Litwin
Platinum Member
Which of Gulags Facts is the most Terrifying for you?
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The USSR during the Stalin era was a place of purges and bloodthirsty secret police where the most innocent remark or unfounded suspicion could land you in a gulag. “Gulag” is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitel’no-trudovykh Lagerei, which translates to “main administration of corrective labor camps.” There were dozens of these forced labor camps spread across the nation, many of which were located in the some of the coldest places on the planet. While not “extermination camps,” life in the gulags was unrelentingly brutal.
10 Kengir uprising
To understand the Kengir uprising, it is important to note that gulags generally did not contain the large populations of rapists, murderers, and drug dealers of today’s prisons. The vast majority were political prisoners, intellectuals who took a stand against the government’s oppressive regime. They were arrested under Article 38, a sweeping penal code that called for the arrest of anyone suspected of counter-revolution. The guards used “real” criminals (called “thieves”) as a means of controlling the wider gulag population. The thieves terrorized activists, preventing them from organizing.
In May 1954, the same tactic was attempted at Kengir, a gulag in the Kazakh SSR, when approximately 650 thieves were admitted to a population of over 5,000 activists. The plan backfired, and soon after, the prisoners took control of the camp, driving out the guards. Far from descending into anarchy, the inmates took full advantage of their freedom, building their own society complete with wedding ceremonies, plays, and an improvised hydroelectric power system. Knowing that they couldn’t hold the gulag for long without defending themselves, they made all kinds of weapons, including crude IEDs.
Negotiations between the prisoners and the outside world soured, and 40 days into their uprising, the Red Army stormed in with tanks, attack dogs, and 1,700 troops. The prisoners put up a valiant fight, but their rebellion was crushed. Some of the defeated inmates committed suicide, fearing what might happen to them if they were caught. The official government death toll numbers mere dozens, but survivors reported that hundreds were killed.
9
The White Sea Canal
Slave labor has its benefits, and the gulags aimed to make good use of their prisoners on various construction projects across the USSR. One of their first major undertakings was the White Sea Canal, built in 20 months between 1931 and 1933. The 227-kilometer (141 mi) canal connects the White Sea to Lake Onega. Even with modern tools, this would have been a massive undertaking, but the canal was largely dug with primitive tools like shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows. The death toll of this project is unknown, but historians estimate that anywhere between 25,000 and 100,000 lives were lost in the process.
What makes the construction of the White Sea Canal even more tragic is that it was largely useless. Not only were prisoners used for building it, the engineers were prisoners, too. Their creation was too shallow to be used by large ships, and it was choked with ice for half the year. The prisoners certainly didn’t take any pride in their work—they merely did what they had to do to survive—and the canal was so poorly constructed that by the time it was finished, it was already starting to fall apart.
10 Terrifying Facts About Gulags - Listverse
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The USSR during the Stalin era was a place of purges and bloodthirsty secret police where the most innocent remark or unfounded suspicion could land you in a gulag. “Gulag” is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitel’no-trudovykh Lagerei, which translates to “main administration of corrective labor camps.” There were dozens of these forced labor camps spread across the nation, many of which were located in the some of the coldest places on the planet. While not “extermination camps,” life in the gulags was unrelentingly brutal.
10 Kengir uprising
To understand the Kengir uprising, it is important to note that gulags generally did not contain the large populations of rapists, murderers, and drug dealers of today’s prisons. The vast majority were political prisoners, intellectuals who took a stand against the government’s oppressive regime. They were arrested under Article 38, a sweeping penal code that called for the arrest of anyone suspected of counter-revolution. The guards used “real” criminals (called “thieves”) as a means of controlling the wider gulag population. The thieves terrorized activists, preventing them from organizing.
In May 1954, the same tactic was attempted at Kengir, a gulag in the Kazakh SSR, when approximately 650 thieves were admitted to a population of over 5,000 activists. The plan backfired, and soon after, the prisoners took control of the camp, driving out the guards. Far from descending into anarchy, the inmates took full advantage of their freedom, building their own society complete with wedding ceremonies, plays, and an improvised hydroelectric power system. Knowing that they couldn’t hold the gulag for long without defending themselves, they made all kinds of weapons, including crude IEDs.
Negotiations between the prisoners and the outside world soured, and 40 days into their uprising, the Red Army stormed in with tanks, attack dogs, and 1,700 troops. The prisoners put up a valiant fight, but their rebellion was crushed. Some of the defeated inmates committed suicide, fearing what might happen to them if they were caught. The official government death toll numbers mere dozens, but survivors reported that hundreds were killed.
9
The White Sea Canal
Slave labor has its benefits, and the gulags aimed to make good use of their prisoners on various construction projects across the USSR. One of their first major undertakings was the White Sea Canal, built in 20 months between 1931 and 1933. The 227-kilometer (141 mi) canal connects the White Sea to Lake Onega. Even with modern tools, this would have been a massive undertaking, but the canal was largely dug with primitive tools like shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows. The death toll of this project is unknown, but historians estimate that anywhere between 25,000 and 100,000 lives were lost in the process.
What makes the construction of the White Sea Canal even more tragic is that it was largely useless. Not only were prisoners used for building it, the engineers were prisoners, too. Their creation was too shallow to be used by large ships, and it was choked with ice for half the year. The prisoners certainly didn’t take any pride in their work—they merely did what they had to do to survive—and the canal was so poorly constructed that by the time it was finished, it was already starting to fall apart.
10 Terrifying Facts About Gulags - Listverse
