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105-758: The canal was constructed by forced labor of gulag inmates. Beginning and ending with a labor force of 126,000, between 12,000 and 25,000 laborers died according to official records, while Anne Applebaum 's estimate is 25,000 deaths. The canal runs 227 km (141 mi), partially along several canalized rivers and Lake Vygozero . As of 2008, it carries only light traffic of between ten and forty boats per day. Its economic advantages are limited by its minimal depth of 3.5 m (11.5 ft), inadequate for most seagoing vessels. This depth typically corresponds to river craft with deadweight cargo up to 600 tonnes, while useful seagoing vessels of 2,000–3,000  dwt typically have drafts of 4.5–6 m (15–20 ft). The canal

210-482: 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

315-486: A caravan of passenger vessels evacuating families of Povenets canal workers and residents, along with equipment, froze into the ice of Lake Vygozero . On the night of November 12/13, another boat caravan froze in Zaonezhsky Bay near Megostrov Island, and was later captured by Finnish troops. On December 5, Finnish troops entered Medvezhyegorsk. On December 6 in a -37 °C frost, Finnish troops captured Povenets,

420-474: A cargo of fuel oil to the White Sea port of Kandalaksha . After many years of interruption, Volgotanker resumed the canal route in 2003. The company had plans to carry 800,000 tonnes of fuel oil over the canal during 2003, and to increase the volume to 1,500,000 t (1,476,000 long tons; 1,653,000 short tons) in 2004. The fuel was transferred from Volgotanker river tankers to Latvian seagoing tankers at

525-602: 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

630-468: 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

735-584: A few days of fighting they were pushed back to the canal's western side. Soviet sappers blew up Lock No. 7 on December 11 after the Red Army had retreated. Once the locks of the Povenets Ladder had been destroyed, water from the watershed lakes poured freely into Lake Onega through Povenets village, which was nearly completely destroyed by the flood. The route of the BBK had become the front line, separating

840-799: A floating transfer station near the Osinki Island in the Onega Bay on the White Sea, 36 km (22 mi) northwest of the port of Onega . Transfer operations began 24 June 2003, but on 1 September a low-speed collision between Volgotanker's Nefterudovoz-57M and the Latvian Zoja-I during a transfer caused a crack in the Nefterudovoz's hull, with a subsequent oil spillage estimated at 45 t (44 long tons; 50 short tons), of which only 9 t (8.9 long tons; 9.9 short tons) were recovered. Volgotanker's alleged failure to contain

945-401: 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

1050-550: 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

1155-554: A policy that lasted until 1948. Belbaltlag Gulag forced labor camp [REDACTED] Inmates during the construction Belbaltlag (Russian names: Белбалтлаг, БелБалтлаг, ББЛ, Беломорско-Балтийский ИТЛ ) was the Soviet Gulag forced labor camp whose main purpose was manning the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal . It was established on November 16, 1931 from

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1260-463: 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

1365-587: 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

1470-473: 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

1575-538: A work in praise of the project, the 600-page The I.V. Stalin White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal ( Беломорско-Балтийский канал имени Сталина ), published at the end of 1934. Shklovsky visited the White Sea Canal on his own rather than with the group. Gorky, who had previously visited the Solovetski Islands labor camp in 1929 and written about it in the Soviet journal Our Accomplishments, organized

1680-490: Is заключённый ( zakliuchyonnyi ), usually abbreviated to " з/к " in paperwork, and pronounced as " зэка " ( IPA: [zɨˈka] , "zeh-KA"), which gradually transformed into " зэк " and " зек ", zek (both pronounced as IPA: [ˈzɛk] ). The word is still in colloquial use. Originally the abbreviation stood for zaklyuchyonny kanaloarmeyets ( заключённый каналоармеец ), literally "incarcerated canal-army-man". The latter term coined in an analogy with

