Talk:Gulag

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[edit] Not NPOV

The GULAG was generally oriented towards keeping its labour force in humane condition ...

Are you kidding me? This article is a disaster and ought to be locked. It positively reeks of political agenda. As for the estimate of the number of victims, which is lower than those commonly cited, there should at the very least be a discussion of the difficulty in reaching a single number, and mention of the fact that reputable sources reach different conclusions on the subject. But suggesting that working conditions were "humane" goes beyond the pale. Is spending the night huddled against a corpse in the hopes of getting an extra bread ration in the morning, as my father did in 1944, 15 years old at the time, evidence of a humane working condition? 128.255.85.47 18:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Old talk

Gulag is an English language word. It's origins as a Russian acronym are of interest, but now it is simply an English language word. - Tim

Well, that's true, but the English usage is inprecise (as far as I understand, it is used as a countable noun for "a concentration camp", while GULAG is the name of a system. So a gulag is not GULAG - these are 2 different things, and I think that they should be differentiated. --Uriyan

I think 'gulag' is used either to refer specifically to the Soviet camp system, or is used metaphorically in reference to some other camp system, in order to emphasize a similarity with the Soviet system. So I don't think there is any need for two articles, since the word and the acronym have the same referent. And to fall back on convention, the book 'The Gulag Archipelego' is always spelled with 'Gulag' the word, not 'GULAG' the acronym - suggesting that the word is correct even when referring specifically to the system. - Tim

On further reflection, I don't think gulag is even an acronym. It is a word made up from parts of other words, which was common practice for the Soviets. Comintern is another. Laogai is a Chinese example, I think. Orwell's 'Ingsoc' is a parody of this practice. I believe it was Orwell who wrote about this practice, claiming it was an attempt to reduce language to mere symbolism devoid of any semantic content by divorcing words from concepts. - Tim

Well, GULAG is an acronym. It is always capitalized in Russian text, and it follows the same pattern as e.g. GUPO (Glavobye Upravleniye Pozharnoy Okhrany, Main Administration of Fire Fighting), GURKM and many others. It is capitalized, too. --Uriyan
In English, Gulag is certainly a word and not an acronym. And since this is the English wikipedia... :-/ --Anders Törlind
No, I don't object to the article's name, I've just written it to answer the last comment. Obviously I have less authority in describing English usage than native English speakers :-) Uriyan

A strange thing is mentioned: that the scientists in sharashkas published their research under substitute names. This may have happened a few times (I am not aware of any), but was not common by any means. Should be restated or deleted, I guess. Cema 03:35 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)

The Cyrillic letters are coming out all messed up on my system - it looks like "çÌÁ×ÎÏÅ õÐÒÁ×ÌÅÎÉÅ ìÁÇÅÒÅÊ" to me. Can we change them to HTML codes, like in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party article, so they'll come out correctly on all browsers? kwertii

Yes, sure. I will do it momentarily.
In reality, all browsers that understand unicode html codes are also known to understand Russian Cyrillic encodings, but you are certainly correct that the codes should be used instead. (What you quoted looks right with Koi-8.)
Cema 05:48 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)
Done. Cema

[edit] Fatalities

I have replaced this: it is estimated that a total of 1.5 to 2 million people have died in the camps and colonies — mainly during World War II when German occupation cut off food supplies. with Britannica 2004 estimates of 15-30 million, much closer to the truth IMHO. I picked it up at Talk:Concentration camp, so let's keep in sync. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 07:38, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Gulags were not concentration camps. Gulags were labor camps while concentration camps were DEATH camps. Places like Auschwitz and Treblinka were literally used to murder people. A train-load of people came in, they were gassed; another train-load came in, they were gassed and repeat so on and so forth. The purpose of Stalin's gulags were for labor and state profit, not deliberate mass murder! Majority of the deaths were because of over-work, disease, starvation and exposure. Hitler's concentration camps killed people but failed to gain profit and resources for Nazi Germany but Stalin's gulags gained profit and resources at the cost of human lives; big difference.--Secret Agent Man 02:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Concentration camps were for political prisoners. Their prime reason for existance was for "concentrating" people deemed politcally or mentally wayward by a government. In Nazi Germany there were two types of camps: concentration camps and death camps. Death Camps were established as a result of the Nazi held Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Their purpose was to fulfill Hitler's Final Solution, which was to exterminate the inferior races (primarily Jews). Inmates in concentration camps (like the Gulags in Stalin's Soviet Russia) did labors in extremely harsh conditions causing mass deaths. I probably should not write about concentration camps in the past tense, being that they still exist in North Korea.: Mdriver1981 July 6, 2006

