What is a gulag? Gulag: the truth about Stalin's camps

An infant in a pre-trial detention center, locked in a cell with its mother, or sent along a stage to a colony was a common practice in the 1920s and early 1930s. “When women are admitted to correctional labor institutions, at their request, their infant children are also admitted,” a quote from the Correctional Labor Code of 1924, Article 109. “The shurka is neutralized.<...>For this purpose, he is allowed out for a walk only for one hour a day, and no longer in the large prison yard, where a dozen trees grow and where the sun shines, but in a narrow, dark courtyard intended for singles.<...>Apparently, in order to physically weaken the enemy, assistant commandant Ermilov refused to accept Shurka even the milk brought from outside. For others, he accepted transmissions. But these were speculators and bandits, people much less dangerous than SR Shura,” wrote arrested Evgenia Ratner, whose three-year-old son Shura was in Butyrka prison, in an angry and ironic letter to People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Felix Dzerzhinsky.

They gave birth right there: in prisons, during prison, in zones. From a letter to the Chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin, about the expulsion of families of special settlers from Ukraine and Kursk: “They sent them into terrible frosts - infants and pregnant women who rode in calf cars on top of each other, and then the women gave birth to their children (isn’t this a mockery ); then they were thrown out of the carriages like dogs, and then placed in churches and dirty, cold barns, where there was no room to move.”

As of April 1941, there were 2,500 women with young children in NKVD prisons, and 9,400 children under four years old were in camps and colonies. In the same camps, colonies and prisons there were 8,500 pregnant women, about 3,000 of them in the ninth month of pregnancy.

A woman could also become pregnant while in prison: by being raped by another prisoner, a free zone worker, or a guard, or, in some cases, of her own free will. “I just wanted to the point of madness, to the point of beating my head against the wall, to the point of dying for love, tenderness, affection. And I wanted a child - a creature dear and dear, for whom I would not be sorry to give my life,” recalled former Gulag prisoner Khava Volovich, sentenced to 15 years at the age of 21. And here are the memories of another prisoner, born in the Gulag: “My mother, Anna Ivanovna Zavyalova, at the age of 16–17 was sent with a convoy of prisoners from the field to Kolyma for collecting several ears of corn in her pocket... Having been raped, my mother gave birth on February 20, 1950 me, there were no amnesties for the birth of a child in those camps.” There were also those who gave birth, hoping for an amnesty or a relaxation of the regime.

But women were given exemption from work in the camp only immediately before giving birth. After the birth of a child, the prisoner was given several meters of footcloth, and for the period of feeding the baby - 400 grams of bread and black cabbage or bran soup three times a day, sometimes even with fish heads. In the early 40s, nurseries or orphanages began to be created in the zones: “I ask for your order to allocate 1.5 million rubles for the organization of children’s institutions for 5,000 places in camps and colonies and for their maintenance in 1941 13.5 million rubles, and in total 15 million rubles,” writes the head of the Gulag of the NKVD of the USSR, Viktor Nasedkin, in April 1941.

The children were in the nursery while the mothers worked. The “mothers” were taken under escort to be fed; the babies spent most of the time under the supervision of nannies - women convicted of domestic crimes, who, as a rule, had children of their own. From the memoirs of prisoner G.M. Ivanova: “At seven o’clock in the morning the nannies woke up the kids. They were pushed and kicked out of their unheated beds (to keep the children “clean”, they did not cover them with blankets, but threw them over the cribs). Pushing the children in the back with their fists and showering them with harsh abuse, they changed their undershirts and washed them with ice water. And the kids didn’t even dare cry. They just groaned like old men and hooted. This terrible hooting sound came from children’s cribs all day long.”

“From the kitchen the nanny brought porridge blazing with heat. Having laid it out in bowls, she snatched the first child she came across from the crib, bent his arms back, tied them to his body with a towel and began stuffing him with hot porridge, spoon by spoon, like a turkey, leaving him no time to swallow,” recalls Khava Volovich. Her daughter Eleanor, born in the camp, spent the first months of her life with her mother, and then ended up in an orphanage: “During visits, I found bruises on her body. I will never forget how, clinging to my neck, she pointed to the door with her emaciated little hand and moaned: “Mommy, go home!” She did not forget the bedbugs in which she saw the light and was with her mother all the time.” On March 3, 1944, at one year and three months, the daughter of prisoner Volovich died.

The mortality rate of children in the Gulag was high. According to archival data collected by the Norilsk Memorial Society, in 1951 there were 534 children in infant homes on the territory of Norilsk, of which 59 children died. In 1952, 328 children were supposed to be born, and the total number of babies would have been 803. However, documents from 1952 indicate the number of 650 - that is, 147 children died.

The surviving children developed poorly both physically and mentally. The writer Evgenia Ginzburg, who worked for some time in an orphanage, recalls in her autobiographical novel “Steep Route” that only a few four-year-old children could speak: “Inarticulate screams, facial expressions, and fights predominated. “Where can they tell them? Who taught them? Who did they hear? - Anya explained to me with a dispassionate intonation. - In the infant group, they just lie on their beds all the time. Nobody takes them in their arms, even if they burst from screaming. It is forbidden to pick it up. Just change wet diapers. If there are enough of them, of course.”

Visits between nursing mothers and their children were short - from 15 minutes to half an hour every four hours. “One inspector from the prosecutor’s office mentions a woman who, due to her work duties, was several minutes late for feeding and was not allowed to see the child. One former worker of the camp sanitary service said in an interview that half an hour or 40 minutes were allotted for breastfeeding a child, and if he did not finish eating, then the nanny fed him from a bottle,” writes Anne Applebaum in the book “GULAG. The Web of Great Terror." When the child grew out of infancy, visits became even more rare, and soon the children were sent from the camp to an orphanage.

In 1934, the period of stay of a child with his mother was 4 years, later - 2 years. In 1936-1937, the stay of children in camps was recognized as a factor reducing the discipline and productivity of prisoners, and this period was reduced to 12 months by secret instructions of the NKVD of the USSR. “Forcibly sending camp children is planned and carried out like real military operations - so that the enemy is taken by surprise. Most often this happens late at night. But it is rarely possible to avoid heartbreaking scenes when frantic mothers rush at the guards and the barbed wire fence. The zone has been shaking with screams for a long time,” French political scientist Jacques Rossi, a former prisoner and author of “The Gulag Handbook,” describes the transfer to orphanages.

A note was made in the mother’s personal file about sending the child to the orphanage, but the destination address was not indicated there. In the report of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Lavrentiy Beria to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Vyacheslav Molotov dated March 21, 1939, it was reported that children seized from convicted mothers began to be assigned new names and surnames.

