). There were the following ITLs:

• Akmola camp of wives of traitors to the Motherland (ALZHIR)
• Namelesslag
• Vorkutlag (Vorkuta ITL)
• Dzhezkazganlag (Steplag)
• Intalag
• Kotlas ITL
• Kraslag
• Lokchimlag
• Perm camps
• Pechorlag
• Pecheldorlag
• Breakthrough
• Svirlag
• Sevzheldorlag
• Siblag
• Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (ELEPHANT)
• Taezhlag
• Ustvymlag
• Uhtizhemlag

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

GULAG statistics

Until the end of the 1980s, the official statistics on the Gulag were classified, researchers could not access the archives, so the estimates were based either on the words of former prisoners or their family members, or on the use of mathematical and statistical methods.

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

According to official data, in the system of camps, prisons and colonies of the OGPU and NKVD in 1930-56, more than 2.5 million people were kept at a time (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).

Mortality certificate for prisoners in the GULAG system for the period 1930-1956.

Mortality certificate for prisoners in the GULAG system for the period 1930-1956.

Years	Number of deaths	% of deaths 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 the ITL. ** In ITL and places of detention (NTK, prisons). *** Further to the ITL and NTK. **** Without OL. (O. L. - special camps). Help prepared based on materials OURZ 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 of the USSR) and the Russian Center for Socio-Political History (former TsPA IML), a number of researchers concluded that in 1930-1953 6.5 million people visited corrective 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 on political charges.

Thus, based on the above archival data of the OGPU-NKVD-Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, we can conclude: in 1920-1953, about 10 million people passed through the ITL system, including 3.4-3.7 million people under the article counter-revolutionary crimes ...

National composition of prisoners

According to a number of studies, on January 1, 1939, in the gulag camps, the ethnic composition of the 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%)
• turkmen - 9 352 (0.71%)
• other nationalities - 8.06%.

According to the data cited 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 - 30,029 (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%.

Organization history

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 for the execution of punishments of the People's Commissariat of Justice, formed in May 1918. The Main Directorate of Forced Labor under the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs dealt partly with the same issues.

After October 1917 and up to 1934, general prisons were under the jurisdiction of the republican People's Commissariats of Justice and were part 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 prison labor and legalizes the practice of counting two days of shock work in three days of the term, 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 after 1934 changed only once - 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 system for the execution of sentences 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 Administration 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 Department

The first leaders of the GULAG - Fyodor Eikhmans, Lazar Kogan, Matvey Berman, Israel Pliner - among other prominent Chekists died during the years of the "Great Terror". In 1937-1938. they were arrested and soon shot.

Role in the economy

By the early 1930s, the labor of prisoners in the USSR was seen as an economic resource. The SNK decree in 1929 ordered the OGPU to organize new camps for the reception of prisoners in remote areas of the country.

Joseph Stalin expressed even more clearly the attitude of the authorities towards prisoners as an economic resource, speaking at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1938 and stating the following about the then practice of early release of prisoners:

Gulag prisoners in the 1930s-1950s were building a number of large industrial and transport facilities:

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

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

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

The overall economic efficiency of the GULAG system has not been evaluated. On May 13, 1941, the head of the Gulag, Nasedkin, wrote: "Comparison of the cost of agricultural products in the camps and state farms of the NKSH of the USSR showed that the cost of production in the camps is much higher than 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 scales, norms of production, the 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 thereafter, the GULAG system was systematically phased out and finally ceased to exist in 1960.

Terms

Organization of camps

In the ITL, three categories of prisoners were established: strict, enhanced, and general.

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

• Physically healthy prisoners were assigned the first category of work ability, allowing them to be used for heavy physical work.
• Prisoners with minor physical disabilities (low body condition, non-organic functional disorders) belonged to the second category of work capacity and were used in jobs of moderate severity.
• Prisoners who had pronounced physical disabilities and diseases, such as: decompensated heart disease, chronic diseases of the kidneys, liver and other organs, however, did not cause profound disorders of the body, belonged to the third category of work capacity and were used in light physical work and individual physical labor ...
• Prisoners with severe physical disabilities, excluding the possibility of their employment, belonged to the fourth category - the category of disabled people.

Hence, all the work processes characteristic of the productive profile of a particular camp were divided according to their severity into: heavy, medium and light.

For the inmates of each camp in the GULAG system, there was a standard system of registering prisoners based on their labor use, introduced in 1935. All working prisoners were divided into two groups. The main labor contingent, which performed production, construction or other tasks of this camp, was group "A". In addition to him, a certain group of prisoners was always busy with work that arose inside the camp or camp administration. This, mainly administrative and managerial and service personnel, belonged to group "B". Non-working prisoners were also divided into two categories: group "C" included those who did not work due to illness, and all the rest of the unemployed, respectively, were united in group "D". This group seemed to be the most heterogeneous: some of these prisoners only temporarily did not work for external reasons - because they were at a stage or in quarantine, because of the lack of work by the camp administration, because of the intra-camp transfer of labor, etc. - but it should also include the "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-wage workers was widely used (accounting for 20-70% of group "A" (at different times and in different camps)).

The norms for work a year were about 270-300 working days (in different ways 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, the work was canceled.

The food ration number 1 (basic) of a prisoner of the GULAG in 1948 (for 1 person per day in grams):

1. Bread 700 (800 for hard workers)
2. Wheat flour 10
3. Various groats 110
4. Macaroni and vermicelli 10
5. Meat 20
6. Fish 60
7. Fats 13
8. Potatoes and vegetables 650
9. Sugar 17
10. Salt 20
11. Surrogate tea 2
12. Tomato puree 10
13. Pepper 0.1
14. Bay leaf 0.1

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

A large percentage of deaths fall on colds and wasting; colds are explained by the fact that there are prisoners who go to work poorly dressed and shod, the barracks are often not heated due to lack of fuel, as a result of which the 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 conditions of detention improved slightly, the mortality rate of prisoners in the GULAG camps exceeded the national average, and in some years (1942-43) it reached 20% of the average number of prisoners. According to official documents, over the years of the Gulag's existence, more than 1.1 million people have died in it (more than 600 thousand more 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 opening of official documents and internal orders, previously inaccessible to historians, there is a number of materials confirming the repressions, moreover, produced by virtue of decrees and resolutions of the executive and legislative authorities.

For example, by virtue of the GKO Resolution No. 634 / ss of September 6, 1941, 170 political prisoners were shot in the Oryol prison of the GUGB. This decision was explained by the fact that the transfer of the convicts of this prison was not possible. Most of those serving sentences in such cases were released or attributed 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 basic 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 underprivileged prisoners in camps and prisons, as a result of which certain groups of "men" began to resist, organize protests against "thieves" and the relevant laws, including committing acts of disobedience, raising uprisings, and committing 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 leaders turned directly to the higher authorities with a request to allocate additional more authoritative "thieves" to restore order and regain control, which sometimes caused some loss management of places of deprivation of liberty, gave a reason for criminal groups to control the very mechanism of serving a sentence, dictating their terms of cooperation. ...

Labor incentive system in the GULAG

Prisoners who refuse to work were subject to a penalty regime, and “malicious refuseniks who by their actions corrupted labor discipline in the camp” were brought to criminal responsibility. 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, programs for up to 6 months, restriction in 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 (penalty rations, less comfortable barracks, etc.)

In relation to prisoners who observed the regime, performed well at work, exceeded the established norm, the following incentives could be applied by the camp leadership:

• announcement of gratitude in front of the formation or in the order with entry into a personal file;
• issuance of bonuses (in cash or in kind);
• providing an extraordinary date;
• granting the right to receive parcels and transfers without restriction;
• 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 the Stakhanovites.

Prisoners who worked "Stakhanov's labor methods" were provided with a number of special, additional benefits, in particular:

• living in more comfortable barracks, equipped with trestle beds or beds and provided with bedding, a cultural center and a radio;
• special improved ration;
• separate dining room or separate tables in the common dining room with priority service;
• clothing allowance in the first place;
• preemptive right to use the camp stall;
• priority receipt of books, newspapers and magazines from the camp library;
• permanent club ticket to occupy the best place for watching films, art performances and literary evenings;
• sending to courses inside the camp to obtain or improve relevant qualifications (driver, tractor driver, machinist, etc.)

Similar incentives were adopted for prisoners who had the rank of drummer.

Along with this incentive system, there were others, which 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 with overfulfillment of the established norm for one and a half, two (or even more) days of his term of imprisonment. The result of this practice was the early release of prisoners who showed themselves positively at work. In 1939, this practice was abolished, and the system of "early release" itself was reduced to replacing imprisonment in a camp with a forced settlement. So, according to the decree of November 22, 1938 "On additional benefits for prisoners released ahead of schedule for shock work on the construction of 2 tracks" Karymskaya - Khabarovsk ", 8,900 prisoners - shock workers were released ahead of schedule, with a transfer to free residence in the BAM construction area until the end of the sentence. During the war years, liberation began to be practiced on the basis of GKO resolutions 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 (the so-called amnesties).

The third system of incentives for labor in the camps was the differentiated payment of money to prisoners for the work they performed. This money was 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 the amount of no more 150 rubles at a time. Money in excess of this amount was credited to their personal accounts and issued as soon as the previously issued money was spent. Non-working and non-fulfilling norms did not receive money. At the same time, “… even a slight overfulfillment of production norms 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 premium 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 the release from work, but the cost of guaranteed food and clothing allowance was not deducted from them either. The disabled persons who were activated, employed in piecework, were paid according to the piece-rate established for prisoners for the amount of work actually performed by them.

Memories of survivors

The famous Moroz, the head of the Ukhta camps, declared that he did not need either cars or horses: "Give me more w / c 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 simply threw them to work in the cold winter taiga without tents - they would warm up by the fire! - without boilers for cooking food - they will do without hot! But since no one asked him for “losses in manpower,” then he enjoyed for the time being the glory of an energetic, proactive figure. I saw Frost near the locomotive - the firstborn of the future movement, just HANDS unloaded from the pontoon. Frost fluttered in front of the retinue - it is necessary, they say, urgently, to dissolve the pairs, so that immediately - before laying the rails! - announce the surroundings with a locomotive whistle. An order was immediately given: to bring water into the boiler and light the furnace! "

Children in the Gulag

In the field of combating juvenile delinquency, punitive corrective measures prevailed. On July 16, 1939, the NKVD of the USSR issues an order "With the announcement of the regulation on the NKVD OTC detention center for minors", which approved the "Regulation on the detention center for minors", prescribing to place adolescents from 12 to 16 years old, 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 term of detention in the isolation ward was limited to six months.

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

In the secret monograph "The Main Directorate of Forced Labor Camps and Colonies of the NKVD of the USSR" written in 1940, there is a separate chapter "Working with minors and neglected":

“In the GULAG system, work with juvenile offenders and neglected people is organizationally isolated.

By the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of May 31, 1935, the Department of Labor Colonies was created in the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which has as its task the organization of reception centers, isolation wards and labor colonies for street 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 street and neglected children through cultural, educational and industrial work with them and their further direction to work in industry and agriculture.

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

In open-type colonies there are juvenile criminals with one conviction, and in closed-type colonies, juvenile criminals from 12 to 18 years old, with a large number of drives and several convictions, are held under special conditions.

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

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

1. Metalworking,
2. Woodworking,
3. Shoe production,
4. Knitwear production (in colonies for girls).

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

Clubs have been organized, with the corresponding amateur circles: music, drama, choral, fine arts, technical, physical culture and others. The upbringing and teaching staff of juvenile colonies numbers: 1200 educators - mainly from the Komsomol members and party members, 800 teachers and 255 leaders of amateur art circles. In almost all colonies pioneer detachments and Komsomol organizations are organized from the composition of the unsuccessful pupils. On March 1, 1940, there were 4126 pioneers and 1075 members of the Komsomol in the GULAG colonies.

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

In 1939, the GULAG labor colonies for minors fulfilled the production program for 169,778 thousand rubles, mainly for consumer goods. For the maintenance of the entire composition of juvenile criminals, the GULAG system spent 60,501 thousand rubles in 1939, and the state subsidy to cover these costs was expressed in approximately 15% of the total amount, and the rest of it was provided by receipts from the production and economic activities of labor colonies ... The main point that completes the entire process of re-education of juvenile criminals is their employment. For 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

Statistical article. We have in the immense a lot of historians and not so many who point to the exorbitantly inflated figures of the number of prisoners during the Stalinist repressions. Usually, after such a statement, there is a further comment that the proportion of prisoners relative to the total population was small and invisible for most citizens.

I will give some numbers, attach scans of documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation. We will not touch upon the economic and other reasons for the repressions - only figures and documents.

So, the number of prisoners in different periods of time:

There is a certain nuance here, indicated in the note - the data are given without the list of colonies and prisons. How large these numbers are, I will indicate with the following documents.

But, for now, we need to know the movement, that is, how much was received by the GULAG every year. We will take this data from the following table:

This reference also provides data without taking into account colonies and prisons. Using it, we will calculate the number of convicts in the period from 1934 to 1944. Why not further? Because since 1945 there are tables with more complete data.

So, for the calculation, we take the number of prisoners who were listed at the beginning of 1934 (510 307 people) and begin to add to it the number of arrivals. The number of new prisoners will be equal to the figure in the "Total arrived" column minus the figure from the "From the NKVD camps" column. As a result, for the period 1934-1944 we will have 6 646 056 people.

How many prisoners were held in colonies and prisons that are not counted in the tables above?

