For Slaves: Against Labour (Labour And the Gulag, 1929-31) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Stalin's Repression - Special Settlements, the Great Terror, and the Gulag
2021
Most memoirs written by survivors of the Gulag come from the intellectuals such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Eugenia Ginzburg, Varlam Shalamov, and General A.V. Gorbatov. Western authors, such as Anne Applebaum and Robert Conquest were able to use these intellectuals’ documentation when the Russian archives were opened in 1991 to tell the story of the Gulag forced labor camps, but little was mentioned about the special settlements and peasants within the forced labor camps. Recently, historians such as Lynne Viola, Orlando Figes, and Alan Barenberg, have been able to interview those deported as children to settlements as well as grandchildren of many special settlers. Many special settlers did not have the ability to read and write, so they were often left out when telling the story of the Gulag. Joseph Stalin developed special settlements beginning with the massive deportation of the peasant class in the early 1930s. Often forgotten by historians are the people of these special settlements. Western historians only had archival documentation written by the political prisoners, who had the ability to read and write. What was the culture of the special settlements and towns, since they were considered outside the wire fences and walls of the internal Gulag? How did the people of special settlements and those prisoners inside the Gulag work together? How were the kulaks (rich peasants) impacted? Political prisoners were treated differently than common criminals, thieves, and murderers. Why were these individuals treated differently in the Gulag system? How did these two groups differ during World War II, and what was their impact during the war? Many of these questions can now be answered, thanks to the Memorial Society, which was founded in 1987 by Andrei Sakhorov, as a human rights advocacy group. Members of the Memorial Society (often called only the Memorial) include former labor camp survivors, families who lost relatives to firing squads during collectivization and the Great Terror, but also historians and human rights supporters. The Memorial can now piece together documentation received by relatives from former kulaks, who could neither read nor write to tell the story of special settlements and peasant prisoners of the forced labor camps. Using newly available documents and memoirs, historians may now conduct further research on the special settlers and those deported in the early years of collectivization.
In the shadow of the Gulag: worker discipline under Stalin
Journal of Comparative Economics, 2015
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Worse Than Guards:" Ordinary Criminals and Political Prisoners in the GULAG (1918-1950)
2019
This paper explores the volatile relationship between the political prisoners and the common criminals in the Soviet GULAG. Lenin's theories on crime and punishment shaped the early Soviet penal system; he implemented policies which favored the common criminals and repressed the political prisoners. He deemed that the criminals, as "social allies" of the working class, were more likely to become good Soviet citizens than the political prisoners, considered "counterrevolutionaries" and "enemies of the state." In the decade after the Bolshevik revolution, the prison administration empowered the criminals in the GULAG by giving them access to the life-saving jobs and goods in the labor camps, while gradually withdrawing the political prisoners' access to the same. From the 1930s to shortly after the end of World War II, the strong criminal fraternity in the GULAG robbed, beat, and killed the political prisoners, while the GULAG administration refused to intervene. Using the testimony of former political prisoners and GULAG personnel, as well as secondary sources, I identify the policies that led to the criminals' "reign of terror," I address theories regarding if and why the administration permitted such violence and disorder in the camps, and I demonstrate that the political prisoners responded to their situation in a range of ways, from holding their tormentors in contempt to forming a tentative friendships with individual criminals who could offer them their protection and a way to survive the camps.
Origins of the Gulag: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917-1934
The Russian Review, 1994
This book could hardly have been written without the help of my teachers, friends, and colleagues. I am grateful to John Thayer and James Tracy of the University of Minnesota, whose intellectual influence and guidance cannot be overstated.
Ars Aeterna, 2014
Although the foundations of the Soviet concentration camp system date back to the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, the amplitude of human suffering in the Gulag would not be known in detail until after 1962, i.e. the year when A. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published. But even before the start of World War II, the totalitarian Soviet universe spoke the language of oppression that public opinion in the West constantly refused to acknowledge. This paper tries to recover a neglected corpus of early autobiographical narratives depicting the absurd Soviet concentration system, in the authentic voice of a number of Gulag survivors (G. Kitchin, Tatiana Tchernavin, Vladimir Tchernavin, S. A. Malsagoff, etc.).
2019
The Soviet prison camp system, known as the Gulag, played a major role in the Soviet economy from 1929 to 1953. Gulag inmates worked in various branches of Soviet industry, including lumbering, mining, and construction, often in remote regions with harsh climates. The Soviet leadership saw the Gulag as a means to enforce state economic policy and develop the frontiers of the Soviet Union. However, the camps proved to be economically harmful because they wasted manpower and resources, straining the Soviet economy. Furthermore, to ensure their own survival, inmates frequently engaged in various forms of resistance, such as faking work results and selfmutilation, which disrupted camp production. Ultimately, the drawbacks of the Gulag system of forced labor far outweighed its advantages. During the early years of the Soviet Union, the prison system played only a minor role in the economy. In 1918, the People's Commissariat of Justice issued a resolution, "On Prison Worker Teams," which had called for prisoners to perform hard labor in government projects. Another resolution, "On Deprivation of Liberty as a Measure of Punishment and Procedures for Its Implementation," issued later that year, allowed the creation of workplaces intended especially for prisoners. Prison workplaces were established across the country, with 352 workshops and 18 farms run by the Chief Administration of Forced Labor (GUPR).i Nevertheless, only forty percent of all prisoners worked during most of the 1920s.ii The early camps did not contribute to the New Economic Policy, and required increasing subsidies from the central government to remain functional, iii In 1929, however, steps were taken to establish the prison camps as a major economic force. In June, the Politburo released a resolution entitled "On the Use of Prison Labor," which called for all prisoners with sentences of three or more years to be transferred to camps governed by the OGPU. iv Then, in October, the First All-Union Conference of the Prison Agency of the People's Commissariats of the Interior proclaimed: