The formation of Gulag networks began in 1917. It is known that Stalin was a great admirer of this type of camps. The Gulag system was not just a zone where prisoners served their sentences, it was the main engine of the economy of that era. All the grandiose construction projects of the 1930s and 1940s were carried out by the hands of prisoners. During the existence of the Gulag, many categories of the population visited there: from murderers and bandits, to scientists and former members of the government, whom Stalin suspected of treason.
How did the Gulag appear?
Most of the information about the Gulag refers to the late twenties and early 30s of the twentieth century. In fact, this system began to emerge immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. The Red Terror program provided for the isolation of objectionable classes of society in special camps. The first inhabitants of the camps were former landowners, manufacturers and representatives of the wealthy bourgeoisie. At first, the camps were not led by Stalin, as is commonly believed, but by Lenin and Trotsky.
When the camps filled with prisoners, they were handed over to the Cheka, under the leadership of Dzerzhinsky, who introduced the practice of using prisoner labor to restore the country's ruined economy. By the end of the revolution, through the efforts of the "iron" Felix, the number of camps increased from 21 to 122.
In 1919, a system was already in place that was destined to become the basis of the Gulag. The war years led to complete lawlessness, which was happening in the territories of the camps. In the same year, the Northern camps were created in the Arkhangelsk province.
Creation of the Solovetsky Gulag
In 1923, the famous "Solovki" were created. In order not to build barracks for prisoners, an ancient monastery was included in their territory. The famous Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp was the main symbol of the Gulag system in the 1920s. The project for this camp was proposed by Unshlikht (one of the leaders of the GPU), who was shot in 1938.
Soon the number of prisoners in Solovki expanded to 12,000 people. The conditions of detention were so harsh that during the entire existence of the camp, according to official statistics, more than 7,000 people died. During the famine of 1933, more than half of that number died.
Despite the reigning cruelty and mortality in the Solovetsky camps, they tried to hide information about this from the public. When the famous Soviet writer Gorky, who was considered an honest and ideological revolutionary, arrived in the archipelago in 1929, the camp management tried to hide all the unsightly aspects of the life of prisoners. The hopes of the inhabitants of the camp that the famous writer would tell the public about the inhuman conditions of their detention did not come true. The authorities threatened all those who let it out with severe punishment.
Gorky was amazed at how labor turns criminals into law-abiding citizens. Only in the children's colony did one boy tell the writer the whole truth about the regime of the camps. After the writer left, this boy was shot.
For what offense could they send to the Gulag
More and more workers were required for new global construction projects. The investigators were given the task to accuse as many innocent people as possible. Denunciations in this case were a panacea. Many uneducated proletarians seized the opportunity to get rid of objectionable neighbors. There were standard charges that could be applied to almost anyone:
- Stalin was an inviolable person, therefore, any words that discredited the leader were subject to severe punishment;
- Negative attitude towards collective farms;
- Negative attitude towards bank government securities (loans);
- Sympathy for counter-revolutionaries (especially Trotsky);
- Admiration for the West, especially the USA.
In addition, any use of Soviet newspapers, especially those with portraits of leaders, was punishable by a term of 10 years. It was enough to wrap breakfast in a newspaper with the image of the leader, and any vigilant work comrade could hand over the “enemy of the people”.
The development of camps in the 30s of the 20th century
The Gulag camp system reached its peak in the 1930s. Visiting the museum of the history of the Gulag, you can see what horrors happened in the camps during these years. In the corrective labor code of the RSFS, work in camps was legally approved. Stalin constantly forced to carry out powerful campaigns to convince the citizens of the USSR that only enemies of the people are kept in the camps, and the Gulag is the only humane way to rehabilitate them.
In 1931, the largest construction project of the times of the USSR began - the construction of the White Sea Canal. This construction was presented to the public as a great achievement of the Soviet people. An interesting fact is that the press spoke positively about the criminals involved in the construction of BAMA. At the same time, the merits of tens of thousands of political prisoners were hushed up.
Often the criminals collaborated with the administration of the camps, representing another lever for the demoralization of political prisoners. Laudatory odes to thieves and bandits who made "Stakhanovite" norms at the construction site were constantly heard in the Soviet press. In fact, the criminals forced ordinary political prisoners to work for themselves, cruelly and demonstratively cracking down on the recalcitrant. Attempts by former military personnel to restore order in the camp environment were suppressed by the camp administration. Appearing leaders were shot or set on them by seasoned criminals (a whole system of incentives was developed for them for reprisals against political ones).
Hunger strikes were the only available way for political prisoners to protest. If solitary acts did not lead to anything good, except for a new wave of bullying, then mass hunger strikes were considered counter-revolutionary activities. The instigators were quickly identified and shot.