"Be careful with Lyusya, her father is an enemy of the people"

If the child’s parents were arrested when he was no longer an infant, his own stage awaited him: wandering around relatives (if they remained), a children’s reception center, an orphanage. In 1936-1938, the practice became common when, even if there were relatives ready to become guardians, the child of “enemies of the people” - convicted under political charges - was sent to an orphanage. From the memoirs of G.M. Rykova: “After my parents’ arrest, my sister, grandmother and I continued to live in our own apartment<...>Only we no longer occupied the entire apartment, but only one room, since one room (father’s office) was sealed, and an NKVD major and his family moved into the second. On February 5, 1938, a lady came to us with a request to go with her to the head of the children's department of the NKVD, supposedly he was interested in how our grandmother treated us and how my sister and I generally lived. Grandmother told her that it was time for us to go to school (we studied in the second shift), to which this person replied that she would give us a ride in her car to the second lesson, so that we would take only textbooks and notebooks with us. She brought us to the Danilovsky children's home for juvenile delinquents. At the reception center we were photographed from the front and in profile, with some numbers attached to our chests, and our fingerprints were taken. We never returned home."

“The day after my father was arrested, I went to school. In front of the whole class, the teacher announced: “Children, be careful with Lyusya Petrova, her father is an enemy of the people.” I took my bag, left school, came home and told my mother that I wouldn’t go to school anymore,” recalls Lyudmila Petrova from the city of Narva. After the mother was also arrested, the 12-year-old girl, along with her 8-year-old brother, ended up in a children's reception center. There they had their heads shaved, fingerprinted and separated, sent separately to orphanages.

The daughter of army commander Ieronim Uborevich Vladimir, who was repressed in the “Tukhachevsky case,” and who was 13 years old at the time of her parents’ arrest, recalls that in foster homes, children of “enemies of the people” were isolated from the outside world and from other children. “They didn’t let other children near us, they didn’t even let us near the windows. No one close to us was allowed in... Me and Vetka were 13 years old at the time, Petka was 15, Sveta T. and her friend Giza Steinbrück were 15. The rest were all younger. There were two little Ivanovs, 5 and 3 years old. And the little one called her mother all the time. It was pretty hard. We were irritated and embittered. We felt like criminals, everyone started smoking and could no longer imagine ordinary life, school.”

In overcrowded orphanages, a child stayed from several days to months, and then a stage similar to an adult: “black raven”, boxcar. From the memoirs of Aldona Volynskaya: “Uncle Misha, a representative of the NKVD, announced that we would go to an orphanage on the Black Sea in Odessa. They took us to the station on a “black crow”, the back door was open, and the guard was holding a revolver in his hand. On the train we were told to say that we were excellent students and therefore we were going to Artek before the end of the school year.” And here is the testimony of Anna Ramenskaya: “The children were divided into groups. The little brother and sister, having found themselves in different places, cried desperately, clutching each other. And all the children asked them not to separate them. But neither requests nor bitter crying helped. We were put into freight cars and driven away. That’s how I ended up in an orphanage near Krasnoyarsk. It’s a long and sad story to tell how we lived under a drunken boss, with drunkenness and stabbings.”

Children of “enemies of the people” were taken from Moscow to Dnepropetrovsk and Kirovograd, from St. Petersburg to Minsk and Kharkov, from Khabarovsk to Krasnoyarsk.

GULAG for junior schoolchildren

Like orphanages, orphanages were overcrowded: as of August 4, 1938, 17,355 children were seized from repressed parents and another 5 thousand were planned for seizure. And this does not count those who were transferred to orphanages from camp children's centers, as well as numerous street children and children of special settlers - dispossessed peasants.

“The room is 12 square meters. meters there are 30 boys; for 38 children there are 7 beds where recidivist children sleep. Two eighteen-year-old residents raped a technician, robbed a store, were drinking with the caretaker, and the watchman was buying stolen goods.” “Children sit on dirty beds, play cards cut from portraits of leaders, fight, smoke, break bars on windows and hammer walls in order to escape.” “There are no dishes, they eat from ladles. There is one cup for 140 people, there are no spoons, you have to take turns eating with your hands. There is no lighting, there is one lamp for the entire orphanage, but it does not have kerosene.” These are quotes from reports from the management of orphanages in the Urals, written in the early 1930s.

“Children’s homes” or “children’s playgrounds,” as children’s homes were called in the 1930s, were located in almost unheated, overcrowded barracks, often without beds. From the memoirs of the Dutchwoman Nina Wissing about the orphanage in Boguchary: “There were two large wicker barns with gates instead of doors. The roof was leaking and there were no ceilings. This barn could accommodate a lot of children's beds. They fed us outside under a canopy.”

Serious problems with the nutrition of children were reported in a secret note dated October 15, 1933 by the then head of the Gulag, Matvey Berman: “The nutrition of children is unsatisfactory, there is no fat and sugar, bread standards are insufficient<...>In connection with this, in some orphanages there are mass diseases of children with tuberculosis and malaria. Thus, in the Poludenovsky orphanage of the Kolpashevo district, out of 108 children, only 1 is healthy, in the Shirokovsky-Kargasoksky district, out of 134 children are sick: 69 with tuberculosis and 46 with malaria.”

“Basically soup from dry smelt fish and potatoes, sticky black bread, sometimes cabbage soup,” recalls the orphanage menu Natalya Savelyeva, in the thirties, a pupil of the preschool group of one of the “orphanages” in the village of Mago on the Amur. The children ate pasture and looked for food in garbage dumps.

Bullying and physical punishment were common. “Before my eyes, the director beat boys older than me, with their heads against the wall and with fists in the face, because during a search she found bread crumbs in their pockets, suspecting them of preparing crackers for their escape. The teachers told us: “Nobody needs you.” When we were taken out for a walk, the children of the nannies and teachers pointed their fingers at us and shouted: “Enemies, they are leading enemies!” And we, probably, actually were like them. Our heads were shaved bald, we were dressed haphazardly. The linen and clothes came from the confiscated property of the parents,” Savelyeva recalls. “One day during a quiet hour, I couldn’t fall asleep. Aunt Dina, the teacher, sat on my head, and if I had not turned around, perhaps I would not be alive,” testifies another former pupil of the orphanage, Nelya Simonova.

Counter-revolution and the Quartet in literature

Anne Applebaum in the book “GULAG. The Web of Great Terror" provides the following statistics, based on data from the NKVD archives: in 1943–1945, 842,144 homeless children passed through orphanages. Most of them ended up in orphanages and vocational schools, some went back to their relatives. And 52,830 people ended up in labor educational colonies - they turned from children into juvenile prisoners.

