44 Photos That Reveal The Horrors Of The Soviet Gulags

Established after the Bolsheviks took power in 1919, the gulags were forced labor camps where at least 1 million people died over the next 50 years.

During the days of Joseph Stalin, one wrong word could end with the secret police at your door, ready to drag you off to a Soviet gulag. Historians estimate that between 15 and 18 million people were thrown into one of these forced labor camps during Stalin’s reign, where inmates toiled under torturous conditions — often to their deaths.

Some were political prisoners, rounded up for speaking out against the Soviet regime. Others were criminals and thieves. And some were just ordinary people, caught cracking an unkind word about a Soviet official.

They came from all over. Though many hailed from the Soviet Union — the U.S.S.R. came to encompass 15 countries before it dissolved in 1991 — gulags also imprisoned people of other nationalities. Polish, French, and American prisoners toiled within these prison camps during the 20th century.

Wherever the gulag inmates came from, their fate was the same: backbreaking labor in freezing, remote locations with little protection from the elements and less food. These photographs tell their story:

Young boys in a gulag stare at the cameraman from their beds.

Molotov, USSR. Date unspecified.

David Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies A miner who died working in a forced labor camp is put to rest under the ground.

Vaygach Island, USSR. 1931.

Wikimedia Commons Polish families are deported to Siberia as part of the Soviet Union's relocation plan.

Influential families in conquered states would often be forced into labor to help systematically destroy their culture.

Poland. 1941.

Wikimedia Commons A gulag kitchen serving prisoners working on the White Sea–Baltic Canal.

Belomorkanal. Date unknown.

Public Domain A gold mine in Kolyma.

Siberia. 1934.

The Central Russian Film and Photo Archive Not every political prisoner was pushed into forced labor. Here, the bodies of thousands of Polish people lie dead in a mass grave.

Katyn, Russia. April 30, 1943.

Wikimedia Commons The dead bodies of political prisoners, murdered by the secret police, lie inside of a prison camp.

Tarnopil, Ukraine. July 10, 1941.

Wikimedia Commons Two members of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police.

Likely at Vaygach Island. Circa 1930 - 1932.

Public Domain A gulag camp called Vorkuta in the winter.

Circa 1947.

Kauno IX forto muziejus / Kaunas 9th Fort Museum/Wikimedia Commons Vorkuta was one of the largest gulags and was located 100 miles above the Arctic Circle.

Circa 1940-1945.

Wikimedia Commons Convicts sleep inside of a sod-covered house in a Siberian gulag.

Siberia, USSR. Date unspecified.

Library of Congress Prisoners digging for clay at Solovki Island.

Circa 1924 or 1925.

Public Domain Posters of Stalin and Marx gaze down at the prisoners inside of their sleeping quarters.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library Prisoners at work building the White Sea–Baltic Canal, one of the first major projects in the Soviet Union made entirely through slave labor.

12,000 people died while working in the harsh conditions at the canal.

USSR. 1932.

Wikimedia Commons Political prisoners.

Kengir. Circa 1949–1956.

Kauno IX forto muziejus / Kaunas 9th Fort Museum/Wikimedia Commons The chiefs of the gulags. These men were responsible for forcing more than 100,000 prisoners to work.

USSR. July 1932

Wikimedia Commons A deportee camp in the Kolyma region.

Circa 1956.

Kauno IX forto muziejus / Kaunas 9th Fort Museum/Wikimedia Commons Gulag guards during the construction of the White Sea Baltic Canal.

1932.

Public Domain Prisoners in a Soviet gulag dig a ditch while a guard looks on.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library Stalin comes out to inspect the progress on the Moscow Canal, which is being built by imprisoned workers.

Moscow, USSR. April 22, 1937.

Wikimedia Commons A gold mine that, during Stalin's reign, was worked through prison labor.

Magadan, USSR. August 20, 1978.

Wikimedia Commons Philosopher Pavel Florensky after being arrested for "agitation against the Soviet system."

Florensky was sentenced to ten years of labor in Stalin's gulags. He would not serve the full ten years. Three years after this picture was taken, he was dragged out into the woods and shot.