Skilled labor in the camp
The main problem of the Gulags was the huge shortage of skilled workers and engineers. Complex construction tasks had to be solved by high-level specialists. In the 1930s, the entire technical stratum consisted of people who studied and worked while still under tsarist rule. Naturally, it was not difficult to accuse them of anti-Soviet activities. The administration of the camps sent lists to the investigators, which specialists were required for large-scale construction projects.
The position of the technical intelligentsia in the camps was practically no different from the position of other prisoners. For honest and hard work, they could only hope that they would not be subjected to bullying.
The most fortunate were the specialists who worked in closed secret laboratories on the territory of the camps. There were no criminals there, and the conditions of detention of such prisoners were very different from the generally accepted ones. The most famous scientist who went through the Gulag is Sergei Korolev, who became the originator of the Soviet era of space exploration. For his merits, he was rehabilitated and released along with his team of scientists.
All large-scale pre-war construction projects were completed with the help of the slave labor of convicts. After the war, the need for this labor force only increased, as many workers were required to restore the industry.
Even before the war, Stalin abolished the parole system for shock work, which led to demotivation of prisoners. Previously, for hard work and exemplary behavior, they could hope for a reduction in the term of imprisonment. After the abolition of the system, the profitability of the camps fell sharply. Despite all the atrocities The administration could not force people to do quality work, especially since poor rations and unsanitary conditions in the camps undermined people's health.
Women in the Gulag
The wives of traitors to the motherland were kept in "ALZHIR" - the Akmola camp of the Gulag. For refusing “friendship” with representatives of the administration, one could easily get an “increase” in time or, even worse, a “ticket” to a male colony, from where they rarely returned.
ALZHIR was founded in 1938. The first women who got there were the wives of Trotskyists. Often, along with their wives, other members of the family of prisoners, their sisters, children and other relatives also ended up in the camps.
The only method of women's protest was the constant petitions and complaints that they wrote to various authorities. Most of the complaints did not reach the addressee, but the authorities mercilessly cracked down on the complainants.
Children in Stalin's camps
In the 1930s, all homeless children were placed in Gulag camps. Although the first children's labor camps appeared as early as 1918, after April 7, 1935, when a decree was signed on measures to combat juvenile delinquency, this became widespread. Usually children had to be kept separately, often they were together with adult criminals.
All punishments were applied to teenagers, including execution. Often, 14-16-year-old teenagers were shot only because they were the children of the repressed and "imbued with counter-revolutionary ideas."
Museum of Gulag History
The Gulag History Museum is a unique complex that has no analogues in the world. It presents reconstructions of individual fragments of the camp, as well as a huge collection of artistic and literary works created by former prisoners of the camps.
A huge archive of photographs, documents and belongings of the inhabitants of the camp allows visitors to appreciate all the horrors that happened on the territory of the camps.
Liquidation of the Gulag
After Stalin's death in 1953, the gradual liquidation of the Gulag system began. A few months later, an amnesty was announced, after which the population of the camps was halved. Sensing the relaxation of the system, the prisoners began mass riots, seeking further amnesties. A huge role in the elimination of the system was played by Khrushchev, who sharply condemned Stalin's personality cult.
The last head of the main department of labor camps, Kholodov, was transferred to the reserve in 1960. His departure marked the end of the Gulag era.
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I am fond of martial arts with weapons, historical fencing. I write about weapons and military equipment because it is interesting and familiar to me. I often learn a lot of new things and want to share these facts with people who are not indifferent to military topics.
(Gulag) was formed in the USSR in 1934. This event was preceded by all Soviet correctional institutions from the subordination of the People's Commissariat of the USSR to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs.
At first glance, the banal departmental reassignment of all the camps actually pursued far-reaching plans. The country's leadership intended to widely use the forced labor of prisoners at the construction sites of the national economy. It was necessary to create a single, clear system of correctional institutions with their own economic management bodies.
At its core, the Gulag was something like a huge construction syndicate. This syndicate united many chiefs, divided according to the territorial and sectoral principle. Glavspetstsvetmet, Sredazgidstroy, Northern branch of the camp railway construction…. These quite harmless names of the main chapters can be listed for a long time. An uninitiated person would never guess that dozens of concentration camps with hundreds of thousands of prisoners are hidden behind them.
According to former, miraculously surviving prisoners of the Gulag, the main problem in the camps was hunger. There were, of course, approved nutritional standards - extremely meager, but not allowing a person to die of starvation. But the products were conceived stolen by the administration of the camps.
Diseases were another problem. Epidemics of typhus, dysentery and other infectious diseases broke out constantly, and there were no medicines. There were almost no medical staff. Tens of thousands of people die every year from diseases.
All these hardships were completed by the cold (the camps were mainly located in the northern latitudes) and hard physical labor.