Back in 1935, the well-known resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On measures to combat juvenile delinquency” was published, which amended the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: according to this document, children from the age of 12 could be convicted for theft, violence and murder “with the use of all measures of punishment." At the same time, in April 1935, an “Explanation to prosecutors and chairmen of courts” was published under the heading “top secret”, signed by the USSR prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky and the chairman of the USSR Supreme Court Alexander Vinokurov: “Among the criminal penalties provided for in Art. 1 of the said resolution also applies to capital punishment (execution).”

According to data for 1940, there were 50 labor colonies for minors in the USSR. From the memoirs of Jacques Rossi: “Children's correctional labor colonies, where minor thieves, prostitutes and murderers of both sexes are kept, are turning into hell. Children under 12 years old also end up there, since it often happens that a caught eight- or ten-year-old thief hides the name and address of his parents, but the police do not insist and write down in the protocol - “age about 12 years old,” which allows the court to “legally” convict the child and sent to the camps. The local authorities are glad that there will be one less potential criminal in the area entrusted to them. The author met many children in the camps who looked to be 7-9 years old. Some still couldn’t pronounce individual consonants correctly.”

At least until February 1940 (and according to the recollections of former prisoners, even later), convicted children were also kept in adult colonies. Thus, according to “Order for Norilsk construction and correctional labor camps of the NKVD” No. 168 of July 21, 1936, “child prisoners” from 14 to 16 years old were allowed to be used for general work for four hours a day, and another four hours were to be allocated for study and “cultural and educational work.” For prisoners from 16 to 17 years old, a 6-hour working day was already established.

Former prisoner Efrosinia Kersnovskaya recalls the girls who ended up with her at the detention center: “On average, they are 13-14 years old. The eldest, about 15 years old, already gives the impression of a really spoiled girl. Not surprisingly, she has already been to a children's correctional colony and has already been “corrected” for the rest of her life.<...>The smallest is Manya Petrova. She is 11 years old. The father was killed, the mother died, the brother was taken into the army. It’s hard for everyone, who needs an orphan? She picked onions. Not the bow itself, but the feather. They “had mercy” on her: for the theft they gave her not ten, but one year.” The same Kersnovskaya writes about the 16-year-old blockade survivors she met in prison, who were digging anti-tank ditches with adults, and during the bombing they rushed into the forest and stumbled upon the Germans. They treated them to chocolate, which the girls told about when they went out to the Soviet soldiers and were sent to the camp.

Prisoners of the Norilsk camp remember the Spanish children who found themselves in the adult Gulag. Solzhenitsyn writes about them in “The Gulag Archipelago”: “Spanish children are the same ones who were taken out during the Civil War, but became adults after World War II. Brought up in our boarding schools, they equally melded very poorly with our lives. Many were rushing home. They were declared socially dangerous and sent to prison, and those who were especially persistent - 58, part 6 - espionage for... America.”

There was a special attitude towards the children of the repressed: according to the circular of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 106 to the heads of the NKVD of territories and regions “On the procedure for placing children of repressed parents over the age of 15 years”, issued in May 1938, “socially dangerous children exhibiting anti-Soviet and terrorist sentiments and actions must be tried on a general basis and sent to camps according to the personal orders of the Gulag NKVD.”

Such “socially dangerous” people were interrogated on a general basis, using torture. Thus, the 14-year-old son of army commander Jonah Yakir, who was executed in 1937, Peter, was subjected to a night interrogation in an Astrakhan prison and accused of “organizing a horse gang.” He was sentenced to 5 years. Sixteen-year-old Pole Jerzy Kmecik, caught in 1939 while trying to escape to Hungary (after the Red Army entered Poland), was forced to sit and stand on a stool for many hours during interrogation, and was fed salty soup and not given water.

In 1938, for the fact that “being hostile to the Soviet system, he systematically carried out counter-revolutionary activities among the pupils of the orphanage,” 16-year-old Vladimir Moroz, the son of an “enemy of the people” who lived in the Annensky orphanage, was arrested and placed in the adult Kuznetsk prison. To authorize the arrest, Moroz's date of birth was corrected - he was assigned one year. The reason for the accusation was the letters that the pioneer leader found in the pocket of the teenager’s trousers - Vladimir wrote to his arrested older brother. After a search, the teenager’s diaries were found and confiscated, in which, interspersed with entries about the “four” in literature and “uncultured” teachers, he talks about repression and the cruelty of the Soviet leadership. The same pioneer leader and four children from the orphanage acted as witnesses at the trial. Moroz received three years of labor camp, but did not end up in a camp - in April 1939 he died in Kuznetsk prison “from tuberculosis of the lungs and intestines.”

(GULAG) was formed in the USSR in 1934. This event was preceded by the transfer of all Soviet correctional institutions from the subordination of the People's Commissariat of the USSR to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs.

At first glance, the banal departmental reassignment of all camps actually pursued far-reaching plans. The country's leadership intended to widely use forced labor of prisoners on construction sites of the national economy. It was necessary to create a single, clear system of correctional institutions with their own economic management bodies.

At its core, the Gulag was something like a huge construction syndicate. This syndicate united many headquarters, divided according to territorial and sectoral principles. Glavspetsvetmet, Sredazgidstroy, Northern Department of Camp Railway Construction…. These completely harmless names of chapters can be listed for a long time. An uninitiated person would never guess that behind them lie dozens of concentration camps with hundreds of thousands of prisoners.

The conditions in the Gulag defy normal human comprehension. The mere fact of the high mortality rate of camp residents, reaching 25 percent in some years, speaks for itself.

According to the testimony of former Gulag prisoners who miraculously survived, the main problem in the camps was hunger. There were, of course, approved diets - extremely meager, but not allowing a person to die of starvation. But the food was often stolen by the camp administration.

Another problem was illness. Epidemics of typhus, dysentery and other diseases broke out constantly, and there were no medicines. There were almost no medical staff. Tens of thousands of people died from disease every year.

All these hardships were completed by cold (the camps were mainly located in northern latitudes) and hard physical labor.

Labor efficiency and achievements of the Gulag

The labor efficiency of Gulag prisoners has always been extremely low. Camp administrations took various measures to increase it. From cruel punishments to incentives. But neither cruel torture and bullying for failure to meet production standards, nor increased food standards and reductions in prison terms for shock work helped almost. Physically exhausted people simply could not work effectively. And yet, much was created by the hands of prisoners.

After existing for a quarter of a century, the Gulag was disbanded. He left behind a lot of things that the USSR could be proud of for many years. After all, official historians, for example, argued that Komsomolsk-on-Amur was built by volunteers, and not by the Gulag headquarters of Amurstroy. And the White Sea-Baltic Canal is the result of the valiant labor of ordinary Soviet workers, and not Gulag prisoners. The revealed truth of the Gulag horrified many.

