Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian SystemThis is the first historical survey of the Gulag based on newly accessible archival sources as well as memoirs and other studies published since the beginning of glasnost. Over the course of several decades, the Soviet labor camp system drew into its orbit tens of millions of people -- political prisoners and their families, common criminals, prisoners of war, internal exiles, local officials, and prison camp personnel. This study sheds new light on the operation of the camp system, both internally and as an integral part of a totalitarian regime that "institutionalized violence as a universal means of attaining its goals". In Galina Ivanova's unflinching account -- all the more powerful for its austerity -- the Gulag is the ultimate manifestation of a more pervasive and lasting distortion of the values of legality, labor, and life that burdens Russia to the present day. |
Contents
Courts and Convicts in Tsarist Russia | 3 |
The Camp Economy | 69 |
Gulag Personnel | 127 |
What Was the Gulag? | 185 |
203 | |
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Common terms and phrases
activity Administration of Camps arrested Beria billion rubles camp administration camp economy camp system camps and colonies central apparatus Central Committee Cheka Chekist Chief Administration Communist Party completely concentration camps construction projects convicted corrective-labor camps counterrevolutionary courts CPSU crimes criminal Dalstroi deputy documents Dolgikh economic exile facilities forced labor free workers guards GUGB Gulag Gulag system hard-labor Ibid included industry Internal Affairs Istoricheskii arkhiv Komsomol kopecks large number leadership ment military million Ministry of Internal Moscow Moscow Oblast NKGB NKVD number of prisoners Oblast officials OGPU overall number Party members Party organizations people's commissar People's Commissariat percent personnel places of incarceration political section Presidium primarily prison labor production punishment punitive policy Red Army regions RSFSR rubles Russian sent sentenced served social socialist Solovki Sovnarkom Special Board special camps special settlers specialists staff Stakhanovite Stalin tion totalitarian TSAODM TsKhSD USSR