Labor efficiency and achievements of the Gulag
The labor efficiency of Gulag prisoners has always been extremely low. The administrations of the camps took various measures to increase it. From cruel punishments to incentives. But neither cruel torture and bullying for non-fulfillment of production standards, nor enhanced nutritional standards and reduction in terms of imprisonment for shock work almost helped. Physically exhausted people simply could not work effectively. And yet, many things were created by the hands of the prisoners.
Having existed for a quarter of a century, the Gulag was disbanded. After himself, he left a lot of things that the USSR could be proud of for many years. After all, official historians, for example, argued that Komsomolsk-on-Amur was built by Komsomol volunteers, and not by prisoners of the Gulag head office of Amurstroy. And the White Sea-Baltic Canal is the result of the valiant work of ordinary Soviet workers, and not prisoners of the Gulag. The revealed truth of the Gulag horrified many.
The truth of the Stalin era Litvinenko Vladimir Vasilyevich
3.2. How many political prisoners were there in the Gulag?
It is widely believed in the anti-communist milieu that in the 1930s in the Gulag camps mostly political prisoners were kept (in 2007, this opinion was presented as beyond doubt in the Argumenty i Fakty weekly), and they numbered in the millions. Anti-communists usually estimate the total number of political prisoners in the Gulag at several tens of millions. For example, on October 30, 2006, RTR TV journalist Dmitry Kaistro, in the Vesti program, said about the repressions: “At that time, 52 million sentences were passed in the country for political reasons.”
In fact, the number of political prisoners in the Gulag was ten times less than the numbers mentioned. V. N. Zemskov in 1993 published the following data in the journal Socis: in total, from 1921 to February 1, 1954, 3,777,380 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, including 2,369,220 people to detention in camps and prisons for a period of 25 years or less, 765,180 people to exile and exile .
This means that, on average, about 72 thousand people became political prisoners every year during this period.
The total number of political prisoners in places of deprivation of liberty in the USSR, broken down by years, is given in Table. 3.3.
Table 3.3. Number of prisoners in places of deprivation of liberty (as of January 1 of each year)
| years | In camps (ITL) | Of which political (% of total) | In colonies (ITK) and prisons | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | 510 307 | 135 190 (26,5) | - | 510 307 |
| 1935 | 725 483 | 118 256 (16,3) | 240 259 | 965 742 |
| 1936 | 839 406 | 105 849(12,6) | 457 088 | 1 296 494 |
| 1937 | 820 881 | 104 826(12,8) | 375 488 | 1 196 369 |
| 1938 | 996 367 | 185 324(18,6) | 885 203 | 1 881 570 |
| 1939 | 1 317 195 | 454 432 (34,5) | 687 751 | 2 004 946 |
| 1940 | 1 344 408 | 444 999 (33,1) | 501 862 | 1 846 270 |
| 1941 | 1 500 524 | 420 293 (28,7) | 899 898 | 2 400 422 |
| 1942 | 1 415 596 | 407 988 (29,6) | 629 979 | 2 045 575 |
| 1943 | 983 974 | 345 397 (35,6) | 737 742 | 1 721 716 |
| 1944 | 663 594 | 268 861 (40,7) | 667 521 | 1 331 115 |
| 1945 | 715 505 | 289 351 (41,2) | 1 020 681 | 1 736 186 |
| 1946 | 746 871 | 333 883 (59,2) | 1 201 370 | 1 948 241 |
| 1947 | 808 839 | 427 653 (54,3) | 1 205 839 | 2 014 678 |
| 1948 | 1 108 057 | 416 156(38,0) | 1 371 852 | 2 479 909 |
| 1949 | 1 216 361 | 420 696 (34,9) | 1 371 371 | 2 587 732 |
| 1950 | 1 416 300 | 578 912* (22,7) | 1 343 795 | 2 760 095 |
| 1951 | 1 533 767 | 475 976 (31,0) | 1 159 058 | 2 692 825 |
| 1952 | 1 711 202 | 480 766 (28,1) | 946 126 | 2 657 128 |
| 1953 | 1 727 970 | 465 256 (26,9) | 892 844 | 2 620 814 |
Table data. 3.3. refute the opinion widely held among anticommunists that political prisoners predominated in the Gulag: in the 1930s their number did not reach even a third of all prisoners. The predominance of political prisoners in places of deprivation of liberty was only in 1946 and 1947, when convicted Vlasovites, Bandera, "forest brothers", policemen and other evil spirits began to enter the camps. But in general in the period 1921–1953 the number of those convicted for political reasons was approximately 25% of the total number of prisoners in the Gulag.
