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124-476: Moscow and Leningrad were two competing power centers in the Soviet Union. Researchers argue that the motivation behind the cases was Joseph Stalin's fear of competition from the younger and popular Leningrad leaders – who had been fêted as heroes following the city's siege . Stalin's desire to keep power was combined with his deep distrust of anyone from Leningrad from the time of Stalin's involvement in

248-572: A "racially motivated starvation policy" that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally. Civilians in the city suffered from extreme starvation , especially in the winter of 1941–42. From November 1941 to February 1942 the only food available to the citizen was 125  grams of bread per day, of which 50–60% consisted of sawdust and other inedible admixtures. In conditions of extreme temperatures (down to −30 °C (−22 °F)), and with city transport out of service, even

372-482: A camp commander and an important Gulag official. His proposals soon saw widespread adoption in the Gulag system. After having appeared as an instrument and place for isolating counter-revolutionary and criminal elements, the Gulag, because of its principle of "correction by forced labor", quickly became, in fact, an independent branch of the national economy secured on the cheap labor force presented by prisoners. Hence it

496-541: A department of NKVD (later MVD) in charge of handling of foreign civilian internees and POWs (prisoners of war) in the Soviet Union during and in the aftermath of World War II (1939–1953). In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG. Its major function was the organization of foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union . The top management of GUPVI came from the GULAG system. The major memoir noted distinction from GULAG

620-542: A distance of a few kilometres to a food distribution kiosk created an insurmountable obstacle for many citizens. Deaths peaked in January–February 1942 at 100,000 per month, mostly from starvation. People often died on the streets, and citizens soon became accustomed to the sight of death. While reports of cannibalism appeared in the winter of 1941–42, NKVD records on the subject were not published until 2004. Most evidence for cannibalism that surfaced before this time

744-468: A distinctly political purpose. These early camps of the GULAG system were introduced in order to isolate and eliminate class-alien, socially dangerous, disruptive, suspicious, and other disloyal elements, whose deeds and thoughts were not contributing to the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat . Forced labor as a "method of reeducation" was applied in the Solovki prison camp as early as

868-899: A former capital of Russia, thus competing with the Moscow-centered communist government. The initial accuser was Georgy Malenkov , Stalin's first deputy. Then formal accusations were formulated by the Communist Party and signed by Malenkov, Khrushchev and Lavrentiy Beria . Over two thousand people from the Leningrad city government and regional authorities were arrested. Also arrested were many industrial managers, scientists and university professors. The city and regional authorities in Leningrad were swiftly occupied by pro-Stalin communists transplanted from Moscow. Several important politicians were arrested in Moscow and other cities across

992-683: A large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extrajudicial punishment . In 1918–1922, the agency was administered by the Cheka , followed by the GPU (1922–1923), the OGPU (1923–1934), later known as the NKVD (1934–1946), and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the final years. The Solovki prison camp , the first correctional labour camp which

1116-401: A meeting: "There are cases when a prisoner is given only four or five hours out of twenty-four for rest, which significantly lowers his productivity." In the words of a former Gulag prisoner: "By the spring of 1942, the camp ceased to function. It was difficult to find people who were even able to gather firewood or bury the dead." The scarcity of food stemmed in part from the general strain on

1240-550: A minimum sentence of seven years and a maximum of twenty five. In 1958, the maximum sentence for any crime was reduced from twenty five to fifteen years. In 1960, the Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (MVD) ceased to function as the Soviet-wide administration of the camps in favour of individual republic MVD branches. The centralised detention administrations temporarily ceased functioning. Although

1364-522: A reputation which was further enhanced by the Soviet GULAG system. The Bolsheviks' own experiences with exile and forced labor provided them with a model which they could base their own system on, including the importance of strict enforcement. From 1920 to 1950, the leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet state considered repression a tool that they should use to secure the normal functioning of

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1488-529: A result of the siege. At the time, it was not classified as a war crime , however, in the 21st century, some historians have classified it as a genocide , due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population. The capture of Leningrad was one of three strategic goals of the German Operation Barbarossa and as a result, Leningrad was the main target of Army Group North . The strategy

1612-473: A significant amount of prisoners, which confined prisoners serving short sentence terms. In the early 1930s, a tightening of the Soviet penal policy caused a significant growth of the prison camp population. During the Great Purge of 1937–38, mass arrests caused another increase in inmate numbers. Hundreds of thousands of persons were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms on the grounds of one of

1736-582: A terrifying nursery rhyme adapted from a pre-war song: Gulag The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union . The word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin 's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for

1860-479: Is followed by one more important reason for the constancy of the repressive policy, namely, the state's interest in unremitting rates of receiving a cheap labor force that was forcibly used, mainly in the extreme conditions of the east and north. The Gulag possessed both punitive and economic functions. The Gulag was an administration body that watched over the camps; eventually its name would be used for these camps retrospectively. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin

1984-564: The Great Patriotic War , Gulag populations declined sharply due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. In the winter of 1941, a quarter of the Gulag's population died of starvation . 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941–43, from a combination of their harsh working conditions and the famine caused by the German invasion. This period accounts for about half of all gulag deaths, according to Russian statistics. In 1943,

