Gulags, which stand for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps, first began in 1918 but rose in the 1930's. They were a collection of camps with a range of criminals, from petty ones to political ones, as well as innocent people captured by the paranoid secret police were forced to do labor. The two main groups of people who were sent to the gulag however were those who committed heinous crimes such as robbery, murder, and rape and those who committed inconspicuous crimes such as unexcused absences from work, or stealing a small parcel of bread to feed their children.
In the Gulag, prisoners could work up to 14 hours a day while surviving off of food that was hardly enough to properly nourish them and laboring in weather that often ventured past 0, entering into the negatives. Some of their work day consisted of cutting down trees with handsaws and axes or digging at the frozen ground with pickaxes. Others were forced to mine coal or copper by hand often leading to painful and fatal lung diseases from inhaling the dust. Due to a combination of harsh conditions and inadequate food, many of the prisoners died.
When the prisoners were not working, they usually lived in a camp zone surrounded by fence or barbed wire which was overlooked by guards in watch towers. The camp zone was overpopulated, smelt terrible, and was not heated properly which made life in the zone brutal. Since they were always competing for necessities, this sometimes resulted in violence by other prisoners. Meanwhile, prisoners were watched by other prisoners who were willing to report any misconduct to the authorities.
Women in the gulags were sexually assaulted and abused by males, and some women took on "camp husbands" for protection and company. There were some women who arrived at the gulags pregnant or became pregnant while there, and on special occasions, the authorities at the gulags would release the pregnant women and women with young children. However, more times than not mothers had only a small break from work, and gulag officials took the babies and placed them in special orphanages. Oftentimes, the mothers were never able to find their children after leaving the camps.
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| Prisoners sleeping in wooden bunk beds |
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| Inmates in the prison camp in Siberia in 1945. |
Citations:
- Hosford,David Kachurin,Pamela Lamont,Thomas. Gulag: Soviet Prison Camps and their Legacy.National Park Service,12-11-14
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Gulag." Encyclopaedia Britannica. By
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. N.p.: n.p., 2013. Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Web. 15 Dec. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/
topic/249117/Gulag>.
- "Of Russian Origin: The Gulag." RUSSIAPEDIA. N.p., 2011. Web. 15 Dec. 2014. http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-gulag/.
- "Work in the Gulag." Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2014. <http://gulaghistory.org/nps/
onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php>.
Photo Links:
Sources:
http://gulaghistory.org/nps/downloads/gulag-curriculum.pdf
http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-gulag/
http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/249117/Gulag
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/249117/Gulag
It was interesting and surprising to learn that women were put into gulags with males and the harsh reality of what would happen to the kids that were born in the gulags.
ReplyDeleteThis was really informative yet concise. The Gulag was obviously a horrible place. It is hard to get a concrete number on how many died in the Gulag due in part to propaganda and "dubious record keeping" but it the numbers go as low as 1.6 million all the way to 10 million. The numbers in between are an incomprehensible number of lives. This is a black mark on Russia's history, just as slavery is for the US and as concentration camps are for Germany. Thankfully, the true horrors of the Gulags have been exposed through works like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and hopefully history will never be marred with the existence of another Gulag (or anything like it).
ReplyDeleteThis blog was eye-opening. It's upsetting that those who would steal a piece of bread just to feed their family were punished the same as a murderer or a rapist. This shows the injustice that the Russians had to endure in Soviet Russia. Moreover, because prisoners were watching other prisoners there was most likely some sort a divide among the inmates. These camps seemed to exemplify the iron fisted regime of Stalin and they left heinous mark on Russia and the world.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was very informative as well as very eye opening. After reading this post the horrid conditions of the gulags and the harsh treatment of the prisoners in the gulags was absolutely terrible. This post made it very clear that Stalin, no pun intended, took no prisoners, and did not cut anyone slack, whether it was a pregnant woman, a woman with an infant child or a man that was deathly ill, Stalin and the leaders of the specific gulags did not care they were treated just as harshly as the next prisoner.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post reinforced the terrible conditions we learned about in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It still surprises me that people were able to survive more than a week in such harsh living and work conditions. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through such a terrible experience especially if you were one of the people who had not done anything wrong but were still sent to a gulag. Prior to reading this post I hadn't even thought about it women in gulags. It is horrifying to hear what they went through. The post was well done and brought to light the terrors of the gulag.
ReplyDeleteThis was great for me in retrospect of the book. I feel like I have a really good grasp on what I read now. I had no idea women were in the gulags this whole time. You did a really good job not making it too boring by repeating a bunch of stuff we already knew about the gulags. You added information that I didn't know which made it a lot easier to read.
ReplyDeleteThis post was really nicely summarized, and definitely displayed how horrible the gulags were and how horrible they were for the people in them. What really shocked me was the part of the women, and how they were treated equally as bad as the men were. The fact that the women had to take on "camp husbands" for protections shows that women were treated maybe even worse than the men. Pregnant women barely received any slack, and I cannot believe that they were separated from their babies once they were born. The conditions that the prisoners had to live with were extremely unbearable, and I am not shocked to hear that many of them died. The amount of hours they had to work and the amount of food they received was incompatible, in addition to the dilapidated headquarters. I was not completely shocked when reading this post since we have already read a book about the cruelty of the gulags, but it is still shocking to me every time I read it. Ivan really was a trooper to overcome these conditions for years and still have a sane mind, he reminds he of Louie Zamperini from Unbroken.
ReplyDelete