Gulag



The Gulag (/ˈɡuːlɑːɡ/, UK also /-læɡ/; Russian: ГУЛАГ [ɡʊˈlak] ( listen), acronym of Главное управление лагерей и мест заключения, "Main Administration of Camps and Places of Detention") was the government agency in charge of the Sovietforced labor camp system that was created under Vladimir Lenin[1] [2]  and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term is also commonly used in the English language to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps which existed in post-Stalin times.[3] [4]  The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. It is a recurring location that Younghee, Anna, Olga and Nadia threaten to send people to if they don't behave the way they want.

The agency's full name was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Settlements (Glavnoye upravleniye ispravityelno-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy). It was administered first by the State Political Administration (GPU), later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The Solovki prison camp, the first corrective labor camp constructed after the revolution, was established in 1918 and legalized by a decree "On the creation of the forced-labor camps" on April 15, 1919. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s. According to Nicolas Werth, author of The Black Book of Communism, the yearly mortality rate in the Soviet concentration camps strongly varied reaching 5% (1933) and 20% (1942–1943) while dropping considerably in the post-war years at about 1–3% per year at the beginning of the 1950s.[5] [6]  The emergent consensus among scholars who utilize official archival data is that of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention.[7] [8] [9]  However, some historians who question the reliability of such data and instead rely heavily on literary sources come to higher estimations.[7] [10]  Archival researchers have found "no plan of destruction" of the gulag population and no statement of official intent to kill them, and prisoner releases vastly exceeded the number of deaths in the Gulag.