2108-1052: The MGB . The graves of the executed leaders of Leningrad were never marked and their exact locations are still unknown. All of the accused were later rehabilitated during the Khrushchev Thaw , many of them posthumously. Alexei Kosygin , the future Chairman of the Council of Ministers , and Iosif Shikin , the political director of the Red Army, survived but their political careers were hampered for some time. Siege of Leningrad [REDACTED] Army Group North : 1941 : 85,371 total casualties 1942 : 267,327 total casualties 1943 : 205,937 total casualties 1944 : 21,350 total casualties Total : 579,985 casualties Glantz estimate: 3,473,066 casualties 1942 1943 1944 Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Air war The siege of Leningrad

2232-826: The Neva River . Another line of defence passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushy. In the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region , had been maintained in Leningrad's northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. A total of 306 km (190 mi) of timber barricades, 635 km (395 mi) of wire entanglements, 700 km (430 mi) of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and reinforced concrete weapon emplacements and 25,000 km (16,000 mi) of open trenches were constructed or excavated by civilians. Even

2356-776: The Northern Sea Route delivered American Lend-Lease and British food and war materiel supplies to the Murmansk railhead (although the rail link to Leningrad was cut off by Finnish armies just north of the city), as well as several other locations in Lapland . Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and read their low-level communications. This was particularly helpful for Hitler, who constantly requested intelligence information about Leningrad. Finland's role in Operation Barbarossa

2480-619: The Russian Civil War , officials accused of corruption, sabotage and embezzlement, political enemies, dissidents and other people deemed dangerous for the state. In the first decade of Soviet rule, the judicial and penal systems were neither unified nor coordinated, and there was a distinction between criminal prisoners and political or "special" prisoners. The "traditional" judicial and prison system, which dealt with criminal prisoners, were first overseen by The People's Commissariat of Justice until 1922, after which they were overseen by

2604-565: The Russian Empire both used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga , a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment: confinement, simplified facilities (as opposed to the facilities which existed in prisons), and forced labor, usually involving hard, unskilled or semi-skilled work. According to historian Anne Applebaum , katorga

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2728-540: The Russian Revolution , Russian Civil War , execution of Grigory Zinoviev and the Right Opposition . In this earlier time, among Stalin's competitors from Leningrad who were also assassinated were two former leaders of the city, Sergei Kirov and Leon Trotsky , whose appointed subordinates continued to work in the city government for years after they left office. During the siege of Leningrad ,

2852-529: The Sovnarkom order 22 p. 248 dated April 7, 1930. It was renamed as the GULAG in November of that year. The hypothesis that economic considerations were responsible for mass arrests during the period of Stalinism has been refuted on the grounds of former Soviet archives that have become accessible since the 1990s, although some archival sources also tend to support an economic hypothesis. In any case,

2976-607: The 15th Battery of the 192nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, and made an emergency landing . All crew members, including the commander, Lieutenant Hans Turmeyer, were captured on the ground. The commander of the 15th Battery, Lieutenant Alexey Pimchenkov, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner . By Monday, 8 September, German forces had largely surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. Unable to press home their offensive, and facing defences of

3100-575: The 1920s, based on Trotsky 's experiments with forced labor camps for Czech war prisoners from 1918 and his proposals to introduce "compulsory labor service" voiced in Terrorism and Communism . These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist or Hitler camps, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1 . Various categories of prisoners were defined: petty criminals, POWs of

3224-662: The 48th Army in the western sector between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk – Mga position. The Leningrad Fortified Region, the Leningrad garrison, the Baltic Fleet forces, and Koporye , Pulkovo, and Slutsk–Kolpino operational groups were also present. According to Zhukov, "Before the war Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 and 3,385,000 counting the suburbs. As many as 1,743,129, including 414,148 children were evacuated" between 29 June 1941 and 31 March 1943. They were moved to

3348-747: The Chief Administration of Camps for Highway Construction destroyed ninety-four trucks in just three years. But the greatest problem was simple – forced labor was less efficient than free labor. In fact, prisoners in the Gulag were, on average, half as productive as free laborers in the USSR at the time, which may be partially explained by malnutrition. To make up for this disparity, the NKVD worked prisoners harder than ever. To meet rising demand, prisoners worked longer and longer hours, and on lower food-rations than ever before. A camp administrator said in

3472-513: The Finnish positions. The proximity of the Finnish border – 33–35 km (21–22 mi) from downtown Leningrad – and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defence of the city. At one point, the defending front commander, Popov , could not release reserves opposing the Finnish forces to be deployed against the Wehrmacht because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defences on

3596-497: The Finns advanced to within 20 km (12 mi) of the northern suburbs of Leningrad at the 1939 Finnish-Soviet border, threatening the city from the north; they were also advancing through East Karelia , east of Lake Ladoga, and threatening the city from the east. The Finnish forces crossed the pre-Winter War border on the Karelian Isthmus by eliminating Soviet salients at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, thus straightening

3720-495: The GULAG. According to the estimates, in total, during the whole period of the existence of the GUPVI, there were over 500 POW camps (within the Soviet Union and abroad), which imprisoned over 4,000,000 POW. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of political prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time. Petty crimes and jokes about the Soviet government and officials were punishable by imprisonment. About half of political prisoners in

3844-507: The Gulag camps and the 4 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag colonies from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million prisoners perished there or died soon after they were released. Some journalists and writers who question the reliability of such data heavily rely on memoir sources that come to higher estimations. 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

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3968-466: The Gulag camps were imprisoned " by administrative means ", i.e., without trial at courts; official data suggest that there were over 2.6 million sentences to imprisonment on cases investigated by the secret police throughout 1921–53. Maximum sentences varied depending on the type of crime and changed over time. From 1953, the maximum sentence for petty theft was six months, having previously been one year and seven years. Theft of state property however, had

4092-457: The Gulag in 1928–1953. A further 6–7 million were deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR , and 4–5 million passed through labor colonies , plus 3.5 million who were already in, or had been sent to, labor settlements . According to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953. According to other estimates, at the beginning of 1953

4216-422: The Gulag into 380 special colonies which produced tanks, aircraft, armaments, and ammunition. Despite its low capital costs, the camp economy suffered from serious flaws. For one, actual productivity almost never matched estimates: the estimates proved far too optimistic. In addition, scarcity of machinery and tools plagued the camps and the tools that the camps did have quickly broke. The Eastern Siberian Trust of

4340-431: The Gulag system expanded dramatically to create a Soviet "camp economy". Right before the war, forced labor provided 46.5% of the nation's nickel , 76% of its tin , 40% of its cobalt , 40.5% of its chrome-iron ore, 60% of its gold, and 25.3% of its timber. And in preparation for war, the NKVD put up many more factories and built highways and railroads. The Gulag quickly switched to the production of arms and supplies for

4464-428: The Gulag system founders was Naftaly Frenkel . In 1923, he was arrested for illegally crossing borders and smuggling. He was sentenced to 10 years' hard labor at Solovki , which later came to be known as the "first camp of the Gulag". While serving his sentence he wrote a letter to the camp administration detailing a number of "productivity improvement" proposals including the infamous system of labor exploitation whereby

4588-569: The Karelian Isthmus. Mannerheim terminated the offensive on 31 August 1941, when the army had reached the 1939 border. Popov felt relieved, and redeployed two divisions to the German sector on 5 September. Subsequently, the Finnish forces reduced the salients of Beloostrov and Kirjasalo , which had threatened their positions at the sea coast and south of the River Vuoksi. Lieutenant General Paavo Talvela and Colonel Järvinen,

4712-462: The OGPU started to recruit people within the colony to help stop people who attempted to leave, and set up ambushes around known popular escape routes. The OGPU also attempted to raise the living conditions in these camps that would not encourage people to actively try and escape, and Kulaks were promised that they would regain their rights after five years. Even these revisions ultimately failed to resolve

4836-511: The OGPU. In 1928, there were 30,000 individuals interned; the authorities were opposed to compelled labor. In 1927, the official in charge of prison administration wrote: The exploitation of prison labour, the system of squeezing "golden sweat" from them, the organisation of production in places of confinement, which while profitable from a commercial point of view is fundamentally lacking in corrective significance – these are entirely inadmissible in Soviet places of confinement. The legal base and

4960-515: The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, also known as the NKVD . The Cheka and its successor organizations, the GPU or State Political Directorate and the OGPU , oversaw political prisoners and the "special" camps to which they were sent. In April 1929, the judicial distinctions between criminal and political prisoners were eliminated, and control of the entire Soviet penal system turned over to

5084-549: The Reich in Generalplan Ost , it is clear Hitler intended to utterly destroy the city and its population. According to a directive sent to Army Group North on 29 September 1941: After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. [...] Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding

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5208-458: The Road of Life ( Russian : Дорога жизни ), was effected over the southern part of Lake Ladoga and the corridor of land which remained unoccupied by Axis forces between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. Transport across Lake Ladoga was achieved by means of watercraft during the warmer months and land vehicles driven over thick ice in winter (hence the route becoming known as the "Ice Road"). The security of

5332-489: The Soviet Baltic Fleet navy aviation made over 100,000 air missions to support their military operations during the siege. German shelling and bombing killed 5,723 and wounded 20,507 civilians in Leningrad during the siege. To sustain the defence of the city, it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad. This route, which became known as

5456-522: The Soviet Union. As a result of the first prosecution, on 30 September 1950, Nikolai Voznesensky (chairman of Gosplan ), Mikhail Rodionov ( Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers ), Alexey Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin were sentenced to death on false accusations of embezzlement of the Soviet State budget for "unapproved business in Leningrad", which

5580-479: The Soviet Union. The fair was attacked by official Soviet propaganda , and was falsely portrayed as a scheme to use the federal budget from Moscow for business development in Leningrad, although the budget and economics of such a trade fair were normal and legitimate and approved by State Planning Commission and the government of the USSR . Other accusations included that Kuznetsov, Popkov and others tried to re-establish Leningrad's historic and political importance as

