gulag

Gulag refers to the network of labor camps maintained by the Soviet Union for the detention and use of prisoner labor. The name is an acronym for Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei, the Main Administration of Camps. The system developed in the 1920s and expanded under Joseph Stalin, reaching its peak in the 1930s through the 1950s as a tool of punishment, political repression, and economic mobilization.

Camp labor covered vast portions of the country and served multiple industries. Inmates were deployed in mining, logging, construction, and railway work, among other tasks. The camps ranged from small work sites to large settlements, often located in remote regions with extreme climates. Administration, discipline, and security were centralized under the NKVD and later the MVD, and conditions were harsh, with inadequate food, crowded housing, and brutal enforcement of rules.

Scholarly estimates of the Gulag's scope vary. It is generally accepted that tens of millions of people passed through the system from the 1930s to the mid-1950s, with the number who died in camps commonly placed in the hundreds of thousands to around 1.5–2 million, depending on definitions and counting methods. The Great Terror and subsequent campaigns intensified arrests and deportations, intensifying the system’s reach during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, reforms led to a rapid reduction of the Gulag. Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of mass repression prompted releases and closures, and the system was largely dismantled by the late 1950s to early 1960s, though some camps persisted in adapted forms for several years.

The Gulag left a significant legacy in Soviet history and in international human rights discourse, influencing literature, memory, and scholarly study of political repression. Notable accounts include Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, which brought global attention to the subject.