As you can see, in the camps in which we looked at the number of prisoners, only 50-55% of the composition was contained, in fact, the number of prisoners in total was twice as large. Tracing the dynamics of the movement of prisoners from the tables that I will give below, the rough figure of prisoners who went through the Gulag for the period from 1934 to 1944 averages 10 million people. In general, taking into account the analysis of documents on specific camps, individual researchers cite a figure of up to 14 million, but in fact it is impossible to trace the rotation and movement in camps, colonies and prisons to date. The gulag was a huge bureaucratic apparatus, in which there were many complex elements - the camps were restructured, enlarged, liquidated, evacuated during the war, changed their location, and the like. Hence we have the vagueness of the numbers. 6 646 056 people for the specified period is the minimum confirmed figure. It is clear that the figure was much higher, but how much is absolutely unknown, only within the limits of assumptions.

We take the following years:

In these tables, the data are given taking into account the colonies and we will look at the numbers in the "arrived" column. However, the figures are not entirely accurate, since it is impossible to determine from the documents the migration between prisons, camps and colonies. Based on their nature of the tables, we will consider these figures relatively maximum.

For 1948, I have no rotation data and I have not found them. The dynamics of changes in the number is:

According to indirect data from other documents, the rotation amounted to approximately 1.4 million people, which, in principle, coincides with L.P. Beria in 1953 that 1.5 million people were convicted annually.

So, if you look at "Arrived" from 1945 to 1954 (excluding 1948), then we get 15 694 952 people. Of these, approximately 20% should be internal migration in the penitentiary system. In total, we have about 12.5 million "left", plus 1.4 million in 1948 - a total of 13.9 million prisoners in the ten years after the war. This is the maximum figure, the lower researchers believe is about 10 million.

Add to our maximum 13.9 million the minimum 6.6 million confirmed in the previous decade - we get 20.4 million prisoners at the output.

If we take a more realistic figure for 1934-1944 of 10 million and add to it the minimum 10 million for the next decade, we get the same 20 million.

So, the number of prisoners who went through the Gulag for the period 1934-1954:

Minimum - 16.5 million people

Average - 20 million people

Maximum - 27.9 million people

As I have already said, it is not possible to calculate the exact figures today. Another question is that some individuals do not want to operate not only with an average number, but even with a minimum one.

For comparison:

In total, during the Great Patriotic War in the period 1941-1945, 14.2 million people were mobilized in the USSR. In the next decade after the war, the same number spent in the camps.

The losses in World War II for the USSR amounted to approximately 12 million military personnel (plus 4.4 million prisoners and missing persons), at least another 10 million civilians. The total losses amounted to almost 14% of the population of the whole country, while they concerned the healthiest and most able-bodied population. Over the next decade, at least another 5% of the population visited the Gulag camps. This is every 20th inhabitant. Can this be called invisible?

During the years of the post-war "heyday" in the Gulag there were 2.5 million prisoners at a time, which was 1.5% of the population. It is often this figure that is often used when assessing the scope of repression, and it really looks small - what is 1.5%. However, this is a one-time indicator.

In fact, one should look at how much went through the Gulag in total - 5-7.5% of the population, excluding those who were in the camps before and during the war. By 1954, the total number of former ZKs could reach 10% of the population in the country as a whole and up to 60% of the population of individual settlements that prisoners built and then stayed in them for settlement.

The truth of the Stalinist era Litvinenko Vladimir Vasilievich

3.2. How many political prisoners were there in the Gulag?

In the anti-communist environment, there is a widespread opinion that in the 1930s, mainly political prisoners were in the GULAG camps (in 2007, the weekly Argumenty i Fakty published this opinion as beyond doubt), and they numbered in the millions. The total number of political prisoners in the Gulag is usually estimated by anti-communists at several tens of millions. So, on October 30, 2006, RTR TV journalist Dmitry Kaystro, on the Vesti program, said about the repressions: "At that time, 52 million sentences were passed in the country for political reasons."

In fact, the number of political prisoners in the Gulag was dozens of times less than the above figures. V.N. Zemskov in 1993 in the magazine "Sotsis" published the following data: in total, from 1921 to February 1, 1954, 3,777,380 people were convicted for counterrevolutionary crimes, including 2,369,220 to detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years or less, and 765,180 people to exile and deportation ...

This means that, on average, about 72 thousand people became political prisoners annually during this period.

The total number of political prisoners in places of deprivation of liberty in the USSR, broken down by year, is given in Table. 3.3.

Table 3.3. The number of prisoners in places of detention (as of January 1 of each year)

Years	In the camps (ITL)	Of these, political (% of the total)	In colonies (ITK) and prisons	Total
1934	510 307	135 190 (26,5)	-	510 307
1935	725 483	118 256 (16,3)	240 259	965 742
1936	839 406	105 849(12,6)	457 088	1 296 494
1937	820 881	104 826(12,8)	375 488	1 196 369
1938	996 367	185 324(18,6)	885 203	1 881 570
1939	1 317 195	454 432 (34,5)	687 751	2 004 946
1940	1 344 408	444 999 (33,1)	501 862	1 846 270
1941	1 500 524	420 293 (28,7)	899 898	2 400 422
1942	1 415 596	407 988 (29,6)	629 979	2 045 575
1943	983 974	345 397 (35,6)	737 742	1 721 716
1944	663 594	268 861 (40,7)	667 521	1 331 115
1945	715 505	289 351 (41,2)	1 020 681	1 736 186
1946	746 871	333 883 (59,2)	1 201 370	1 948 241
1947	808 839	427 653 (54,3)	1 205 839	2 014 678
1948	1 108 057	416 156(38,0)	1 371 852	2 479 909
1949	1 216 361	420 696 (34,9)	1 371 371	2 587 732
1950	1 416 300	578 912* (22,7)	1 343 795	2 760 095
1951	1 533 767	475 976 (31,0)	1 159 058	2 692 825
1952	1 711 202	480 766 (28,1)	946 126	2 657 128
1953	1 727 970	465 256 (26,9)	892 844	2 620 814

Table data. 3.3. refute the opinion widespread among anti-communists that political prisoners predominated in the Gulag: in the 1930s, their number did not reach even a third of all prisoners. The prevalence of political prisoners in prisons was only in 1946 and 1947, when convicted Vlasovites, Bandera, “forest brothers”, policemen and other evil spirits began to enter the camps. In general in the period 1921-1953. the number of those convicted for political reasons was about 25% of the total number of prisoners in the Gulag.

Far from the truth are the assertions of anti-Sovietists that the majority of political prisoners in the USSR were convicted "for nothing." Here is what SN Nikiforov, who served as the prototype for Ruska Doronin in A. Solzhenitsyn's novel In the First Circle, writes about this in his memoirs, published in the journal Nash Sovremennik (No. 11, 2000): “… For eight years of imprisonment, I have not met innocent people. When we met, everyone says, and I said that they were planted for nothing. And you will get to know better, you will find out: either he served in the German army, or studied at a German intelligence school, or was a deserter ... "

And what about political prisoners and innocent convicts in post-Soviet Russia? There are also political prisoners now. There are still few of them, but the introduction of the law "On extremism", I think, will correct this matter over time. There are already reports in the press and on television about extremely zealous advocates of this law, such as those law enforcement officials who tried to initiate an absurd criminal case "for the propaganda of Nazi symbols" against the manufacturer of German tank models (with a cross on the tower) during the Great Patriotic War (he made them for use on the filming of war films).

