Gulag

The Gulag (Russian: ГУЛаг, GULag; ) was the Soviet Union government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems during the Stalin era, from the 1930s through the 1950s. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.

GULag is the acronym for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies (Russian: Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний, Glavnoye upravleniye ispravityelno-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy) of the NKVD. It was officially created on April 25, 1930 and dissolved on January 13, 1960.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, introduced the term to the Western world with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The book likened the scattered camps to "a chain of islands" and depicted the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Some scholars concur with this view, whereas others argue that the Gulag was neither as large nor as deadly as it is often presented, and it did not have death camps, although during some periods of its history, mortality was high in the labor camps.

In March 1940, there were 53 separate camps and 423 labor colonies in the USSR. Today's major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.

Read more about Gulag:  Brief History, Modern Usage and Other Terminology, Conditions, Geography, Special Institutions, Gulag Memorials, Gulag Museum, Notable Gulag Prisoners