The Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet and East European history and affected millions of individuals. Its cultural impact was enormous. The Gulag has become a major influence on contemporary Russian thinking, and an important part of modern Russian folklore.

Apr 14, 2025 · 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.

Mar 23, 2018 · 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...

Apr 16, 2025 · As Jonathan Last at The Bulwark grimly and accurately argues, a failure of Congress and the courts to act would create “a de facto extralegal policy of imprisonment in a foreign gulag for ...

From the 1920s through to the 1950s, under the iron-clad rule of Joseph Stalin, a system of labor camps known as 'gulags' carved a harsh scar on the psyche of the Soviet Union.

Jul 18, 2022 · 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.

The term “GULAG” is an acronym for the Soviet bureaucratic institution, Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh LAGerei (Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps), that operated the Soviet system of forced labor camps in the Stalin era.

May 23, 2024 · A gulag is a forced labor camp; the term is derived from the Russian Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitel'no-Trudovykh Lagerey i koloniy, or “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps,” an institution in the former Soviet Union.

Creation of the Main Camp Administration (Glavnoye upravleniye lagerey, GULAG – an acronym that has appeared sporadically since 1930) under the USSR’s People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which takes over the management of practically all Soviet prison facilities.

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.