If the number of political prisoners in modern Russia is small, then the same cannot be said about the number of those convicted for crimes that they did not commit. Innocent convicts are reported with frightening consistency by the media. Here are some examples from the Internet:

Dmitry Aprelkov, Chita - sued the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation for 100 thousand rubles for the fact that the police under torture forced him to confess to a murder, which he did not commit;

Evgeny Vedenin, Tatarstan - was sentenced to 15 years by mistake for the murder of the head of Tatneft's security;

Oleg Bondarenko, Rostov - innocently convicted in May 1998 to 13 years of imprisonment on charges of murder, for almost 6 years he sought to overturn the sentence;

Dmitry Medkov, Stavropol - innocently convicted of the murder of his sister, 4 years of compulsory treatment in a special mental hospital;

Evgeny Lukin, Novosibirsk - served 5 years for a murder that he did not commit;

Radiy Tuchibaev, Agapovka village, South Ural - innocently convicted of murder, which he did not commit, sued the RF Ministry of Finance for 350 thousand rubles;

Sergei Mikhailov, Lipovka village, Arkhangelsk region - innocently convicted of rape and murder of a first grader;

Konstantin Kutuzov, Volgograd - innocently convicted of illegal possession of weapons and ammunition;

Alexander Syusyaev, Nizhny Novgorod - innocently convicted of the murder of three people (22).

The weekly Argumenty i Fakty cites the story of State Duma deputy Boris Reznik: “I headed the Board of Trustees of the Far East prisons and camps in Khabarovsk. During trips to colonies and pre-trial detention centers, I was often approached by people who did not understand what they were doing. For example, a boy and a friend made a tunnel under the stall and stole three packs of cookies - both were terribly hungry ... So the guy spent 2.5 years in the isolation ward awaiting trial! Another guy, Ivan Demuz, was accused of stealing a sack of potatoes that he didn't actually take. In 10 months in prison, he almost went blind. Father and son Ryzhov were imprisoned for stealing a woodpile of firewood in a village medical center. My father worked as a truck driver, returned home - there is a sick wife, the stove is not heated. Someone else's firewood cost almost two years in jail for the father and 4 months for his son. "

Moreover, courts often do not take into account mitigating circumstances and impose excessively high penalties. For example, “... 23-year-old Muscovite Konstantin Yegorychev was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for a bottle of vodka stolen from a store worth 124 rubles. The judges did not take into account that the guy is a disabled person of the 2nd group and his mother is disabled. The fact of voluntary compensation for damage to the owners of the goods was not taken into account either. Valery Klepikovsky, a 29-year-old resident of the Arkhangelsk region, received 3 years of captivity for stealing 22 kg of meat. And again, the court did not notice that the man had compensated the damage and the injured hostess of the meat herself asked to dismiss the case. And that the "villain" is dependent on a non-working wife and a young child ... Arkhangelsk resident Alexei Shiryaev (26 years old) sat down for 3.5 years after he stole 999 rubles worth of property from someone else's apartment. Behind the thief is the traditional "baggage" for such cases: poverty, death of parents, two younger sisters and a dependent child, desperate attempts to feed ... "

It is not surprising that according to the VTsIOM polls, 56% of Russians do not trust law enforcement agencies, and 49% do not trust the judicial system. "Arguments and Facts" summarize: "The people see: a poor commoner can be sent to jail for a mere trifle or not for anything at all, and those who grabbed billions get away with it." It must also be said that acquittals are very rare in the judicial practice of modern Russia: in 2001, for example, there were 0.5% of them, and in 2002 - 0.77% (23).

In general, according to the chairman of the Committee “For Civil Rights” Andrei Babushkin, now “... about a third of our convicts have been punished either completely unlawfully, or sentenced to more severe punishment than they deserved. First of all, they are victims of miscarriage of justice or abuse. According to my estimates, 1.5-2% of those convicted. The second category is people who are really guilty, but their actions are incorrectly qualified. For example, a person committed theft - and he is charged with robbery or robbery. This is about 15%. And another 15–20% of cases - when, for example, extenuating circumstances are not taken into account ”.

If we consider that only 1.5% are innocently convicted, then from 1995 to the present, from 12 thousand to 18 thousand people are convicted “for nothing” every year, that is, in “democratic Russia, more people are innocently convicted,” than it was in the Stalinist USSR.

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The victims are genuine and contrived
The greatest distortions and falsifications were, apparently, the data on the number and mortality of prisoners in the Gulag. For a long time after all, contradictory, but clearly exaggerated figures on the number of those who were detained and died, died in camps and colonies have gone and continue to walk. I say: "clearly exaggerated", because honest researchers have already proven this. And not only scientists. For example, Rear Admiral Anatoly Tikhonovich Shtyrov, who served in the Far East for many years, conducted his own investigation of Kolyma statistics. The fact is that in June 1996, just before the presidential elections, a gigantic monument to the “victims of the GULAG” was erected in Magadan. Moreover, it was argued that "there was a concentration camp in this very place, in which at least 700 thousand prisoners died," and in total ... 10 million died in Kolyma!

Meanwhile, A.T. Shtyrov made his calculations and came to different conclusions, like other independent researchers of the “history of the Kolyma region”. They transported prisoners for Dalstroy to the port of Nagayevo through the ports of Vanino and Nakhodka, first on one and then on two specially equipped steamers, which never operated simultaneously. Each of them could take up to 2 thousand people into the holds. The navigation season in the Sea of \u200b\u200bOkhotsk is from June to November, that is, 6 months a year. Shuttle flight there and back - at least 15 days. Consequently, the transport could make no more than 12 trips per navigation and deliver up to 30 thousand special contingent people to the Kolyma land per year. This is the maximum, with uninterrupted operation - without delays for storms, fogs, etc. And there were no other delivery methods! It turns out that in 17 years no more than 510 thousand prisoners could be delivered to the Kolyma, but in reality, according to Shtyrov's calculations, up to 375 thousand. Indeed, the archives of "Dalstroy" showed that from 1939 to 1953, a special contingent of 371 thousand prisoners was taken to the port of Nagaevo. Where did the 10 million dead come from?

I am addressing you as the most knowledgeable specialists in this field: can we bring the final clarity to such a confusing and, of course, deliberately distorted by anti-Soviet Gulag statistics?

