Search results
The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extrajudicial punishment.
Jun 21, 2024 · Gulag, (Russian: “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps”), system of Soviet labour camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons that from the 1920s to the mid-1950s housed the political prisoners and criminals of the Soviet Union.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Gulag was a system of Soviet labour camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons. From the 1920s to the mid-1950s it housed p...
- The Gulag, a system of forced-labour camps, was first inaugurated by a Soviet decree of April 15, 1919. It underwent a series of administrative and...
- Western scholars estimate the total number of deaths in the Gulag ranged from 1.2 to 1.7 million during the period from 1918 to 1956.
- The Gulag started to shrink soon after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were amnestied from 1953 to 1957. The Gula...
- What Is A Gulag?
- Gulag Prisoners
- Life at A Gulag Camp
- Prison Terms and Release
- End of The Gulag
- Legacy of The Gulag
- Sources
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
The word “Gulag” is an acronym for the Russian phrase Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or Main Camp Administration. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist Party, took control of the Soviet Union. When Lenin died of a stroke in 1924, Joseph Stalinpropelled his way to power and became dictator. The Gulag was...
The first group of prisoners at Gulag camps included common criminals and prosperous peasants, known as kulaks. Many kulaks were arrested when they revolted against collectivization, a policy enforced by the Soviet government that demanded peasant farmers give up their individual farms and join collective farming. When Stalin launched his purges, a...
Prisoners at the Gulag camps were forced to work on large-scale construction, mining and industrial projects. The type of industry depended on the camp’s location and the area’s needs. Gulag labor crews worked on several massive Soviet endeavors, including the Moscow-Volga Canal, the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Kolyma Highway. Prisoners were giv...
Prisoners in the Gulag were given sentences, and if they survived the term, they were permitted to leave camp. For example, family members of a suspected traitor would receive a minimum sentence of five to eight years of labor. If they worked extremely hard and surpassed their quotas, some prisoners qualified for early release. Between 1934 and 195...
The Gulag started to weaken immediately after Stalin’s death in 1953. Within days, millions of prisoners were released. Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, was a staunch critic of the camps, the purges and most of Stalin’s policies. But, the camps didn’t disappear completely. Some were restructured to serve as prisons for criminals, democratic a...
The true horrors of the Gulag system were revealed belatedly: Before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, state archives were sealed. Unlike the Holocaust camps in Europe during World War II, no film or images of the Gulag camps were available to the public. In 1973, The Gulag Archipelago was publishedin the West by Russian historian and Gulag sur...
Gulag: Soviet Prison Camps and Their Legacy, A Project of the National Park Service and the National Resource Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, Harvard University. Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives. GulagHistory.org. The Gulag Collection, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. 13 Stomach-Churning Facts About Being Held Pris...
Learn about the Gulag, a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union that imprisoned millions of people under Stalin's rule. Find out how the Gulag operated, who were its victims and how it ended.
People also ask
How many people died in the Soviet Gulag?
What does Gulag stand for?
Where were Gulag camps located?
What was the Soviet Gulag?
Learn about the history and the basic form of Soviet repression, based on specific human destinies, selected objects, documents, texts and a virtual reconstruction of the Gulag camp. Explore the stories of people, places and items related to the Gulag, and see the 3D gallery of objects from the Gulag.
The Gulag was a system of Soviet labour camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons. From the 1920s to the mid-1950s it housed political prisoners and criminals of the Soviet Union. At its height, the Gulag imprisoned millions of people.
Feb 9, 2023 · A major political, historical, human and economic fact of the 20th century: the Gulag, the extremely punitive Soviet concentration camp system, remains largely unknown. The history of the Gulag...
- 53 min
- 866.1K
- Free Documentary - History