Gulag Complete History

Living in Russia in the 1800s and early 1900s meant living in a country full of poverty where the technology was far behind the western world. Russia was being viewed as a country that while very large, was in no way close to being even a minor world power. The peasants, who represented the mast majority of the nation, were discontent with the state of affairs, and in 1905 Bloody Sunday, where "Czar officials reported 130 people killed that SundayÐ'...other sources say 1,000 people died that day or the days following from their wounds," (ABC Clio "Bloody Sunday") just added to the discontent. This lead to the Russian Revolution of 1905, where the czar's power was limited, yet the major revolution happened in 1917. In the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, organized an insurgency of armed workers, soldiers, and sailors who seized government buildings in Petrograd and eventually Moscow. Even after Western interference to stop the communist takeover, by 1922, Lenin and the Bolsheviks (also known as the All-Russian Communist Party) had restored order, with most of the credit being given to Leon Trotsky and his control over the Red Army. By 1923, a new constitution was created that recognized the multinational character of the nation, changing its name from Russia to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Yet even when a country appears to be liberated, if a particular ruler gains power, they may act ruthlessly and defer from the original ideals of the liberation. Even though the Russians had won their way out of the harsh rule of the Czars during the Russian Revolution, while one set of leaders may have been overthrown, another despotic individual with the an even more stern fist was able to take control. Stalin used the mechanism of the gulag as a tool to create obedience based on an insane fear invoked in people that they would be taken off to this "mythical" place where they would literally be worked to death, if they even got that far. And finally, in the end, the good guys don't always win, and when people like Trotsky, who believed in the original ideals of the liberation tried to stand out, they were promptly executed.

First of all, though Russia believed they had won their way out of the rule of the "evil" czars, all it led to was the rule of an even more authoritarian individual who believed that violence was the solution in solving Russia's problems. Czar rule left Russia in a state with technology severely lacking compared to both western nations, and citizens were starving to death with virtually no connection to the outside world. The provisional government that was put into place "proved unpopular with the Russian people because it refused to end Russia's involvement in World War I or to promote such agrarian reforms as redistributing land to peasants." (ABC Clio "Vladimir Lenin") A civil war erupted, and in the end Lenin and the communist government emerged victorious, with Lenin keeping up with the promises that he made the people. This included leading the faction that believed peace with Germany and withdrawal from World War I should be accomplished at any sacrifice as well as creating the Communist International (or Comintern) to coordinate the efforts of European communist parties to spread the revolution and bring an end to the war. He even began the process of ending all the poverty in his New Economic Policy, where "the decree required the khulacks, middle-class farmers to give the government a specified amount of any surplus agricultural, raw product, and fodder, and allowed them to keep the remaining surplus to use as capital or to trade for industrial goods." (Wikipedia "New Economic Policy") Despite the successes Lenin had, he died in 1924, and after a bitter power struggle, Joseph Stalin (which means steel in Russian) became the ruler of the Soviet Union, and here we discover how the initial motives for revolution can go astray. When Stalin solidified his rule in 1928 after killing off his major opponents, he was able to rule without significant obstacles to his authority. In 1929, he ordered the first of many five-year plans to modernize and industrialize the Soviet Union. He also ordered the collectivization of agriculture and essentially created large agricultural communities that would feed the growing industrial state. The Soviet Union's economy and industry did grow, but collectivization was achieved only with the dramatic sacrifice of the Russian people. Famines resulted in 1931 and in 1932 and some historians estimate that "as many as 10 million people died as a result of collectivization and the resulting famines." (ABC Clio "Joseph Stalin")

After Stalin took power, he decided that creating a canal that connected White Sea to the Baltic Sea would be highly beneficial to the developing USSR. In 1931 well over one hundred thousand workers were forced to pick up pickaxes, shovels, and wheelbarrows in order to construct the 227 kilometer canal. Completed by 1933, the canal took only twenty months to finish, yet tens of thousands of men lost their lives in the construction project. At its conclusion, sailing on the steamship Anokhin, Stalin surveyed the canal, and he concluded with disappointment that the canal was too narrow and shallow. By 1936 plans to widen the canal were completed, and this new expansion project would cost many more lives. These lives, like the lives lost in the original project, were bartered from the Russian system of forced labor camps, the Gulag. (Essortment "History of the Soviet Russian Gulag")

The Gulag system was a network of forced labor camps that at its peak consisted of over four hundred official prisons and held millions of inmates. The system "has become primarily known as a place for political prisoners and as a mechanism for repressing political opposition to the Soviet state." (Wikipedia, "Gulag") Yet it turns out most of this "political opposition" was no more than enemies of Stalin or people whose profession was agriculture. As many as 20 million people had passed through the gates of hell that Stalin called his system of justice over a period of more than three decades. All in all, "over half of all families in the Soviet Union were touched directly," (essorment "History of the Soviet Russian Gulag") with Russia quickly becoming one of the largest countries in the world. The prisoners that were sentenced to spend time in these camps at first were actual outlaws; the murderers, thieves, and other common criminals. Unlike the holocaust where people of a certain ethnicity were put in, the prison population of the gulag became increasing of simply any citizens who did not subscribe to his political, religious, or economic teachings. Prisoners

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