[[File:Olkhon Island gulag.jpg|right|250px|thumb|Remains of a Soviet gulag, Olkhon Island, Russia.]]
The '''Gulag''' is the extensive network of prison camps used in the Soviet Union and by extension other socialist societies. It was used to imprison people and exact any kind of labor from its subjects who opposed Marxism or failed to live up co-operate with, or simply were in any way threatening to , ongoing regime objectives, particularly the use of words, actions or being in a position to have a basis of knowledge that discredited the various ways a force genocidal in extent or a totalizing falsification was required to command assent in the face of the regime's incompetence and abuse in applying its self-defined and self-prioritized [[Socialist ]] principlesto carry out those objectives.
In the indictment procedure, whatever threats to regime prestige the indicted posed were disguised and re-fashioned into imputations of participation in usually-direct intentional attacks on some aspect of the professed prerogatives or policies of the regime or its subjects. The name derives from threat of the gulag terrorized the regime's subjects into participating in activities beneficial to the regime that were sure to give them more power with which to enslave them. More recently, this term refers to the continued imprisonment without a trial of [[Trump]] supporters who exercised their [[First Amendment]] rights on Jan. 6, 2021, at the [[United States Capitol]]. Gulag is an acronym for the is derived from Chief Directorate Administration of Corrective Labour Labor Camps and Colonies, ''Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey i kolonii'' (Russian: ''Главное управление лагерей и мест заключения''), <ref>A ''lag'' or ''lage'' in Russian is the same word in German for "camp", as in ''konzentrationslager'' or [[concentration camp]]. The word, common to both languages, may have derived from Czarist times and the operation of punitive logging camps for criminal offenders and political dissidents. Vladimir Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) for example, spent time in a notorious logging camp on the River Lena in Siberia, from which he adopted the name "Lenin" to identify as a proud veteran of the camps.</ref> spelled GuLag, Corrective labor is used for [[politically incorrect]] thought, word, or action. The term became well known by its use in the title of the compilation of personal historical accounts by [[Alexander Solzhenitsyn]] in ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]''.<ref>The camps are depicted as a scattered collection of islands.</ref>
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.
Under the Soviet system, a person was banished from the Moscow Center (Red Square) by a distance of kilometers.<ref>An internal passport system required individuals to carry papers showing restrictions, the number of kilometers a person was banned from the Moscow Center.</ref> The farthest being 7000 kilometers, or the Kolyma River in far Eastern Siberia.<ref>https://youtu.be/mWA54jX-VtY</ref> 1500 to 3000 kilometers usually meant the salt mines of [[Kazakhstan]].<ref>https://vimeo.com/192420959</ref> 3500 to 5000 kilometers usually was the logging camps of the River Lena in central Siberia.<ref>https://youtu.be/PA8gBxOAlu0</ref>
The camps were filled mostly with dissidents and the [[unemployed]] from the large cities, such as [[Moscow]] and [[Leningrad]]. Dissidents were mainly political prisoners or religious protestors. Political prisoners were branded "enemies of the working class," or more commonly, "enemies of the people." The unemployed were branded "social parasites," similiar similar the [[National Socialist]] category of "shiftless elements."<ref>[[Marx]] did not consider homeless vagabounds, the [[lumpen masses]], as fit for the workers' revolution. Marx considered desperately impoverished people as tools of the "beougeoie," who would do anything for money, sell out revolutionary ideology, and not to be trusted.</ref>
When a person served out their time behind barbed wire, the system of internal banishment remained in place. A released prisoner then usually had to settle down in the village or community neighboring the Gulag camp where the guards and their families lived,<ref>Some cities and place names on maps are entirely the creation of the Gulag system as it was a vital part of Soviet economic development. Population statistics on Cold War era National Geographic maps often reflect the size of the prison camp population, which typically was 90% of the figure shown in the map's population key.</ref> and find menial employment in some service sector industry supporting their former prison guard slave masters and their families.<ref>The former prisoners' housing often consisted of converted chicken coops or the basements of their former prison guard slave masters.</ref>
The Gulag system was a vital element of the [[Democratic Socialist]] [[economy]], providing necessary [[employment]] and productive capacity for the non-[[profit]] driven, communist society.