Far from the truth are the assertions of the anti-Sovietists that the majority of political prisoners in the USSR were convicted "for nothing." Here is what S. N. Nikiforov, who served as the prototype of Ruska Doronin in A. Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle” (21), writes about this in his memoirs published in the journal “Our Contemporary” (No. 11, 2000): “... In eight years of imprisonment, I have not met innocent people. When we meet, everyone talks, and I said that they were imprisoned for nothing. And you will get to know each other better, you will find out: either he served in the German army, or studied at a German intelligence school, or was a deserter ... "
And what about the political prisoners and the innocently convicted in post-Soviet Russia? There are also political prisoners now. There are not many of them yet, but the enactment of the law “On extremism”, I think, will improve this matter over time. There are already reports in the press and on television about extremely zealous advocates of this law, like those law enforcement officers who tried to initiate an absurd criminal case “for propaganda of Nazi symbols” against a maker of mock-ups of German tanks (with a cross on the turret) from the Great Patriotic War (he made them for use in the filming of films about the war).
If the number of political prisoners in modern Russia is small, then the same cannot be said about the number of those convicted for crimes they did not commit. The mass media report on the innocently convicted with frightening regularity. Here are some examples from the Internet:
Dmitry Aprelkov, Chita - sued the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation for 100 thousand rubles for the fact that under torture the police forced him to confess to a murder he did not commit;
Evgeny Vedenin, Tatarstan - was sentenced to 15 years by mistake for the murder of the head of security at Tatneft;
Oleg Bondarenko, Rostov - innocently convicted in May 1998 to 13 years in prison on charges of murder, almost 6 years sought to have the sentence overturned;
Dmitry Medkov, Stavropol - innocently convicted of murdering his sister, 4 years of compulsory treatment in a special psychiatric hospital;
Evgeny Lukin, Novosibirsk - served 5 years for a murder he did not commit;
Radiy Tuchibaev, Agapovka village, Southern Urals - innocently convicted of a murder he did not commit, sued the RF Ministry of Finance for 350,000 rubles;
Sergei Mikhailov, Lipovka village, Arkhangelsk region - innocently convicted of raping and murdering a first grader;
Konstantin Kutuzov, Volgograd - innocently convicted of illegal possession of weapons and ammunition;
Alexander Syusyaev, Nizhny Novgorod - innocently convicted of killing three people (22) .
The Argumenty i Fakty weekly cites the story of State Duma deputy Boris Reznik: “I headed the board of trustees of prisons and camps in the Far East in Khabarovsk. During trips to colonies and pre-trial detention centers, I was often approached by people who did not understand what they were sitting for. For example, a kid, together with a friend, dug under a stall and stole three packages of cookies - both were terribly hungry ... So the guy spent 2.5 years in an isolation cell awaiting trial! Another guy, Ivan Demuz, was accused of stealing a sack of potatoes that he didn't actually take. For 10 months in prison, he almost went blind. Father and son Ryzhovs were imprisoned for stealing a stack of firewood in a rural medical center. My father worked as a truck driver, he returned home - there is a sick wife, the stove is not heated. Other people's firewood cost almost two years in the pre-trial detention center for the father and 4 months for his son.
In addition, often the courts do not take into account extenuating circumstances and impose excessively high penalties. For example, “... 23-year-old Muscovite Konstantin Yegorychev was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for stealing a bottle of vodka from a store worth 124 rubles. The judges did not take into account that the guy is a disabled person of the 2nd group and his mother is disabled. The fact of voluntary compensation for damage to the owners of the goods was not taken into account .... 29-year-old resident of the Arkhangelsk region Valery Klepikovsky received 3 years of captivity for stealing 22 kg of meat. And again, the court did not notice that the person compensated for the damage and the injured owner of the meat herself asked to stop the case. And that the “villain” is dependent on a non-working wife and a young child ... Arkhangelsk Alexei Shiryaev (26 years old) sat down for 3.5 years after he stole goods worth 999 rubles from someone else’s apartment. Behind the thief is the traditional “baggage” for such cases: poverty, the death of parents, two younger sisters and a dependent child, desperate attempts to feed themselves ... "
It is no wonder that according to polls by VTsIOM, 56% of Russians do not trust law enforcement agencies, and 49% do not trust the judicial system. “Arguments and Facts” sums up: “The people see: a poor commoner can be put in jail for a mere trifle or nothing at all, and the one who grabbed billions gets away with everything.” It must also be said that in the judicial practice of modern Russia acquittals are very rare: in 2001, for example, they were 0.5%, and in 2002 - 0.77% (23) .
In general, according to Andrei Babushkin, chairman of the Committee for Civil Rights, now “... about a third of the convicts in our country have been punished either completely unlawfully or sentenced to a more severe punishment than they deserved. First of all, they are victims of judicial errors or abuses. According to my estimates, 1.5-2% of convicts. The second category is people who are really guilty, but their actions are incorrectly qualified. For example, a person committed theft - and he is charged with robbery or robbery. There are about 15% of them. And another 15-20% of cases - when, for example, extenuating circumstances are not taken into account.