Yuri MORUKOV. It is possible and necessary. There is already some clarity. Only until now, few are known. And continue to dominate the mass consciousness, as you quite rightly noted, incredibly inflated, simply fantastic numbers of those who were and died in the GULAG. It was downright competition, whose numbers are worse. Suffice it to say that, according to R. Conquest's book "The Great Terror", the number of prisoners in the camps was 5 million in 1933, and in 1939 it increased to 9 million. The notorious A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko claims that just before the Great Patriotic War 20 million people were repressed, of which 7 million were shot. Some other authors, among whom A.I. Solzhenitsyn, brought the death toll in places of imprisonment to 50 million or more.

VC. Where does all this come from? What are these calculations based on?

Mikhail MORUKOV. The question is reasonable, but you can answer it like this: it is taken from the ceiling. This is not a scientific approach, completely unsubstantiated. And even if references are made to some documents, then with gross distortion.

For example, the aforementioned Antonov-Ovseenko estimates the number of prisoners as follows: "according to the GULAG General Supply Department, there were almost 16 million on rations in places of detention - according to the number of paykodach in the first post-war years." But it seems that he did not see this document and quotes it from someone else's words. After all, if I had seen, I would certainly have drawn attention to the comma between the numbers 1 and 6, since in reality, in the fall of 1945, not 16 million, but 1.6 million prisoners were held in the camps and colonies of the Gulag. 10 times less!

Data on the number of prisoners, special settlers, exiled settlers, exiles and exiles are available in the documents of the Gulag, stored in the archives. It contains statistical information about the "population" of the GULAG as of January 1 of each year. Before us, Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov, a well-known and respected historian, was engaged in the study of this information. The table of the number of prisoners compiled by him by years has already entered scientific circulation.

VC. Yes, we printed this table. Together with the article by V.N. Zemskova. However, people who call themselves "democrats" do not cease to accuse him of citing underreporting, which is explained by the allegedly forged nature of the documents used. Can you refute this?

Yu.M. Let me explain. The organization of forced labor camps and the need for effective use of the contingent literally within six months led to the creation of a central apparatus for the leadership of the ITL, since their subordination to the OGPU bodies in the regions did not make it possible to quickly and purposefully concentrate the labor force from prisoners to solve the tasks set by the government. And the creation of a central government body (let me remind you that since April 25, 1930, it was the OGPU ULAG, which was transformed into the GULAG on October 1 of the same year) required the necessary reporting system. So, the most important element that ensures the adoption of managerial decisions is statistical reporting, developed for the main areas of activity of corrective labor camps (ITL), and then colonies (ITK), where convicts were kept for up to three years.

VC. What required data did it include?

Yu.M. First of all, this is reporting on the presence, movement and composition of prisoners, information on the physical profile of the labor force from their composition, on the number of women, disabled people, etc., on the use of specialists. All this was collected by the accounting and distribution department (since 1947 - the special department of the 2nd department of the GULAG).

In addition, there was a sanitary department. He kept statistics on morbidity, outpatient and inpatient. The number of persons for certain diseases, as well as the loss of working time as a result of release due to illness, the number of operating medical facilities and their capacity, and the number of medical workers were taken into account. The sanitary department also received data on mortality among convicts, including those outside medical institutions, on its causes.

Separate reporting was on the line of security, operational-regime work, personnel, cultural and educational work, production and economic activities. So, if all of the above is kept in mind, with absolute certainty it is necessary to conclude that it is impossible to falsify the entire reporting system.

VC. And there can be no doubt about that?

Yu.M. None! After all, the information received by the central office of the GULAG was repeatedly duplicated by various directorates and departments, since on their basis cardinal decisions were made, funds and material resources were allocated. Reporting from the ITL and ITK was sent to several addresses, and its volume was so significant that there could not even be a thought of any deliberate falsification. Imagine, the GULAG reporting scheme included seven sections (timesheets), numbering 85 forms, in which there were more than two and a half thousand indicators!

M.M. This is not only our conclusion that the possibility of falsification in the statistics of the GULAG should be categorically excluded. This is the opinion of the same Viktor Zemskov, and Alexander Dugin, the author of the book "The Unknown Gulag", who did a lot to establish the truth on this topic, and other truly professional historians who work not to please the political or any other conjuncture ... Zemskov rightly notes that the issue of forgery could be considered if it were about one or several disparate documents. But it is impossible to forge a whole archival fund in state custody with many thousands of storage units, which includes a huge array of primary materials! And it is possible to assume that the primary materials were fake only if one admits the ridiculous idea that each camp had two offices: one that was in charge of genuine office work, and the other that was inauthentic.

Nevertheless, all these documents were subjected to a thorough source analysis, and their authenticity was established with a 100% guarantee. The data of the primary materials ultimately coincide with the summary statistical reporting of the GULAG and with the information contained in the memoranda of the Gulag leadership addressed to N.I. Ezhova, L.P. Beria, S.N. Kruglov, as well as in their reports addressed to I.V. Stalin.

Yu.M. It can be added that in the materials of the all-Union population censuses of 1937 and 1939, the size of the NKVD special contingent of group "B" (prisoners and labor settlers) coincides with the data taken by V.N. Zemskov from the statistical reporting of the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR, the prison administration of the NKVD and the Department of Labor Settlements of the GULAG of the NKVD of the USSR.

M.M. After all that has been said, the continuation of the polemic with authors such as A.V. Antonova-Ovseenko or a certain O.G. Shatunovskaya, it would seem, becomes completely meaningless. And more than strange is the inclusion of Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" in school history programs. The free play with the “victim numbers” continues in the same vein ...

Yu.M. Meanwhile, the available information makes it possible to reconstruct with a significant degree of reliability the real number of convicts who entered the camps and colonies, as well as their further fate. This analysis can be carried out both for the entire system as a whole, and for individual camps.

You talked about Dalstroy. But the data analyzed by Rear Admiral A.T. Shtyrov, as I understand it, does not refer to the entire period of this organization's existence. And I can give figures for the entire period - from 1932 to 1954 inclusive. So, during this time, 867 thousand prisoners entered the Dalstroy camp, of which about 500 thousand were released, about 140 thousand died, about 10 thousand fled. On January 1, 1955, 73 thousand convicts remained, the rest - in different years - were taken to other camps and colonies.

VC. You see, someone was released after serving their sentence, and someone died in custody. However, according to your data, 140 thousand people died in the Dalstroy camps, and according to others - as much as 10 million. Such fictitious statistics, with which people are stunned, is designed to paint a picture of "death camps". That there was a complete analogy with the Nazi concentration camps.

Did the GULAG leadership have an interest in the greatest mortality? People were treated. The same Solzhenitsyn was cured of cancer, as he himself told in the story "Cancer Ward". And cured for free! And what is the cost of such treatment today? He claims that it was God who saved him so that Aleksandr Isaevich would write his "Archipelago", however, it was still not without doctors and medicines. What can you say about the mortality statistics in the Gulag?