The formation of Gulag networks began back in 1917. It is known that Stalin was a big fan of this type of camp. The Gulag system was not just a zone where prisoners served their sentences, it was the main engine of the economy of that era. All the grandiose construction projects of the 30s and 40s were carried out by the hands of prisoners. During the existence of the Gulag, many categories of the population visited there: from murderers and bandits, to scientists and former members of the government, whom Stalin suspected of treason.

How did the Gulag appear?

Most of the information about the Gulag dates back to the late twenties and early 30s of the twentieth century. In fact, this system began to emerge immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. The “Red Terror” program provided for the isolation of undesirable classes of society in special camps. The first inhabitants of the camps were former landowners, factory owners and representatives of the wealthy bourgeoisie. At first, the camps were not led by Stalin, as is commonly believed, but by Lenin and Trotsky.

When the camps were filled with prisoners, they were transferred to the Cheka, under the leadership of Dzerzhinsky, who introduced the practice of using prisoner labor to restore the country's destroyed economy. By the end of the revolution, through the efforts of “Iron” Felix, the number of camps increased from 21 to 122.

In 1919, a system had already emerged that was destined to become the basis of the Gulag. The war years led to complete lawlessness that occurred in the camp areas. In the same year, Northern camps were created in the Arkhangelsk province.

Creation of the Solovetsky Gulag

In 1923, the famous Solovki were created. In order not to build barracks for prisoners, an ancient monastery was included in their territory. The famous Solovetsky special purpose camp was the main symbol of the Gulag system in the 20s. The project for this camp was proposed by Unshlikhtom (one of the leaders of the GPU), who was shot in 1938.

Soon the number of prisoners on Solovki expanded to 12,000 people. The conditions of detention were so harsh that during the entire existence of the camp, according to official statistics alone, more than 7,000 people died. During the famine of 1933, more than half of this number died.

Despite the reigning cruelty and mortality in the Solovetsky camps, they tried to hide information about this from the public. When the famous Soviet writer Gorky, who was considered an honest and ideological revolutionary, came to the archipelago in 1929, the camp leadership tried to hide all the unsightly aspects of the prisoners’ lives. The hopes of the camp residents that the famous writer would tell the public about the inhumane conditions of their detention were not justified. The authorities threatened everyone who spoke out with severe punishment.

Gorky was amazed at how work turns criminals into law-abiding citizens. Only in a children's colony did one boy tell the writer the whole truth about the regime of the camps. After the writer left, this boy was shot.

For what offense could you be sent to the Gulag?

New global construction projects required more and more workers. Investigators were given the task of accusing as many innocent people as possible. Denunciations in this matter were a panacea. Many uneducated proletarians took the opportunity to get rid of their unwanted neighbors. There were standard charges that could be applied to almost anyone:

Stalin was an inviolable person, therefore, any words discrediting the leader were subject to strict punishment;
Negative attitude towards collective farms;
Negative attitude towards bank government securities (loans);
Sympathy for counter-revolutionaries (especially Trotsky);
Admiration for the West, especially the USA.

In addition, any use of Soviet newspapers, especially with portraits of leaders, was punishable by 10 years. It was enough to wrap breakfast in a newspaper with the image of the leader, and any vigilant workmate could hand over the “enemy of the people.”

Development of camps in the 30s of the 20th century

The Gulag camp system reached its peak in the 1930s. By visiting the Gulag History Museum, you can see what horrors happened in the camps during these years. The RSSF Correctional Labor Code legislated for labor in the camps. Stalin constantly forced powerful propaganda campaigns to be carried out to convince the citizens of the USSR that only enemies of the people were kept in the camps, and the Gulag was the only humane way to rehabilitate them.

In 1931, the largest construction project of the USSR began - the construction of the White Sea Canal. This construction was presented to the public as a great achievement of the Soviet people. An interesting fact is that the press spoke positively about the criminals involved in the construction of BAM. At the same time, the merits of tens of thousands of political prisoners were kept silent.

Often, criminals collaborated with the camp administration, representing another lever to demoralize political prisoners. Odes of praise to the thieves and bandits who carried out “Stakhanov’s” standards at construction sites were constantly heard in the Soviet press. In fact, the criminals forced ordinary political prisoners to work for themselves, cruelly and demonstrably dealing with the disobedient. Attempts by former military personnel to restore order in the camp environment were suppressed by the camp administration. The emerging leaders were shot or seasoned criminals were set against them (a whole system of rewards was developed for them for reprisals against political figures).

The only available way of protest for political prisoners was hunger strikes. If individual acts did not lead to anything good, except for a new wave of bullying, then mass hunger strikes were considered counter-revolutionary activity. The instigators were quickly identified and shot.

Skilled labor in the camp

The main problem of the Gulags was the huge shortage of skilled workers and engineers. Complex construction tasks had to be solved by high-level specialists. In the 30s, the entire technical stratum consisted of people who studied and worked under the tsarist regime. Naturally, it was not difficult to accuse them of anti-Soviet activities. The camp administrations sent lists to investigators of which specialists were needed for large-scale construction projects.

The position of the technical intelligentsia in the camps was practically no different from the position of other prisoners. For honest and hard work, they could only hope that they would not be bullied.

The luckiest ones were the specialists who worked in closed secret laboratories on the territory of the camps. There were no criminals there and the conditions of detention for such prisoners were very different from the generally accepted ones. The most famous scientist who passed through the Gulag is Sergei Korolev, who became at the origins of the Soviet era of space exploration. For his services, he was rehabilitated and released along with his team of scientists.

All large-scale pre-war construction projects were completed with the help of slave labor of prisoners. After the war, the need for this labor only increased, as many workers were needed to restore industry.

Even before the war, Stalin abolished the system of parole for shock labor, which led to the deprivation of motivation for prisoners. Previously, for hard work and exemplary behavior, they could hope for a reduction in their prison term. After the system was abolished, the profitability of the camps fell sharply. Despite all the atrocities. The administration could not force people to do quality work, especially since meager rations and unsanitary conditions in the camps undermined people's health.

Women in the Gulag

The wives of traitors to the motherland were kept in “ALZHIR” - the Akmola Gulag camp. For refusing “friendship” with representatives of the administration, one could easily get an “increase” in time or, even worse, a “ticket” to a men’s colony, from which they rarely returned.

ALGERIA was founded in 1938. The first women who got there were the wives of Trotskyists. Often other members of the prisoners’ family, their sisters, children and other relatives were also sent to the camps along with their wives.

The only method of protest for women was constant petitions and complaints, which they wrote to various authorities. Most of the complaints did not reach the addressee, but the authorities mercilessly dealt with the complainants.

