GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps).
Gulag, system of Soviet labor camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons that from the 1920s to the mid-1950s housed the political prisoners and criminals of the Soviet Union. At its height, the Gulag imprisoned millions of people.
What Is a Gulag? The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps established during Joseph Stalin’s reign as dictator of the Soviet Union. The notorious prisons, which incarcerated about 18 million...
Known collectively as the Gulag, this system imprisoned over 18 million people between the late 1920s and early 1950s. Many died under extreme conditions that ranged from Arctic logging sites to Siberian mines.
Started by Vladimir Lenin, and expanded by Joseph Stalin, gulags made up a defining part of life in the Soviet Union. As many as 30,000 camps operated across the USSR, where prisoners served years-long sentences for offenses as innocuous as making a drunken joke or showing up late to work.
In the sprawling network of Soviet forced labor camps known as the Gulag, millions of men and women were subjected to unimaginable horrors. They were forced into back-breaking labor and inhumane living conditions, including the daily threat of torture, execution, and murder.
The word Gulag is actually an acronym (used from 1930) for (Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey), or Main Camp Administration, which was a special division of the secret police and the Soviet Ministry of the Interior overseeing the use of the physical labour of prisoners.
While the Gulag was radically reduced in size following Stalin’s death in 1953, forced labor camps and political prisoners continued to exist in the Soviet Union right up to the Gorbachev era.