitentiary Institutions and Terms Related to the Forced Labor Camps'', 1989, ISBN 1-55778-024-2. * [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] **<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. * Karl Tobien. ''Dancing Under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's Gulag.'' WaterBrook Press, 2006. ISBN 1-4000-7078-3 * 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.&nbsp;33–260. * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_index.html "The Literature of Stalin's Repressions" in Azerbaijan International, Vol 14:1 (Spring 2006)] ;Memoirs * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_kolyma.html Ayyub Baghirov (1906-1973), Bitter Days of Kolyma] * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_sadikhli_siberia.html Murtuz Sadikhli (1927-1997), Memory of Blood] * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_prison_diary_ummugul.html Ummugulsum Sadigzade (died 1944), Prison Diary: Tears Are My Only Companions] * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_prison_letters.html Ummugulsum Sadigzade (died 1944), Letters from Prison to her Young Children] * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai134_folder/134_articles/134_index.html Remembering Stalin - Azerbaijan International 13.4 (Winter 2005)] *[[Anne Applebaum]] (foreword) and [[Paul Hollander]] ([http://www.isi.org/books/content/384intro.pdf introduction] and editor). ''From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States.'' Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006. ISBN 1-932236-78-3 (from the annotation: "more than forty dramatic personal memoirs of Communist violence and repression from political prisoners across the globe") * [[Janusz Bardach]], ''[[Man Is Wolf to Man]]: Surviving the Gulag.'' University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0-520-22152-4 * [[Alexander Dolgun]], Patrick Watson, "Alexander Dolgun's story: An American in the Gulag", NY, Knopf, 1975, 370 pp., ISBN 978-0-394-49497-5. * [[Yevgenia Ginzburg|Eugenia Ginzburg]], ''Journey into the whirlwind'', Harvest/HBJ Book, 2002, 432 pp., ISBN 0-15-602751-8. * [[Yevgenia Ginzburg|Eugenia Ginzburg]], ''Within the Whirlwind'', Harvest/HBJ Book, 1982, 448 pp., ISBN 0-15-697649-8. * Jerzy Gliksman, ''Tell the West: An account of his experiences as a slave laborer in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'', ''[[Gresham Press]]'', 358pp. (abridged edition: New York : [[National Committee for a Free Europe]], c 1948, 95pp.) *[[Julius Margolin]], [http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/MARGOLIN/Puteshestvie_v_stranu_ze-ka.txt ПУТЕШЕСТВИЕ В СТРАНУ ЗЭ-КА ''A Travel to the Land Ze-Ka'', full text, according to the original manuscript] (book written in 1947-47, first printed in 1952) {{ru icon}} * Fyodor V. Mochulsky, ''Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir'', Oxford University Press, 272 pp., the first memoir from an NKVD employee translated into English * [[Tamara Petkevich]], ''Memoir of a Gulag Actress'', Northern Illinois University, 2010 * [[John H. Noble]], ''I Was a Slave in Russia'', Broadview, Illinois: Cicero Bible Press, 1961. * [[Varlam Shalamov]], ''[[The Kolyma Tales|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 978-0-920862-17-9. ** <cite>Za Chidnim Obriyam - (Beyond The Eastern Horizon)</cite>,Paris, Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1974, 447 pp. * [[Hava Volovich]], My Tale is Told: Women's Memoirs of Gulag, by Simeon Vilensky, Indiana University Press, 1999 * [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) * Вернон Кресс (alias of Петр Зигмундович Демант) "Зекамерон XX века", autobiographical novel {{ru icon}} *Бирюков А.