Easy comparisons to the Soviet Union's prison camps fail to convey the human suffering that took place in the Gulag system
It is a popular comparison – if it’s not the Guantánamo Bay detention centre that is likened to the Gulag, it is another prison or mental institution. Most know the intended meaning behind the comparison, but the analogy has to end there, because the atrocities of Russia’s Gulag system are poles apart from current prisoner detention standards.
What was the Gulag?
The Gulag was a network of labor camps that existed across the Soviet Union from the early 1900’s to the 1950’s. Because much is still unknown and records have only been released in the last few years, the longer answer reveals only a grain of the terrible truth about this harsh penal system.
Labor camps in Russia existed in lesser form during Czarist times, and were expanded by Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution in 1917, but The Gulag (Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei or Main Camp Administration) found new focus under Joseph Stalin during the 1930’s to 1950’s. During his rule, the camps served a dual purpose. Not only did they provide him with a way to remove the thousands of “enemies of the people” he was so paranoid about, but they also served as mechanisms to speed up Russia’s industrialization and to mine the rich resources in the uninhabitable Siberian north.
Today Russians do not like to talk about the Gulag, and casual questions, remarks or jokes by foreigners are not welcomed. Many, especially among older people, believe that the millions that disappeared during Stalin’s rule went to the camps as “volunteer” workers. This could not be further from the truth.
More often than not, harmless citizens were arrested for no reason, or for very absurd ones. Some were reported and consequently arrested for comments interpreted as being critical of Stalin, or for making unfortunate jokes, but often being late for work or owning more cows than a neighbor provided enough cause for suspicion. The paranoia that reigned meant that not even diplomats or fellow foreign communists were spared. “Knocks on the door” often came in the middle of the night and people were taken away for interrogation, farcical trials and eventually long sentences.
Prisoners were loaded onto trains and endured long trips in overcrowded trains to remote camps where their days and years were regulated by strict rules determined by Moscow. To ensure continuous industrialization, Moscow often demanded quotas of work to be completed, irrespective of the feasibility of those goals. Many of the camps were located in Siberia, and quotas did not take into account weather conditions or availability of equipment and resources. As a result, prisoners suffered from long working hours and little rest and food, which led to many deaths due to exhaustion and illness.
How many suffered?
It is extremely difficult to put numbers on the scale of the camp operation. According to some of the most recent counts, there were around 476 camp complexes that formed part of the Gulag, but many of these had countless smaller camps under their authority, so this number is not completely reliable. It is even more difficult to count the lives affected and the number who died, but historians like Anne Applebaum, who won the Pulitzer prize for her 2003 book “Gulag: A History” have made efforts to make estimates. According to her, the total number of forced laborers in the USSR numbered around 28.7 million. Consider that number briefly: it is about a fifth of Russia’s current population and was almost a third of the country’s total population in the 1950’s. The number that died in or as a result of the camps remains conjecture.