If we consider that only 1.5% are innocently convicted, then from 1995 to the present, from 12 thousand to 18 thousand people are convicted “for nothing” every year, that is, in “democratic Russia, more people are innocently convicted, than it was in the Stalinist USSR.
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From the editors of the information agency "Ledokol": Despite the fact that more than 20 years ago, documented facts about the prisoners of the Gulag were published by various historians, this information remained unknown to most readers. To familiarize readers with the authentic data of state archives, we publish the work of V.N. Zemskov "GULAG - Historical and sociological aspect", the journal "Sociological Research" - No. 6, No. 7, 1991.
In Tables No. 01 and No. 02, the editors publish statistical data that may be useful to the reader for comparison:
Table No. 01
| The population of the USSR | 1922 | 1940 | 1956 |
| Thousand Human | 136100 | 194077 | 208827 |
Source: "The National Economy of the USSR 1922-1982"
Table No. 02
| Quantity prisoners 2006 |
Population Million people |
Quantity Prisoners year 2013 |
Population Million people |
|
| USA | 2,186,230 | 296,4 | 2,239,751 | 312,72 |
Source: http://www.prisonstudies.org
The editors of the news agency "Ledokol" do not agree with some of the author's conclusions about the Soviet Union, the article is valuable as a source of archival data.
The purpose of this article is to show the true statistics of the Gulag prisoners, a significant part of which has already been cited in the articles by A.N. Dugin, V.F. Nekrasov, as well as in our publication in the weekly "Arguments and Facts".
Despite the existence of these publications, in which the corresponding truth and documented number of GULAG prisoners is called, the Soviet and foreign public for the most part is still under the influence of far-fetched and not corresponding to historical truth statistical calculations contained both in the works of foreign authors (R. Conquest , S. Cohen and others), and in the publications of a number of Soviet researchers (R.A. Medvedev, V.A. Chalikova and others). Moreover, in the works of all these authors, the discrepancy with genuine statistics never goes in the direction of understatement, but exclusively only in the direction of multiple exaggeration. One gets the impression that they are competing with each other to amaze readers with numbers, so to speak, more astronomically.
Here is what, for example, S. Cohen writes (with reference to the book by R. Conquest "The Great Terror", published in 1968 in the USA): "... By the end of 1939, the number of prisoners in prisons and separate concentration camps increased to 9 million people (compared to 30 thousand in 1928 and 5 million in 1933-1935)" . In reality, in January 1940, there were 1,334,408 prisoners in the Gulag camps, 315,584 in the Gulag colonies, and 190,266 in prisons. In total, 1,850,258 prisoners were then in camps, colonies and prisons (Tables 1, 2), i.e. The statistics given by R. Conquest and S. Cohen are exaggerated by almost five times.
R. Conquest and S. Cohen are echoed by the Soviet researcher V. A. Chalikova, who writes: "Based on various data, calculations show that in 1937-1950 there were 8-12 million people in the camps, which occupied vast spaces." V.A. Chalikova names the maximum figure - 12 million prisoners of the Gulag (apparently, she includes colonies in the concept of "camp") on a certain date, but in reality for the period 1934-1953. the maximum number of prisoners in the Gulag, falling on January 1, 1950, was 2,561,351 people (see Table 1). Consequently, V.A. Chalikova, following R. Conquest and S. Cohen, exaggerates the true number of Gulag prisoners by about five times.
N.S. Khrushchev also contributed to confusing the issue of the statistics of GULAG prisoners, who, apparently in order to present his own role as a liberator of the victims of Stalinist repressions, wrote in his memoirs: "... When Stalin died, there were up to 10 million people". In reality, on January 1, 1953, there were 2,468,524 prisoners in the Gulag: 1,727,970 in camps and 740,554 in colonies (see Table 1). The TsGAOR of the USSR keeps copies of the memos of the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR addressed to N.S. Khrushev, indicating the exact number of prisoners, including at the time of I.V. Stalin's death. Consequently, N.S. Khrushchev was well informed about the true number of Gulag prisoners and deliberately exaggerated it four times.