1785-479: 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

1890-478: Is limited to 8 km/h (4.3 kn; 5.0 mph) in all artificial portions. In conditions of low visibility (less than one km) navigation is halted. For the navigation seasons of 2008 to 2010, the canal locks were scheduled to operate from 20 May to 15–30 October, giving 148–163 navigation days per year. The following illustration depicts the profile of the White Sea–Baltic Canal. The horizontal axis

1995-426: Is the length of the canal. The vertical axis is the elevation of the canal segments above mean sea level. The Soviet Union presented the canal as an example of the success of the first five-year plan . Its construction was completed four months ahead of schedule, though it was too shallow for the planned use. The canal was constructed in twenty months, between 1931 and 1933, almost entirely by manual labor. The canal

2100-597: The Belomorkanal Soviet cigarette brand. There is a monument at Povenets for the prisoners who perished during the construction, and a smaller memorial in Belomorsk near the White Sea end. There was even a comedic play written about the canal by Nikolay Pogodin . The canal project also gave the Russian language the slang word " zeka ", " zek , z/k " for "inmate". In Russian , "inmate", "incarcerated"

2205-696: 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 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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2310-564: 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,

2415-557: 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

2520-567: 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

2625-588: The Order of Lenin for the completion of the canal by the Politburo on July 15, 1933. The Soviets portrayed the project as evidence of the efficiency of the Gulag. Supposedly "reforging class enemies" (political prisoners) through "corrective labor", the working conditions at the BBK Camp were brutal, with the prisoners given only primitive hand tools to carry out the massive construction project. The mortality rate

2730-619: 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

2835-565: 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

2940-610: The Solovki prison camp and closed on February 26, 1941. Most of the time its headquarters were in Medvezhyegorsk . Its ocupation varied between about 58,000 and 99,000. After the construction of canal was finished the inmates were tasked with logging , various other constructions, fishing and manufacturing of various consumer foods. References [ edit ] ^ БЕЛОМОРО-БАЛТИЙСКИЙ ИТЛ Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Belbaltlag&oldid=1254355741 " Category : Camps of

3045-529: 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,

3150-900: The Yenisei River . In 2011, heavy equipment for the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro power plant was shipped from Saint Petersburg via the canal, the Arctic Sea, and the Yenisei River. In Soviet times, the canal was used for shipping oil products from refineries on the Volga River to consumers in the Murmansk Oblast and overseas. Russia's Volgotanker Company, with a fleet of suitably sized petroleum tankers and ore-bulk-oil carriers , pioneered this route starting August 1970, when Nefterudovoz-3 delivered

3255-427: 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

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3360-525: The "Stairs of Povenets". These locks are the southern slope of the canal. The canal summit pond at 103 m elevation is 22 km (14 mi) long between locks 7 & 8. The northern slope has twelve locks numbered 8–19. The route of the northern slope runs through five large lakes; Lake Matkozero between locks 8 & 9, Lake Vygozero between locks 9 & 10, Lake Palagorka between locks 10 & 11, Lake Voitskoye between locks 11 & 12 and Lake Matkozhnya between locks 13 & 14. The canal empties out into

3465-575: 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

3570-747: 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

3675-594: The Combine employed about 4,500 free employees and a paramilitary security force. In all, the Combine's employees accounted for about 25% of the population of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic . Until 1936, all financial transactions of the Combine were exempt from taxes and duties. The BBK led to the development of Belomorsk as a major industrial city. New cities and urban-type settlements developed along

3780-685: The Finland-USSR border. The air bombings of the Povenets lock ladder succeeded in interrupting boat traffic on the canal only from June 28 to August 6, and then again from 13 to 24 August 1941. On August 28, the fifth and final bombing raid of the 1941 navigation season took place against Lock No. 7, but it did no damage. In August, the management of the BBK and most of the 800 canal staff were evacuated from Medvezhyegorsk to Lock No. 19 in Belomorsk, with only 80 left at their stations. In November,

