Russian Gulag free essay sample

The Gulags were called many things by the Soviet government, but when boiled down, they were essentially three things: Prison camps, labor camps, and extermination camps. Most prisoners were sent to a labor camp when their sentences were issued, but under certain conditions such as an illness that crippled a worker, work related accidents that cost limbs and organ function, or even bad behavior at work, convicts could be sent to prison camps or extermination camps. The Gulags were created to make use of convict labor to stimulate the Soviet economy and instill corrective behavior in those convicts. The economy of the Soviet Union greatly improved and the rapid industrialization and collectivization of the cities and countryside pushed the Soviets into the modern world. The Soviets were slower than most of the world in respect to industrialization due to World War I and the following October Revolution. However, with the money gained from the surplus of materials harvested by Gulag prisoners, the Soviets were able to push the Union into a period of rapid economic growth. The Gulag inmates mined coal, gold, and other minerals, farmed, cut down trees for lumber, and so forth. On paper, the Gulag was a great idea. In reality, despite its economical effectiveness, it was the cruelest thing a person could have done to another human being. Humans have a natural desire for money, especially those who have power. Gulag personnel fed convicts very little to save money on food and forced them to work long hours to make more money. Scores of prisoners died on a daily basis due to starvation and exhaustion alone. There were many Gulag camps, with more than 2,000 colonies branching off of the 476 discovered camps. There are likely many more that lie undiscovered and buried in the snow of the Siberian tundra today. The total number of prisoners that were in the Gulags is heavily disputed, but the most reliable number would be about twenty million. Gulag records are incomplete, however, so this estimate may be false. Most of these prisoners died horrible deaths. Although most of the convicts had committed actual crimes, far too many were convicted of counter-revolutionary activities, which in today’s society would generally be accepted as a form of free speech, excluding those that used violent methods to protest. According to Gulag records, all of them were criminals. However, it is generally accepted that most Mensheviks were imprisoned due to â€Å"Counter-revolutionary activities,† and are not counted in the criminal count. Those charged with this crime thus have a section of their own. About one-third of all inmates were Mensheviks and imprisoned to be silenced. The other two-thirds were convicted of legitimate crimes. However, because the government was so corrupt, falsification of evidence ran rampant. With this in mind, a sizeable number of these convicts may have been innocent. The death toll of the convicts was staggering. The beginning of Gulag life started at home. If a person was suspected of illegal activities, the local authorities were contacted. Soon, an investigator was sent to the suspect’s house to look for any incriminating evidence, usually in a book or pamphlet. The investigator’s job was to take this person to the Gulag, under specification of NKVD Order No. 00447. The purpose of the Order was to get the suspect in front of a military tribunal to be separated into one of two categories. Category One convicts were sentenced to be shot, while Category Two convicts were to be sentenced to hard labor in the Gulags. In addition to this, in the mindset of the day, if someone was suspected of anti-Bolshevik activities, they were automatically guilty. The investigator would look for anything he could find that could possibly make the person guilty at all. Sometimes the investigator would take up a random piece of literature, say it was bad, and have the suspect shipped off, even if the â€Å"incriminating† evidence was something as benign as the children’s story Goodnight Moon. The investigator would not be the one to tell the suspect what he was even accused of; he would just take the â€Å"evidence† and people would soon kidnap the suspect and toss him in a cattle car to Siberia, which was cramped with a mass of other convicts. When the prisoners reached the Gulag, an official there would take everyone’s valuables and toss the convicts into cramped cells. The interrogation could start at any time. For some the interrogations were that day, and for others it never came and their lives were lived out in the dirty cells. When and if the interrogator got a confession out of someone, a prison sentence was read out and the convict was sent off to the actual Gulag. Interrogation was possibly the most terrifying part of the early Gulag prison term. The interrogator could be anyone with any type of personality, but he or she always had a myriad of torture methods to extract false or true confessions from a suspect. At first the interrogator was usually nice and patient and calmly told their victim what they were being accused of. If the suspect denied their charges, the interrogator would tell