The Gulag system in the USSR

The history of the Gulag is closely intertwined with the entire Soviet era, but especially with its Stalinist period. The network of camps stretched across the country. They were visited by various groups of the population, accused of the famous 58th article. The Gulag was not only a system of punishment, but also a layer of the Soviet economy. Prisoners carried out the most ambitious projects of the first five-year plans.

The origin of the Gulag

The future system of the Gulag began to take shape immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. During the Civil War, the Soviet government began isolating its class and ideological enemies in special concentration camps. Then this term was not shunned, since he received a truly monstrous assessment during the atrocities of the Third Reich.

First, the camps were run by Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. Mass terror against "counterrevolution" included the total arrests of the rich bourgeoisie, manufacturers, landowners, traders, church leaders, etc. Soon the camps were given to the Cheka, whose chairman was Felix Dzerzhinsky. In them, forced labor was organized. This was also necessary in order to raise the ruined economy.

If in 1919 there were only 21 camps on the territory of the RSFSR, by the end of the Civil War there were already 122. In Moscow alone, there were seven such establishments where prisoners from all over the country were brought. In 1919 there were more than three thousand people in the capital. It was not yet the Gulag system, but only its prototype. Even then a tradition developed according to which all activity in the OGPU was subordinated only to internal acts, and not to general Soviet legislation.

The first correctional labor camp in the Gulag system existed in emergency mode. Civil war, the policy of war communism led to lawlessness and violation of prisoners' rights.

Solovki

In 1919 the Cheka created several labor camps in the north of Russia, or rather, in the Arkhangelsk province. Soon this network was called the ELEPHANT. The abbreviation was interpreted as "Northern special purpose camps". The Gulag system appeared in the USSR even in the most remote regions of a large country.

In 1923, the Cheka was transformed into a GPU. The new department was distinguished by several initiatives. One of them was the proposal to establish a new forced camp on the Solovetsky archipelago, which was not far from the same Northern camps. Before that, an ancient Orthodox monastery was located on the islands in the White Sea. He was closed in the fight against the Church and the "priests".

So one of the key symbols of the Gulag appeared. It was Solovetsky special purpose camp. His project was proposed by Joseph Unshlikht - one of the then leaders of the Cheka-GPU. His fate is indicative. This man contributed to the development of the repressive system, the victim of which he eventually became a victim. In 1938, he was shot at the famous polygon "Kommunarka". This place was the dacha of Henry Yagoda - People's Commissar of the NKVD in the 30s. He was also shot.

Solovki became one of the main camps in the Gulag of the 1920s. According to the instruction of the OGPU, it should contain criminal and political prisoners. A few years after the emergence of Solovki have grown, they have branches on the mainland, including in the Republic of Karelia. The Gulag system was constantly expanded at the expense of new prisoners.

In 1927, the Solovki camp contained 12 thousand people. A severe climate and unbearable conditions led to regular deaths. Over the entire period of the camp's existence more than 7 thousand people were buried in it. At the same time, about half of them died in 1933, when hunger raged throughout the country.

Solovki were known throughout the country. Information about the problems inside the camp tried not to endure outside. In 1929 Maxim Gorky arrived at the archipelago, at that time the main Soviet writer. He wanted to check conditions in the camp. The writer's reputation was flawless: his books were printed in huge editions, he was known as a revolutionary old-schooled. Therefore, many prisoners placed their hopes on him that he would publicize everything that happens in the walls of the former monastery.

Before Gorky was on the island, the camp was completely cleaned and was brought to a decent appearance. The mockery of the prisoners stopped. At the same time, the prisoners were threatened that if they told Gorky about their life, they would face a severe punishment. The writer, having visited Solovki, was delighted with the way in which prisoners are re-educated, accustomed to work and returned to society. However, at one of these meetings, in the children's colony, a boy approached Gorky. He told the famous guest about the jailers' harassment: torture in the snow, overtime work, standing in the frost, etc. Gorky left the barracks in tears. When he sailed to the mainland, the boy was shot. The Gulag system brutally dealt with any dissatisfied prisoners.

Stalin's Gulag

In 1930, the GULAG system under Stalin was finally formed. It was subordinated to the NKVD and was one of the five main departments in this People's Commissariat. Also in 1934, all correctional institutions moved to the Gulag, which before belonged to the People's Commissariat of Justice. Labor in the camps was legislatively approved in the Correctional Labor Code of the RSFSR. Now numerous prisoners had to realize the most dangerous and grandiose economic and infrastructure projects: construction, digging of channels, etc.

The authorities did everything to make the Gulag system in the USSR seem free to citizens. For this, regular ideological campaigns were launched. In 1931 the construction of the famous Belomorkanal began. This was one of the most significant projects of the first Stalin Five-Year Plan. The Gulag system is also one of the economic mechanisms of the Soviet state.

In order that the layman could learn in detail about the construction of the White Sea Canal in positive tones, the Communist Party instructed the well-known writers to prepare a laudatory book. Thus appeared the work "The Canal named after Stalin." Above him worked a whole group of authors: Tolstoy, Gorky, Pogodin and Shklovsky. Particularly interesting is the fact that the book spoke positively about gangsters and thieves, whose work was also used. The Gulag in the system of the Soviet economy occupied an important place. Cheap forced labor made it possible to implement the tasks of the five-year plans at an accelerated pace.

Political and criminals

The camp system of the Gulag was divided into two parts. It was a world of political and criminal. The last of them were recognized by the state as "socially close". This term was popular in Soviet propaganda. Some criminals tried to cooperate with the camp administration in order to facilitate their existence. At the same time, the authorities demanded loyalty and surveillance of political power.