Yu.M. The question of the number of people who died and perished in places of imprisonment over the years of the existence of the Main Administration of Camps was hardly raised in a purely scientific sense. Stereotypes, myths and legends gravitated over the authors of most publications. Each tried to show the hardships and horrors of camp life as scary as possible, and for this the most incredible numbers of the dead and the dead were announced. True, no documents were provided to confirm where this came from.

VC. You said that there are documents on real mortality.

Yu.M. Yes, as I said, two independent structures of the GULAG were engaged in the collection of data on mortality in prisons - the sanitary department (SANO) and the department for registration and distribution of prisoners (URO), renamed in 1947 into the special department of the 2nd department of the GULAG ... The sanitary department, which was responsible for the sanitary condition of places of detention, was interested in both an actual reduction in mortality, and in the fact that deaths not related to the level and quality of sanitation were not included in the reporting. Therefore, for example, those killed as a result of gangster manifestations, while trying to escape, etc. the statistics of the sanitary department were not taken into account.

But all of them were included in the statistics that came to the URO from the units of the registration and distribution of prisoners in camps and colonies. As a result, there is a certain difference between the data of these two reports, measured in some years by thousands of people (for example, in 1939 - 3898 people, in 1940 - 2809, etc.). Using these data, it is possible with significant certainty to isolate the various components of mortality in ITL and ITC.

The annual mortality rate was calculated using various methods. Until 1943, the number of deaths correlated with the average number of prisoners for the year. For example, in 1934, 25,187 people died in the camps, and the average payroll this year was 586,477. Dividing the first number by the second and multiplying by 100, we get the mortality rate as a percentage, which was 4.28 percent.

Since 1943, the calculation has been different: as the ratio of the amount of deaths for each month to the sum of the average monthly number of prisoners. If we take the same year 1934, then 2218 people died in January with an average monthly number of prisoners of 450174, in February 1890 people died with an average monthly total of 450,000, and so on until December inclusive. Adding the number of deaths for the year gives the same amount - 25187 people, but adding the average monthly numbers for the whole year has a different result - 7304301 people. When the first number is divided by the second and multiplied by 100, the mortality rate is 0.34 percent, that is, compared to the previous method, it is significantly lower.

I recalculated all the data according to the original method so that we could compare. From the available data it is clear that the years of the Great Patriotic War became the most tragic period for the inhabitants of places of imprisonment. However, as for the entire population of our country. The ITL and ITK were affected by the increased workload, a significant reduction in centralized supply and, as a result, a decrease in food rations, massive transfers of prisoners, including urgent evacuation.

The highest mortality rate in the camps was in May 1942, when 28642 people died, and then the mortality rate decreases and in October decreases to 13193. On the contrary, the mortality rate in the colonies increased throughout the year, reaching a maximum in the summer months, which was associated primarily with the mass evacuation of prisoners from the regions of southern Russia and the North Caucasus.

After the end of the war, the death rate among convicts drops sharply. Since 1949, the death rate (deaths per thousand people) in the Gulag has been even lower than that in the country. With all the conventionality of such a comparison, it gives a fairly objective idea of \u200b\u200bthe situation in the ITL and ITK, of its dynamics in the postwar period.

VC. How, in what data can one summarize the real mortality rate of convicts over the years of the existence of the GULAG?

Yu.M. In the camps, according to the SANO, 1 million 34 thousand people died, and according to the URO - a little more, 1 million 167 thousand. In the colonies, the death rate was about 570 thousand people. Thus, during the existence of the Gulag, from 1930 to 1956, approximately 1 million 737 thousand convicts died and perished here. Almost 60 percent of this number falls on the war years. Taking into account such a difficult time for the country, the average death rate in the Gulag for all 27 years of its existence is 4.91 percent of the average annual number of prisoners.

The mortality rate in the Gulag fluctuated depending on the conditions outside the places of detention, and in comparison with a similar indicator in the country, it was of the same order of magnitude. The number of deaths in prisons, with a few exceptions, did not exceed 2-3 percent of the mortality rate in the country as a whole and did not significantly affect the overall indicators.

VC. Of course, any death is a tragedy. And life in prison is not the norm. Although, if the punishment is deserved, then it is fair to bear this punishment. After all, it’s no better, in all respects, if the criminals in their mass are not condemned, not punished, do not work in camps and colonies, benefiting society, but defiantly walk free, which has become quite common today.

At the same time, I was amazed at the conclusion that Alexander Dugin came to as a result of his research. As he writes, "the scale of the criminal law policy associated with the Stalinist period of our history does not differ too much from the analogous indicators of modern Russia." In the early 90s, there were 765 thousand prisoners in the system of the Main Directorate of Correctional Affairs of the USSR,

SIZO - 200 thousand. Almost the same rates exist today. But you involuntarily think: what if we added to those in prison all those who "according to merit" must be there, what data would we have! ..

In my opinion, they want to deduce from our past an excuse for any current outrage, to raise to a pedestal the most flagrant injustice that has reigned in the country over the past twenty years. But of course, there are no shootings, and there is no GULAG. This means that we should rejoice, rejoice, closing our eyes to what is happening around us (including mass mortality!) And cursing everything that happened in Soviet times. But, firstly, the time was very different, depending on the specific historical conditions. And secondly, even the most severe years require concrete and truthful consideration, excluding all sorts of inventions, falsifications, speculations.

M.M. Let's hope that our conversation serves just that.

VC. Once Anna Akhmatova put it very brightly: they say, half of the country was in prison, and half of the country was guarded. And it was picked up, inspired by the young! But the emotional poetic image still does not reflect reality for certain, which is once again convinced by the documentary factual data that you cited. In the name of truth, it is necessary that everyone understands: Svanidze, Mlechin, Fedotov, Karaganov and other "de-Stalinizers" are simply lying when they say that everything in the Soviet country was built by the prisoners, and the penalty boxers defended the country. In what directions do you think it is especially important to continue the explanatory work?

Yu.M. If people know how much of what was actually built, created in the Soviet era, and what of this falls to the share of the "prisoners", the Mlechins and Svanidze will become simply a laughing stock for the absolute majority. If the feat of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War is revealed to new generations in all its tremendous strength and completeness, the contribution of the "penalties" will take a real, that is, a very modest, place in it.

M.M. It is very important to use concrete calculations to expose the lies about repressions, which have become especially commonplace. For example, about 1937-1938, when in the habitually sweeping image they "planted" almost in a row, indiscriminately. For example, Roy Medvedev writes: during these years, “according to my calculations, from 5 to 7 million people were repressed ... Most of those arrested in 1937-1938. ended up in forced labor camps, a dense network of which covered the entire country. " How these calculations were carried out remains unknown. But Alexander Dugin, mentioned by us, does not hide his methodology and his number, based on purely documentary archival data. And here's the picture.

On January 1, 1937, there were 820,881 people in forced labor camps, on January 1, 1938 - 996,367, on January 1, 1939 - 1,317,195 people. A lot of? Certainly. However, these numbers cannot be automatically added to obtain the total number of those arrested in 1937-1938, as is often done.