USSR. February 27, 1933.

Wikimedia Commons The directors of the gulag camps gather together to celebrate their work.

USSR. May 1, 1934.

Wikimedia Commons Two Lithuanian political prisoners get ready to go to work in a coal mine.

Inta, USSR. 1955.

Wikimedia Commons The crude lodgings that host a group of prisoners in one of Stalin's gulags.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library Soviet writer Maxim Gorky at Solovetsky with security officers.

June 1929.

Public Domain Prisoners at work operating a machine inside of a gulag.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library Gulag camp commanders.

1934.

Public Domain Prisoners at work on the White Sea-Baltic Canal.

USSR. Circa 1930-1933.

Wikimedia Commons Prisoners hammer away at the rocks in the White Sea–Baltic Canal.

USSR. Circa 1930-1933.

Wikimedia Commons Yuriy Tyutyunnyk, a Ukrainian General who fought against the Soviets in the Ukrainian -Soviet War.

Tyutyunnyk was allowed to live in Soviet Ukraine after the war — until 1929, when Soviet policies changed. He was arrested, taken to Moscow, imprisoned, and killed.

USSR. 1929.

Wikimedia Commons Prisoners transport lead-zinc ore.

Vaygach Island, USSR. Circa 1931-1932.

Wikimedia Commons Prisoners digging clay for the brickyard.

Solovki Island, USSR. Circa 1924-1925.

Wikimedia Commons Officials look over their laborers, at work on the Moscow Canal.

Moscow, USSR. September 3, 1935.

Wikimedia Commons A "penal insulator" inside of a gulag.

Vorkuta, USSR. 1945.

Wikimedia Commons Stalin and his men inspect the work on the Moscow-Volga Canal.

Moscow, USSR. Circa 1932-1937.

Wikimedia Commons Gulag prisoners forced to work on a mine overseen by the USSR's secret police.

Vaygach Island, USSR. 1933.

Wikimedia Commons Prisoners at work in a gulag pause for a moment's rest.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library A guard shakes hands with a prisoner, at work cutting down lumber.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library Guards walk through a gulag during an inspection.

USSR. Circa 1936-1937.

New York Public Library The prison photo and papers of Jacques Rossi, a political prisoner arrested for his connections to revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, hang on the wall of a gulag.

Norillag, USSR.

Wikimedia Commons Men at work on the Koylma Highway.

The route would come to be known as the "Road of Bones" because the skeletons of the men who died building it were used in its foundation.

USSR. Circa 1932-1940.

Wikimedia Commons Colonel Stepan Garanin, at one time the chief of the Kolyma Force Labor Camps, prepares for his new life as a prisoner.

USSR. Circa 1937-1938.

Wikimedia Commons A view of Yagrinlag, a gulag camp in Molotovsk (present-day Severodvinsk).

Date unknown.

Фото з архіву В. А. Мітіна/Wikimedia Commons

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44 Disturbing Photos Of Life Inside Soviet Gulag Prisons View Gallery

The Early History Of The Gulags

The history of forced labor camps in Russia is a long one. Early examples of a labor-based penal system date back to the Russian empire, when the tsar instituted the first "katorga" camps in the 17th century.

Katorga was the term for a judicial ruling that exiled the convicted to Siberia or the Russian Far East, where there were few people and fewer towns. There, prisoners would be forced to labor on the region's deeply underdeveloped infrastructure — a job no one would voluntarily undertake.

But it was the government of Vladimir Lenin that transformed the Soviet gulag system and implemented it on a massive scale.

In the aftermath of the 1917 October revolution, Communist leaders found that there were a number of dangerous ideologies and people floating around Russia — and nobody knew how fatal an inspiring new ideology could be better than the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

The Soviet gulag system started under Vladimir Lenin, but was greatly expanded under his successor, Joseph Stalin.

They decided that it would be best if those who disagreed with the new order found somewhere else to be — and if the state could profit from free labor at the same time, all the better. On April 15, 1919, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee passed a decree which approved the formation of forced labor camps across the Soviet Union.