Table 1. The number of prisoners in the Gulag (as of January 1 of each year) 
Table 2. The number of prisoners in the prisons of the USSR
(data as of the middle of each month)
Available publications about the repressions of the 30s - early 50s, as a rule, contain distorted, greatly exaggerated data on the number of those convicted for political reasons or, as it was then officially called, for "counter-revolutionary crimes", i.e. under the infamous Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and under the corresponding articles of the Criminal Code of other Union republics. This also applies to the data cited by R.A. Medvedev on the scope of repressions in 1937-1938. Here is what he wrote: “In 1937-1938, according to my calculations, from 5 to 7 million people were repressed: about a million party members and about a million former party members as a result of party purges of the 20s and the first half of the 30s , the remaining 3-5 million people are non-party, belonging to all segments of the population. Most of those arrested in 1937-1938 ended up in forced labor camps, a dense network of which covered the whole country "
.According to R.A. Medvedev, the number of prisoners in the Gulag for 1937-1938. should have increased by several million people, but this was not observed. From January 1, 1937 to January 1, 1938, the number of prisoners in the Gulag increased from 1,196,369 to 1,881,570, and by January 1, 1939, it dropped to 1,672,438 people (see Table 1). For 1937-1938. in the Gulag, there was indeed a surge in the growth of the number of prisoners, but by several hundred thousand, and not by several million. And it was natural, because. in fact, the number of those convicted for political reasons (for "counter-revolutionary crimes") in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, amounted to about 3.8 million people. The statements of R.A. Medvedev that, as if only in 1937-1938. 5-7 million people were repressed, do not correspond to the truth. The statement of the chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is in full agreement with the current Gulag statistics that we studied in the second half of the 1930s.
In February 1954, in the name of N.S. Khrushchev, a certificate was prepared, signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, which indicated the number of those convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes over the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954. In total, during this period, 3,777,380 people were convicted by the Collegium of the OGPU, the “troikas” of the NKVD, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals, including capital punishment - 642,980, to detention in camps and prisons for a period of 25 years or less - 2,369,220, in exile and exile - 765,180 people. It was indicated that out of the total number of those arrested for counter-revolutionary crimes, approximately 2.9 million people were convicted by the Collegium of the OGPU, the "troikas" of the NKVD and the Special Conference (i.e. extrajudicial bodies) and 877 thousand - by courts, military tribunals, the Special Collegium and the Military College. At present, it was said in the certificate, there are 467,946 prisoners convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes in camps and prisons, and, in addition, 62,462 people are in exile after serving their sentences.
The same document noted that a special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, created on the basis of a decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of November 5, 1934, which lasted until September 1, 1953, convicted 442,531 people, including those sentenced to capital punishment - 10,101, to deprivation of liberty - 360,921, to exile and expulsion (within the country) - 67,539 and to other penalties (credit for the time spent in custody, expulsion abroad, compulsory treatment) - 3,970 people. The overwhelming majority whose cases were considered by the Special Conference were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes.
In the original version of the certificate, compiled in December 1953, when the number of convicts convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes then available in places of deprivation of liberty was 474,950 people, the geography of the placement of 400,296 prisoners was given: in the Komi ASSR - 95,899 (and, in addition, in Pechorlag - 10,121), in the Kazakh SSR - 57,989 (of which in the Karaganda region - 56,423), in the Khabarovsk Territory - 52,742, Irkutsk region. - 47,053, Krasnoyarsk region - 33,233, Mordovian ASSR - 17,104, Molotov region. - 15 832, Omsk region. - 15 422, Sverdlovsk region. - 14 453, Kemerovo region - 8 403, Gorky region. - 8 210, Bashkir ASSR - 7 854, Kirov region. - 6 344, Kuibyshev region. - 4,936 and in the Yaroslavl region. - 4,701 people. The remaining 74,654 political prisoners were in other territories, regions and republics (Magadan Region, Primorsky Territory, Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, etc.).
In the same version of the certificate, it was noted that persons who were in exile and exile at the end of 1953, from among the former prisoners convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, lived: in the Krasnoyarsk Territory - 30,575, in the Kazakh SSR - 12,465, in the Far North - 10,276, in the Komi ASSR - 3,880, Novosibirsk region. - 3 850, in other regions - 1416 people.
It must be emphasized that from the above official state document it follows that for the period from 1921 to 1953. less than 700,000 of those arrested for political reasons were sentenced to capital punishment. In this regard, we consider it our duty to refute the statement of the former member of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Commission Investigating the Murder of S.M. later allegedly disappeared mysteriously, writes: "... From January 1, 1935 to June 22, 1941, 19 million 840 thousand "enemies of the people" were arrested. Of these, 7 million were shot. Most of the rest died in the camps".
In this information, O.G. Shatunovskaya allowed more than a 10-fold exaggeration of both the scope of the repressions and the number of those executed. She also assures that most of the rest (presumably 7-10 million people) died in the camps. We have absolutely accurate information that during the period from January 1, 1934 to December 31, 1947, 963,766 prisoners died in the GULAG forced labor camps, and this number includes not only "enemies of the people", but also criminals (Table .3).
The dynamics of the movement of GULAG camp prisoners for the period from 1934 to 1947, including such indicators as mortality, escapes, detention and return of fugitives, release from prison, etc., is given in Table 3. In addition, Table 4 shows the ratio between convicted extrajudicial and judicial bodies among prisoners who were in the Gulag camps in the period from 1934 to 1941. Unfortunately, we do not have similar statistics on the prisoners held in the Gulag colonies.
