The Norilsk uprising was a major uprising of the GULAG labor camp inmates in [Gorlag](special camp for political prisoners) and later in two camps of Norillag [ITL], Norilsk, USSR, now Russia, in the summer of 1953, shortly after Joseph Stalin's death. It was the first major revolt within the Gulag system in 1953-1954,[1] although earlier numerous cases of unrest in Gulag camps are known.
In May-August 1953, the inmates of the Gorlag-Main camp went on strike, which lasted 69 days. It was not exactly an uprising, since the inmates did not have any weapons, although initially during the inquest it was suggested by MVD to classify it as "an anti-Soviet armed counter-revolutionary uprising". (Eventually the Soviet court used the term "mass insubordination of the inmates to the camp administration".) Neither was it simply a strike: the actions included a wide spectrum of nonviolent forms of protest within the Soviet law: meetings, letters to government, hunger strikes. For this reason, the term "Uprising of the Spirit"[2] was suggested, as a form of nonviolent protest against the Gulag system.