Gulag - Brief History

Brief History

Approximately 14 million people passed through the Gulag "labour camps" from 1929 to 1953. A further 6-7 million were deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR, and 4-5 million passed through "labour colonies". The total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953.

According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953. However, taking into account that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or on the point of death, the actual Gulag death toll was somewhat higher, amounting to 1,258,537 in 1934-53, or 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953. Some estimates for total number deaths in the Gulag go beyond 10 million.

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 the Gulag camps were imprisoned without trial; official data suggest that there were over 2.6 million sentences to imprisonment on cases investigated by the secret police throughout 1921-1953. The GULAG was reduced in size following Stalin’s death in 1953.

In 1960 the Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (MVD) ceased to function as the Soviet-wide administration of the camps in favor of individual republic MVD branches. The centralized detention facilities temporarily ceased functioning.