A Short Overview Of Gulag History

If you've been planning a trip to Russia, you've probably heard of the gulags. But what exactly are they? Are they just jails? or something more?

There are many different types of jails throughout the world, some with better records of humane treatment than others. For instance, in the United States, prisoners are treated very humanely, due to that countries focus on overall human rights. But in other countries the same cannot be said.

At the other end of the spectrum were places such as Russia, which had one of the worst records for human rights in prison. But what exactly is a gulag? The word gulag is actually an acronym, coming from the Russian words that translate into The Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.

The interesting thing to note here is that the term gulag was never officially used. Instead the term "corrective labor camps." Put simply, it could best be described as a forced labor camp. Camps like this were used to house all prisoners regardless of what they had done.

But some historians have used the term to describe the entire correctional system, which included arrest, interrogation, transportation and ultimately, arrival in one of the camps. Other historians instead preferred to separate gulags into different types (i.e. for women, political prisoners, children, etc).

And in fact there were several varieties of camps. For instance, there were camps for convicted scientists, where prisoners would be forced to work on secret experiments for the government. Another type of camp was one where prisoners were taken to be mentally and psychologically tormented and broken. A third type was for wives and children of traitors to the country.

Gulags came into existence in 1917 and were finally ended in 1991. During that time there has been a documented death toll of approximately 1.5 million in the camps alone. This does not take into account those that were in the camps and then released. And those that were lucky enough to survive being in the gulags and release still had a very tough life ahead on the outside, with restrictions being placed on where they could live and how they could work.

From what we've seen in this short history lesson, gulags were definitely not a place that anyone wanted to end up. Prisoners called it a "meat grinder" for a very good reason.

Ultimately, we can use this period in history to see on the one hand how far we (and Russia) have come in terms of basic human rights. And we can also see what caused these types of prisons to spring up and why they lived on for so long.