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Siberia had long gained its fearful connotation of punishment. But in 1920, the first model camp of the future Gulag system was created, on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea region. It was called Solovki, and was ironically housed in a monastery building.
In 1929, Stalin announced a program of rapid industrialization and five-year plans. The following year the Gulag was officially established, thereby creating a unified network of camps to replace the existing dual prison system for class enemies and criminals.
Lenin (pictured), together with Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), first mooted the idea of setting up concentration camps, mostly in Siberia, for class enemies as early as 1918.
The most famous dissident of the Soviet era was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. An outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a labor camp (pictured) and then internal exile for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter. He was freed from exile in 1956. Solzhenitsyn's book 'The Gulag Archipelago,' published in 1973, documents his own experience as a Gulag prisoner and remains one of the most authoritative accounts of life within the Gulag system.
Sources: (Gulag Online) (Hoover Press) (Gulag History) (Gulag Map) (Britannica) (Seventeen Moments in Soviet History)
The idea, however, was nothing new. Forced exile to Siberia had been in use since the 17th century for a wide range of offenses, and was a common punishment for political dissidents and revolutionaries. Sakhalin, a large island off the Pacific coast of Siberia, was a notorious prison used to incarcerate those convicted of the most serious crimes. Pictured in 1890 are caged prisoners on the deck of a steamer en route to the island.
Prisoners sent to Sakhalin would undertake forced labor under harsh conditions, a category of punishment known as katorga. Here, a guard is riveting heavy chains on a newly-arrived convict at one of the government stations on Sakhalin.
According to official records and accounts in the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, between 12,000 and 240,000 laborers died during the construction of the canal, which was inaugurated in 1933. Pictured is a grave of a prisoner at the onsite camp.
Hospital facilities were frugal, and general care lamentable. Meanwhile, prisoner numbers continued to grow. By mid-1931, a total of 1,438, or 2% of the annual average number of prisoners, died. The death rate rose toward the end of the year because of the increasing industrial losses and deteriorating food supply.
The Soviet dictator's zeal in exploiting prison labor as a highly visible symbol of development meant that workers and engineers were never allowed the time, money, or equipment necessary to build a canal that would be deep enough and safe enough to carry 20th-century cargoes. Ultimately, the waterway never played any significant role in Soviet commerce or industry.
Vorkutlag was one of the largest camps in the entire Gulag system. It was located at Vorkuta, just north of the Arctic Circle in the Komi Republic.
The mid- to late 1930s represented the period of Stalin's Great Terror, a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union also known as the Great Purge. Thousands fell victim, including Communist Party and Red Army officials, members of the civil service, and 'relatively wealthy' peasants (kulaks). Many were sent to Vorkutlag (pictured), one of the most infamous of Soviet Gulags.
Established in 1932 with the start of coal mining, Vorkutlag housed dissidents, political prisoners, so-called "enemies of the state," and common criminals. It also later served as a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War.
The Vorkuta Gulag system comprised approximately 132 sub-camps. At its peak in 1951, Vorkutlag alone housed 71,000 prisoners.
Taking place shortly after Stalin's death, the Vorkutlag Uprising of 1953 initially took the form of a passive walk out by prisoners who were protesting against camp conditions. It later became violent and was brutally repressed. But the die had been cast. That same year at Norillag Gulag a similar strike took place, in what became known as the Norilsk Uprising. Pictured is one S Golovko, a prisoner of Norilsk Gulag and a participant of the uprising.
This propaganda poster from 1938 reads: "Hot work will melt away your prison term!" But by 1954 the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had ordered the review of almost four million political crime cases in what became known as the "Khrushchev Thaw." The Gulag system was finally abolished in 1957. However, the repression of dissidents continued, with numerous political opponents arrested and serving their sentences in terrible conditions.
Similarly, the production of ceramics and furniture put to good use the skills of imprisoned carpenters and potters.
Women suffered greatly in the Gulag. Male camp employees, guards, and even other male prisoners sometimes beat or abused female convicts. Some women took on "camp husbands" for protection and companionship.
Women inmates share a moment of repose in their shack in the Vorkutlag. Stalin's purges meant that many camps were unable to cope with the mass influx of prisoners.
Many prisoners of the Gulag simply froze to death. Tired, weak, and inadequately clothed, they were ill equipped to toil in sub-zero temperatures. Pictured is a work party in the East Siberian taiga region, near Verkhoyansk. The lowest temperature ever recorded here is −68°C (−90°F).
Men and women were dispatched to Sakhalin. In this rare image, the female con artist known as Sonya Golden Hand is clamped in leg irons upon arrival at the island. Convicted of theft, she was exiled to the colony for an indefinite period. In 1890, she met Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who was visiting Sakhalin during his investigations into prison reform; he subsequently described the incident in his book 'Sakhalin Island.'
The first prisoners to arrive at this remote outpost were political opponents of the Bolsheviks. Soon, the Solovetsky Islands become the center of the camp system in northern Russia.
Stalin and Kremlin officials at the canal's official opening on August 2, 1933.
Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953. His passing saw an amnesty granted to those convicted of minor criminal offenses, but completely overlooked political prisoners—news that reached the very far corners of the Gulag Archipelago.
In 1923, Solovki contained approximately 3,000 prisoners; by 1930, the number had jumped to nearly 50,000. Forced labor as a "method of reeducation" was applied in the Solovki prison camp. A notorious you-eat-as-you-work system was established, whereby inmates' food rations were to be linked to their rate of production, a proposal known as the nourishment scale. This policy killed weaker prisoners in weeks. Pictured is the prison's concert party, likely assembled for propaganda purposes.
Although prison labor camps were usually kept secret, the White Sea Canal was a propaganda showcase of convicts "reforging" themselves in useful labor. But the lie hid a dreadful truth.
The decision to use forced labor throughout the entire construction of the canal was based on economics as much as anything else. Prisoners weren't paid, and accommodation (pictured) was basic. But overcrowding was commonplace, and disease rife.
Prisoners, male and female, also labored in a tailor's workshop. Many camps provided facilities for inmates to produce goods for mass consumption. This included apparel and accessories such as shoes.
Work began on the ambitious undertaking in 1931. An initial work force of 126,000 prisoners was assembled to create what would become the first waterway in the world built by prison labor.
Gulag is the acronym used from 1930 for Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey, or Main Camp Administration. This was the government agency in charge of the Soviet network of forced labor camps set up by order of Vladimir Lenin.
Vast "archipelagos" of camps stretching across Siberia grew up at the sites of ambitious economic projects, and provided a convenient source of manpower. One such project was the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal.
In the late 1940s, Stalin signed off on another round of megalomaniacal projects, among them the construction of the Salekhard-Igarka railway, the so-called "Dead Road." But this and a tunnel and railway to Sakhalin Island were subsequently halted upon the dictator's death in 1953.
Click through the following gallery and be reminded just what it was like to be imprisoned in the Gulag.
The terror that was the Russian Gulag
The unbearable life in Russian labor camps
LIFESTYLE History
The Gulag was the government agency in charge of the vast Soviet network of prisons and labor camps that came into being shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917. Reaching its peak during Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s, the Gulag became synonymous with misery, murder, and terror as Siberia gained its notorious connotation of punishment. The Gulag system was abolished in 1957, but the very word still invokes the fear and repression that swept throughout the Soviet Union during the first half of the 20th century.
Click through the following gallery and be reminded just what it was like to be imprisoned in the Gulag.