Camps were located in every part of the country—most notoriously in cold Siberia—and slave labor was used not only for mining and heavy industries but for producing every kind of consumer product such as furniture toys, and fur hats.
[[File:Gulag.gif|right|300px|thumb|Detailed explanation how the Gulag camps work found in the [[Harry Hopkins]] papers at Hyde Park; American [[liberal]]s pled ignorance of the system until after publication of Solzhenitsyn's book in 1974.]]
The camps were not designed for execution, but rather forced labor in a society not driven by the profit motive. The death rate was very high from exposure to the cold, over-work, disease and very poor food, government rations, clothing and medical care. Nearly 95 75 million prisoners passed through the gulags in their more than 60 years of operation. Some people were imprisoned for violating Soviet law,<ref>Unemployment is illegal under "social parasite" laws in the [[collectivist]] system.</ref> others simply to fill quotas for the demand for workers. The population of the Gulag peaked around 1939 (at the climax of the Stalinist purges) at 7.5 6 million, and again in the early 1950s at 97.5 million. Around 50 million Gulag prisoners died of over-work, ill-treatment, disease or starvation between 1931 and 1953.<ref>In 1992, Russian demographers announced a determination that there were 63 million 'excess deaths' in the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin's reign — 1923-53.</ref>
Some estimates of Gulag population statistics, such as Anne Applebaum's, are absurdly low due to their reliance on statistical reporting from the estimated 90% of the returnees who had collaborated in atrocities with Gulag slavemasters, and who had consequently later reported lower populations, seeking to diminish reprisals should their complicity become known.