What it was like, how the GULAG system worked in the USSR, and who could be released

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

For anyone with a history of the Soviet past, the GULAG is the personification of something sinister and frightening. The camp system of the USSR, which became the end point of the flywheel of repression and exile, is reflected not only in documentaries and books, but also occupies a certain place in art. How did the system work, what was included in it, for what it was possible to get there and thanks to what was released?

Gulag, and if not abbreviated, then the Main Department of Camps is not the name of a camp or a prison, but an abbreviation of a unit of the NKVD of the USSR, which headed the places of detention and detention in the period from the 30s to the 60s of the 20th century. Simply put, an analogue of the modern FSIN. However, the GULAG became not just a department, but a symbol of the arbitrariness of the authorities, which fit into this short abbreviation.

The history of the Gulag: when did it appear and why?

Despite the fact that the actual work as a system of the GULAG began in the 30s, the prerequisites for its creation arose much earlier. Back in the spring of 1919, a document was issued regulating the work of forced labor camps, which laid the foundation for the creation of the system. Around the same time, the main principle of such camps was formulated - this is "the isolation of harmful, undesirable elements and their involvement, with the help of coercion, into re-education and creative work."

In principle, it is precisely this principle of the work of the camp system that literally explains everything that happened in the dungeons of the GULAG. Anyone could be declared an undesirable element for anything, because the wording itself does not even imply a crime or any misconduct, in principle. It was possible to become an “undesirable element” just like that, by the fact of its existence.

The Labor Camp Authority (originally ULAG) was formed in 1930 to integrate all the camps into a system. This became possible thanks to the decree "On the use of labor of criminals." By 1940, the system included more than 50 ITLs, more than 400 ITKs, 50 colonies where minors were kept.

Initially, the GULAG emerged as a place of isolation, an instrument for combating dissent, but pretty soon it became almost an independent branch of the national economy, since labor in the name of correction worked extremely successfully. A cheap labor force has been solving the industrial problems of remote areas for several decades. Considering the fact that even the most difficult types of work presupposed manual labor for the most part, we are talking about millions of workers.

The gulag system was very extensive geographically, camps were located throughout the country, but most often these were regions with extreme weather conditions - Siberia, southern Central Asia.

For a long time, any information about the Gulag was classified, especially information about the number of prisoners. Therefore, for a long time historians and other public figures could not come to a common denominator on this rather acute issue. In addition, after the archival data was declassified, it became known that many facts and details turned out to be contradictory and even mutually exclusive.

The testimonies of the witnesses - former prisoners and their family members - added unanswered questions, adding to the confusion. It can be said with relative accuracy that from 1934 to 1956, from 16 to 28 million people visited the Gulag.

Camp as a system

The country of the Soviets, whose citizens were enthusiastically building a new state with new values, intended to get rid of crime in the near future, or at least reduce it to minimum levels. However, everything happened exactly the opposite. The disruption of the usual rhythm of life, the lack of patriarchal supervision of young people (especially those who moved to large cities), the revolution, which seemed to many to be permissive, the presence of weapons in their hands, on the contrary, provoked a serious increase in crime.

An important fact was the fact that in 1917 the state control system collapsed and the tsarist prisons were unguarded. At that time, almost everyone who was held in custody was released. However, in addition to the real criminals, there were now also those who needed to be "re-educated." These included representatives of the bourgeoisie: landlords, manufacturers, kulaks.

The northern special-purpose camps, or ELEPHANT for short, began to be filled with such "unwanted elements", then something similar was founded on the Solovetsky archipelago. However, in these very Solovki, prisoners were sent back in the days of tsarist Russia. By the time the GULAG officially began to exist, the system of forced labor camps had already been formed and was working. The Solovetsky camp by this time was the largest. Previously, a large monastery was located here and it was this place that became a kind of testing ground - here for the first time the labor of prisoners began to be used massively and widely.

Here, in the cold climate on the islands of the White Sea, convicts felled forests, built roads, and drained swamps. At the same time, they lived in cold and damp barracks. At first, the detention regime was relatively mild, but closer to the 30s, everything changed. Labor was not used for good, but as a punishment, prisoners could be sent to count seagulls, pour water from one hole to another, sing "Internationale" in the cold.

The ELEPHANT was disbanded in the 30s, it demonstrated that hard labor is very effective, it was necessary to extend the experience to other camps. The monastery itself was later restored, it still exists, being not only an architectural and Orthodox heritage, but also evidence of historical events.

How people ended up in the Gulag camps

It is well known that it was not at all necessary to be a recidivist in order to get into the Gulag. The so-called "political" or those who ended up in the camp under Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, constituted a very impressive part of the camp prisoners.

Treason to the homeland is one of the most serious points, but at the same time, it is widely used, because anyone and for anything could become a traitor to the homeland, sometimes it was enough to offend a high-ranking interlocutor to get under this article. In addition, the lack of specifics in the wording made it possible to jail under this article literally for nothing.

Contacts with a foreign state were also prohibited by law; in order to get to the camp on this point, it was enough to communicate with a foreign citizen.

The help of the international bourgeoisie is a very vague, but therefore also a widely applicable accusation, for which it was enough to write abroad or receive a letter from there. Espionage could also be accused almost for no reason: for excessive curiosity, even a camera used for its intended purpose.

The accusation of sabotage became a kind of Soviet know-how. Such pests included those who caused damage to systems recognized as vital: water, heat supply, transport, communications. Such pests could well include a boiler house employee, who, due to its malfunction, was forced to start the heating with a delay.