М. Колымские истории: очерки. Новосибирск, 2004 ;Fiction * [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] **<cite>[[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]</cite>, Signet Classic, 158 pp., ISBN 0-451-52310-5. **<cite>[[The First Circle]]</cite>, Northwestern University Press, 580 pp., ISBN 978-0-8101-1590-3. * [[Chabua Amirejibi]], ''Gora Mborgali''. Tbilisi, Georgia: Chabua, 2001, 650 pp., ISBN 99940-734-1-9. * [http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_mehdi_husein_rivers.html Mehdi Husein (1905-1965), "Underground Rivers Flow Into the Sea" (Excerpts - First Novel About Exile to the Gulag by an Azerbaijani Writer)] * [[Martin Amis]], ''House of Meetings''. New York: Vintage Books, 2006, 242 pp., ISBN 978-1-4000-9601-5. *[[Herta Müller]], ''[[Everything I Possess I Carry With Me]]'' * [[Martin Booth]], ''The Industry Of Souls''. United Kingdom: Dewi Lewis Publishing, 1998, 250 pp., ISBN 0-312-26753-3. ==External links== {{commons category|Gulag}} * [http://thegulag.org GULAG Online Exhibit, Global Museum on Communism, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation] * [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.gmig.ru/news The website of the State Museum of GULAG History] in Moscow * [http://www.gulagmuseum.org/start.do The website of the Virtual Gulag Museum] projected by the scientific information center Memorial * [http://museum.gulagmemories.eu/en Sound Archives. European Memories of the Gulag] * [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://realworldpictures.ca/GULAG_113/ GULAG 113], Canadian documentary film about Estonians in the GULAG, website includes photos video. * [http://www.angelfire.com/de/Cerskus/english/Gulag1.html Gulag Photo album (prisoners of Kolyma and Chukotka labor camps, 1951-55)] * [http://www.gulag.eu Pages about the Kolyma camps and the evolution of GULAG] * [http://okay.com/dunc/gulag.htm The Soviet Gulag Era in Pictures - 1927 through 1953] * [http://www.applet-magic.com/gulag.htm The Economics of the GULAG] * [http://www.english.rfi.fr/europe/20100311-stories-gulag Stories from the Gulag] Dossier by Radio France Internationale in English * [http://www.gulag.memorial.de/index.html Interactive map of GULAG (in German)] * [https://www.archive.org/details/I-Was-A-Slave-in-Russia ''I Was a Slave in Russia: An American Tells His Story''] Archive.org online ebook. * [https://www.archive.org/details/recollsovietlabor00nagyrich ''Recollections of Soviet Labor Camps, 1949-1955''] Archive.org online ebook. * [http://www.gulagmaps.org/ Mapping the Gulag - Russia's prison system from the 1930s to the present] Research Project. * [http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-062-23-0026/outputs/Download/39e3e3e8-a99e-47eb-a8ad-5f9e9a9099c2 The Gulag as the Crucible of Russia’s 21st Century System of Punishment] study by [[Judith Pallot|prof. Judith Pallot]]. * [http://www.norillag.info/ Norillag: Internet Resources] * [https://twitter.com/norillag Norillag: twitter] * [https://www.facebook.com/Norillag.Norilsk Norillag: facebook page] * [https://plus.google.com/communities/108635249809098021123 Norillag: google+ community] * [http://norillag.blogspot.com/ Norillag: blogger] * [http://norillag.wordpress.com/ Norillag: wordpress] * [http://norillag.livejournal.com/ Norillag: livejournal] * [http://norilsk-history.livejournal.com/ Norillag: livejournal community] * [https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/100961303229351108440/100961303229351108440/posts Norillag: google+ page] * {{YouTube|A9fFrBgCBjw|Interview with survivor of Soviet Gulag}}. Clip from documentary film ''Agapitova and the rescued ones'' (2009). {{Incarceration}} {{Soviet dissidents}} {{Joseph Stalin}} {{Segregation by type}} [[Category:Gulag| ]] [[Category:Joseph Stalin]] [[Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union]] [[Category:Political repression]] [[Category:Penal labor]] [[Category:Soviet law]] [[Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia]] [[Category:Imprisonment and detention]] [[Category:NKVD]] [[Category:Soviet phraseology]]'