This updated katorga system was publicly dubbed a "re-education" campaign. Through hard labor, society's uncooperative elements would learn to respect the common people and the new dictatorship of the proletariat.

While Lenin ruled, there were some questions about both the morality and the efficacy of using forced labor to bring exiled workers into the Communist fold. These doubts didn't stop the proliferation of new labor camps, however. By 1921, 84 camps had opened up across the Soviet Union.

But things intensified when Joseph Stalin came to power after Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin's iron-fisted rule, the Soviet gulag prisons became a nightmare of historic proportions.

How Stalin Transformed The Soviet Gulag

When Joseph Stalin came to power, he became determined to industrialize the Soviet Union. He instituted a series of five-year plans and strategies like collectivization (collective farming). And Stalin saw that the forced prison camps started under Lenin could play an important role in his strategy.

Public DomainA pro-collectivization poster which reads, in part: "Long live the day of harvest and collectivization."

Not only did he believe that these camps could help power the Soviet Union's growth, but they also were a convenient place to send anyone who stood in his way. For example, many of the early prisoners under Stalin were kulaks, or peasants, who were sent to the camps because they resisted giving up their farms and joining a collective. Other kulaks could also be sent to the camps telling anti-Stalin jokes or even being late to work.

The term "gulag" was officially born in the 1930s. It stands for Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerey (Main Camp Administration), or GULAG. And under Stalin's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938, which cracked down on all forms of dissent — both real and imagined — countless people were sent to fill these gulags across the country.

Public DomainGulag prisoners toiling on the White Sea Canal circa 1931 to 1933. Some 25,000 people lost their lives while working on the canal, which had to be expanded, anyway.

Anyone suspected of being disloyal to Stalin was in danger, whether they were members of the Communist party, military officers, government officials, or ordinary people.

Over the two years of the Great Purge, some 750,000 people were executed on the spot. But many more were sent to gulags. Some 30,000 camps soon operated across the Soviet Union, and they'd eventually imprison between 15 and 18 million souls.

So what was life like for people inside these camps?

Daily Life In The U.S.S.R.'s Forced Labor Camps

Conditions in the gulags were brutal. Gulag prisoners were often forced to work on ambitions Soviet projects, like the the Moscow–Volga Canal, the White Sea–Baltic Canal, and the Kolyma Highway (known today as the "Road of Bones" because so many workers died building it that they used their bones in the foundation of the road).

The Central Russian Film and Photo Archive.Prisoners of Belbaltlag, a Gulag camp for building the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal.

They were worked — almost literally — to the bone, using outdated supplies like pickaxes or their bare hands to do intense manual labor. Some inmates worked until they collapsed, often literally dropping dead. Others purposefully maimed themselves in hopes of escaping the torturous labor.

The workday was bad enough, but life in the gulags themselves was no better. Prisoners were given thin soup and chunks of hard bread. Often, the amount of food they received was directly tied to the work they'd done, so if a prisoner worked less, he got less food. Starving and unable to work more, he got even fewer rations. Eventually, unable to work and forbidden from eating, the prisoner would die of starvation.

Prisoners were so deprived of food, in fact, that they were forced to jealously guard their daily bread ration. There was no worse crime among prisoners than someone who stole bread from someone else. "Accidents" for thieves like this were easy to arrange.

But even if someone was able to work and got enough to eat, the nights remained a daily torture. Stuffed into barracks with other prisoners and forced to sleep on hard uncomfortable cots, sleep never came easily.

"A lesson to learn: How to distribute your body on the planks trying to avoid excessive suffering?" Jacques Rossi, a prisoner who spent 19 years in the gulag, later wrote. "A position on your back means all your bones are in direct painful contact with wood..."

Regina Gorzkowski-RossiAn illustration of the gulag barracks by Jacques Rossi.

He continued: "To sleep on your belly is equally uncomfortable. Until you sleep on your right side with your left knee pushed against your chest, you counterbalance the weight of your left hip and relieve the right side of your rib cage. You leave your right arm along the body, and put your right... cheekbone against the back of your left hand."