Well, their purpose really was not to destroy people. But in fact, due to absence of control over 'ocassional' deaths, they were turned into death camps. Solovki is a good example. It was mainly used to cut trees on the island, but in the history of this cam there were several cases of massive murders there. Estimation of number of people died during Stalin's governing that is given in official russian textbooks - 20 million. Mihail Vasiliev 00:50, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Given that Stalin and his henchmen were no doubt well aware of conditions in the

Gulag camps, I think it's safe to assume that they expected large numbers of "class enemies" would perish therein. Maybe "mass manslaughter" is the term.

With many people spending their life in the Gulag, having such a high number of deaths in prison is not itself indicative of the conditions under which the prisoners were held. How many people die in US prisons, the country with the largest number of prisoners world-wide? We need better data such as "% who died within the first 5 years of confinement", "average lifespan in Gulag / outside Gulag", preferably plotted over time. Does such an extensive empirical analysis exist?
I am afraid that it's impossible to find this kind of statistics. The main reason is that this system used to destroy all the documents about their prisoners. May be some estimations can be done besed on archeological data, but it will be only estimations... Mihail Vasiliev 09:26, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I also note that the intro says that 7 million "were killed" in the Gulag. Again, we need to distinguish between different causes of death. Given that the number appears to be from a different source anyway, and lacks a citation, I have removed it for now.--Eloquence* 08:52, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

In any case - now we have references to the literature; yes, extensive numerical analyses exist (and are referred to in the text). By the way, where does the 80%-of-all-prisoners-dying-in-a-few-months figure come from?

My goodness, why do you intellectually bankrupt people persist in propagating crude speculation to the effect of around 10 million murders in the GULAG and an overall twenty million during Molotov and Stalin? According to the "American Historical Review" whose contributors include Peter Coclanis, J. Arch Getty, James Huston, Marc Raeff, Gabor Rittersporn, Paul Schroeder, Carl Strikwerda, and Viktor N. Zemskov, a total of 1,031,000 people died in the GULAG. Of this figure, 620,000 died during 1941-1945 when conditions throughout the country drastically deteriorated. In 1950, when the GULAG reached its peak with 2.56 labourers, political criminals composed 23% of population of the labour system. The rest were common criminals whose crimes included theft and violence. Please spare of us of these fairy tales from Solzhenistyn, Anton Antonov-Ovsenko, Roy Medvedev, and Olga Shatunovskaia. Acrhival documents have concluded that a total of 682,000 executions took place during 1937-1938 while an additional 1,031,000 died in the Gulag during 1934-1954. If you're out to spread heretical anti-Marxism techings, then these figures would contribute to a fairly plausable argument.

Solzhynitsyn (sp?) and Conquest both dispute that research you cited, so don't immediately assume the lowest possible figures are the right ones. 10 million seems high to me, but who knows?

Could we stop this Nazi/American propaganda? You idiots and your so called death tolls. You people are sick.

-G

"Please spare of us of these fairy tales from Solzhenistyn, Anton Antonov-Ovsenko, Roy Medvedev, and Olga Shatunovskaia. Acrhival documents have concluded that a total of 682,000 executions took place during 1937-1938 while an additional 1,031,000 died in the Gulag during 1934-1954." Why are they fairy tales? Is it because the all knowing communist party declared them to be "fairy tales"? I rather belive the work made by real historians on this matter than some statistics made by the communist party.
"Could we stop this Nazi/American propaganda? You idiots and your so called death tolls. You people are sick." I rather believe that you are the sick and idiotic one here. Stop believing the communist party's lies and start learning some true history.

[edit] Institute for historical review link

The link on the use of Gulag prisoners for cleaning up nuclear submarines (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n1p39_michaels.html), introduced in a recent edit is a link to the Institute for Historical Review. This is an institute which has a primary aim of holocaust denial through direct lies and subtle insinuation.As such, it is inherently discredited and linking to it without risks discrediting the article. I'm not deleting it yet, since I'm specifically interested in the accusations they use (which, incidentally, shows that it is effective propaganda :-).

