What was the Gulag system?

The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps established during Joseph Stalin’s long reign as dictator of the Soviet Union. The word “Gulag” is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or Main…

Who was the first person sent to the Gulag?

When Stalin launched his purges, a wide variety of laborers, known as “political prisoners,” were transported to the Gulag. Opposing members of the Communist Party, military officers and government officials were among the first targeted.

Were there any exceptions for women in the Gulags?

No exceptions were made for women, many of whom were only imprisoned because of the imagined crimes of their husbands or fathers. Their accounts are some of the most harrowing to emerge from the gulag prisons. Women In The Gulags Though women were housed in barracks apart from the men, camp life did little to really separate the genders.

Where do convicts sleep in the Gulag?

Convicts sleep inside of a sod-covered house in a Siberian gulag. Siberia, USSR. Date unspecified. Library of Congress Posters of Stalin and Marx gaze down at the prisoners inside of their sleeping quarters.

What kind of jobs did prisoners in the Gulag work on?

Prisoners at the Gulag camps were forced to work on large-scale construction, mining and industrial projects. The type of industry depended on the camp’s location and the area’s needs. Gulag labor crews worked on several massive Soviet endeavors, including the Moscow-Volga Canal, the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Kolyma Highway.

When was the book The Gulag Archipelago published?

In 1973, The Gulag Archipelago was published in the West by Russian historian and Gulag survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (though only a few underground copies were available in the Soviet Union at the time). The influential book detailed the atrocities of the Gulag system and its impact on the lives of prisoners and their families.