5704-489: The Soviet state system and preserve and strengthen their positions within their social base, the working class (when the Bolsheviks took power, peasants represented 80% of the population). In the midst of the Russian Civil War , Lenin and the Bolsheviks established a "special" prison camp system, separate from its traditional prison system and under the control of the Cheka . These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had

5828-594: The Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. On 10 July, both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga , with the eventual aim of isolating Leningrad from all directions. The Finnish Army

5952-815: The Soviets evacuated Tallinn. On 23 August, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad Front and the Karelian Front , as it became impossible for front headquarters to control everything between Murmansk and Leningrad. Marshal Georgy Zhukov states, "Ten volunteer opolcheniye divisions were formed in Leningrad in the first three months of the war, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun opolcheniye battalions." On 6 August, Hitler repeated his order: "Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." Arctic convoys using

6076-649: The Volga area, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. By September 1941, the link with the Volkhov Front (commanded by Kirill Meretskov ) was severed and the defensive sectors were held by four armies: 23rd Army in the northern sector, 42nd Army in the western sector, 55th Army in the southern sector, and the 67th Army in the eastern sector. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front had the responsibility of maintaining

6200-410: The army after fighting began. At first, transportation remained a priority. In 1940, the NKVD focused most of its energy on railroad construction. This would prove extremely important when the German advance into the Soviet Union started in 1941. In addition, factories converted to produce ammunition, uniforms, and other supplies. Moreover, the NKVD gathered skilled workers and specialists from throughout

6324-458: The bombings, as well as the city's largest shopping bazaar. Hundreds of people had run from the street into the store to take shelter from the air raid. Artillery bombardment of Leningrad began in August, increasing in intensity during 1942 with the arrival of new equipment. It was stepped up further in 1943, when several times as many shells and bombs were used as in the year before. Against this,

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6448-488: The camps and another 154,000 exiled. This was only the beginning of the dekulakisation process, however. In 1931 alone, 1,803,392 people were exiled. Although these massive relocation processes were successful in getting a large potential free forced labor work force where they needed to be, that is about all it was successful at doing. The " special settlers ", as the Soviet government referred to them, all lived on starvation level rations, and many people starved to death in

6572-412: The camps, and anyone who was healthy enough to escape tried to do just that. This resulted in the government having to give rations to a group of people they were getting hardly any use out of, and was just costing the Soviet government money. The Unified State Political Administration (OGPU) quickly realised the problem, and began to reform the dekulakisation process. To help prevent the mass escapes

6696-638: The captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers were then murdered (see Katyn massacre ) or sent to Gulag. Of the 10,000–12,000 Poles sent to Kolyma in 1940–41, most prisoners of war , only 583 men survived, released in 1942 to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East . Out of General Anders ' 80,000 evacuees from Soviet Union gathered in Great Britain only 310 volunteered to return to Soviet-controlled Poland in 1947. During

6820-489: The city leaders were relatively autonomous from Moscow. Survivors of the siege became national heroes, and leaders of Leningrad again gained much clout in the Soviet central government in Moscow. In January 1949 Pyotr Popkov , Alexey Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesensky organised a Leningrad Trade Fair to boost the post-war economy and support the survivors of the Siege of Leningrad with goods and services from other regions of

6944-516: The city organised by Marshal Zhukov , the Axis armies laid siege to the city for "900 days and nights". The air attack of Friday, 19 September, was particularly brutal. It was the heaviest air raid Leningrad suffered during the war, as 276 German bombers hit the city killing 1,000 civilians. Many of those killed were recuperating from battle wounds in hospitals that were hit by German bombs. Six air raids occurred that day. Five hospitals were damaged in

7068-412: The city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output. It has been said that Adolf Hitler was so confident that he would capture Leningrad that he had invitations printed to the victory celebrations to be held in the city's Hotel Astoria . Although various theories have been put forward about Germany's plans for Leningrad, including making it the capital of the new Ingermanland province of

7192-473: The city's community, were exiled or imprisoned in the Gulag prison camps. Intellectuals were harshly persecuted for the slightest signs of dissent, such as Nikolai Punin , who was killed in a prison camp for expressing his dislike of Soviet propaganda and "tasteless" Lenin portraits. The Leningrad affair was organised and supervised by Malenkov and Beria. Executions and purges were done by Viktor Abakumov and

7316-596: The city, although hard fighting continued along his front throughout October and November. The 14th Army of the Soviet Red Army defended Murmansk and the 7th Army defended Ladoga Karelia; thus they did not participate in the initial stages of the siege. The 8th Army was initially part of the Northwestern Front and retreated through the Baltics. It was transferred to the Northern Front on 14 July when

7440-504: The city. Although Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943, the Red Army did not lift the siege until 27 January 1944, 872 days (125 weeks) after it began. The siege became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history , and it was possibly the costliest siege in history due to the number of casualties which were suffered throughout its duration. An estimated 1.5 million people died as

7564-561: The commander of the Finnish Coastal Brigade responsible for Ladoga, proposed to the German headquarters the blocking of Soviet convoys on Lake Ladoga. The idea was proposed to the Germans on their own behalf going past both Finnish Navy HQ and General HQ. Germans responded positively to the proposition and informed the slightly surprised Finns – who apart from Talvela and Järvinen had very little knowledge of