===Torture===
The Gulag is infamous also for mass torture.<ref>David Remnick, [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/04/14/seasons-in-hell-4/amp Seasons in Hell], ''The New Yorker'', Apr 14, 2003.<br><i>How the Gulag grew... Another prisoner recalls, in a memoir, how this torture was modified at a Siberian camp...</i></ref> Excruciating images of prisoners in Stalin's Gulag prisons.<ref>Kelly Mclaughlin, [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5011849/amp/Haunting-images-prisoners-Stalin-s-Gulag-prisons.html Haunting images of prisoners in Stalin's Gulag prisons], ''Daily Mail Online,'' Oct 24, 2017.<br><i>Victims of the red revolution: The haunting faces of prisoners worked to death in Stalin's slave camps emerge as 100th anniversary of 1917 Bolshevik takeover approaches... By the time the last Soviet gulag closed its gates, millions had died. ... Force Labour Camps, where he was known for torturing prisoners.</i></ref>
==Marxist theory==
:{{See also |Progressivism}}
In addition to the unemployed, most others fell into two groups: political prisoners and thieves. While dissenters were considered enemies of the revolution, under Marxist [[class warfare]] theory, thieves are considered victims of [[bourgeois]] society and the propertied class.
While the bourgeois are "class enemies" of the working class, and dissenters are "enemies of the people," thieves are considered "class allies" of socialism, the revolution, and the party. Hence a single thief was often deliberately placed within a group of political prisoners to sow mistrust, chaos, and division as a precaution against organized resistance.
The concept of a thief in a society without [[private property ]] may be hard to fathom; those branded as thieves simply were [[sociopath]]s lacking the [[collectivist ]] mindset and discipline enough to join the party.
==The gulag vs . the slave plantation contrasted==
Solzhenitsyn pointed out that the Soviet slave system was unlike the [[slavery]] in the [[American South]], were slaves were allowed to marry and live in family units, although the threat of family separation certainly was used to enforce compliance with the system of forced labor; victims of the [[Marxist]] ideology were permanently separated from all extended family and lived in barracks under a prison regime, where even their toilet habits were strictly supervised and regulated.
==Rehabilitation==
Under [[Nikita Khrushchev]] nearly 4 million Gulag prisoners were released in 1953-571953–57. Millions of these were [[German]] [[POW]]s (the [[leftist]] Soviet Union was not a signatory of the [[Geneva Convention]] agreeing to the [[humanitarian]] treatment and exchange of prisoners when [[World War II]] broke out). [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], who served as a [[Red Army]] Captain in the War Against Fascism, who defeated [[fascism]], nonetheless remained imprisoned by the leftist regime for criticizing [[socialist]] management of the war, [[foreign policy]], the economy, and [[social justice]] in private letters which had been intercepted by the government domestic [[surveillance]] system.
These victims of left-wing state terror encountered physical, psychological, social, and political problems upon their reintegration into socialist society. A reciprocal adjustment had to be made by the Soviet system, and society as a whole, in order to reintroduce former prisoners to the 'Big Zone,' or life outside the camps. Most survivors however, were never allowed to return home or to their previous employment under the system of internal exile.
The process of rehabilitation was slowed by the victims' disorientation on release and their fear of further repression. A person needed "rehabilitation papers" to find a job or housing, although "gainful employment" was illegal because the profit motive [[subversion|subverted]] the Soviet system.
A greater problem was the government's denial of its history rather than admitting to leftist ideological flaws. Even after Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech to the 20th Party Congress condemning "Stalinist excesses," the state was slow to acknowledge that many former 'enemies of the people' were in fact innocent victims.<ref>Nanci Adler, "Life in the 'Big Zone': the Fate of Returnees in the Aftermath of Stalinist Repression," ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 1999 51(1): 5-19</ref> The socialist economy, it was felt, couldn't exist without forced labor of those whom [[progressive]]s progressives disagreed with.
