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87-478: The instructions specified that the deportations would be carried out as secretly, quietly and speedily as possible. Families were restricted to taking 100 kilograms (220 lb) of their belongings (clothes, food, kitchenware). The heads of the families were sent to Gulag labor camps , and other members were transported to forced settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union. While the original document

174-419: A hemorrhagic stroke involving the left middle cerebral artery . Over the next two days he received a variety of treatments. In an attempt to decrease his blood pressure, which had risen to 210/120, two separate applications of eight leeches each were applied to his neck and face over the next two days. However, Stalin's condition continued to deteriorate and he died at 9:50 p.m. on 5 March 1953. His death

261-524: A moment of silence was observed nationwide at noon Moscow time. As the bells of the Kremlin Clock chimed the hour, sirens and horns wailed nationwide, along with a 21-gun salute fired from within the precincts of the Kremlin . Similar observances were also held in other Eastern Bloc countries including Mongolia , China and North Korea. Immediately after the silence ended, a military band played

348-872: A "minute of silence". At the request of President Eisenhower , Secretary of State John Foster Dulles transmitted a message of condolence through the American Embassy to the Soviet Foreign Ministry. After Stalin's death, Patriarch Alexy I composed a personal statement of condolence to the Soviet Council of Ministers : "His death is a heavy grief for our Fatherland and for all the people who inhabit it. The whole Russian Orthodox Church, which will never forget his benevolent attitude to Church needs, feels great sorrow at his death. The bright memory of him will live ineradicably in our hearts. Our Church proclaims eternal memory to him with

435-482: 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

522-590: A completely different document that was signed by Lavrenty Beria on October 11, 1939, which was prepared by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and listed various groups of people (anticommunists, former military or police personnel, large landowners, industrialists etc.) to be targeted by Soviet security structures according to the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) . The original Serov Instructions had no date or number. The confusion possibly originates from

609-541: 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

696-468: 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

783-497: A fatal end." As summarized above, rather than suggesting a plot by Beria, on whom suspicion fell for his purportedly telling Molotov that he "took him out" at one point, and his seemingly willful delay in obtaining medical treatment for Stalin, the physical changes seen during autopsy were consistent with extracranial changes that often occur in stroke victims. Beria's son, Sergo Beria, later recounted that after Stalin's death, his mother Nina told her husband that, "Your position now

870-475: A few others, gathered together for an evening of entertainment and drinking. After the guests dispersed at approximately 4:00 a.m. on 1 March, Stalin retired to his private quarters with strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed until sounds were heard indicating that he had awakened. Time passed and no sounds were heard throughout the day. At approximately 11:00 p.m. on 1 March, Stalin's housekeeper cautiously entered his room and found him lying on

957-401: 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

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1044-550: 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

1131-522: A policy that lasted until 1948. Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin , second leader of the Soviet Union , died on 5 March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke , at age 74. He was given a state funeral in Moscow on 9 March, with four days of national mourning declared. On the day of the funeral, of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens visiting

1218-463: 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 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

1305-587: 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

1392-473: 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

1479-435: A special feeling of abiding love." Alexy I also gave a eulogy on the day of Stalin's funeral. Other Orthodox officials, including Nicholas (Yarushevich) , attended the funeral and mourned for Stalin. Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place. The Central Committee met on the day of his death, after which Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev emerged as

1566-518: Is even more precarious than when Stalin was alive." This turned out to be correct; several months later, in June 1953, Beria was arrested and charged with a variety of crimes but, significantly, none relating to Stalin's death. He was subsequently found guilty of treason , terrorism and counter-revolutionary activity by the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953, and executed

1653-479: 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

1740-509: Is undated, sources provide various dates from October 11, 1939 to January 21, 1941. However, the NKGB was created only on February 3, 1941 and so could not have issued documents earlier. A copy of the instructions, found in Šiauliai , had a stamp that the document was received on June 7. Therefore, the instructions must have been written sometime between February and June 1941. The Serov Instructions are often confused with NKVD Order No. 001223 ,

1827-620: 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 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

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1914-564: 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,

2001-557: 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 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

2088-781: The NKVD ; Georgy Malenkov , the chairman of the Presidium ; and Vyacheslav Molotov , previously the Soviet Union's Minister of Foreign Affairs . Joseph Stalin's health had begun to deteriorate towards the end of the Second World War . He had atherosclerosis as a result of heavy smoking, a mild stroke around the time of the Victory Parade in May 1945, and a severe heart attack in October 1945. The last three days of Stalin's life have been described in detail, first in

2175-567: 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 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

2262-619: 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

2349-565: 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

2436-856: The Soviet State Anthem , and then a military parade of the Moscow Garrison was held in Stalin's honor. In their efforts to pay their respects to Stalin, a number of Soviet citizens, many of whom had travelled from across the country to attend the funeral, were crushed and trampled to death in a crowd crush . They were crushed against building walls and Soviet Army trucks, which had been deployed to block off side streets. Mourners, along with mounted police and their horses, were trampled to death in Trubnaya Square  [ ru ] . The Soviet government did not initially report

2523-529: 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,

2610-427: 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 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

2697-575: 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

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2784-476: The Body of J. V. Stalin" Pathologic examination revealed a large hemorrhage, localized to the area of subcortical centers of the left cerebral hemisphere. This hemorrhage destroyed important areas of the brain and resulted in irreversible changes in the respiration and circulation. In addition to the brain hemorrhage, there were found significant hypertrophy of the left ventricle (of the heart), numerous hemorrhages in