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7688-778: The defence of a single city are six times greater than the United States’ total death toll during the entirety of World War II" and that "In terms of drama, symbolism and sheer human suffering, however, the Battle for Leningrad has no peer either in the Great Patriotic War or in any other modern war". Military historian Victor Davis Hanson further affirmed that "Leningrad was civilization's most lethal siege" and that "More than one million died at Leningrad amid mass starvation, epidemic, cannibalism and daily barrages—a greater death toll than any siege in history". The crippling starvation and famine extended beyond Leningrad itself, affecting

7812-418: The destruction of the Red Army forces around the city. By 15 September, Panzer Group 4 was to be transferred to Army Group Centre so it could participate in a renewed offensive towards Moscow. The expected surrender did not materialise although the renewed German offensive cut off the city by 8 September. Lacking sufficient strength for major operations, Leeb had to accept the army group might not be able to take

7936-554: The development of the camp system followed economic lines. The growth of the camp system coincided with the peak of the Soviet industrialisation campaign. Most of the camps established to accommodate the masses of incoming prisoners were assigned distinct economic tasks. These included the exploitation of natural resources and the colonization of remote areas, as well as the realisation of enormous infrastructural facilities and industrial construction projects. The plan to achieve these goals with " special settlements " instead of labor camps

8060-512: The entire Soviet Union, but also the lack of central aid to the Gulag during the war. The central government focused all its attention on the military and left the camps to their own devices. In 1942, the Gulag set up the Supply Administration to find their own food and industrial goods. During this time, not only did food become scarce, but the NKVD limited rations in an attempt to motivate the prisoners to work harder for more food,

8184-451: The first winter of the war, and the city was completely isolated until 20 November, when the ice road over Lake Ladoga became operational. Vehicles risked becoming stuck in the snow or sinking through broken ice caused by constant German bombardments, but the road brought necessary military and food supplies in and took civilians and wounded soldiers out, allowing the city to continue resisting the enemy. The two-and-a-half-year siege caused

8308-597: The frontline so that it ran along the old border near the shores of Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and those positions closest to Leningrad still lying on the pre-Winter War border. According to Soviet claims, the Finnish advance was stopped in September through resistance by the Karelian Fortified Region; however, Finnish troops had already earlier in August 1941 received orders to halt the advance after reaching their goals, some of which lay beyond

8432-460: The general command of Admiral Vladimir Tributs . The Ladoga Flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S.V. Zemlyanichenko, P.A. Traynin, and B.V. Khoroshikhin also played a major military role in helping with evacuation of the civilians. The first success of the Leningrad air defence took place on the night of 23 June. The Ju 88A bomber from the 1st Air Corps KGr.806 was damaged by the AA fire of

8556-617: The greatest destruction and the largest loss of life ever known in a modern city. On Hitler's direct orders the Wehrmacht looted and then destroyed most of the imperial palaces, such as the Catherine Palace , Peterhof Palace , Ropsha , Strelna , Gatchina, and other historic landmarks located outside the city's defensive perimeter, with many art collections transported to Germany. A number of factories, schools, hospitals and other civil infrastructure were destroyed by air raids and long range artillery bombardment. The 872 days of

8680-410: The guidance for the creation of the system of "corrective labor camps" ( исправи́тельно-трудовые лагеря , Ispravitel'no-trudovye lagerya ), the backbone of what is commonly referred to as the "Gulag", was a secret decree from the Sovnarkom of July 11, 1929, about the use of penal labor that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of the Politburo meeting of June 27, 1929. One of

8804-438: The guns from the cruiser Aurora were removed from the ship to be used to defend Leningrad. The 4th Panzer Group from East Prussia took Pskov following a swift advance and reached Novgorod by 16 August. After the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad. However, the 18th Army – despite some 350,000 men lagging behind – forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after

8928-399: The inmates' food rations were to be linked to their rate of production, a proposal known as nourishment scale (шкала питания). This notorious you-eat-as-you-work system would often kill weaker prisoners in weeks and caused countless casualties. The letter caught the attention of a number of high communist officials including Genrikh Yagoda and Frenkel soon went from being an inmate to becoming

9052-419: The intelligentsia derive from the extrapolations of Viktor Zemskov from a collection of prison camp population movements data. On the eve of World War II, Soviet archives indicate a combined camp and colony population upwards of 1.6 million in 1939, according to V. P. Kozlov. Anne Applebaum and Steven Rosefielde estimate that 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in Gulag system's prison camps and colonies when

9176-622: The logistic route to the city in coordination with the Ladoga Flotilla. Air cover for the city was provided by the Leningrad military district PVO Corps and Baltic Fleet naval aviation units. The defensive operation to protect the 1,400,000 civilian evacuees was part of the Leningrad counter-siege operations under the command of Andrei Zhdanov , Kliment Voroshilov, and Aleksei Kuznetsov . Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with Baltic Fleet naval forces under

