Gulag Siberia

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So, what exactly is a Russian gulag? Gulag is actually the Soviet agency that administered forced labor camps during the Stalin era form the 1930s to the 1950s. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. No doubt, the Gulag was the major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. But the term gulag is also used to describe the camps themselves.

Some of you may have heard about or read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature. He introduced the world to the term gulag in his 1973 book, Gulag Archipelago. He described the gulag as a system where people were worked to death. As recently as 1940, there were 53 separate camps and 423 labor colonies. Nothing to scoff at, my friends! A map of Soviet gulags

About 14 million were in the gulags between 1929 to 1953. Another six or seven million were deported or exiled to other parts of the Soviet Union. The peak population in 1953 was around 1.7 million people. And over a million died between 1934 to 1953. But the number of gulag deaths is estimated much higher, since the incurably sick and injured prisoners were often released since they were near death.

Most prisoners were not of the political persuasion. But most did not receive a trial, suggesting that upwards of 2.6 million were imprisoned by the secret police. The growth of the camps coincided with the peak of Soviet industrialization. In other words, free labor.

Old gulag in Perm-36

I would imagine the harsh conditions, bitter cold, ice, and snow in the winter, then stifling heat with huge mosquitos in the summer were not kind to anyone in Siberia. Often times, the families followed the head of household out here to maintain some semblance of family life. It was not a pretty picture.

Yet, between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased by a factor of eight! The number of prisoners with high education increased five times! Soviet leaders did not trust the intelligentsia. As the war ramped up, even Polish prisoners, estimated at 300,000, were sent to Siberian gulags. Likewise, gulag populations dropped dramatically due to death from starvation (about half a million).

So, what exactly is the significance of the Siberian gulags? It created a Soviet camp economy, whereby minerals were mined by forced labor. The more skilled workers could produce war materials, like ammunition, weapons, tanks, and airplanes. So, I guess the Soviet cost per unit of war material, was much cheaper than their Allies, as well as the enemy. Camp sentences could be shortened for moving to other labor camps to support the war effort. By 1942, severe food shortages reduced camp populations by about 300,000 prisoners.

A reconstructed gulag

Yet, after the end of World War II, gulag populations increased again, reaching 2.5 million in the 1950s. The Yalta Conference in 1945 allowed for the repatriation of all Soviets. Yet when the Soviet POWs returned from the gulags, they were considered traitors. The gulag institution was finally closed in January 1960, though prison colonies continued to exist. Political prisoners were not released until 1987.

This was a sad period in Russian or Soviet history. Why did it take so long to get rid of the camps?
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