Children in Stalin's camps

In the 1930s, all homeless children were placed in Gulag camps. Although the first children's labor camps appeared back in 1918, after April 7, 1935, when a decree on measures to combat juvenile crime was signed, it became widespread. Typically, children had to be kept separately and were often found together with adult criminals.

All forms of punishment were applied to the teenagers, including execution. Often, 14-16 year old teenagers were shot simply because they were children of repressed people and “imbued with counter-revolutionary ideas.”

Gulag History Museum

The Gulag History Museum is a unique complex that has no analogues in the world. It presents reconstructions of individual fragments of the camp, as well as a huge collection of artistic and literary works created by former prisoners of the camps.

A huge archive of photographs, documents and belongings of the camp inhabitants allows visitors to appreciate all the horrors that happened in the camps.

Liquidation of the Gulag

After Stalin's death in 1953, the gradual liquidation of the Gulag system began. A few months later, an amnesty was declared, after which the population of the camps was halved. Sensing the weakening of the system, prisoners began mass riots, seeking further amnesties. Khrushchev played a huge role in the liquidation of the system, who sharply condemned Stalin’s personality cult.

The last head of the main department of labor camps, Kholodov, was transferred to the reserve in 1960. His departure marked the end of the Gulag era.

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"On forced labor camps", which marked the beginning of the creation of the GULAG - the Main Directorate of Forced Labor Camps. In documents of 1919-1920, the basic idea of camp content was formulated - work “to isolate harmful, undesirable elements and introduce them to conscious labor through coercion and re-education.”

In 1934, the Gulag became part of the united NKVD, reporting directly to the head of this department.
As of March 1, 1940, the Gulag system included 53 ITL (including camps engaged in railway construction), 425 correctional labor colonies (ITC), as well as prisons, 50 colonies for minors, 90 “baby homes”.

In 1943, convict departments were organized at the Vorkuta and North-Eastern camps with the establishment of the strictest isolation regime: convicts worked extended working hours and were used for heavy underground work in coal mines, tin and gold mining.

Prisoners also worked on the construction of canals, roads, industrial and other facilities in the Far North, Far East and other regions. Severe punishments were applied in the camps for the slightest violation of the regime.

Gulag prisoners, which included both criminals and persons convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR “for counter-revolutionary crimes,” as well as members of their families, were required to work without pay. Sick people and prisoners declared unfit for work did not work. Teenagers aged 12 to 18 years were sent to juvenile colonies. The children of imprisoned women were housed in “baby houses.”

The total number of guards in the Gulag camps and colonies in 1954 was over 148 thousand people.

Having emerged as a tool and place for isolating counter-revolutionary and criminal elements in the interests of protecting and strengthening the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the Gulag, thanks to the system of “correction by forced labor,” quickly turned into a virtually independent branch of the national economy. Provided with cheap labor, this “industry” effectively solved the problems of industrialization of the eastern and northern regions.

Between 1937 and 1950, about 8.8 million people were in the camps. Persons convicted “for counter-revolutionary activities” in 1953 made up 26.9% of the total number of prisoners. In total, for political reasons during the years of Stalinist repression, 3.4-3.7 million people passed through camps, colonies and prisons.

By a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated March 25, 1953, the construction of a number of large facilities carried out with the participation of prisoners was stopped, as not caused by “urgent needs of the national economy.” The liquidated construction projects included the Main Turkmen Canal, railways in the north of Western Siberia, on the Kola Peninsula, a tunnel under the Tatar Strait, artificial liquid fuel factories, etc. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated March 27, 1953, about an amnesty was released from the camps about 1 .2 million prisoners.

The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated October 25, 1956 recognized “the continued existence of forced labor camps of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs as inappropriate as they do not ensure the fulfillment of the most important state task - the re-education of prisoners in labor.” The Gulag system existed for several more years and was abolished by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on January 13, 1960.

After the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” (1973), where the writer showed a system of mass repression and arbitrariness, the term “GULAG” became synonymous with the camps and prisons of the NKVD and the totalitarian regime as a whole.
In 2001, the State University was founded in Moscow on Petrovka Street.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources.

). There were the following ITL:

Akmola camp for wives of traitors to the Motherland (ALGERIA)
Bezymyanlag
Vorkutlag (Vorkuta ITL)
Dzhezkazganlag (Steplag)
Intalag
Kotlas ITL
Kraslag
Lokchimlag
Perm camps
Pechorlag
Peczheldorlag
Prorvlag
Svirlag
Sevzheldorlag
Siblag
Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON)
Taezlag
Ustvymlag
Ukhtizhemlag

Each of the above ITLs included a number of camp points (that is, the camps themselves). The camps in Kolyma were famous for the particularly difficult living and working conditions of prisoners.

Gulag statistics

Until the end of the 1980s, official statistics on the Gulag were classified, researchers’ access to the archives was impossible, so estimates were based either on the words of former prisoners or members of their families, or on the use of mathematical and statistical methods.

After the opening of the archives, official figures became available, but the Gulag statistics are incomplete, and data from different sections often do not fit together.

According to official data, more than 2.5 million people were simultaneously held in the system of camps, prisons and colonies of the OGPU and the NKVD in 1930-56 (the maximum was reached in the early 1950s as a result of the post-war tightening of criminal legislation and the social consequences of the famine of 1946-1947).

Certificate of mortality of prisoners in the Gulag system for the period 1930-1956.

Years	Number of deaths	% of deaths compared to the average
1930*	7980	4,2
1931*	7283	2,9
1932*	13197	4,8
1933*	67297	15,3
1934*	25187	4,28
1935**	31636	2,75
1936**	24993	2,11
1937**	31056	2,42
1938**	108654	5,35
1939***	44750	3,1
1940	41275	2,72
1941	115484	6,1
1942	352560	24,9
1943	267826	22,4
1944	114481	9,2
1945	81917	5,95
1946	30715	2,2
1947	66830	3,59
1948	50659	2,28
1949	29350	1,21
1950	24511	0,95
1951	22466	0,92
1952	20643	0,84
1953****	9628	0,67
1954	8358	0,69
1955	4842	0,53
1956	3164	0,4
Total	1606742
Only in ITL. * In correctional labor camps and places of detention (NTK, prisons). * Further in ITL and NTK. ** Without OL. (O.L. - special camps). Help prepared based on materials EURZ GULAG (GARF. F. 9414)

After the publication in the early 1990s of archival documents from leading Russian archives, primarily in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (former TsGAOR USSR) and the Russian Center for Socio-Political History (former TsPA IML), a number of researchers concluded that for 1930-1953 6.5 million people visited forced labor colonies, of which about 1.3 million were for political reasons, through forced labor camps in 1937-1950. About two million people were convicted under political charges.