A couple of quotes from the linked article

When Gutman attempted to show the documentary in New York City, however, it opened and closed to such taunts as: "He should be killed for making such a movie. Shame, a Jew describing the sufferings of Germans."
Today we Americans, from children to dotards, are bombarded with Holocaustiana, a saturation that borders on, and in some case results in, Holocaustomania.

Such material which is designed to incite hatred is something to be very careful of. Certainly we shouldn't be linking to it or quoting from it without comment or backing from a less Neo-Nazi oriented group.

[edit] Terminology

The "Variety" section right now includes a lot of terminology (e.g., the member of the family of a motherland traitor), yet the terminology section comes further down. I feel this is less than perfect, but don't have a vision of a nice merge. Maybe reorder them so that "Terminology" comes right before the "Variety"? What do you think? BACbKA 08:18, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. Only now I realize that since this is English encyclopedia, the terminology should be English, correspondingly and would vote for moving z/k para. out of it. What do you think? ←Humus sapiens←Talk 08:57, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I liked it better the way it was before, as what you've moved down as Terminology served as a mild disambiguation (w.r.t. "the gulags"). z/k looks the best near "the gulags" explanation IMHO, wherever it goes. I agree though that this way the initial section grew too fat... Maybe try merging Terminology and Variety and move the result higher up in the article? BACbKA 12:20, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] ITK, ITL, ITU

IMO the Gulag buzzword made us to miss a more general article, Corrective labor in the USSR.

To do:

  • To figure out the difference:
    • исправительно-трудовой лагерь, ИТЛ
    • исправительно-трудовая колония, ИТК
    • исправительно-трудовое учреждение,ИТУ
    • воспитательно-трудовая колония, ВТК
    • рабочие колонны НКВД
    • and my favorite one: лечебно-трудовой профилакторий, ЛТП ("химия" (inosrantsam ne ponyat'))
  • How long the term GULAG was in use and what was the successior?

Mikkalai 10:28, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Death toll

If I recall correctly, solzyenitsin totalls the number of casualties following a prudent estimate at 60 million. Maybe you should look into this and add Gulag to List_of_historical_events_by_death_count.

First, Gulag is not an event. Second, I find this Gunnessism for deaths disgusting. Third, IMO while Solzhenitsyn was good in details, his generalizations and theories must be taken with reserve. He is good as a writer, an eyewitness, a chronist, but not as historian (or politician). Mikkalai 20:10, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GULAG camps

I am trapping my grandfathers way up to GULAG camps in and around the White Sea. I know for sure that the first place he was sent located near Irkutsk and called Черемхово. It was in 1930. Unfortunately I found no camps with the name near Irkutsk on your GULAG camps map. Is it possible that the mentioned camp was not one of the GULAG-s, some other type?

Best regards Aire from Estonia aire@saaga.hetako.ee

[edit] Number of victims

I am amazed the Gulag page doesn't have a good section about the number of victims - is this a new PC not to write about it? I understand that the precise numbers will never be known, but how about the estimates by various historians/authors? I also see a need to have a break down by nationalities. --Ttyre 18:37, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • The ones who really care: Memorial Society have recently collected and published a lot of factual data from opened archives, but all this is in Russian, and I don't think they really care whether a random American dude knows this now or not. Mikkalai 20:34, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's difficult for me to say how much Memorial Society cares about random American dud's knowledge of Gulag victims estimate(s). Obviously they do care about the English speaking audience since they have created English language version of their site. --Ttyre 17:29, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is but a front page of the central office. Its content is even not a tip of the iceberg. It is a snowflake on this tip. There is an enormous amount of material ammassed by local charters of the organization. It would take a huge effort to translate all of it in English. I may see that these peopler (volunteers, in poor countries) simply have no time, busy with collecting and preserving the information. Mikkalai 17:48, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like the way Massacres of Poles in Volhynia page deals with the number of victims issue - summary of the contemporary (within last 10-15 years) estimates by published historians/authors. I strongly believe Gulag page needs the victims data organized in a similar way. --Ttyre 17:29, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your hands are welcome. Mikkalai 17:48, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, the number of deaths listed in the article (1.3 million) is artifically low. I question the author's "official" sources, as multiple other reliable sources record higher deaths if counting only the Magadan/Kolyma camps. Furthermore, executions for the smallest or no offenses were numerous at the camps (pick up any historical book on the subject), so the title of "death camps" may be evocative yet not inaccurate. Prisoners were sent to Magadan to work in gold mines, which in turn paid for the war effort. I also believe that it is uncontroversial to state that quota systems were used for incarcerations. Economics were not the only reason for the camps, but the connection is strong. The canal mentioned in the article is another example. This article should be changed soon (undoubtably, someone will change it back, but no one said that pursuit of better accuracy and truth was easy; I wouldn't even be surprised if someone erased my entry here). -Anon