One of the reasons, explains A. Dugin, is that every year a certain number of prisoners were released from the camps after serving their sentence or for other reasons. These data are as follows: in 1937, 364,437 people were released, in 1938 - 279,666. This means that 539,923 people entered in 1937, and in 1938 - 600,724. Thus, the total number of prisoners newly admitted to forced labor camps of the GULAG, amounted to 1,140,647 people. More than a million, but still not 5-7 million according to R. Medvedev!

At the same time, there is one more important circumstance, about which, as a rule, they try to keep silent about everyone who has the goal not of establishing the truth, but forcing the "horrors of Soviet power". We have already said that the majority of the prisoners were not “political”, but “ordinary” criminals. But the same R. Medvedev gave "his own calculations" without any gradation - at all! He enrolls everyone in the political. Meanwhile, A. Dugin clarifies and concretizes: according to the well-known 58th article - for counter-revolutionary crimes - there were 104,826 people in the gulag camps in 1937, or 12.8 percent of the total number of prisoners, in 1938 - 185,324 people (18, 6 percent) and in 1939 - 454,432 people (34.5 percent).

Consequently, the cited number of repressed in 1937-1938, allegedly for political reasons and who were in forced labor camps, must be reduced at least 10 times! And the rest? Murderers, robbers, rapists and other representatives of the criminal world. Well, should we consider them also "victims of political repression"? But it turns out that this is exactly what they think!

Yu.M. In the testimonies of Alexander Dugin, there is also data refuting the highly exaggerated figures on dispossession. They call the number of dispossessed and evicted 16 million, which comes from the "Gulag Archipelago", where Solzhenitsyn wrote: "There was a stream of the 29-30s in the good Ob, pushing fifteen million peasants into the tundra and taiga, and somehow not more" ... However, at the very beginning of the special resettlement, on January 18, 1930, G. Yagoda sent a directive to the permanent representatives of the OGPU in the localities, in which he ordered "to accurately take into account and telegraphically report from which districts and how many kulak-White Guard elements are supposed to be evicted" This is how the certificate of the Department of Special Settlements of the GULAG of the OGPU was born, which indicated the number of those deported in 1930-1931: 381,026 families, or 1,803,392 people. Yes, this is a lot, almost 2 million, but not 15 or 16 million, as the “destalinizers” claim!

Not to mention the fact that there was no resettlement of the peasantry by "genocide", the goal of its destruction was not set. And this, again, is being exaggerated in every way in order to equate communism with fascism ...

VC. In a word, is there a lot of work for conscientious historians to clear up the heaped falsifications?

Yu.M. Yes many.

M.M. Lots of…

VC. Let us and we continue our conversation, if the readers have any questions, wishes, objections. The topic is huge and multifaceted, far from everything we managed to touch upon, even in passing. So let's wait for readers' letters.

The history of the GULAG is closely intertwined with the entire Soviet era, but especially with its Stalinist period. A network of camps stretched across the country. They were visited by various groups of the population accused under the famous 58th article. The GULAG was not only a system of punishment, but also a layer of the Soviet economy. The prisoners carried out the most ambitious projects

The origin of the gulag

The future system of the Gulag began to take shape immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. During the Civil War, she began to isolate her class and ideological enemies in special concentration camps. Then they did not shy away from this term, since it received a truly monstrous assessment during the atrocities of the Third Reich.

At first, the camps were run by Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. The mass terror against the "counter-revolution" included the general arrests of the rich bourgeoisie, factory owners, landlords, merchants, church leaders, etc. Soon the camps were given over to the Cheka, whose chairman was Felix Dzerzhinsky. They organized forced labor. It was also necessary in order to raise the ruined economy.

If in 1919 there were only 21 camps on the territory of the RSFSR, then by the end of the Civil War there were already 122. In Moscow alone, there were seven such institutions, where prisoners from all over the country were transported. In 1919 there were more than three thousand of them in the capital. This was not yet the Gulag system, but only its prototype. Even then, a tradition was formed according to which all activities in the OGPU were subject only to intradepartmental acts, and not to general Soviet legislation.

The first in the GULAG system existed in an emergency mode. Civil war led to lawlessness and violation of prisoners' rights.

Solovki

In 1919, the Cheka established several labor camps in the north of Russia, more precisely, in the Arkhangelsk province. Soon this network was named the ELEPHANT. The abbreviation stands for "Northern Special Purpose Camps". The GULAG system in the USSR appeared even in the most remote regions of a large country.

In 1923, the Cheka was transformed into the GPU. The new department distinguished itself with several initiatives. One of them was a proposal to establish a new forced camp on the Solovetsky archipelago, which was not far from those same Northern camps. Before that, there was an ancient Orthodox monastery on the islands in the White Sea. It was closed as part of the fight against the Church and the "priests".

This is how one of the key symbols of the GULAG appeared. It was the Solovetsky special purpose camp. His project was proposed by Joseph Unshlikht, one of the then leaders of the VChK-GPU. His fate is significant. This man contributed to the development of the repressive system, of which he eventually became a victim. In 1938 he was shot at the famous Kommunarka training ground. This place was the dacha of Genrikh Yagoda, the People's Commissar of the NKVD in the 30s. He was also shot.

Solovki became one of the main camps in the Gulag of the 1920s. According to the order of the OGPU, it was supposed to contain criminal and political prisoners. A few years after the emergence of Solovki, they expanded, they had branches on the mainland, including in the Republic of Karelia. The GULAG system was constantly expanding with new prisoners.

In 1927, 12 thousand people were held in the Solovetsky camp. The harsh climate and unbearable conditions led to regular deaths. Over the entire existence of the camp, more than 7 thousand people have been buried in it. Moreover, about half of them died in 1933, when famine raged throughout the country.

Solovki were famous throughout the country. They tried not to let out information about problems inside the camp. In 1929, Maxim Gorky, at that time the main Soviet writer, came to the archipelago. He wanted to check the conditions of detention in the camp. The writer's reputation was impeccable: his books were published in huge editions, he was known as a revolutionary of the old school. Therefore, many prisoners pinned the hope on him that he would publicize everything that was happening within the walls of the former monastery.

Before Gorky was on the island, the camp went through a total cleanup and was put in a decent look. The bullying of the prisoners stopped. At the same time, the prisoners were threatened that if they let Gorky talk about their lives, they would face severe punishment. The writer, having visited Solovki, was delighted with how prisoners are re-educated, accustomed to work and returned to society. However, at one of these meetings, in a children's colony, a boy approached Gorky. He told the famous guest about the jailers' bullying: torture in the snow, overtime work, standing in the cold, etc. Gorky left the hut in tears. When he sailed to the mainland, the boy was shot. The Gulag system brutally cracked down on any disaffected prisoners.