9300-542: The multiple passages of the notorious Article 58 of the Criminal Codes of the Union republics, which defined punishment for various forms of "counterrevolutionary activities". Under NKVD Order No. 00447 , tens of thousands of Gulag inmates were executed in 1937–38 for "continuing counterrevolutionary activities". Between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased more than eight times, and

9424-530: The nineteenth century, the members of the failed Decembrist revolt and Polish nobles who resisted Russian rule were sent into exile. Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to die for reading banned literature in 1849, but the sentence was commuted to banishment to Siberia. Members of various socialist revolutionary groups, including Bolsheviks such as Sergo Ordzhonikidze , Vladimir Lenin , Leon Trotsky , and Joseph Stalin were also sent into exile. Convicts who were serving labor sentences and exiles were sent to

9548-412: The number of deaths in the Gulag. This policy can partially be attributed to the common practice of releasing prisoners who were suffering from incurable diseases as well as prisoners who were near death. Almost immediately after the death of Stalin , the Soviet establishment started to dismantle the Gulag system. A mass general amnesty was granted in the immediate aftermath of Stalin's death, but it

9672-437: The number of prisoners with high education increased five times. It resulted in their increased share in the overall composition of the camp prisoners. Among the camp prisoners, the number and share of the intelligentsia was growing at the quickest pace. Distrust, hostility, and even hatred for the intelligentsia was a common characteristic of the Soviet leaders. Information regarding the imprisonment trends and consequences for

9796-408: The old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not our goal and that we should not take part in it. Mannerheim and Minister of Defense Walden agreed with me and refused the offers of the Germans. The result was a paradoxical situation: the Germans could not approach Leningrad from the north..." There was little or no systematic shelling or bombing from

9920-407: The other annexed lands, regardless of their ethnic origin, were arrested and sent to the Gulag camps. However, according to the official data, the total number of sentences for political and anti-state (espionage, terrorism) crimes in the USSR in 1939–41 was 211,106. Approximately 300,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the "Polish Defensive War" . Almost all of

10044-537: The population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population. Hitler's ultimate plan was to raze Leningrad and give areas north of the River Neva to the Finns . Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. By early August, Army Group North

10168-560: The pre-Winter War border. After reaching their respective goals, the Finns halted their advance and started moving troops to East Karelia. For the next three years, the Finns did little to contribute to the battle for Leningrad, maintaining their lines. Their headquarters rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and did not advance farther south from the Svir River in occupied East Karelia (160 kilometres northeast of Leningrad), which they had reached on 7 September. In

10292-518: The prison system that was still under the purview of the NKVD . The purpose of these new camps was to colonise the remote and inhospitable environments throughout the Soviet Union. These changes took place around the same time that Stalin started to institute collectivisation and rapid industrial development. Collectivisation resulted in a large scale purge of peasants and so-called Kulaks . The Kulaks were supposedly wealthy, comparatively to other Soviet peasants, and were considered to be capitalists by

10416-432: The problem, and the dekulakisation process was a failure in providing the government with a steady forced labor force. These prisoners were also lucky to be in the gulag in the early 1930s. Prisoners were relatively well off compared to what the prisoners would have to go through in the final years of the gulag. The Gulag was officially established on April 25, 1930, as the GULAG by the OGPU order 130/63 in accordance with

10540-617: The proposition – that transport of the equipment for the Ladoga operation was already arranged. The German command formed the international naval detachment (which also included the Italian XII Squadriglia MAS ) under Finnish command and the Einsatzstab Fähre Ost under German command. These naval units operated against the supply route in the summer and autumn of 1942, the only period

10664-435: The rail link between Leningrad and Moscow. Tallinn was captured on 28 August. Finnish military forces were north of Leningrad, while German forces occupied territories to the south. Both German and Finnish forces had the goal of encircling Leningrad and maintaining the siege perimeter, thus cutting off all communication with the city and preventing the defenders from receiving any supplies – although Finnish participation in

10788-632: The remains of its administration were dissolved by Khrushchev. The legal practice of sentencing convicts to penal labor continues to exist in the Russian Federation , but its capacity is greatly reduced. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature , who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened

10912-435: The road to the besieged city was severed when the Germans reached Lake Ladoga at Shlisselburg , leaving just a corridor of land between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad which remained unoccupied by Axis forces. Bombing on 8 September caused 178 fires. On 21 September 1941, German High Command considered how to destroy Leningrad. Occupying the city was ruled out "because it would make us responsible for food supply". The resolution

11036-720: The scattered camps to " a chain of islands ", and as an eyewitness, he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates (simply referred to as "camps") and 423 labor colonies in the Soviet Union. Many mining and industrial towns and cities in northern Russia, eastern Russia and Kazakhstan such as Karaganda , Norilsk , Vorkuta and Magadan , were blocks of camps which were originally built by prisoners and subsequently run by ex-prisoners. GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное управле́ние испави́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps ). It

11160-400: The siege caused extreme famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy and food supplies. This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more (mainly women and children), many of whom died during evacuation due to starvation and bombardment. According to journalist Harrison E. Salisbury on the death toll of