3885-544: The Finnish troops on the canal's western bank from the Soviet forces on its eastern bank. The opposing armies held these positions until June 1944. After Finland left the war in September 1944, the damage to the canal, including the complete destruction of its southern section and the town of Povenets and damage to lighthouses and other structures, was repaired. Rebuilding was completed by July 1946, with navigation through

3990-495: 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

4095-629: The German Major Schaller, and were equipped with German uniforms and weapons, as the Finnish General Staff wanted no responsibility for the operation. The commandos were to blow up the canal locks, but they failed due to heightened security. On June 28, the canal was bombed for the first time by the Finnish Air Force , targeting Locks No. 6, 7, 8, and 9, followed the next day by Finnish troops advancing along

4200-466: 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

4305-457: 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

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4410-422: 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

4515-431: 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

4620-428: 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

4725-462: 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

4830-511: 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

4935-515: 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

5040-463: The Soroka Bay of the White Sea at Belomorsk . The settlements of Povenets , Segezha , Nadvoitsy , Sosnovets, and Belomorsk are located along the canal. Minimum lock dimensions are 14.3 m (47 ft) wide by 135 m (443 ft) long. The navigable channel is 36 m (118 ft) wide and 3.5 m (11.5 ft) deep, with a radius of curvature of 500 m (1,640 ft). Speed

5145-469: 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

5250-489: 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

5355-496: The Soviet-era peak, with just 0.3 million tonnes in 2002. During the 2007 season, the canal carried 0.4 million tonnes of cargo along with 2,500 passengers. It is now operated by the White Sea and Lake Onega Waterways and Shipping Administration (Беломорско-Онежское государственное бассейновое управление водных путей и судоходства), which is also responsible for shipping on Lake Onega and in the Belomorsk harbor area (but not in

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5460-635: The White Sea trip, but did not himself join it. Also along on the White Sea trip was Nikolai Pogodin , screenwriter of Convicts , a 1936 comedy about the BeltBaltLag labor camp. It is likely that at least some of the visiting writers were aware of the brutality of camp life. In fact, one of the contributors, Sergei Alymov, was a prisoner at the camp and editor of the camp newspaper Perekovka ("Reforging"). Similarly, Aleksandr Avdeenko's account of Belomor includes conversations between OGPU chief Semyon Firin and Prince Mirsky that reveal at least some of

5565-605: The White Sea, and then by sea-going vessels to Siberia 's northern ports. For example, in the summer of 2007, a large piece of equipment for Rosneft 's Siberian Vankor Oil Field was delivered by the Amur-1516 from Dzerzhinsk on the Oka River , via the Volga–Baltic Waterway and the White Sea Canal to Arkhangelsk , and from there by the ocean-going SA-15 class Arctic cargo ship Kapitan Danilkin to Dudinka on

5670-660: The White Sea, including submarines K-3 , S-101 and S-102, L-22 . Some unfinished submarines from Leningrad's Baltic Shipyard and Gorky's Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard sailed to the new Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk . Since then, the canal has been regularly used for delivering submarines by transporter dock from the Baltic Shipyard and Krasnoye Sormovo to Sevmash for completion. The canal system includes five hydroelectric power plants with total production capacity of 240 MW. The canal gave its name to

5775-471: The adjacent areas, including 2.8 million hectares of forest lands and the industrial facilities that had been constructed along the route. A major part of the Combine's workforce consisted of 75–85,000 Belbaltlag prisoners. In addition, the Combine included 21 "special settlements" ( spetsposyolok ) with some 30,000 residents, mostly dispossessed farm families transported to Karelia from the USSR's warmer regions. In addition to convicts and "special settlers",

5880-410: 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

5985-488: 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

6090-412: 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

6195-542: The canal restored on July 28, 1946. On February 2, 1950, the RSFSR Council of Ministers issued an order for the overhaul and reconstruction of the BBK's structures, with gradual electrification of the canal's structures and machinery. In 1953, the locks' staff hired electricians; by 1957, the electrification of the locks of the northern slope was completed; and by 1959 all coastal and floating navigation lights were switched to electric power. The importance of BBK for