Stalin's gulag

In 1930, the GULAG system was finally formed under Stalin. She was subordinate to the NKVD and was one of the five main directorates in this People's Commissariat. Also in 1934, all correctional institutions that had previously belonged to the People's Commissariat of Justice were transferred to the GULAG. Labor in the camps was legally approved in the Correctional Labor Code of the RSFSR. Now numerous prisoners had to implement the most dangerous and ambitious economic and infrastructure projects: construction projects, digging canals, etc.

The authorities did everything to make the GULAG system in the USSR seem the norm to free citizens. For this, regular ideological campaigns were launched. In 1931, the construction of the famous Belomorkanal began. This was one of the most significant projects of the first Stalinist five-year plan. The GULAG system is also one of the economic mechanisms of the Soviet state.

In order for the layman to learn in detail about the construction of the White Sea Canal in positive tones, the Communist Party instructed famous writers to prepare a book of praise. This is how the work "The Stalin Channel" appeared. A whole group of authors worked on it: Tolstoy, Gorky, Pogodin and Shklovsky. Particularly interesting is the fact that the book spoke positively about bandits and thieves, whose work was also used. The GULAG occupied an important place in the system of the Soviet economy. Cheap forced labor made it possible to implement the tasks of the five-year plans at an accelerated pace.

Political and criminals

The Gulag camp system was divided into two parts. It was the world of political and criminals. The last of them were recognized by the state as “socially close”. This term was popular in Soviet propaganda. Some criminals tried to cooperate with the camp administration in order to facilitate their existence. At the same time, the authorities demanded from them loyalty and spying on political ones.

Numerous "enemies of the people", as well as those convicted of alleged espionage and anti-Soviet propaganda, had no opportunity to defend their rights. Most often they resorted to hunger strikes. With their help, political prisoners tried to draw the attention of the administration to the difficult living conditions, abuses and bullying of the jailers.

Solitary hunger strikes did not lead to anything. Sometimes the NKVD officers could only increase the suffering of the convict. For this, plates with delicious food and scarce foods were placed in front of the starving.

Fighting protest

The camp administration could pay attention to the hunger strike only if it was massive. Any concerted action of the prisoners led to the fact that they were looking for instigators among them, who were then dealt with with special cruelty.

For example, in Ukhtpechlag in 1937, a group of those convicted of Trotskyism went on a hunger strike. Any organized protest was viewed as counter-revolutionary activity and a threat to the state. This led to an atmosphere of denunciations and mistrust of prisoners to each other reigned in the camps. However, in some cases, the organizers of the hunger strikes, on the contrary, openly announced their initiative because of the simple despair in which they found themselves. In Ukhtpechlag, the founders were arrested. They refused to testify. Then the NKVD troika sentenced the activists to death.

If the form of political protest in the Gulag was rare, then riots were common. Moreover, their initiators were, as a rule, criminals. Convicted persons often became victims of criminals who carried out orders from their superiors. Representatives of the underworld received release from work or occupied an inconspicuous position in the camp apparatus.

Skilled labor in the camp

This practice was also associated with the fact that the GULAG system suffered from a shortage of professional personnel. The NKVD officers sometimes had no education at all. The camp authorities often had no choice but to put the convicts themselves in the economic and administrative-technical positions.

Moreover, among the political prisoners there were a lot of people of various specialties. Especially in demand was the "technical intelligentsia" - engineers, etc. In the early 1930s, these were people who had received their education in tsarist Russia and remained specialists and professionals. In successful cases, such prisoners could even establish a trusting relationship with the administration in the camp. Some of them, when released, remained in the system at the administrative level.

However, in the mid-30s, the regime tightened, which also affected highly qualified convicts. The situation of the specialists who were in the inner-camp world was completely different. The well-being of such people completely depended on the character and degree of depravity of a particular boss. The Soviet system also created the GULAG system in order to completely demoralize its opponents, real or imaginary. Therefore, there could be no liberalism towards prisoners.

Sharashki

More fortunate for those specialists and scientists who fell into the so-called sharashka. These were closed-type scientific institutions where they worked on secret projects. Many famous scientists ended up in camps for their freethinking. For example, such was Sergei Korolev - a man who became a symbol of Soviet space exploration. Designers, engineers, people associated with the military industry fell into sharashka.

Such establishments are reflected in the culture. The writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who visited the sharashka, many years later wrote the novel In the First Circle, in which he described in detail the life of such prisoners. This author is best known for his other book - "The Gulag Archipelago".

By the beginning of World War II, colonies and camp complexes had become an important element in many industrial sectors. The Gulag system, in short, existed wherever prisoner slave labor could be used. It was especially in demand in the mining and metallurgical, fuel and forest industries. Capital construction was also an important area. Almost all large structures of the Stalin era were erected by convicts. They were mobile and cheap labor.

After the end of the war, the role of the camp economy became even more important. The scope of forced labor has expanded due to the implementation of the nuclear project and many other military tasks. In 1949, about 10% of the country's production was created in camps.

Unprofitable camps

Even before the war, in order not to undermine the economic efficiency of the camps, Stalin canceled parole in the camps. At one of the discussions about the fate of the peasants who ended up in the camps after dispossession of kulaks, he said that it was necessary to come up with a new system of incentives for productivity in work, etc. another Stakhanovite.

After Stalin's remarks, the system of counting working days was canceled. According to it, the prisoners reduced their terms, going to production. The NKVD did not want to do this, since the refusal of credits deprived the convicts of the motivation to work hard. This, in turn, led to a drop in the profitability of any camp. Nevertheless, the offsets were canceled.

It was the unprofitableness of enterprises within the GULAG (among some other reasons) that forced the Soviet leadership to reorganize the entire system that had previously existed outside the legal framework, being under the exclusive jurisdiction of the NKVD.

The low efficiency of prisoners' labor was also associated with the fact that many of them had health problems. This was facilitated by a poor diet, difficult living conditions, bullying by the administration and many other hardships. In 1934, 16% of the prisoners were unemployed and 10% were sick.

Liquidation of the Gulag

The abandonment of the Gulag took place gradually. The impetus for the beginning of this process was the death of Stalin in 1953. The liquidation of the GULAG system was started within a few months after that.

First of all, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on a mass amnesty. Thus, more than half of the prisoners were released. As a rule, these were people whose term was less than five years.

At the same time, most of the political prisoners remained behind bars. Stalin's death and the change of power instilled in many convicts the confidence that something would soon change. In addition, the prisoners began to openly resist the oppression and abuse of the camp authorities. So, there were several riots (in Vorkuta, Kengir and Norilsk).

Another important event for the GULAG was the 20th Congress of the CPSU. It was addressed by Nikita Khrushchev, who shortly before that had won the internal battle for power. From the rostrum, he condemned the numerous atrocities of his era.

At the same time, special commissions appeared in the camps, which began to review the cases of political prisoners. In 1956, their number was three times less. The liquidation of the GULAG system coincided with its transfer to a new department - the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1960, the last head of the GUITK (Main Directorate of Forced Labor Camps) Mikhail Kholodkov was dismissed.