As of March 1, 1940, the GULAG consisted of 53 camps (including camps occupied by railway construction) with many camp departments, 425 corrective labor colonies (including 170 industrial, 83 agricultural and 172 "contractor", i.e. . worked at construction sites and on the farms of other departments), united by regional, regional, republican departments of corrective labor colonies (OITK), and 50 colonies for minors. From the middle of 1935 to the beginning of 1940, 155,506 adolescents aged 12 to 18 passed through the juvenile colonies, of which 68,927 were convicted and 86,579 were not. In March 1940, 90 "baby houses" (they had 4,595 children) operated in the Gulag system, whose mothers were prisoners.
Table 3 The movement of the camp population of the Gulag
According to the nature of the crimes, the GULAG prisoners were distributed as follows (March 1, 1940): for counter-revolutionary activities - 28.7%, for especially dangerous crimes against the order of government - 5.4%, for hooliganism, profiteering and other crimes against government - 12, 4%, theft - 9.7%, official and economic crimes - 8.9%, crimes against the person - 5.9%, theft of socialist property - 1.5%, other crimes - 27.5%. The total contingent of prisoners held in the ITL and ITK GULAG was determined, according to centralized records as of March 1, 1940, at 1,668,200 people. Of this number, 352,000 people were kept in ITKs, including 192,000 people in industrial and agricultural ITKs and 160,000 people in "contractor" ITKs [Ibid.].
In the Gulag, the only exception to the rule - every prisoner must work - were the sick and those declared unfit for work (there were 73,000 of them in March 1940). In one of the documents of the Gulag in 1940, it was noted that the costs associated with the maintenance of sick and unfit for work prisoners "place a heavy burden on the budget of the Gulag" [Ibid.].
In March 1940, in the Gulag, the first place in terms of proportion was occupied by those sentenced to terms of 5 to 10 years (38.4%), the second - from 3 to 5 years (35.5%), the third - up to three years (25. 2%), over 10 years - 0.9%. The age composition of the Gulag prisoners (March 1, 1940): under 18 years old - 1.2%, from 18 to 21 years old - 9.3%, from 22 to 40 years old - 63.6%, from 41 to 50 years old - 16 .2%, over 50 years - 9.7%. On January 1, 1941, there were 4,627 prisoners over the age of 70 in the ITL [Ibid.]. As of January 1, 1939, the GULAG camp prisoners included 63.05% Russians, 13.81% Ukrainians, 3.40% Belarusians, 1.89% Tatars, 1.86% Uzbeks, 1.50% Jews , 1.41% Germans, 1.30% Kazakhs, 1.28% Poles, 0.89% Georgians, 0.84% Armenians, 0.71% Turkmens and 8.06% others (Table 5).
The data on the educational level of the GULAG camp prisoners in 1934-1941 are very indicative. (Table 6). For the period from 1934 to 1941. the proportion of people with higher education has tripled, and those with secondary education almost doubled. Such a significant increase in the proportion of prisoners with higher and secondary education occurred despite a simultaneous increase in the number of people with lower education, semi-literate and illiterate. For example, the number of illiterate camp prisoners increased from 217,390 in 1934 to 413,122 in 1941, i.e. almost doubled, but their share in the total composition of prisoners in labor camps during this period decreased from 42.6% to 28.3%. The number of prisoners with higher education increased in 1934-1941. more than eight times, with an average of five times, which led to an increase in their share in the total composition of the camps.
These data indicate that the number and proportion of the intelligentsia grew at a faster pace in the composition of the camp prisoners. Distrust, hostility and even hatred towards the intelligentsia is a common feature of communist leaders. Practice has shown that, having seized upon unlimited power, they were simply unable to resist the temptation to mock the intelligentsia. At the same time, the method of mocking the intelligentsia in Maoist China - sending them to "labor re-education" in agriculture - can be called relatively humane. The most "radical" action was taken by another communist leader, Pol Pot (who ruled Kampuchea in 1975-1979), who physically exterminated almost the entire intelligentsia in his country. The Stalinist version of mockery of the intelligentsia, which consisted in sending part of it to the Gulag on the basis of far-fetched or fabricated accusations, occupied, as it were, a middle position between the Maoist and Pol Pot variants. The unrepressed part of the intelligentsia was prepared for a form of mockery in the form of "ideological thrashings", guiding and guiding instructions "from above" on how it should think, create, honor "leaders", etc.
On July 15, 1939, order No. 168 of the NKVD of the USSR was issued, according to which prisoners caught in the disorganization of camp life and production were put on trial. Until April 20, 1940, on the basis of this order, the operational-Chekist departments of the camps, on the basis of this order, brought to justice and tried 4,033 people, of which 201 people were sentenced to capital punishment (although some of them later the death penalty was replaced by imprisonment for terms 10 to 15 years old) [Ibid.].