No exceptions were made for women, many of whom were only imprisoned because of the imagined crimes of their husbands or fathers. Their accounts are some of the most harrowing to emerge from the gulag prisons.

Women In The Gulag System

Though women were housed in barracks apart from the men, camp life did little to really separate the genders. Many reported the most effective survival strategy was to take a "prison husband" — a man who would exchange protection or rations for sexual favors. But many women were often victims of rape and violence by inmates and guards.

Public DomainAili Jurgenson, a 14-year-old from Estonia who was arrested for blowing up a Soviet war monument. She was sent to the a Gulag labour camp in Komi, but survived.

A survivor named Elena Glinka recalled a horrific mass rape which once occurred called the "Kolyma tram."

"The men rushed the women and began to haul them into the building, twisting their arms, dragging them through the grass, brutally beating any who resisted," Glinka later recalled.

She continued: "A line of about 12 men formed by each woman, and the Kolyma tram began. When it was over, the dead women were dragged away by their feet; the survivors were doused with water from the buckets and revived. Then the lines formed up again."

Not only were women in the gulags subjected to horrifying sexual violence, but they also had to deal with heartbreaking moments when it came to their children. If a woman had a child with her, she would have to divide her rations to feed them — sometimes as little as 140 grams of bread per day.

But for some of the female prisoners, simply being allowed to keep their own children was a blessing. Many of the children born in gulags were shipped to distant orphanages. Their papers were often lost or destroyed, making a reunion someday almost impossible.

The End Of The Soviet Gulag System

For decades, the gulags struck fear into Soviet citizens everywhere. Friends and neighbors disappeared; rumors about camp conditions spread. No one knew who would get taken next, or why.

"[The gulag] created fear," Anne Applebaum, the author of Gulag: A History, told The Atlantic in 2013. "It was very spread out, it had branches all over the Soviet Union and everybody knew about it. Everybody was aware that it existed. It wasn't some kind of hidden part of society. It functioned as something that would scare people."

Kaunas 9th Fort Museum/Wikimedia CommonsA barrack in the Kolyma region in the 1950s.

However, Joseph Stalin found the gulags so effective that he actually planned on expanding them. In the 1950s, he ordered the construction of several more camps, purportedly because he was planning a second Great Purge that would target Soviet Jews. However, Joseph Stalin died suddenly in 1953 before this could get started.

This ushered in the end of the Soviet gulag system. When Nikita Khrushchev became the premier in 1958, he instituted a policy of a policy of "de-Stalinization" and leniency dubbed the "Khrushchev Thaw." That said, the gulags did not disappear completely.

Over the next 30 years, criminals, democratic activists, and anti-Soviet nationalists were still sent to the prison camps. In fact, some new camps were even built.

Wrestling With A Difficult Legacy

Ninaras/Wikimedia CommonsA monument to the victims of the Akmola Labour Camp for Wives of Political Dissidents
in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Today, the gulags remain a thorny part of Soviet history. Though some Russians view them today as a "necessary evil," it's unclear how much they really helped production. Some 25,000 people lost their lives while building the White Sea-Baltic Canal, for example, and the canal itself was originally far too shallow for any ship to navigate.

And then there's the question of "what-if." What if Soviet citizens had fought back against the gulag system? What if they had revolted against fear? That's the question that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously asked in The Gulag Archipelago (1973), a work so controversial that Solzhenitsyn was exiled.

"What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?" Solzhenitsyn asked.

"Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?"

But such a thing never came to pass. By the time Stalin died, countless people had perished. Some worked themselves to death, some had starved, and others were simply dragged out into the woods and shot.

It is unlikely the world will ever have an accurate count of the lives lost because of the camps. Some 10 percent of gulag prisoners died every year, and at least 1.5 million people died while imprisoned. But this doesn't account for the ripple effects — the families impacted, the livelihoods lost, and the deep, cruel emotional devastation.

Though Stalin's successors ruled with a gentler hand, the damage had been done. Take a look at what life was like in Soviet gulags in the gallery above.

After reading about the gulag prisons of the Soviet Union, check out these photos of abandoned Soviet monuments and fascinating Soviet propaganda posters.

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