them something like, â€Å"It doesn’t really matter. My job is to get a confession from you, and I’m going to do it. If you confess, you can save yourself a lot of pain, and you can save both of us plenty of time. † This was one of the few things in the Gulag that was completely true. If the accusation was still denied, the interrogator could do anything to the prisoner. They could do anything as small as using foul language to something as sadistic as sticking the prisoner in a cage with bedbugs that had been left to procreate for weeks. Either way, the confession would be made, and the convict was taken off to the Gulag to work. Work in the Gulag was grueling. The prisoners were forced to work every hour of the day with little food and sleep. They would be forced to lay train tracks, work in the mines, or fell trees in the thick snow. By performing these tasks, the prisoners ran the risk of illness, freezing to death, or in the case of forestry, being crushed by a falling tree. There were ways for prisoners to get off of work, however. A popular practice in the Gulag was to commit Samorub. Samorub translates from Russian to â€Å"Self-inflicted wound. † Usually, a prisoner committing Samorub would do something that would impair their movement and stop their ability to work. Most ‘dropped’ an ax on their foot so they could not walk or ‘accidentally’ put a nail through their hands. Some were caught and immediately killed, but others got away with it. A more legitimate health concern that could get them leave from work was a serious illness such as typhoid, pneumonia, or severe frostbite. There was very little medicine available in the Gulags, so most convicts who got ill died soon after. Sometimes, after a few years of good behavior and completing their workload, the prisoners could be promoted to a position known as the â€Å"Trusty. † Trusties did not do work in the forests or mines, instead, they had easier jobs, like doctoring or delivering firewood. Some Trustees were given a pass which allowed them to walk through the Gulag unaccompanied by a guard. Gulags were often not separated by gender, so there were always children being born. When a child was born in a Gulag, it was an automatic death sentence; the child would not last for a year. The mother and child were taken to the Mothers’ Camp, where they were separated in only a few months. The mother did work while the children were either trained to work, or they were simply stuck in an ill-run day-care center. Wake-up time for children varied from place to place, but it was always early. They were forced from their beds with kicks and shoves, and soon after came bath time. Children were doused with ice-water for their bath and then force-fed some kind of hot gruel. At first, they cried, but they soon learned to be silent. If they cried, the nurses would beat them into silence. The only ones treated with any semblance of care were the children of the nurses themselves, and even they would often die at a young age. Punishment in the Gulag was often cruel and unusual. In addition to the sadistic interrogation tactics, prisoners were often subject to being stuck in the cooler, pinned naked to a tree during mosquito season, having their already meager bread ration decreased, or they were flat out shot. Occasionally the guards would stage something called the Hunt. The Hunt occurred for no reason other than the sadistic guards wanted to shoot their guns around and not get fired. It often took place in an open field or the woods. If a prisoner crossed the border line for any reason, they would be classified as Runners, and thus open to be shot. This title stood if it was a mistake, or even if a guard told them to. After the first step over the line, the prisoner would be shot. The guard who shot the Runner would get a promotion, home leave, a pay bonus, or a medal. The cooler was another form of punishment. It was a hallway of prison cells that varied in size. Some were for solitary confinement, some for two, three, five, twenty, and even thirty or forty people in a single cell. The bunks were short and bare, with not even a mattress on them. The beds were so small that the average prisoner could lay flat on them and then bend his knees so that his feet flatly touched the floor. The prisoners would stay there until their sentences in the cooler were served. The origin of the Gulag was etched in Soviet politics. On June 27, 1929, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, also referred to as the Politburo, replaced the prison system with a network of self-supporting camps and colonies that would have little to no contact with the outside world. The labor camps were to house inmates whose sentences exceeded three years, and the industrial and agricultural colonies were to house inmates whose sentences were under three years. Thus the project, called the Chief Administration of Camps of the OGPU-NKVD, or GULAG, was created. The targets of the Gulag were usually people who had committed actual crimes like theft and murder, but a startling amount had been convicted of â€Å"Anti-Bolshevik activities†. Bolsheviks were the ruling Communist party in the Soviet Union. They