Gulags

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the Soviet forced-labor camp system during the Stalin era (roughly 1929 to 1953). The term is an acronym for Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerei (Chief Administration of Camps), but it became a global term used to denote the entire vast, brutal network of forced-labor camps, transit prisons, and detention centers that spanned the Soviet Union. The primary purpose of the Gulag was to serve as a tool of political repression—imprisoning dissidents, counter-revolutionaries, and perceived "enemies of the people" as defined by the repressive Article 58 of the criminal code—but it also functioned as a system of massive economic exploitation.

Kanal Moskva Volga Gulag - photo unknown | By Unknown author http://tushinec.ru/index.php?news_read=2058&page=2 Public Domain Wikimedia

Prisoners, known as zeks, were forced to perform grueling, dangerous labor, often in resource extraction and massive infrastructure projects in remote and inhospitable regions like Siberia and the Arctic. Conditions were characterized by extreme cold, starvation, disease, and brutal treatment, resulting in high mortality rates. Historians estimate that millions of people passed through the Gulag system, with hundreds of thousands, and potentially well over a million, dying there. The Gulag system is now a recognized symbol of Soviet totalitarian terror and an essential subject of study for understanding the USSR's history of political violence.

Gulags: Key Resources and Memorials ⛓️

Credits

Compiled by Mark Rabideau, Opa & Professional Genealogist.