Thus, based on the given archival data of the OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR, we can conclude: during the years 1920-1953, about 10 million people passed through the ITL system, including 3.4-3.7 million people under the article of counter-revolutionary crimes .

National composition of prisoners

According to a number of studies, on January 1, 1939, in the Gulag camps, the national composition of prisoners was distributed as follows:

Russians - 830,491 (63.05%)
Ukrainians - 181,905 (13.81%)
Belarusians - 44,785 (3.40%)
Tatars - 24,894 (1.89%)
Uzbeks - 24,499 (1.86%)
Jews - 19,758 (1.50%)
Germans - 18,572 (1.41%)
Kazakhs - 17,123 (1.30%)
Poles - 16,860 (1.28%)
Georgians - 11,723 (0.89%)
Armenians - 11,064 (0.84%)
Turkmens - 9,352 (0.71%)
other nationalities - 8.06%.

According to the data given in the same work, on January 1, 1951, the number of prisoners in camps and colonies was:

Russians - 1,405,511 (805,995/599,516 - 55.59%)
Ukrainians - 506,221 (362,643/143,578 - 20.02%)
Belarusians - 96,471 (63,863/32,608 - 3.82%)
Tatars - 56,928 (28,532/28,396 - 2.25%)
Lithuanians - 43,016 (35,773/7,243 - 1.70%)
Germans - 32,269 (21,096/11,173 - 1.28%)
Uzbeks - 30029 (14,137/15,892 - 1.19%)
Latvians - 28,520 (21,689/6,831 - 1.13%)
Armenians - 26,764 (12,029/14,735 - 1.06%)
Kazakhs - 25,906 (12,554/13,352 - 1.03%)
Jews - 25,425 (14,374/11,051 - 1.01%)
Estonians - 24,618 (18,185/6,433 - 0.97%)
Azerbaijanis - 23,704 (6,703/17,001 - 0.94%)
Georgians - 23,583 (6,968/16,615 - 0.93%)
Poles - 23,527 (19,184/4,343 - 0.93%)
Moldovans - 22,725 (16,008/6,717 - 0.90%)
other nationalities - about 5%.

History of the organization

First stage

On April 15, 1919, the RSFSR issued a decree “On forced labor camps.” From the very beginning of the existence of Soviet power, the management of most places of detention was entrusted to the department of execution of punishments of the People's Commissariat of Justice, formed in May 1918. The Main Directorate of Compulsory Labor under the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was partially involved in these same issues.

After October 1917 and until 1934, general prisons were administered by the Republican People's Commissariats of Justice and were part of the system of the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Institutions.

On August 3, 1933, a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was approved, prescribing various aspects of the functioning of the ITL. In particular, the code prescribes the use of prisoner labor and legitimizes the practice of counting two days of hard work for three days, which was widely used to motivate prisoners during the construction of the White Sea Canal.

The period after Stalin's death

The departmental affiliation of the Gulag changed only once after 1934 - in March the Gulag was transferred to the jurisdiction of the USSR Ministry of Justice, but in January it was returned to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The next organizational change in the penitentiary system in the USSR was the creation in October 1956 of the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Colonies, which in March was renamed the Main Directorate of Prisons.

When the NKVD was divided into two independent people's commissariats - the NKVD and the NKGB - this department was renamed Prison Department NKVD. In 1954, by decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Prison Administration was transformed into Prison department Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. In March 1959, the Prison Department was reorganized and included in the system of the Main Directorate of Prisons of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Gulag leadership

Heads of the Department

The first leaders of the Gulag, Fyodor Eichmans, Lazar Kogan, Matvey Berman, Israel Pliner, among other prominent security officers, died during the years of the “Great Terror”. In 1937-1938 they were arrested and soon shot.

Role in the economy

Already by the beginning of the 1930s, the labor of prisoners in the USSR was considered an economic resource. A resolution of the Council of People's Commissars in 1929 ordered the OGPU to organize new camps for the reception of prisoners in remote areas of the country

The attitude of the authorities towards prisoners as an economic resource was expressed even more clearly by Joseph Stalin, who in 1938 spoke at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and stated the following about the then existing practice of early release of prisoners:

In the 1930s-50s, Gulag prisoners carried out the construction of a number of large industrial and transport facilities:

canals (White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin, Canal named after Moscow, Volga-Don Canal named after Lenin);
HPPs (Volzhskaya, Zhigulevskaya, Uglichskaya, Rybinskaya, Kuibyshevskaya, Nizhnetulomskaya, Ust-Kamenogorskaya, Tsimlyanskaya, etc.);
metallurgical enterprises (Norilsk and Nizhny Tagil MK, etc.);
objects of the Soviet nuclear program;
a number of railways (Transpolar Railway, Kola Railway, tunnel to Sakhalin, Karaganda-Mointy-Balkhash, Pechora Mainline, second tracks of the Siberian Mainline, Taishet-Lena (beginning of BAM), etc.) and highways (Moscow - Minsk, Magadan - Susuman - Ust-Nera)

A number of Soviet cities were founded and built by Gulag institutions (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Sovetskaya Gavan, Magadan, Dudinka, Vorkuta, Ukhta, Inta, Pechora, Molotovsk, Dubna, Nakhodka)

Prisoner labor was also used in agriculture, mining, and logging. According to some historians, the Gulag accounted for an average of three percent of the gross national product.

No assessments have been made of the overall economic efficiency of the Gulag system. The head of the Gulag, Nasedkin, wrote on May 13, 1941: “A comparison of the cost of agricultural products in the camps and state farms of the NKSH USSR showed that the cost of production in the camps significantly exceeds the state farm.” After the war, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Chernyshov wrote in a special note that the Gulag simply needed to be transferred to a system similar to the civilian economy. But despite the introduction of new incentives, detailed elaboration of tariff schedules, and production standards, self-sufficiency of the Gulag could not be achieved; Labor productivity of prisoners was lower than that of civilian workers, and the cost of maintaining the system of camps and colonies increased.

After Stalin's death and a mass amnesty in 1953, the number of prisoners in the camps was halved, and the construction of a number of facilities was stopped. For several years after this, the Gulag system was systematically collapsed and finally ceased to exist in 1960.

Conditions

Organization of camps

In the ITL, three categories of prisoner detention regime were established: strict, enhanced and general.

At the end of the quarantine, medical labor commissions established categories of physical labor for prisoners.