Table 4 Correlation between the convicted bodies of the NKVD, courts and tribunals among the camp prisoners of the Gulag (as of January 1 of each year)
Table 5
The national composition of the camp prisoners of the Gulag in 1939-1941.
(as of January 1 of each year)
In 1940, the GULAG's centralized card file reflected the corresponding data on almost 8 million people - both for people who went through isolation in the past years, and for those who were then imprisoned [Ibid.].
Along with isolation organs, the GULAG system included the so-called "Bureau of Correctional Labor" (BIRs), whose task was not to isolate convicts, but to ensure the implementation of court decisions against persons sentenced to serving forced labor without imprisonment. 312,800 people were registered with the BIRs of the GULAG, sentenced to corrective labor without imprisonment. Of these, 97.3% worked at the place of their main job, and 2.7% - in other places, according to the appointment of the NKVD [Ibid.].
A few months later, the number of this category of convicts increased sharply, which was a consequence of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 26, 1940 "On the transition to an eight-hour working day, to a seven-day working week and on the prohibition of unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions", which introduced criminal liability for unauthorized leaving enterprises and institutions, for absenteeism and being late for work for 21 minutes or more. Most of these "ukazniks" were sentenced to corrective labor at the place of their main job for up to six months and with deductions from wages of up to 25%.
Camps for prisoners in Soviet Russia began to be created with 1919
years. They contained those convicted of criminal and political crimes. This institution was directly subordinated Cheka and was located for the most part in the Arkhangelsk region and with 1921
years was named "Northern Special Purpose Camps""abbreviation" Elephant". With the growth of the fifth column (which was actively fueled from abroad, as well as in our time), a number of measures were taken in the young Soviet Republic, as a result of which it was created in 1930
year "Main Department of Forced Labor Camps". Throughout its relatively short existence in 26
spent years in these camps 8
million people. A huge number of whom were imprisoned for political reasons (although most of them were imprisoned for the cause).
If we compare the most terrible Stalinist times and modern American democracy, it turns out that much more people are sitting in American prisons than in the most fierce years of repression..However, for some reason, nobody cares.
Prisoners of forced labor camps took an active part in the construction of bridges, mines, canals, roads, huge industrial enterprises and even entire cities.
The most famous construction projects in which prisoners took part:
- City of Nakhodka
- City of Vorkuta
- City of Komsomolsk-on-Amur
- Tsimlyanskaya HPP
- Tunnel to Sakhalin Island (not completed)
- Nizhny Tagil Iron and Steel Works
- Volga-Don Canal
- White Sea-Baltic Canal
- City of Dzhezkazgan
- City of Ukhta
- City Sovetskaya Gavan
- Zhigulevskaya HPP
- Volzhskaya HPP (Hydroelectric power plant)
- Railway tracks in the north of the USSR
- Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine
- Moscow Channel
The largest associations of the Gulag
- Ukhtizhemlag
- Ustvymlag
- Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON)
- Sevzheldorlag
- SWITL
- Provlag
- Perm camps (Usollag, Visheralag, Cherdynlag, Nyroblag, etc.), Pechorlag
- Norilsklag (Norilsk ITL)
- Kraslag
- Kizelag
- Intalag
- Dmitrovlag (Volgolag)
- Dzhezkazganlag
- Vyatlag
- Belbaltlag
- Berlag
- Bamlag
- ALZHIR (decoding: Akmola camp for the wives of traitors to the Motherland)
- Khabarlag
- Ukhtpechlag
- Taezhlag
- Siblag
- Svirlag
- Pejheldorlag
- Ozerlag
- Lokchimlag
- Kotlas ITL
- Karaganda ITL (Karlag)
- Dubravlag
- Dzhugdzhurlag
- dallag
- Vorkutlag (Vorkuta ITL)
- Namelesslag
If you look at Wikipedia, you can read interesting facts there. For example, in the Gulag there was 2000 special commandant's office 425 colonies, 429 camps. Most of the prisoners were in 1950 year, then they were detained there 2 million 561 thousand person (compared to USA v 2011 year were imprisoned 2 million 261 thousand Human). The saddest year GULAG was 1941 when in places not so remote died 352 thousand people, which was in fact about a quarter of all convicts. For the first time, the number of prisoners in the Gulag exceeded one million people in 1939 year, which means that in the "terrible" 1937 year, less than a million people were imprisoned, for comparison, you can take another look at the numbers on the number of prisoners in the "Empire of Good" for 2011 a year and be a little surprised, as well as start asking liberals questions that are uncomfortable for them. The camp system included institutions for minors, where juvenile delinquents could be sent from 12 years.
V 1956 year Gulag has been renamed to " Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Colonies", and after a short time in 1959 year was once again renamed to " General Directorate of Places of Detention".
Documentary about the Gulag