identified these supposed anti-Bolsheviks as enemies of the people, Rightists, suspicious persons, saboteurs, enemies of Soviet power, and many other things. Although there was always starvation, the famine of 1932 has been named the Great Famine. The grain harvest of 1932 was very poor, so there was very, very little bread to go around, mostly affecting the Ukraine, North Caucasus, Volga, and Central Black Soil regions. Before the Famine, bread was their most abundant food. With very little bread and no increased rations in other foods to make up for the loss, six to seven million people died in 1932 alone. Of all the prison camp systems, the Kolyma system was possibly the deadliest. The labor in Kolyma was a form of work called Katorga, the severest form of forced labor. Prisoners worked in the dangerous Siberian mines and served twenty to twenty-five year sentences. They had no names, only numbers on their backs. They were transported to Kolyma in chains. When they slept, there were no blankets, and not even a mattress. They slept only on wooden boards and were given blankets after three years with all good behavior. This was rare, as Gulag personnel almost always found a reason to punish prisoners. There was one camp in Kolyma that was particularly terrible, called the Maxim-Gorky camp. In 1944 alone, the estimated delivery amount of prisoners was three thousand. Maxim-Gorky was a gold mine camp where sickness was abundant. Along with the standard dangers of mining for gold and the dangers of starving, dying of thirst, and dangers of the mine shaft collapsing came the dangers of the sadistic guards. Contact with the outside world was strictly forbidden. If a prisoner wrote a letter and was caught, they were sent to a super-isolated mine-camp within the Kolyma system called Laso. The prisoners received food rations that were meager at best. Their most abundant food was bread. Below is a chart on bread rationing in the Kolyma camp system. Fulfillment of Labor Quota| Women| Men | 100 90%| 21 oz| 28. 5-32 oz| 70 89%| 17. 5 oz| 25 oz| 50 69%| 14 oz| 17. 5 oz| Disciplinary Ration| 10. 5 oz| 10. 5 oz| Their supply of bread could not be lived off of. The amount they received that was the rest of their food was even more pathetic. Sugar| Herbal Tea| Boiled Cabbage Leaves| Salted Fish| Cereals| Starch| Vegetable Oil| 0. 34 oz| 0. 106 oz | 10. oz | 3. 5 oz | 2. 1 oz| 0. 17 oz| 0. 5 oz | Disease ran rampant in the Gulags. The two most prominent diseases were scurvy, caused by lack of vitamin C, and pellagra, caused by a lack of vitamin B. The cure for scurvy was pure pine extract, said to be the vilest tasting thing in the Gulag. The cure for pellagra was a mixture of flour and yeast, but the punishment was losing 1. 75 ounces of bread. The most frequent cause of dea th, ironically, was a lack of vitamins. The menu of food for the prisoners was staggeringly monotonous. Breakfast always consisted of half a herring, sweetened tea, and a third of the bread ration. Lunch was a pint of cabbage soup, groats, and another third of the bread ration. Dinner was cabbage soup with cereal and fish heads floating in it along with the remainder of the bread ration. In 1937-38, the Gulags were in a period known as the Great Purge. The man in charge of the Gulag project was a man named Nikolai Yezhov. When Yezhov came to power in 1937, he immediately started exiling officers to the Gulag on corruption charges. He falsified evidence for himself as he had done for Stalin in the past. By the time he was ousted from power, Yezhov had exiled approximately 1,600,000 people. Within the Gulags, the prisoners faced mass executions, the escalation of violence from the guards, increased starvation rates, and increased infant mortality rates. Based on the information available, one could roughly estimate that 7,836,611 prisoners were held from 1930-1941. Taking into account the fact that Gulag records are horribly incomplete, It is difficult to get a more accurate figure. With incomplete prisoner estimates comes an uncountable death toll: It remains a mystery as to how many actually paid their lives to the terror of the Gulags. After the Great Terror came a period known as Beria’s Reforms. In 1939, Nikolai Yezhov was replaced by a man named Lavrenty Beria. In 1940, Beria personally executed Yezhov. When Beria came into power, he put some convicts back on trial, this time without falsifying evidence and putting words in their mouths. The year he was put in charge of the Gulag project, he released 223,622 prisoners. Liberation for the Gulags came in the 1950s. By 1960, the last Gulag was shut down and every prisoner had been released. The Gulag project was starting to fade before the Liberation period, so most Gulag camps and colonies had already been shut down. In the Liberation period, when the Gulags were shutting down at an accelerated rate, fifty-three camps along with 423 colonies had been shut down. In total, more than thirty thousand were shut down. The most infamous Gulags were Solovki, the White Sea Canal, the Kolyma system, Vorkuta, and the Road of Death, a failed project to create a road that traversed the endless expanse of Siberia.