For fans of jokes with a political color, an article was also prepared, this time for "propaganda and agitation." Moreover, the punishment was received not only by the one who told, but also by the one who listened. Of course, if he did not act as an informer and did not reveal the "dangerous criminal" with his own hand.

If a factory worker at work exceeded the marriage rate, and it does not matter what was the reason (low quality of raw materials, for example), then he could well be jailed for counter-revolutionary sabotage. This article even included typographical errors in newspapers.

For most contemporaries, such restrictions seem like savagery and a crime against humanity, but it is worthwhile to understand that in those years the country lived in an era of changes and in fact there were enough ideological opponents and those who were ready to conduct a sabotage policy. Another question is how the punitive system worked and why was it so easy to jail an innocent person? Did the political elite know about this? Of course she knew. But it was easier to jail the innocent than to carefully select the innocent among the guilty.

Contemporaries often accuse the citizens of the Soviet Union who had the imprudence to be born and live during this period of denunciations, slander and "snitching". For those who were a supporter of secrecy, there was a special article "Failure to report". If a person knew that a neighbor has several sins and still has not called where he should be, then sooner or later the funnels will come for both of them.

Everyone who fell under these points was called "political" and even after the end of their term of imprisonment, they could no longer live in large cities closer than 100 km. Hence the phrase about "101st kilometer" appeared.

Life and peculiarities of life of prisoners

Considering that the camp was a place of confinement, correction and re-education, the conditions in it were, to put it mildly, not sanatorium. They could differ significantly depending on the location of the camp and the leadership of the institution, but some norms were common to everyone. For example, a food ration with a norm of 2,000 calories was, of course, not criminally insignificant, but clearly meager, especially for a man doing daily hard physical labor.

In addition, most of the camps were located in regions with extremely cold temperatures, and the barracks were poorly heated, the clothes of the prisoners were not warm enough, therefore colds and high mortality against this background were widespread. The camp system itself implied three types of regime in which prisoners were kept. Those who were imprisoned under a strict regime (especially dangerous criminals, including political criminals) were carefully guarded. However, even they could not avoid hard labor. On the contrary, they should have been involved in the work that was the most difficult.

Those who were imprisoned for robberies and equivalent crimes were under the enhanced regime. They were always under escort and worked on a permanent basis. There were also those whose regime was considered common, they did not need a convoy and worked in administrative and economic positions of the lowest order of the camp system.

Five years after the formation of the Gulag, adolescents were also imprisoned in it. In fact, children, given that even 12-year-olds could get there. From the age of 16 they were sent to special zones for juvenile delinquents. There was no re-education system in such camps; most of those who entered the zone as minors could not return to normal life later.

Reeducation or an economic resource?

Despite the fact that the labor of the camp prisoners was used for their re-education, the party did not hide the fact that their labor is economically important. However, it was presented as a small fraction that the prisoners can return to society and the party for their misdeeds. Yes, frankly speaking, the quality of the convicts' work cannot be called highly skilled work with high results. However, the end justified the means, thanks to the cheap labor of the camp prisoners, large objects were built that play an important role.

There are whole cities among such objects, for example Vorkuta, Nakhodka, Ukhta. Prisoners often built railways, they built the Pechersk and Transport Highways, Rybinsk and Ust-Kamenogorsk hydroelectric power stations. Prisoners' labor was used in mines, metallurgical enterprises, logging, road construction and much more. Including they were involved in agricultural work, and on an ongoing basis.

Despite the fact that the mortality rate in the camps was high, there was no problem with the lack of workers, because the number of those who needed to be "re-educated" did not decrease. By modern standards, this seems inhuman, but about the same thing at that time was happening in America, where millions of people worked for the opportunity to eat, building the infrastructure of cities.

In the camp, there was a rather tough discipline, for violation of which the prisoner was deprived of those few benefits that he had. They could be transferred to a cold barrack or to less friendly neighbors in bunks, banned from correspondence with relatives, or placed in an isolation ward. However, for good behavior they could be transferred to a different type of work, not so difficult, allowed a meeting, perhaps there was even a prize.

By the way, after 1949, prisoners began to rely on wages. At first it was introduced only in a few camps, and then it became a widespread practice. Of course, the prisoner could not use the money while in the camp. However, the money could be accumulated or sent to the family.

Kolyma: punishment by labor and cold

The camp in Kolyma became famous not only thanks to the work of Solzhenitsyn, but also because in fact it was a large prison in which it was extremely difficult to survive. And the point is not only that the junction of the Kolyma River and the Sea of Okhotsk is very difficult climatic conditions. Frost on the skin also came from other conditions in which the prisoners found themselves.

During the creation of the GULAG, a gold trust arose in the Kolyma region, the reserves were huge, but there was no infrastructure. It was it that the prisoners were supposed to build, one after another camp barracks began to appear here, roads were built, the latter, due to the high mortality from work in difficult conditions, began to be called the road of death or built on bones.

At first, only real criminals were brought here, who received sentences for crimes, however, after the beginning of the repressions in 1937, "political" ones were also brought here. For the latter, Kolyma became doubly difficult not only because of the weather conditions, but also because they were forced to work and live side by side with criminals who did not miss the opportunity to take out their anger on those who were unlikely to be able to fight back.

The prisoners did almost all types of work by hand, and this is despite the fact that in winter in these parts it is up to minus 50. Nevertheless, the prisoners turned this tough land into a region where there are roads, electricity, houses, and an enterprise. It was this region that allowed the state to build up its military potential. Today, Kolyma is a living proof of the tireless labor of the prisoners, the descendants of convicts still live here, and the region itself is a living museum of the Gulag and the trials that have befallen a whole generation.