The Soviet regime emerged from violent revolution and

The Soviet regime emerged from violent revolution and civil war. Its leaders, above all Stalin, were obsessed with protecting the new state against its real and imagined enemies, especially the “enemy within” – the internal “enemies of the state” who might support counter-revolution. A vast system of bureaucratic terror was constructed: propaganda, the secret police, thousands of informers and detention without trial and the exploitation of forced labour. Imitating and expanding upon the methods used by the former Tsarist regime, a network of prison camps was established across Siberia. This system became even harsher during the “High Stalinism” of the 1930 s. During the Great Fatherland War conditions were eased slightly; but full-scale repression was re-established after 1945. It was only after Stalin’s death in 1953 that the “Gulag” was dismantled, though Soviet repression continued in other, subtler ways.

Ideology and purpose

In the 19 th century, the intellectual ideas of Marxism were set out by two German revolutionary thinkers: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (CC-BY-SA 3. 0 Carlos. XVIG) Marxist ideals inspired many revolutionary movements, especially after the First World War; but most revolutions, such as those in Germany and Hungary, were suppressed. It was in Russia that Marxist ideas were put into practice by the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution and the emerging Soviet Union, Lenin and Stalin believed that a communist revolution could only succeed if it destroyed its class enemies by ruthless repression and the use of Terror.

Enemies of the people “Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Earth of Filth” by Viktor Deni. November 1920. The picture of Lenin “cleansing the earth of filth” (royals, capitalists and priests) shows who the opponents were. (Public Domain)

Stalin’s birthday in 1929. Left to right: Mikhail Kalinin, Lazar Kaganovich, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov (obscured), Sergei Kirov (Public Domain) Joseph Stalin consolidated near-absolute power by 1929 and strengthened his grip on the state by the Great Terror of the 1930 s. There was a purge of the Communist Party to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators“; a purge of the Red Army; and mass arrests of ordinary people. Many were executed. Many were imprisoned in the massive network of labour camps known as the Gulag. The Gulag was a system of forced labour camps, mostly in Siberia. The Gulag was at its height under Stalin and was dismantled after 1953 (although some camps continued to operate into the 1980 s). While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were imprisoned after being denounced by informers, with no presence of any trial.

Away with private peasants! The “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” was announced by Joseph Stalin on 27 December 1929. The stated purpose of the campaign was to fight the counter-revolution and build socialism in the countryside. “Rich” peasants were denounced as class enemies and a danger to the state. “Dekulakization” involved mass deportations and executions. More than 1. 8 million peasants were deported in 1930– 1931. (Public Domain)

Designing and constructing the camps

Construction of the Belomor Canal One of the first massive forced labour projects was the construction of the Belomor Canal, connecting the White Sea to the Baltic. At least 250. 000 prisoners were forced to work on the Belamor Canal, in terrible conditions. OGPU (secret police) chiefs responsible for construction of the White Sea - Baltic Canal, 1932. Right: Naftaly Frenkel, center: Matvei Berman (head of the Gulag from 1932 -1939), left: Afanasev (head of the southern part of Bel. Balt. Lag).

Building collective housing in deportee villages, 1930 There are not many construction drawings. Mainly because there was not much construction needed seeing the environment kept people from escaping. There were also not many guards needed because prisoners couldn’t escape. (UVD archives, Arkhangelsk region)

Building the Makarikha transit camp, Kotlas district, February 1930 (UVD archives, Arkhangelsk region)

Genrikh Yagoda (middle) inspecting the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal The OGPU-Directors Genrikh Yagoda and N. Filatov on the building-site of the Moskva-Volga-canal. Nikita Khrushchev is left behind Yagoda. 3 September 1935.

A watchtower of the “Project 503” The watchtower overlooked the entire territory of the camp (which was not overgrown with trees as it is now). Above all, it had a view of the so-called forbidden zone between individual towers. There were three fences here – besides the main high fence of barbed wire, there was also a lower fence (made of wire or a wooden enclosure) at a distance of 5. 5 meters from the main fence as well as an outer fence of the same type at a distance of 15 meters from the main enclosure. Anyone who set foot in the forbidden zone between these fences could be shot by the guards for attempting to escape.

Perimeter fence and watchtower, Vorkuta Gulag

ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36) in 1946. The camp had four barracks for 250 prisoners each, a punishment block (for prisoners who disobeyed the harsh camp rules), a hospital, outhouses, and a headquarters building. Drawing by Oleg Petrov.

Prison Plan of Perm-36 made by Lett Gunar Astra (in Latvian).

The Omchag camp Photographed on its last day as a camp. Only at the end, the camps were better constructed.

Implementation of bureaucratic terror

Solovki Island, 1924/25 Prisoners digging clay for the brickyard.

White Sea–Baltic Canal The White Sea–Baltic Canal was the first major project constructed in the Soviet Union using forced labor. Convicts at work 1931 -1933. (Public Domain Russia)

White Sea–Baltic Canal (Public Domain Russia) The White Sea–Baltic Canal was the first major project constructed in the Soviet Union using forced labor. Convicts at work 1931 -1933.