Don't be paranoic, just provide references, if you are going to do significant changes. mikka (t) 20:33, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] recent addition

Recent addition of 128.12.187.115 needs cleanup. AFAIK it is based on the book they added into quotes. Some things are misinterpreted. I have no time right now. mikka (t) 05:28, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gulag and Arbeit macht frei

Note that both American dream and Arbeit macht frei are protestant work ethics. That is, Arbeit macht frei didn't, at the beginning, signify a concentration camp.

Nah, I won't note your non-fact. BonniePrinceCharlie 16:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] ==

Death Camps

[edit] ==

Actually the Soviet GULAGS were used as death camps under the excuse of labor and fighting in WW2 (straff-batalion). Thousands of people were purposfully underfed because the Soviet government knew it was impossible to keep producing effectively under the GULAG's official ration policies.

Just like most German work camps were labeled death camps by the Soviets, not Germans themselves. They were Arbeit Lagers (work camps) not Todeslagers (death camps) (officially). In fact most deaths in German camps occured because of the same reason as in the Soviet GULAGS.

[edit] ==

I have found something in this article that I want to comment with you.

I was reading the article and finding the information very helpful, till I came up against this paragraph:


In 1931–32, Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 800,000 in camps and 300,000 in colonies (annual averages), and in 1939 about 1.3 millions in camps and 350,000 in colonies. By contrast, the US prisoner labourer population (on chain gangs and in prisons) remained around a few hundred thousand prisoners.


This information is, I think, completely redundant. I do not need to know anything about US prisoner labourer population if I am interested in Gulag history. I just do not understand why the article compares Gulag population with US prisoner labourer population. Why doest it remind us that a totally different institution such as a prison had a smaller population that Gulag? Why is it suddenly talking about the US, when the article is about the Soviet State? I can’t see the point in this comparison. The author begins this sentence with a clear “By contrast”. What is he trying to show us? The answer is also clear: that there wasn’t any Gulag in the US. But I was not looking for information about US history.

Something similar happens when we read:


“Vorkuta entrance circa early 1950s. The sign reads: "Labour in the USSR is a matter of honour, glory, pride and heroism". Compare with Arbeit macht frei on the gates of Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp”.


Now the article suggests us to make a comparison with another totally different institution such as a nazi camp. This suggestion it is not innocent. It is not trying to tell us: “we have find a sign in Vorkuta, it is similar to a sign in Sachsenhausen, and that’s all”, it is suggesting that Gulag and Nazi camps are alike.

When I look for information about Gulag, I just want that: information. If after reading I decide that Gulag is similar to a nazi camp, that’s up to me. If after reading I want to think about that by contrast the US prisons were significantly less populated than Gulag, that’s up to me.

Regards, Sorry for my bad English

Ilich 07:51, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think you are right. IMHO, these comparisons should be moved into another article. May be here: Concentration camp. And, espetially if no one has something to say about it, you may do it yourself.

Mihail Vasiliev 21:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of Documentation.

My first impression of this article was a negative one, as I feel that GULag needs to be well documented, especially because the fluctuation in opinion is so great. The article is not directly sourced-which lowers its credibility potential. The "History" section is nicely written, and reflects types of numbers I saw in actual documents, but again, no references. Separation between facts, disputable material and author's opinions in "Culture" and "Conditions" sections is non-existent. The final reference, a 7 vol. document compilation does not appear to have been used. I have it and it could give colorful, factual, NPOV examples for all categories of this article.

