Stalinist Russia Grad Class Papers #8

The History of the Gulag

From Collectivization to the Great Terror

Oleg V. Khlevniuk

Oleg Khlevniuk’s The History of the Gulag traces the history of labor camps and, more generally, the Soviet punitive system from its formation and entrenchment in the early 1930s to the opening of the war with Germany in 1941.  The history of the Gulag cannot be separated from the history of repression and industrialization in the Soviet Union, as the state’s economy was largely propped up and subsidized by the forced labor performed by convicts in subhuman conditions. One of the author’s main arguments is the centrality of the draconian and repressive methods used in the Guglas to the Stalinist repression with which it ruled the population. The regime was not only able to eradicate the “dangerous elements” by physical liquidation and mass deportations, but also by utilizing forced labor for capital projects, as well as in various labor intensive industries mostly in Siberia and near the Arctic circle. Oleg Khlevniuk is unequivocal in his assessment of Stalin’s role in the purges and the Great Terror. His other argument is that seemingly chaotic mass repressions of the Stalinist era were in fact a series of Politburo initiated actions supported and personally overseen by Stalin.

Stalin’s policy of dekulakization and crash industrialization set the stage for the Gulag network of camps and the Soviet punitive system. In 1930-31 more than 1.8 million people were exiled.  Those resettled to special and labor settlements were housed in horrid conditions – they lived in crowded rooms, many starved to death and died from pestilence and disease. They had no warm clothes, underwear or shoes. Seventy to 75 percent of all children and 20 percent of the adults were sick and in some places mortality was as high as 25 percent.  The state had no means of supporting the exiles and forced labor was seen as something that could be extracted and used to house and clothe the exiles and prisoners in the camps, prisons and colonies. 

With the famine of 1932-33 and the campaign against the “kulaks” and those who resisted forced requisition of grain, the conditions in the camps became drastically worse. The government could not even provide food for the urban population, while at the same time due to the repressions, the camp populations grew almost by 50 percent.  The author states that by early May there were 777,000 prisoners in crowded prisons, colonies, police detention stations and jails despite previous discharges and the very high mortality rates to due to hunger and disease.  After a brief relaxation of the mid-30s the Great Terror struck with an even greater force. Order no. 00447 targeted against “kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements” mandated 268,950 arrests, out of which 72,950 individuals were to be shot.  The scale and intensity of the terror was reflected in the camp population, and the increased number of arrests in the country lead to an increase in the camp population, as well as the arbitrary killings and violations that occurred in the midst of the mass hysteria. In two years of the Great Terror, “all NKVD organs (excluding the police) arrested more than 1,600,000 people.”  Khevniuk states that after a brief relaxation and as the war loomed larger, the state has increased its reliance on forced labor and once again increased repression. 

The forced-labor sector of the economy was so substantial that it encouraged the thriftlessness and mismanagement so characteristic of the Soviet economy in general. The system did not care for those starving and dying of cold and disease in the camps. Instead they were used to build critical projects for the Soviets such as the Dmitrovsky canal, Belmorkanal, construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, the Kolyma, Ukhta and Pechora mines, among others.

The Gulag system was an important component though which the Stalinist regime controlled, terrorized and exploited the population - about 20 million were convicted in 1930-41 and about 3 million were exiled and deported.  One of the strengths of Khlevniuk’s work is his ability to explain the nature and scale of repression in the camps, its “excesses” and a relative lull, in the context or as a direct outcome of bureaucratic wrangling and turf battles between different agencies within the government. Khlevniuk makes it clear that the political climate manifested in the level of repressions was central to the policy affecting labor camps and colonies as, for example, during the Great Terror the repressive measures were greatly intensified and the number of prisoners increased significantly. 

Dr. W: A strong critique, you made many important points. There were some stylistic problems, however. A-