The Kolyma Highway (Road of Bones) The Kolyma Highway was constructed during the Stalinist era of the USSR by the Dalstroy construction directorate. The first stretch was built by the inmates of the Sevvostlag labour camp in 1932, and construction continued with the use of gulag labour until 1953. (Public Domain Russia)

The Kolyma Highway (Road of Bones) The road is treated as a memorial, as the bones of the people who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road. As the road is built on permafrost, interment into the fabric of the road was deemed more practical than digging new holes to bury the bodies of the dead. (Public Domain)

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1929 -1930 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1931 -1932 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1933 -1934 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1935 -1936 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1937 -1938 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1939 -1940 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1941 -1942 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1943 -1944 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1945 -1946 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1947 -1948 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1949 -1950 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1951 -1952 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1953 -1954 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1955 -1956 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1957 -1958 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR, 1959 -1960 Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.

Gulag prisoner population statistics from 1934 to 1953 (Figures from: J. Arch Getty, Gabor T. Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemdkob, Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence) About 14 million people were in the Gulag labour camps from 1929 to 1953 (the estimates for the period 1918 -1929 are even more difficult to be calculated). A further 6– 7 million were deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR, and 4– 5 million passed through labour colonies, plus 3. 5 million already in, or sent to “labour settlements”. According with some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510, 307 in 1934 to 1, 727, 970 in 1953.

Radicalisation (war, policy, intensification)

Beria’s order to kill all Polish armor officers The accepted proposal of Lavrentiy Beria to execute former Polish army and police officers in NKVD prisoner of war camps and prisons, March 1940. This is the first page of Beria's notice (oversigned by Stalin), to kill approximately 15, 000 Polish officers and some 10, 000 more intellectuals in the Katyn Forest and other places in the Soviet Union.

Latvians in railcars in the process of deportation in 1941 (Public Domain Russia) The June deportation was the first in the series of mass Soviet deportations of tens of thousands of people from the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova starting June 14, 1941, that followed the occupation and annexation of the Baltic states. The procedure for deporting the “anti-Soviet elements” was approved by Ivan Serov in the so-called Serov Instructions. Men were generally imprisoned and most of them died in Siberian prison camps (Gulag); women and children were resettled in Kirov, Tomsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk Oblast as well as Krasnoyarsk and Altai Krai. About a half of them eventually survived.

Soviet POW’s in German hands (German Federal Archive, Sammlung KZ Mauthausen, Bild 192 -208) During World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in deliberately genocidal policies towards Soviet Union prisoners of war (POWs). This resulted in some 3. 3 to 3. 5 million deaths, about 60% of all Soviet POWs. During Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent German–Soviet War, millions of Red Army prisoners of war were taken. Some of them were arbitrarily executed in the field by the German forces, died under inhumane conditions in German prisoner-of-war camps and during ruthless death marches from the front lines, or were shipped to Nazi concentration camps for extermination. This images shows Soviet prisoners of war in Mauthausen concentration camp. The date is unknown.

Estonian children deported to Siberia in Operation Priboi (No known copyright restrictions) After the war, further deportations, known as Operation Priboi, were staged in a much larger scale. Operation Priboi ("Coastal Surf") was the code name for the Soviet mass deportation from the Baltic states on March 25– 28, 1949, called March deportation by Baltic historians. Some 90, 000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, labeled as enemies of the people, were deported to inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union. It was one of the most complex deportation operations engineered by the Soviets in the Cold war era. 72% of deportees were women and children under 16.

Female prisoners of the Gulag Accounts of life in the labour camps across the Soviet Union encompass rape and prostitution, dead babies and brutal interrogations. But besides the many horrors, there also surprising and inspiring tales of love and friendship, resilience and resourcefulness. These extremes are shown in vivid and unforgettable detail in books written by women who survived the labour camps. (No known copyright restrictions)

“Doctors’ plot” January 20, 1953. Soviet ukaz awarding Lydia Timashuk the Order of Lenin for “unmasking doctors-killers”. It was revoked after Stalin's death later that year.

End of the system

The death of Stalin, 1953 After Stalin died a process of de-stalinization started in the Soviet Union. The reforms consisted of changing or removing key institutions that helped Stalin hold power: the cult of personality that surrounded him, the Stalinist political system and the Gulag labour-camp system, all of which had been created and dominated by him as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dueinf 1922– 52. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953, consisting of: Georgi Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Ministry of the Interior; and Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Execution of Lavrentiy Beria, 1953 On 26 June 1953, Beria was arrested and held in an undisclosed location near Moscow. He was tried by a special session of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953 with no defence counsel and no right of appeal. Beria was found guilty of treason, terrorism and counterrevolutionary activity. He was sentenced to death and was executed by firing squad on 23 December 1953, the same day as the trial.

Khrushchev’s 1956 speech A report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made to the 20 th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the reign of deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which had particularly marked the last years of the 1930 s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership personality cult despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism. The speech was a milestone in the “Khrushchev Thaw”. Superficially, the speech was an attempt to draw the Soviet Communist Party closer to Leninism. Khrushchev's ulterior motivation, however, was to legitimise and help consolidate his control of the Communist party and government, power obtained in a political struggle with Stalin loyalists Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov. The Khrushchev report was known as the “Secret Speech” because it was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of Communist Party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded. The text of the Khrushchev report was widely discussed in party cells already in early March, often with participation of non-party members, however the official Russian text was openly published only in 1989 during the glasnost campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Woman of the Gulag; a survivor tells her story “Women of the Gulag: The Last Survivors” by Marianna Yarovskaya is a documentary featuring interviews with some of the last women to live through the Soviet labour camps.

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