While there is a tendency to blame [[Stalin]] for Marxist "excesses" and "mistakes," the dangerous underpinnings of socialist ideology remain unchanged today.
==Chinese Laogai==
[[File:Forced Labor Detention Facilities in China.PNG|thumb|right|300px|]]
The modern [[Chinese Communist Party]] system of gulags are called the ''Laogai'', the Russian equivalent of ''Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei''. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn postulated the gulag system of corrective labor may have originated in China. The book ''Laogai: The Machinery of Repression in China'', published in 2009, stated that as many as 3 to 5 million people were imprisoned in laogai or gulag camps.<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Laogai-The-Machinery-Repression-China/dp/1884167772 Laogai: The Machinery of Repression in China], 2009-10-01</ref>
China’s network of penal forced labor facilities, established in the early years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government to hold both criminals and political dissidents, remains in operation today. U.S. law prohibits the importation of goods produced “wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions.”<ref>Tariff Act of 1930, 19 U.S. Code 19 § 1307.</ref> Artificial flowers, Christmas lights, shoes, garments, umbrellas as well as coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, footwear, nails, and toys have been identified as produced in Chinese prison factories for export. There have been several instances of letters and notes from prisoners describing their confinement, working conditions and mistreatment discovered in products purchased by consumers outside China; at [[Christmas]] in 2019 a six year old girl in [[London]], in a box of newly purchased Christmas cards, found one that had a message in English saying,
{{quotebox-float|"We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization."<ref>[https://www.npr.org/2019/12/23/790832681/6-year-old-finds-message-alleging-chinese-prison-labor-in-box-of-christmas-cards 6-Year-Old Finds Message Alleging Chinese Prison Labor In Box Of Christmas Cards], ''NPR'', Dec 23, 2019</ref>}}
Profitable prison companies help to fund the operations of both local and national government. Prison labor enterprises producing [[high-tech]] goods such as [[semiconductor]]s and optical instruments are the most profitable, each earning an estimated annual revenue of tens of millions of dollars and paying taxes to the Chinese government. According to the 2012 ''Trafficking in Persons Report'' from the [[United States Department of State]],
{{quotebox|“[t]he [PRC] government reportedly profits from [the use of] forced labor. Many prisoners and detainees in ‘reeducation through labor’ facilities [are] required to work, often with no remuneration.”}}
Many prisons function as subcontractors for Chinese firms. The State Department has noted cases in which
{{quotebox|“detainees were forced to work up to 18 hours a day without pay for private companies working in partnership with Chinese authorities” and “were beaten for failing to complete work quotas."<ref>Cited in ''Prison Labor Exports from China and Implications for U.S. Policy'', U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Research Report, July 9, 2014.</ref>}}
==Further reading==
* Applebaum, Anne. ''Gulag: A History'' by Anne Applebaum (2004) [httphttps://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/1400034094/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255213150&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search], a standard history* Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. ''The Gulag Archipelago'' (1973) [httphttps://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn/dp/0060007761/ref=sip_rech_dp_5 excerpt and text search]* Werth, Nicolas et al. ''Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag'' (2007) [httphttps://www.amazon.com/Cannibal-Island-Siberian-against-Humanity/dp/0691130833/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255212940&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
==See also==
*[[Atheism and slavery]]
*[[Concentration camp]]
*[[Killing fields]]
*[[Democide]]
*[[Joseph Stalin]]
====References====
<references{{reflist}} ==External links==*[https:/>/www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG0T_hVMqLs&feature=youtu.be The Face of Socialism]*[https://rumble.com/vqjz4s-hidden-camera-footage-from-forced-internment-camps-in-australia.html Hidden Camera Footage From Australian Covid Gulag]*[[Natan Sharansky]] - [https://rumble.com/v4aanmi-natan-sharansky-antisemitism-is-a-progressive-problem-the-winston-marshall-.html What I learned in the Gulag: Antisemitism is a Progressive problem]
[[Category:Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Marxist Terminology]]
[[Category:Socialism]]