Goodluck, David


[edit] GULAG not gulag

I'm confused about the "english" interpretation of the word gulag as opposed to GULAG. If this is an article about GULAG it should include information about the prison system and torture and all that wonderful stuff, the entire system the article does begin to describe. However, the article loses this focus as it continues. What are americans referring to when they say gulag? just forced labor camps in general? This article should cover the entire system. regardless.--68.45.21.204 05:36, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Finns, Poles, Romanians and other people from foreign countries cleared of Fascism by the Red Army

This suggests that Poland was a Nazi state (Fascism is a Soviet name for the Nazism, applied probably by Russian writers). Would you please correct this or shall I do it myself? Xx236 13:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

It's not like that. Fascism is an italian system and Nazism is german. --62.179.67.14 20:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] During World War II, Gulag populations declined sharply

Since 1939 or rather 1941? Xx236 13:26, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

- Since 1941-42; most of the deaths fall on 1942. Malnourishment and overwork appear to be the principal reasons for increased number of fatalities. Also rate of capture decreased due to mobilization.

Dietmar 13 September 2006

[edit] Recent research

I am following a course on stalinism at the moment. The information in this article is not up to date to recent research. The primary task of the gulag was not to punish political prisoners, but to cultivate the empty territories of Siberia. Political prisoners couldn't do harm far away in Siberia, while chopping trees, ploughing new feelds and working in the mines. Most camps didn't had the task to kill people, but to keep people. Nearly uninhabited regions needed to be filled with people.

Many diaries from the 1930s and other decades have been collected in books describing the conditions in the Gulag. The stories portrayed there are both very negative as in this article, but also positive, even from strong opposers of the regime. The lack of food was not typical to the Gulag, it was a problem in the entire Soviet Union. Millions of people died of hunger only in Ukraine, for Stalin it was the price to pay for progress. The food went to the cities, where the industry was modernized.

I am not defending stalinism. For me it is one of the most hideous ideologies that ever was in history, but i think that this article need to be changed a little bit to get it closer to the facts.--Daanschr 20:25, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that it was the purpose of the Gulags to populate those regions. I think it was one of the ideas, and in so far was merely a continuation of tsarist policies. However, it was arguably more a system targetted at promoting industrialization. They were slave labour camps. I am not sucking this interpretation out of my thumb, but I don't have my sources at hand, so I am not putting it in. Regarding the Gulags not meant to punish political prisoners, I agree, though its a common misunderstanding. For example, after WWII, there were random roundups of Germans, Poles, and other people throughout Eastern Europe who were transported to the USSR to replace or supplement the Russians already in the camps. It's a little known facette of Stalinism. These people were not 'punished', they were simply abducted and put to work. The conditions in the Gulags were most certainly not uniform, and I am certain that some of them might have been rather decent by comparison with others. They were not given priority in terms of food or other things, to put it very carefully, and if they died, it was simply tough luck. Nobody cared. At the same time, I agree that the NKVD and so on had little interest in outright killing Gulag inmates, as they were needed for labour. Somewhat akin to the policy of the Buchenwald camp, where the healthy prisoners were put to work first, and 'only' killed once they were to weak to work.
I have to force myself to look at these events from the perspective of a historian, and not get utterly upset. Please do not confuse my detachment in describing these events with cynicism. Dietwald 12:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved paragraph

I moved a paragraph from the intro to the beginning of the main body. However, I do not feel it actually belongs there. It's a good para, but it should be put somewhere else. any suggestions? Dietwald 11:53, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The architects of GULAG

Mikkalai reverted the addition of Frenkel as the architect of GULAG. Any objective reasons for this? Dietmar

[edit] New category: Soviet concentration camps?

These were even officially called "concentration camps" unitil 1929. --HanzoHattori 08:59, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Collection of publications and photo about Gulag - disputed?

I included an external link to http://gulag.ipvnews.org/ - Collection of publications and photo about Gulag by IPV News (Russian). The content is very interesting and very graphic. However, someone disputed correctness of the site's contents. I have checked what exactly was disputed. It is claimed that some of the photos published by IPV news were known previously, and there is nothing new about them - see http://a-dyukov.livejournal.com/22061.html?mode=reply (Russian). There was nothing else. There are no any doubts from any side that the photos are authentic. The site by IPV news includes also an interesting article about special KGB/FSB detachments who are responsible for "active measures" in the internet: http://gulag.ipvnews.org/article20060916_01.php Biophys 03:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC) .

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