11284-478: The siege mainly consisted of a recapture of lands lost in the Winter War . The Germans planned on lack of food being their chief weapon against the citizens; German scientists had calculated the city would reach starvation after only a few weeks. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad organised "First response groups" of civilians. In the next days, Leningrad's civilian population

11408-452: The siege, "A total for Leningrad and vicinity of something over 1,000,000 deaths attributable to hunger, and an over-all total of deaths, civilian and military, on the order of 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 seems reasonable." According to military historian David M. Glantz , "the number of soldiers and civilians who perished during the Battle for Leningrad amounted to the awesome total of between 1.6 and two million souls. These figures associated with

11532-543: The southeast, the Germans captured Tikhvin on 8 November, but failed to complete their encirclement of Leningrad by advancing further north to join with the Finns at the Svir River. On 9 December, a counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from their Tikhvin positions in the Volkhov River line. On 6 September 1941, Germany's chief of staff, Alfred Jodl, visited Helsinki. His main goal

11656-410: The state, and by extension enemies of socialism. The term would also become associated with anyone who opposed or even seemed unsatisfied with the Soviet government. By late 1929, Stalin began a program known as dekulakization . Stalin demanded that the kulak class be completely wiped out, resulting in the imprisonment and execution of Soviet peasants. In a mere four months, 60,000 people were sent to

11780-493: The summer of 1942. Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad holds half a million civilian victims of the siege alone. Economic destruction and human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those of the Battle of Stalingrad , the Battle of Moscow , or the bombing of Tokyo . The siege of Leningrad ranks as the most lethal siege in world history , and some historians speak of the siege operations in terms of genocide , as

11904-481: The supply route was ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops. Vital food supplies were thus transported to the village of Osinovets, from where they were transferred and transported over 45 km (28 mi) via a small suburban railway to Leningrad. The route had to be used also to evacuate civilians, since no evacuation plans had been executed in the chaos of

12028-419: The surrounding satellite cities as well and de facto including them into the blockade dynamics. The city of Pushkin, with half under formal German occupation and the other half serving as a de facto frontline, experienced similar conditions to those within Leningrad. Pushkinites were dying of mass hunger, the city was regularly shelled by Soviet forces, and the Germans did not introduce ration cards for bread until

12152-441: The system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era . The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for " Г ла́вное У правле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х ЛАГ ере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps ), but the full official name of the agency changed several times . The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union . The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners ,

12276-426: The term katorga works ( каторжные работы ) was reintroduced. They were initially intended for Nazi collaborators , but then other categories of political prisoners (for example, members of deported peoples who fled from exile) were also sentenced to "katorga works". Prisoners sentenced to "katorga works" were sent to Gulag prison camps with the most harsh regime and many of them perished. Up until World War II,

12400-413: The term Gulag was originally used in reference to a government agency, in English and many other languages, the acronym acquired the qualities of a common noun, denoting the Soviet system of prison -based, unfree labor . Even more broadly, "Gulag" has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the "meat-grinder": the arrests, the interrogations,

12524-713: The total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465,000 were political prisoners. Between the years 1934 to 1953, 20% to 40% of the Gulag population in each given year were released. The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the formal distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. GUPVI (ГУПВИ) was the Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees ( Главное управление по делам военнопленных и интернированных , [Glavnoye upravleniye po delam voyennoplennyh i internirovannyh] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) ),

12648-434: The transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths. Western authors use the term Gulag to denote all the prisons and internment camps in the Soviet Union. The term's contemporary usage is at times notably not directly related to the USSR, such as in the expression " North Korea's Gulag " for camps operational today. The word Gulag

12772-468: The underpopulated areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East – regions that lacked towns or food sources as well as organized transportation systems. Despite the isolated conditions, some prisoners successfully escaped to populated areas. Stalin himself escaped three of the four times after he was sent into exile. Since these times, Siberia gained its fearful connotation as a place of punishment,

12896-497: The units were able to operate as freezing waters then forced the lightly equipped units to be moved away, and changes in front lines made it impractical to reestablish these units later in the war. The Leningrad Front (initially the Leningrad Military District ) was commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov . It included the 23rd Army in the northern sector between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and

13020-647: The war started. After the German invasion of Poland that marked the start of World War II in Europe, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed eastern parts of the Second Polish Republic . In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , Bessarabia (now the Republic of Moldova) and Bukovina . According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens and inhabitants of

13144-655: Was a prolonged military siege undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg ) on the Eastern Front of World War II . Germany 's Army Group North advanced from the south, while the German-allied Finnish army invaded from the north and completed the ring around the city. The siege began on 8 September 1941, when the Wehrmacht severed the last road to

13268-465: Was able to take control of the government, and began to form the gulag system. On June 27, 1929, the Politburo created a system of self-supporting camps that would eventually replace the existing prisons around the country. These prisons were meant to receive inmates that received a prison sentence that exceeded three years. Prisoners who had a shorter prison sentence than three years were to remain in