Numerous "enemies of the people," as well as those convicted of alleged espionage and anti-Soviet propaganda, had no opportunity to defend their rights. Most often they resorted to hunger strikes. With their help, political prisoners tried to attract the attention of the administration to the difficult living conditions, abuses and abuses of the jailers.

Single hunger strikes did not lead to anything. Sometimes NKVD officers could only intensify the sufferings of the convict. To do this, before the hungry set plates with delicious food and scarce food.

Fighting the protest

The camp administration could pay attention to the hunger strike only if it was mass. Any concerted action of the prisoners led to the fact that among them they sought the instigators, with whom they were then dealt with with particular cruelty.

For example, in Uhtpechlag in 1937 a group of prisoners convicted of Trotskyism went on a hunger strike. Any organized protest was seen as a counter-revolutionary activity and a threat to the state. This led to the atmosphere in the camps of denunciation and distrust of the prisoners to each other. However, in some cases, the organizers of hunger strikes, on the contrary, openly announced their initiative because of the simple desperation in which they found themselves. In Uchtpechlag, the initiators were arrested. They refused to testify. Then the NKVD troika condemned the activists to be shot.

If the form of political protest in the Gulag was rare, then riots were common. At the same time, their initiators were, as a rule, criminals. Convicts under Article 58 often became victims of criminals who carried out orders from their superiors. Representatives of the underworld received exemption from work or occupied an inconspicuous post in the apparatus of the camp.

Skilled labor in the camp

This practice was also connected with the fact that the Gulag system suffered from shortcomings of professional staff. Employees of the NKVD sometimes had no education at all. The camp authorities often had no choice but to put the zeks themselves on the economic and administrative-technical posts.

At the same time among political prisoners there were a lot of people of different specialties. The "technical intelligentsia" was especially in demand - engineers, etc. In the early 1930s, these were people who had been educated in tsarist Russia and remained specialists and professionals. In successful cases, such prisoners could even enter into a trusting relationship with the administration in the camp. Some of them, with the release to freedom, remained in the system already at the administrative level.

However, in the mid-1930s, there was a toughening of the regime, which also affected highly qualified prisoners. The position of the specialists who were in the inner-camp world was completely different. The well-being of such people depended entirely on the nature and degree of depravity of a particular boss. The Soviet system created the Gulag system also in order to completely demoralize its opponents - true or imaginary. Therefore, there could be no liberalism towards prisoners.

Shashka

More lucky to those specialists and scientists who fell into the so-called sharashki. These were closed-type scientific institutions, where they worked on secret projects. Many famous scientists fell into the camps for their freethinking. For example, this was Sergey Korolev, a man who became a symbol of the Soviet conquest of the cosmos. Sharashki got designers, engineers, people associated with the military industry.

Such institutions are reflected in the culture. Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who visited the sharashka, many years later wrote the novel "In the First Circle", which described in detail the life of such prisoners. This author is best known for his other book, The Gulag Archipelago.

Gulag as a part of the Soviet economy

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the colonies and camp complexes became an important element in many production sectors. The Gulag system, briefly, existed wherever the slave labor of prisoners could be used. Especially it was in demand in the mining and metallurgical, fuel and forest industries. There was an important direction and capital construction. Almost all the large structures of the Stalin era were erected by zeks. They were mobile and cheap labor.

After the end of the war, the role of the camp economy became even more important. The scope of forced labor has expanded due to the implementation of the atomic project and many other military tasks. In 1949, about 10% of the production in the country was created in the camps.

Loss of camps

Before the war, in order not to undermine the economic effectiveness of the camps, Stalin abolished parole in camps. In one of the discussions about the fate of the peasants who found themselves in the camps after the dekulakization, he stated that it was necessary to come up with a new system of encouragement for productivity in labor, etc. Often a parole person waited for a person who either distinguished himself by exemplary behavior or became Another Stakhanovite.

After Stalin's remark, the working days offset system was canceled. According to it, prisoners shortened their term, going out to production. In the NKVD did not want to do this, since the refusal of credits deprived the convicts of motivation to work diligently. This, in turn, led to a drop in the profitability of any camp. And yet, the tests were canceled.

It is the unprofitability of enterprises inside the Gulag (among several other reasons) that forced the Soviet leadership to reorganize the entire system, which previously existed outside the legal framework, being in the exclusive jurisdiction of the NKVD.

The low efficiency of prisoners' work was also due to the fact that many of them had health problems. This was promoted by a bad diet, difficult living conditions, mockery of the administration and many other adversities. In 1934, 16% of prisoners were unemployed, and 10% were sick.

Elimination of the Gulag

The refusal of the Gulag occurred gradually. The impetus for the beginning of this process was the death of Stalin in 1953. Elimination of the Gulag system was launched a few months after this.

First of all, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on mass amnesty. Thus, more than half of the prisoners were released. As a rule, these were people whose term was less than five years.

At the same time, most political prisoners remained behind bars. The death of Stalin and the change of power gave many zeks confidence that something would soon change. In addition, the prisoners began to openly resist the harassment and abuse of the camp authorities. So, there were several riots (in Vorkuta, Kengir and Norilsk).

Another important event for the GULAG was the 20th Congress of the CPSU. It was made by Nikita Khrushchev, who shortly before that he won in the internal apparatus struggle for power. From the rostrum he condemned the cult of Stalin's personality and the numerous atrocities of his era.

At the same time, special commissions appeared in the camps, which engaged in reviewing the cases of political prisoners. In 1956, their number was less than three times. The liquidation of the Gulag system coincided with the transfer to its new department, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1960, Mikhail Kholodkov, the last head of the GUITK (Main Directorate of Forced Labor Camps), was fired.