Gulag

The Gulag is the extensive network of prison camps used in the Soviet Union to imprison Joseph Stalin's political enemies, real or imagined. The name derives from a acronym for the Chief Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey i kolonii, and became well-known by its use in the title of the novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago. The population of the Gulag peaked in 1939 (at the climax of the Stalinist purges) at 1.65 million, and again in the early 1950s at 2.5 million. Around 1 million Gulag prisoners died of ill-treatment, disease or starvation between 1931 and 1953.

Under Nikita Khrushchev over 2 million Gulag prisoners were released in 1953-57. These victims of the Stalinist terror encountered physical, psychological, social, and political problems upon their return to Soviet 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. The process of rehabilitation was slowed by the victims' disorientation on return and their fear of further repression. A greater problem was the government's denial of its history rather than admitting to Stalinist-era mistakes. Even after Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech to the 20th Party Congress, the state was slow to acknowledge that many former 'enemies of the people' were in fact innocent victims.

See also

• Concentration camp
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Joseph Stalin