2871-747: 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

2958-495: 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

3045-466: 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

3132-457: 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

3219-422: 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

3306-431: 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

3393-428: 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

3480-462: 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

3567-511: 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

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3654-515: 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

3741-469: 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

3828-540: 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

3915-558: The Soviet system were immediately implemented. Economic reform scaled back the mass construction projects, placed a new emphasis on house building, and eased the levels of taxation on the peasantry to stimulate production. The new leaders sought rapprochement with Yugoslavia and a less hostile relationship with the U.S., and they pursued a negotiated end to the Korean War in July 1953. The doctors who had been imprisoned were released and

4002-893: The Third Interim Report by the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the Incorporation of the Baltic States into the U.S.S.R. , which published the full text of the Instructions under a misleading heading as Order № 001223. 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

4089-408: 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 , 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

4176-410: 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

4263-488: 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

4350-412: 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

4437-665: The capital to pay their respects, at least 109 were later acknowledged to have died in a human crush . Stalin's body was embalmed and interred in Lenin's Mausoleum until 1961, when it was moved to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis . The members of Stalin's inner circle in charge of organizing his funeral were Nikita Khrushchev , then-head of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party ; Lavrentiy Beria , head of

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4524-638: 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

4611-560: The coffin containing Stalin's body was put on display at the Hall of Columns in the House of the Unions , remaining there for three days. On 9 March, the body was delivered to Red Square prior to interment in Lenin's Mausoleum . Speeches were delivered by Khrushchev, Malenkov, Molotov and Beria, after which pallbearers carried the coffin to the mausoleum. As Stalin's body was being interred,

4698-554: 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

4785-512: 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,

4872-441: The event, and the exact number of casualties is unknown. Khrushchev later provided an estimate that 109 people died in the crowd. According to Ogoniok , the mourners included the following foreign dignitaries (listed alphabetically by last name): Czechoslovak leader Gottwald died shortly after attending Stalin's funeral, on 14 March 1953, after one of his arteries burst. Fearing their departure might encourage rivals within

4959-448: The floor, wearing his pajama trousers and a shirt. He was unconscious, breathing heavily, incontinent and unresponsive to attempts to rouse him. At 7:00 a.m. on 2 March, Beria and a group of medical experts were summoned to examine Stalin. Based on their examination, which revealed blood pressure of 190/110 and right-sided hemiplegia , they concluded that Stalin, who had a known history of uncontrolled hypertension , had sustained

5046-466: 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

5133-399: 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

5220-419: 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

5307-542: 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

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5394-400: The myocardium, in the stomach and intestinal mucosa; atherosclerotic changes in the vessels, more prominent in the cerebral arteries. These are the result of hypertension. The results of the pathologic examination revealed the irreversible character of J.V. Stalin's disease from the moment of brain hemorrhage. Therefore, all treatment attempts could not have led to a favorable outcome and prevent

5481-530: 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

5568-437: 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

5655-604: The official Soviet announcements in Pravda , and then in a complete English translation which followed shortly thereafter in The Current Digest of the Soviet Press . Decades later, former senior officer and historian Dmitry Volkogonov described how, on 28 February 1953, Stalin and a small number of his inner circle, consisting of Lavrentiy Beria , Nikita Khrushchev , Georgy Malenkov , Vyacheslav Molotov and

5742-407: 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

5829-567: The party's dominant figures. The system of collective leadership was restored, and measures introduced to prevent any one member from attaining autocratic domination. The collective leadership included eight senior members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , namely Georgy Malenkov , Lavrentiy Beria , Vyacheslav Molotov , Kliment Voroshilov , Nikita Khrushchev , Nikolai Bulganin , Lazar Kaganovich and Anastas Mikoyan . Reforms to

5916-518: 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

6003-432: 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

6090-526: The ranks of the Party of Labour of Albania , neither Prime Minister Enver Hoxha nor Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu risked traveling to Moscow to attend the funeral, with Hoxha instead pledging eternal allegiance to the late Soviet leader. Guatemalan officials in the government of Jacobo Árbenz eulogized Stalin as a "great statesman and leader ... whose passing is mourned by all progressive men". The Guatemalan Congress paid tribute to Stalin with

6177-501: 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 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

6264-414: The same day, shot by General Pavel Batitsky . Some historians have conjectured that Stalin was murdered; Beria has been accused of poisoning him, but no firm evidence has appeared. According to a theory developed by historians Vladimir Naumov and Jonathan Brent , based on mentions of stomach hemorrhaging excised from his autopsy, Stalin was poisoned with warfarin , most likely by Beria. On 6 March,

6351-410: 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

6438-426: 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,

6525-468: 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,

6612-713: 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 ) ),

6699-434: 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

6786-468: 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,

6873-647: 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

6960-409: 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

7047-498: Was announced the next day on Radio Moscow by Yuri Levitan . Stalin's body was then taken to an unspecified location and an autopsy performed, after which it was embalmed for public viewing. Attempts to locate and access the original autopsy report were unsuccessful until the 2010s, but the most important findings were reported in a special bulletin in Pravda on 7 March 1953, as follows: "Pathological-Anatomical Examination of

7134-463: 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,

7221-411: 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 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

7308-522: 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

7395-478: 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

7482-513: 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

7569-417: 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

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