Physically healthy prisoners were assigned the first category of working ability, allowing them to be used for heavy physical work.
Prisoners who had minor physical disabilities (low fatness, non-organic functional disorders) belonged to the second category of working ability and were used in moderately difficult work.
Prisoners who had obvious physical disabilities and diseases, such as: decompensated heart disease, chronic disease of the kidneys, liver and other organs, however, did not cause deep disorders of the body, belonged to the third category of working ability and were used for light physical work and individual physical labor. .
Prisoners who had severe physical disabilities that precluded their employment were classified in the fourth category - the category of disabled people.

From here, all work processes characteristic of the productive profile of a particular camp were divided by severity into: heavy, medium and light.

For the prisoners of each camp in the Gulag system, there was a standard system for recording prisoners based on their labor use, introduced in 1935. All working prisoners were divided into two groups. The main labor contingent that performed production, construction or other tasks of this camp constituted group “A”. In addition to him, a certain group of prisoners was always busy with work that arose within the camp or camp administration. These, mainly administrative, managerial and service personnel, were classified as group “B”. Non-working prisoners were also divided into two categories: group “B” included those who did not work due to illness, and all other non-working prisoners, accordingly, were combined into group “G”. This group seemed to be the most heterogeneous: some of these prisoners were only temporarily not working due to external circumstances - due to their being in transit or in quarantine, due to the failure of the camp administration to provide work, due to the intra-camp transfer of labor, etc. , - but it should also include “refuseniks” and prisoners held in isolation wards and punishment cells.

The share of group “A” - that is, the main labor force, rarely reached 70%. In addition, the labor of free-hired workers was widely used (comprising 20-70% of group “A” (at different times and in different camps)).

Work standards were about 270-300 working days per year (varied in different camps and in different years, excluding, of course, the war years). Working day - up to 10-12 hours maximum. In case of severe climatic conditions, work was canceled.

Food standard No. 1 (basic) for a Gulag prisoner in 1948 (per person per day in grams):

Bread 700 (800 for those engaged in heavy work)
Wheat flour 10
Various cereals 110
Pasta and vermicelli 10
Meat 20
Fish 60
Fats 13
Potatoes and vegetables 650
Sugar 17
Salt 20
Surrogate tea 2
Tomato puree 10
Pepper 0.1
Bay leaf 0.1

Despite the existence of certain standards for the detention of prisoners, the results of inspections of the camps showed their systematic violation:

A large percentage of mortality falls on colds and exhaustion; colds are explained by the fact that there are prisoners who go to work poorly dressed and with shoes; the barracks are often not heated due to lack of fuel, as a result of which prisoners who are frozen in the open air do not warm up in the cold barracks, which entails flu, pneumonia, and other colds

Until the end of the 1940s, when living conditions improved somewhat, the mortality rate of prisoners in the Gulag camps exceeded the national average, and in some years (1942-43) reached 20% of the average number of prisoners. According to official documents, over the years of the existence of the Gulag, more than 1.1 million people died in it (more than 600 thousand died in prisons and colonies). A number of researchers, for example V.V. Tsaplin, noted noticeable discrepancies in the available statistics, but at the moment these comments are fragmentary and cannot be used to characterize it as a whole.

Offenses

At the moment, in connection with the discovery of official documentation and internal orders, previously inaccessible to historians, there is a number of materials confirming repressions, carried out by virtue of decrees and resolutions of executive and legislative authorities.

For example, by virtue of GKO Resolution No. 634/ss of September 6, 1941, 170 political prisoners were executed in the Oryol prison of the GUGB. This decision was explained by the fact that the movement of convicts from this prison was not possible. Most of those serving sentences in such cases were released or assigned to retreating military units. The most dangerous prisoners were liquidated in a number of cases.

A notable fact was the publication on March 5, 1948 of the so-called “additional decree of the thieves’ law for prisoners,” which determined the main provisions of the system of relations between privileged prisoners - “thieves”, prisoners - “men” and some personnel from among the prisoners:

This law caused very negative consequences for the unprivileged prisoners of camps and prisons, as a result of which certain groups of “men” began to resist, organize protests against the “thieves” and the relevant laws, including committing acts of disobedience, raising uprisings, and starting arson. In a number of institutions, control over prisoners, which de facto belonged and was carried out by criminal groups of “thieves”, was lost; the camp leadership turned directly to higher authorities with a request to allocate additionally the most authoritative “thieves” to restore order and restore control, which sometimes caused some loss controllability of places of deprivation of liberty, gave criminal groups a reason to control the very mechanism of serving punishment, dictating their terms of cooperation. .

Labor incentive system in the Gulag

Prisoners who refused to work were subject to transfer to a penal regime, and “malicious refuseniks, whose actions corrupted labor discipline in the camp,” were subject to criminal liability. Penalties were imposed on prisoners for violations of labor discipline. Depending on the nature of such violations, the following penalties could be imposed:

deprivation of visits, correspondence, transfers for up to 6 months, restriction of the right to use personal money for up to 3 months and compensation for damage caused;
transfer to general work;
transfer to a penal camp for up to 6 months;
transfer to a punishment cell for up to 20 days;
transfer to worse material and living conditions (penal ration, less comfortable barracks, etc.)

For prisoners who complied with the regime, performed well at work, or exceeded the established norm, the following incentive measures could be applied by the camp leadership:

declaration of gratitude before the formation or in an order with entry into a personal file;
issuing a bonus (cash or in kind);
granting an extraordinary visit;
granting the right to receive parcels and transfers without restrictions;
granting the right to transfer money to relatives in an amount not exceeding 100 rubles. per month;
transfer to a more qualified job.

In addition, the foreman, in relation to a well-working prisoner, could petition the foreman or the head of the camp to provide the prisoner with the benefits provided for Stakhanovites.

Prisoners who worked using “Stakhanov labor methods” were provided with a number of special, additional benefits, in particular:

accommodation in more comfortable barracks, equipped with trestle beds or beds and provided with bedding, a cultural room and a radio;
special improved ration;
private dining room or individual tables in a common dining room with priority service;
clothing allowance in the first place;
priority right to use the camp stall;
priority receipt of books, newspapers and magazines from the camp library;
permanent club ticket for the best place to watch films, artistic productions and literary evenings;
secondment to courses within the camp to obtain or improve the relevant qualifications (driver, tractor driver, machinist, etc.)

Similar incentive measures were taken for prisoners who had the rank of shock workers.

Along with this incentive system, there were others that consisted only of components that encouraged high productivity of the prisoner (and did not have a “punitive” component). One of them is related to the practice of counting to a prisoner one working day worked in excess of the established norm for one and a half, two (or even more) days of his sentence. The result of this practice was the early release of prisoners who showed positive results at work. In 1939, this practice was abolished, and the system of “early release” itself was reduced to replacing confinement in a camp with forced settlement. Thus, according to the decree of November 22, 1938 “On additional benefits for prisoners released early for shock work on the construction of 2 tracks “Karymskaya - Khabarovsk”, 8,900 prisoners - shock workers were released early, with transfer to free residence in the BAM construction area until end of the sentence. During the war, liberations began to be practiced on the basis of decrees of the State Defense Committee with the transfer of those released to the Red Army, and then on the basis of Decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (so-called amnesties).

