apr 15, 1919 - The Gulag and Slave Labor (April 15, 1919)
Description:
a. What
i. The Gulag
- Series of slave labor camps Siberia, northern Soviet Union, etc. under the Cheka (continued under the NKVD)
-Most difficult projects put on to Gulag
-Contributed 25% to industrialization
-Run by the secret police
-reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the 1950s
-The Gulag started to shrink soon after Stalin’s death; hundreds of thousands of prisoners were amnestied from 1953 to 1957, by which time the camp system had returned to its proportions of the early 1920s. Indeed, the was officially disbanded; its activities were absorbed by various economic ministries, and the remaining camps were grouped in 1955 under a new body, GUITK
c. Significance
-Scared people into following Lenin's rule
-Slave labor is not even efficient
-Just a way to suppress counter revolutionaries/threats to the way too paranoid Stalin
Added to timeline:
SS 201 Midterm 1 Timeline
Date:
