Forced Labor in The Soviet Union - Daily Life As A Soviet Slave

Daily Life As A Soviet Slave

Prisoners were forced to work extremely strenuous labour for up to 14 hours in a single day. Prisoners did jobs like forestry work with saws and axes,they mined ore by hand where often they suffered painful and fatal diseases from inhalation of ore dust. They also had to dig at frozen ground with primitive pickaxes for construction, construction of defensive lines, creating railroads, and creating large canals like the workers in Belbaltlag, which is a Gulag camp where the prisoners would work on building the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal. Prisoners were meagrely fed and could barely sustain these hard working conditions and freezing cold climate. Typically about thirty percent of the labour force was too sick or weak to work but were punished if they did not show up to perform the labour, thus it was not uncommon for prisoners to drop dead on the job.

The chart below is based on the typical daily schedule at Gulag camp Perm-36.