Forced Labor in The Soviet Union - De-Stalinization

De-Stalinization

Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953. By then the Gulag had reached its maximum amount of prisoners at around 2.7 million. Over the next few years under Stalin’s successors the population of Gulag prisoners decreased substantially because they were convinced that forced labour was wasteful and inefficient. After Stalin’s death the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev moved to relieve Soviet repression and decreased the population to a greater extent. Khrushchev allowed for open discussion of the lifestyles of those living and working in the Gulag, even giving permission for author Alexander Solzhenitsyn to publish “one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich,” a Soviet novel of life in Stalin’s forced labour camps. This period of time was only temporary for Khrushchev was removed from power in 1964 and the subject of the Gulag became forbidden once again until 1985. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and initiated a period of openness called Glasnost. He believed in making a socialist society without repression or violence. The period of openness he titled glasnost allowed for a era of discussing the on goings of the Gulag.