The third system of stimulating labor in the camps consisted of differentiated payments to prisoners for the work they performed. This money is in administrative documents initially and until the end of the 1940s. were designated by the terms “cash incentive” or “cash bonus”. The concept of “salary” was also sometimes used, but this name was officially introduced only in 1950. Cash bonuses were paid to prisoners “for all work performed in forced labor camps,” while prisoners could receive the money they earned in their hands in an amount not exceeding 150 rubles at a time. Money in excess of this amount was credited to their personal accounts and issued as the previously issued money was spent. Those who did not work and did not comply with standards did not receive money. At the same time, “... even a slight overfulfillment of production standards by individual groups of workers...” could cause a large increase in the amount actually paid, which, in turn, could lead to a disproportionate development of the bonus fund in relation to the implementation of the capital work plan. prisoners temporarily released from work due to illness and other reasons were not paid wages during their release from work, but the cost of guaranteed food and clothing allowances was also not withheld from them. Activated disabled people employed in piecework work were paid according to the piecework rates established for prisoners for the amount of work actually completed by them.

Memories of survivors

The famous Moroz, the head of the Ukhta camps, stated that he did not need either cars or horses: “give more s/k - and he will build a railway not only to Vorkuta, but also through the North Pole.” This figure was ready to pave the swamps with prisoners, he easily left them to work in the cold winter taiga without tents - they would warm themselves by the fire! - without boilers for cooking food - they will do without hot food! But since no one held him accountable for “losses in manpower,” he for the time being enjoyed the reputation of an energetic, proactive figure. I saw Moroz near the locomotive - the first-born of the future movement, which had just been unloaded from the pontoon in his HANDS. Frost hovered before the retinue - it was urgent, they say, to separate the couples so that immediately - before the laying of the rails! - announce the surrounding area with a locomotive whistle. The order was immediately given: pour water into the boiler and light the firebox!”

Children in the Gulag

In the field of combating juvenile delinquency, punitive corrective measures prevailed. On July 16, 1939, the NKVD of the USSR issued an order “With the announcement of the regulations on the NKVD OTC detention center for minors,” which approved the “Regulations on the detention center for minors,” ordering the placement in detention centers of adolescents aged 12 to 16 years, sentenced by the court to various terms of imprisonment and not amenable to other measures of re-education and correction. This measure could be carried out with the sanction of the prosecutor; the period of detention in the detention center was limited to six months.

Beginning in mid-1947, sentences for minors convicted of theft of state or public property were increased to 10 - 25 years. The Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of November 25, 1935 “On amending the current legislation of the RSFSR on measures to combat juvenile delinquency, child homelessness and neglect” abolished the possibility of reducing the sentence for minors aged 14 - 18 years, and the regime was significantly tightened keeping children in places of deprivation of liberty.

In the secret monograph “Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies of the NKVD of the USSR” written in 1940, there is a separate chapter “Working with minors and street children”:

“In the Gulag system, work with juvenile delinquents and homeless people is organizationally separate.
By decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on May 31, 1935, the Department of Labor Colonies was created in the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which has as its task the organization of reception centers, isolation wards and labor colonies for homeless minors and criminals.

This decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars provided for the re-education of homeless and neglected children through cultural, educational and production work with them and their further sending to work in industry and agriculture.

Reception centers carry out the process of removing homeless and neglected children from the streets, keep the children in their homes for one month, and then, after establishing the necessary information about them and their parents, give them appropriate further direction. The 162 reception centers operating in the GULAG system during the four and a half years of their work admitted 952,834 teenagers, who were sent both to children's institutions of the People's Commissariat for Education, People's Commissariat of Health and People's Commissariat of Security, and to the labor colonies of the NKVD Gulag. Currently, there are 50 closed and open labor colonies operating in the Gulag system.

In open-type colonies there are juvenile offenders with one criminal record, and in closed-type colonies, under special regime conditions, juvenile offenders from 12 to 18 years old are kept, who have a large number of convictions and several convictions.

Since the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars, 155,506 teenagers aged 12 to 18 years have been sent through labor colonies, of which 68,927 have been tried and 86,579 have not been tried. Since the main task of the NKVD labor colonies is to re-educate children and instill in them labor skills, production enterprises have been organized in all Gulag labor colonies in which all juvenile criminals work.

In the Gulag labor colonies there are, as a rule, four main types of production:

Metalworking,

Woodworking,

Shoe production,

Knitting production (in colonies for girls).

In all colonies, secondary schools are organized, operating according to a general seven-year educational program.

Clubs have been organized with corresponding amateur clubs: music, drama, choir, fine arts, technical, physical education and others. The educational and teaching staff of juvenile colonies number: 1,200 educators - mainly from Komsomol members and party members, 800 teachers and 255 leaders of amateur art groups. In almost all colonies, pioneer detachments and Komsomol organizations were organized from among the students who had not been convicted. On March 1, 1940, there were 4,126 pioneers and 1,075 Komsomol members in the Gulag colonies.

Work in the colonies is organized as follows: minors under 16 years of age work daily in production for 4 hours and study at school for 4 hours, the rest of the time they are busy in amateur clubs and pioneer organizations. Minors from 16 to 18 years old work in production for 6 hours and, instead of a normal seven-year school, study in self-education clubs, similar to adult schools.

In 1939, the Gulag labor colonies for minors completed a production program worth 169,778 thousand rubles, mainly for consumer goods. The GULAG system spent 60,501 thousand rubles in 1939 on the maintenance of the entire corps of juvenile criminals, and the state subsidy to cover these expenses was expressed in approximately 15% of the total amount, and the rest of it was provided by revenues from the production and economic activities of labor colonies . The main point that completes the entire process of re-education of juvenile offenders is their employment. Over four years, the system of labor colonies employed 28,280 former criminals in various sectors of the national economy, including 83.7% in industry and transport, 7.8% in agriculture, 8.5% in various educational institutions and institutions.”
25. GARF, f.9414, op.1, d.1155, l.26-27.
GARF, f.9401, op.1, d.4157, l.201-205; V. P. Popov. State terror in Soviet Russia. 1923-1953: sources and their interpretation // Domestic archives. 1992, No. 2. P.28. http://libereya.ru/public/repressii.html

A. Dugin. “Stalinism: legends and facts” // Word. 1990, No. 7. P.23; archival