13392-428: Was anecdotal. Anna Reid points out that "for most people at the time, cannibalism was a matter of second-hand horror stories rather than direct personal experience". Indicative of Leningraders' fears at the time, police would often threaten uncooperative suspects with imprisonment in a cell with cannibals. Dimitri Lazarev, a diarist during the worst moments in the Leningrad siege, recalls his daughter and niece reciting

13516-581: Was applied to the accused retroactively . Over 200 Leningrad officials were sentenced to prison terms from 10 to 25 years. Their families were stripped of rights to live and work in any major city, thus limiting their lives to Siberia and other remote regions of the country. About 2,000 of Leningrad's public figures were removed from their positions and exiled from their city, thus losing their homes and other property. All of them were repressed , together with their relatives. Respected intellectuals, scientists, writers and educators, many of whom were pillars of

13640-418: Was constructed after the revolution, was opened 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. By the end of 1940, the population of the Gulag camps amounted to 1.5 million. The emergent consensus among scholars is that, of the 14 million prisoners who passed through

13764-463: Was dropped after the revealing of the Nazino affair in 1933. The 1931–32 archives indicate the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; while in 1935, approximately 800,000 were in camps and 300,000 in colonies. Gulag population reached a peak value (1.5 million) in 1941, gradually decreased during the war and then started to grow again, achieving a maximum by 1953. Besides Gulag camps,

13888-459: Was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilised for the construction of fortifications . Several lines of defences were built along the city's perimeter to repel hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the fortified line ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina , Uritsk , Pulkovo and then through

14012-479: Was labeled as anti-Soviet treason. Several of those prosecuted were also accused of Russian chauvinism for their desire to create a separate Russian Communist Party. The verdict was announced behind closed doors after midnight and the six main defendants, including the mayor of the city, were executed by shooting on 1 October 1950. Stalin's government had reinstated the death penalty in the Soviet Union on 12 January 1950; it had previously been repealed in 1947. It

14136-521: Was laid out in Hitler's Directive 21 , "The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Russian (sic – Soviet) strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake Ladoga." The last rail connection to Leningrad was severed on 30 August 1941, when the Germans reached the Neva River. On 8 September,

14260-553: Was motivated by Leningrad 's political status as the former capital of Russia as well as by Leningrad's political status as the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution and its symbolic status as the ideological center of Bolshevism , hated by the Nazi Party , the city's military importance as a main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet , and its industrial strength, including its numerous arms factories. In 1939,

14384-522: Was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. Under the Imperial Russian penal system, those who were convicted of less serious crimes were sent to corrective prisons and they were also made to work. Forced exile to Siberia had been in use for a wide range of offenses since the seventeenth century and it was a common punishment for political dissidents and revolutionaries. In

14508-542: Was not often used in Russian, either officially or colloquially; the predominant terms were the camps (лагеря, lagerya ) and the zone (зона, zona ), usually singular, for the labor camp system and for the individual camps. The official term, " correctional labour camp ", was suggested for official use by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the session of July 27, 1929. The Tsar and

14632-428: Was only offered to non-political prisoners and political prisoners who had been sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison. Shortly thereafter, Nikita Khrushchev was elected First Secretary , initiating the processes of de-Stalinization and the Khrushchev Thaw , triggering a mass release and rehabilitation of political prisoners. Six years later, on 25 January 1960, the Gulag system was officially abolished when

14756-513: Was renamed several times, e.g., to Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Colonies ( Главное управление исправительно-трудовых колоний (ГУИТК) ), which names can be seen in the documents describing the subordination of various camps. Some historians estimate that 14 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953 (the estimates for the period from 1918 to 1929 are more difficult to calculate). Other calculations, by historian Orlando Figes , refer to 25 million prisoners of

14880-430: Was seriously over-extended, having advanced on a widening front and dispersed its forces on several axes of advance. Leeb estimated he needed 35 divisions for all of his tasks, while he only had 26. The attack resumed on 10 August but immediately encountered strong opposition around Luga . Elsewhere, Leeb's forces were able to take Kingisepp and Narva on 17 August. The army group reached Chudovo on 20 August, severing

15004-417: Was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both camp systems were similar: hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, and high mortality rate. For the Soviet political prisoners, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , all foreign civilian detainees and foreign POWs were imprisoned in the GULAG; the surviving foreign civilians and POWs considered themselves prisoners in

15128-569: Was then expected to advance along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga. The last rail connection to Leningrad was cut on 30 August, when the German forces reached the River Neva. In early September, Leeb was confident Leningrad was about to fall. Having received reports on the evacuation of civilians and industrial goods, Leeb and the OKH believed the Red Army was preparing to abandon the city. Consequently, on 5 September, he received new orders, including

15252-531: Was to lay the city under siege and bombardment, starving its population. "Early next year, we [will] enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns." On 7 October, Hitler sent a further directive signed by Alfred Jodl reminding Army Group North not to accept capitulation. By August 1941,

15376-531: Was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the offensive. In 1941, President Ryti declared to the Finnish Parliament that the aim of the war was to restore the territories lost during the Winter War and gain more territories in the east to create a " Greater Finland ". After the war, Ryti stated: "On 24 August 1941 I visited the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans aimed us at crossing

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