6300-638: 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

6405-554: 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

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6510-512: 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,

6615-422: The first navigation in 1933, 1.143 million tons of cargo and 27.000 passengers were transported through the canal. In 1940 traffic volume was approximately 1 million tons, representing 44% of capacity Cargo tonnage peaked in 1985, with 7.3 million tonnes transported. Tonnage remained high until 1990, then declined after the fall of the Soviet Union . Usage rose gradually in the 21st century, but remained well below

6720-409: 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 , 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

6825-410: 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

6930-399: 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

7035-419: 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

7140-542: 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

7245-492: The national economy greatly increased after the commissioning of the modern Volga–Baltic Waterway in 1964. Canal capacity and the annual volume of freight traffic increased several-fold. Another upgrade took place in the 1970s. During the reconstruction, the guaranteed depth of the fairway was increased to 4 meters, and the channel became part of the Unified Deep Water System of European Russia . During

7350-530: 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

7455-542: The norm (2.5 m³ per day for earthworks) received an increased bread ration (up to 1200 g), a bonus dish (for example, 75-gram pies with cabbage or potatoes), and a cash bonus. Moral incentives were also used: presenting the brigade or phalange with a Red Banner, declaring gratitude, presenting certificates, placing the names of shock workers on the honor board, as well as counting 3 working days for 5 days of work, and for shock workers - “a day in two”. At other times these teams were pitted to compete against each other in surpassing

7560-410: The norms, and promises were made of shortened sentences, food and cash bonuses for the champions. After the successful construction, 12,484 prisoners were freed as reward, and 59,516 prison terms were shortened. 12,300 workers died during the building process, according to the official records, including in 1931 - 1438 (2.24% of the number of workers), in 1932 - 2010 (2.03%), in 1933 - 8870 (10.56%), which

7665-437: 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

7770-479: The open waters of the White Sea). The canal was seemingly a small part of the agency's overall shipping business, which in 2007 amounted to 4.6 million tonnes and 155,000 passengers. According to official statistics, a total of 193 million tonnes of cargo was transported over the canal over its first 75 years (1933–2008). The canal makes it possible to ship heavy and bulky items from Russia's industrial centers to

7875-407: 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

7980-518: 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

8085-432: 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

8190-501: 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

8295-636: The route of the canal, such as Medvezhyegorsk , Segezha , Nadvoitsy . Povenets , which had been demoted from a town to a village in the 1920s, now became a town again, and a large port. As is discussed further below, during the 1930s a number of smaller naval vessels were transferred from the Baltic to the White Sea to provide warships for the Soviet Northern Naval Flotilla, which became the Northern Fleet in 1937. There

8400-486: The southern entrance to the BBK. On the same day, Soviet troops started demolishing canal structures. Lock No. 1 was the first to be blown up. By the morning of December 8, Locks No 1 to 6, and dams No. 4 and 20 had all been demolished. At the same time, heavy fighting took place near the Povenets Lock Ladder (Locks No. 1 to 7). The Finns crossed the canal and captured Gabselga village to the east, but after

8505-580: The southwest shore through the Svir River (and its two locks) to reach Lake Ladoga and then proceed down the Neva River to Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea. Alternatively, from Lake Onega river ships can sail eastward into the Volga–Baltic Waterway . The canal begins near Povenets settlement in Povenets bay of Lake Onega . After Povenets there are seven locks close together, forming

8610-504: The spill resulted in the Arkhangelsk Oblast authorities shutting down the oil transfer operation with only 220,000 tonnes exported. The company was fined and future operations were refused. Soviet (and later Russian) naval strategists long believed that a well-designed canal system could help establish contact among the separate fleets based on Russia's Black Sea, Baltic, Arctic, Pacific, and Caspian coasts. The White Sea Canal

