On this day in 1929, a secret decree about the use of penal labour was issued in USSR – what is known as GULAG was born
by WRW_And_GB
On this day in 1929, a secret decree about the use of penal labour was issued in USSR – what is known as GULAG was born
by WRW_And_GB
2 comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
> The legal base and the guidance for the creation of the system of “corrective labor camps” (Russian: исправи́тельно-трудовые лагеря, Ispravitel’no-trudovye lagerya), the backbone of what is commonly referred to as the “Gulag”, was a secret decree from the Sovnarkom of July 11, 1929, about the use of penal labor that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of the Politburo meeting of June 27, 1929
The camps themselves, however, had been existing and *working* from way earlier than that, right after the October coup:
> The Solovki prison camp, the first correctional labour camp which was constructed after the revolution, was opened in 1918 and legalized by a decree, “On the creation of the forced-labor camps”, on April 15, 1919.
…
> Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, estimates of Gulag victims ranged from 2.3 to 17.6 million (see History of Gulag population estimates). Mortality in Gulag camps in 1934–40 was 4–6 times higher than average in the Soviet Union. Post-1991 research by historians accessing archival materials brought this range down considerably.[94][95] In a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953.[4]: 1024
>
> It was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death,[15][16] so a combined statistics on mortality in the camps and mortality caused by the camps was higher. The tentative historical consensus is that, of the 18 million people who passed through the gulag from 1930 to 1953, between 1.6 million[2][3] and 1.76 million[96] perished as a result of their detention,[1] and about half of all deaths occurred between 1941 and 1943 following the German invasion.[96][97] If prisoner deaths from labor colonies and special settlements are included, the death toll rises to 2,749,163, according to J. Otto Pohl’s incomplete data.[16][5]
Meanwhile, [Stalin’s popularity is on the rise in Russia](https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/84991), and Russians even choose him as [the most ‘outstanding’ figure of all times](https://khpg.org/en/1608809237)
And again I tell you, even if it may be useless. The GULAG – the main management of the camps – is just an office in the center of Moscow, where the bosses who manage all the prisons of the country sat. Nothing more. In fact, on this day, the supervision of prisons and labor camps was singled out separately.