The Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps

One of the most brutal mistakes made by Stalin was the creation of a GULAG. It is difficult to give a precise characterization of its purpose. The aim of this work is to answer the question, “Can we generalize why certain people were able to survive the Gulag more than others?” To survive the Gulag, many prisoners had to fight with others for food, shelter, and simple medical care. Certain prisoners went into religious and intellectual meditations to preserve at least the appearance of intelligence. The survival required willpower, strength of mind, skills, mercilessness, and a lot of luck.

In conclusion, the conditions that many suffered when in the Gulags were unimaginable. Many say it was easier to commit suicide rather than to suffer and live each and every day in these intense labor camps. Many were starved to extreme measures and even the most hard working people were feed little to nothing at all. Sleeping conditions were nowhere near to comfortable. Over a million perished between 1923-1953 and very few made it out and even if they did the Gulags were set in remote areas so they would not make it too far from the camp and would eventually die. Unlike concentration camps, you were eventually released from the Gulags, but once you were released you were either half dead or suffered severe psychological trauma. Many were

During the peak of “corrective labor colonies”, each camp held around 2,000-10,000 inmates and consisted of people arrested at collectivization, anyone who opposed the Communist party, and many innocent victims who never committed any crimes (Gulag 1). The number of prisoners working in forced labor camps was extensive and continued to grow for many years,“The Gulag had a total inmate population of about 100,000 in the late 1920s when it underwent an enormous expansion coinciding with the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture. By 1936

First, Hitler and the Nazi’s created a “work/concentration camp” called Dachau. In fact, “From the start, camp detainees were subjected to harsh treatment,” (history.com 2009). This explains that although Germany called them work camps, the prisoners put in there were exposed to far worse than just overwork. For example, there were many murders classified as unknown deaths

No citizen was immune to the wayward forced labor camps that were formed in the Soviet Union officially in 1930. These camps were administered by the government agency known as The Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements. This agency was then referred to as the acronym for this title- Gulag- and eventually the whole camp system was known as the Gulag (Applebaum viii). The Gulags were the Soviet’s penal system and Stalin’s administration used the camps as free labor to complete construction projects involving canals, railways, roads, and mines. Anyone could be sent, without trial, to a Gulag camp, regardless of their gender, age, political views, or ancestry. Felons who committed crimes of rape, murder, and robbery

Labor camps or also known as Forced Labor were for the Jews to be put under brutal condition. But even before the Holocaust started the Nazi already putted forced labor or also known as Human trafficking in this world generation right now onto Jews. But mostly only Jewish male only done Labor work as for some of the women were to be sent to death row for being weak. But towards the Nazi, Jews only way to survive is to

During the holocaust many concentration camps were built. The most known camp is Auschwitz. Auschwitz was one of the Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and extermination camps. Auschwitz resulted in the deaths of 1 million people during World War II (1939-45). Inside the camp people were often killed in gas chambers, or used as slave labour. Some people didn’t even make it to the camp and died during transportation.

People living under the Nazi or Communist regimes were faces with constant turmoil and fear of the unknown during WWII. In this paper, what elements in a Nazi forced labor camp impacted the prisoners, how is survival addressed, and can there be any free will under these totalitarian regimes? By looking at the works of two survivors from the Nazi death camps and the Stalinist Gulag, I will provide a critical response to each of these questions.

In this research paper, I will explain the different aspects of slavery in the forced labor camps of Germany in the late 30’s and early 40’s. Many different categories of labor camps were created during the second World War in order to classify the inmates. These prisoners were not treated the usual way an inmate might be treated. They would be forced to work in bad conditions with limited access to sustenance. They were forced to work at an unrealistic pace and would be killed if they were unable to keep up that rate. Many deaths were caused by these forced labor camps which were directed and guided by the Nazis and, as the war continued, slave labor camp procedures continued to increase which, as a result, brought many more deaths.

The Gulags of the Soviet Union have been compared to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, but in reality they were worse. The Gulags were isolated prison camps peppered across Siberia. Death, torture, and disease raged within their walls, while endless work went on outside. Gulag personnel were cruel and unfeeling, using terrible punishment methods and playing senseless games that cost prisoners their lives. Political enemies of the Bolshevik party made up a significant portion of the prisoner population, with most sent to the infamous camp system Kolyma. Liberation was painfully slow, but by 1960, all of the Gulags were gone.

This is what interactions with government officials were like when trying to see someone inside the Gulag. The government officials would be unhelpful and stubborn to make sure nothing was accomplished. Interactions with government officials was different when living inside the Gulag camp system. The government officials were most NKVD officers and they would be very rough and violent to the prisoners. The type of camp prisoners lived in affected their interactions with the guards and officials. At the Sharashka scientist and engineers were treated with more respect and scientific work was allowed in the provided labs. Interactions with government officials varied from camp to camp depending on the severity of the crimes and the type of camp

(Orwell 385). On the other hand, in Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Nazi Party greatly utilized Jewish concentration camps in order to punish those who went against Hitler’s desires and discipline those who didn’t fit the criteria of their ideal society. Many of the times the products produced from these extreme labor conditions were used for profit, but without pay or proper treatment for their services. The labor camps were greatly emphasized on religious beliefs and social class, and those who were forced to endure such camps were often than not those who didn’t fit into Hitler’s desired image for his world. ” The SS established a number of new concentration camps to incarcerate

One of the best methods to surviving the Gulag system was by reaching the work quotas, but this was at times impossible to reach, so both parties found ways to re-interpret quotas which lead to inferences. The method that quotas were to be enforced were very strict and were also used as a way to blame someone for letting down the Soviet Union. For the Guards, officers, and bosses, if quotas were not met, they were to be charged in court as hinders to the soviet cause and were put themselves in prison. Prisoners themselves were given fewer rations, but this will be explained later in this analysis. The standards of how many logs were to be cut or how many miles of track were to be laid daily were set very high, so accomplish this feat, many

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich follows exactly as its title suggests, a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, a prisoner of the Soviet Gulag camps, and the tribulations that he and his fellow prisoners encounter in their daily lives. Having personally experienced the horrific conditions of the Gulag camp system, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote the novel as a means to communicate these horrors to not only the Russian people, but also beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union, to the international community. Its stark realism and political undercurrents shocked many at the time of its publishing, and caused a great amount of controversy in the Soviet Union (Klimoff xiv). The style in which Solzhenitsyn presents his work transcends the scope of the novel and its translation into something more sweeping. Although Ivan Denisovich is rooted in the contextual background of a Soviet Gulag, it is able to relay universal and timeless issues such as oppression, sense of identity, and the social hierarchy.

Rations were the technique that the Gulag system created to enforce the obtaining of quotas, and this led to inefficiencies because of the productivity of the prisoners. The system of you eat what you earn, was common in the government of a way to motivate the common people. It was the system that prisoners were set on, and the memoirs make mention of this. In Ginzburg’s account, it says, “You have three days to get your hand in. You’ll get full rations for that long, but afterward, it’ll depend on your output. You’ll only eat as much as you earn”. (Ginzburg 405) In Mochulsky’s memoir, “The rules were as follows. Anyone who did not work the norm…received 300 grams (ten slices of bread) a day, those who overfulfilled the norm received 800 grams.”