8715-410: 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

8820-426: 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,

8925-468: 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,

9030-713: 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 ) ),

9135-434: 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

9240-468: 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,

9345-707: 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

9450-623: The words "krasnoarmeyets" meaning "member of the Red Army " or trudarmeyets (member of a labor army ). According to the Soviet account, in 1932 when Anastas Mikoyan visited the Belomorstroy construction site, Lazar Kogan asked, "Comrade Mikoyan, what shall we call them? (…) I thought up the word: 'kanaloarmeyets' . What do you think?" Mikoyan approved. 62°48′N 34°48′E  /  62.800°N 34.800°E  / 62.800; 34.800 Gulag The Gulag

9555-617: The writers were aware of its true nature. After the canal had been completed and opened for navigation, the Belbaltlag (White Sea-Baltic Camp) was reorganized into the White Sea-Baltic Combine (Baltiysko-Belomorsky Kombinat [BBK]), still within the NKVD system, by an order of the Council of People's Commissars of August 17, 1933. The Combine was charged with operating the canal and managing the economic development of

9660-593: 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 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

9765-638: Was a triumph of publicity; but if half the care that went into the public relations campaign had been devoted to the work itself, there would have been far fewer victims and far more development." The workforce for the Canal was supplied by the Belbaltlag camp directorate (White Sea–Baltic Corrective Labor Camp Directorate, WSBC) of the OGPU GULAG . Genrikh Yagoda , Deputy Chairman of the OGPU , as well as Berman, Firin, Kogan, and Rappoport were awarded

9870-409: 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

9975-419: Was about 8.7%, with many more sick and disabled. The workforce was organized into brigades of 25–30, which made up phalanges of 250–300. There were norms for labor, for example 2.5 m (3.3 cu yd) of hand-dug stone per day per brigade. There was an extensive system of incentives for prisoners in place. The food rations for prisoners who exceeded quotas were increased. Those who fulfilled and exceeded

10080-598: Was also constructed with this military use in mind, and early in its history the Northern Fleet 's first warships sailed along the canal to the White Sea from the Baltic, Before World War II , the canal was used for the transfer of military vessels between the two seas on 17 occasions. During World War II, in August–September 1941, the canal was used to move a number of submarines from the Baltic Fleet to

10185-463: 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,

10290-534: Was due to a reduction in supplies due to famine in the country and the rush before the completion of construction while Anne Applebaum 's estimate is 25,000 deaths. A carefully prepared visit in August 1933 to the White Sea–Baltic Canal may have hidden the worst of the brutality from a group of 120 Russian writers and artists, the so-called Writers Brigade, including Maxim Gorky , Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy , Viktor Shklovsky , and Mikhail Zoshchenko , who compiled

10395-597: Was no action near the White Sea–Baltic Canal during the Winter War of 1939–1940, when the USSR invaded Finland. With Germany's full-scale invasion of the USSR in 1941, supported by Finland in the Continuation War , the canal route became the front line. On June 23, 1941, the day after the German invasion, 16 Finnish commandos were ferried to the canal by two German Heinkel He 115 seaplanes from Oulujärvi . The commandos were Finnish volunteers recruited by

10500-522: 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

10605-487: 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

10710-547: Was originally proposed to be 5.4 m (17.7 ft) deep; however, the cost and time constraints of Stalin's first five-year plan forced the much shallower draught. The total length of the waterway is 227 km (141 mi), of which 48 km (30 mi) are man-made. The current flows north from Lake Onega to the White Sea , and all navigation marks are set according to it. Once in Lake Onega, ships can exit

10815-513: 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

10920-417: 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

11025-556: Was the first major project constructed in the Soviet Union using forced labor . Belbaltlag , the Directorate of the BBK Camps, managed the construction, supplying a workforce of an estimated 100,000 convicts, at the cost of huge casualties. Although prison labor camps were usually kept secret, the White Sea Canal was a propaganda showcase of convicts "reforging" themselves in useful labor (Soviet concept of perekovka , reforging or rehabilitation). Marshall Berman states that "The canal

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