This page isn't meant to be really extensive, it's just meant to provide some background and historical context for the writing and life of Varlam Shalamov.

GULAG is an acronym which refers to the the system of forced labor camps in Soviet Russia.

The tradition of forced labor in Russia goes back to the days of the Tsars. This tradition was continued by Soviets and brought to the most disturbing extremes while Stalin was in power. However, Stalin did not pioneer the institution of Soviet work camps-- Stalin was building upon the foundations of the system of "corrective institutions" that early Soviet leadership established:

Peter Stuchka, Eugene Pashukanis, and Nikolai Krylenko, Lenin's ardent supporters, became the reformers of the Russian system of justice, and Eugene Shirvindt, a jurist and writer was eventually put in charge of the network of prisons. All of them were inspired by the same ideas as Lenin. The term "guilt" was deleted from the official vocabulary-society alone was was guilty when its members perpetrated crimes...In the land of socialism there could be no prisons. Prisons were remnants of a capitalist civilization, monuments of barbarism and cruelty. So the very term "prison" was abolished, and the criminal codes mentioned only "places of detention."

From Forced Labor in Soviet Russia by Davin J. Dallin. 1947, Yale University Press. New Haven.

Dallin later quotes the Great Soviet Encyclopedia:

Bourgeois penal policy aims at moral and physical maiming and destruction, achieved by means of organized torture and violation of the human dignity of prisoners...The bourgeois prison not only fails to correct the sentenced individual bu t on the contrary pushes him to new crimes...[The Soviet] corrective labor institutions, in contrast to the prisons in capitalist countries, in carrying out the tasks of obligatory re-educationand adjustment of convicts to life and to work in an organized collective.

The Soviet ideals abover taken from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. The "corrective institutions" were far from the reality as the GULAGS in Soviet Russian grew and evolved. In fact, these institutions were living up to, and by far exceeding, the destructive and demoralizing bourgeois prison system that Lenin and his followers so harshly admonished.

The diagram above is also taken from Dallin's book. Clearly, the GULAGs were a highly developed and carefully organized social insitution which affected people's lives within and outside of the camps.

Camps were located throughout the USSR. Prisoners were arrested for any of a large number of "crimes." Political prisoners, professional criminals and bytoviks (Dallin translates this term as "offenders againts the way of life.") were all held in the GULAGs. A political prisoner could be anyone of the following:

1. Peasants suspected of individualistic tendencies and thus undesirable on the collective farms. The most numerous among these are the Ukrainian farmers; the Russian farmers come next; and then follow a host of dissenting farmers from among the national minorities: Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Mordovians, Caucasian and so on. They are usually without political convictions except for a wholehearted hatred of the Soviet system. As they are used to heavy physical labor, they constitute the bulk of the work brigades.

 

2.Persons who have been abroad, or have members of their families abroad with whom they communicate. Here the percentage of Jews is disproportionatly high, as almost every Jewish family in Russia had relatives living in Poland or Rumania. This group also includes foreign communists: Germans, Austrians, Hungarians etc. who fled the persecution of their own governments. Nearly all of them were arrested in 1937, when Yezhov was Commisar of the Interior, under a charge of espionage. Todat these prisoners are referred to in the camps as "men of the 1937 class." Like the peasants, the majority of them are sentenced not by a court but simply by some agency of the secret police.

 

3. Former inhabitants of the borderlands. These are primarily Russian Poles who lived along the western frontier of the Soviet Union, and Chinese and Koreans who lived along the eastern border. Many of them were deported into the interior before 1937, and during the mass arrests that year were sent from their new homes straight to labor camps.

 

4. People condemned for their religious beliefs: Catholics, Baptists, members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and others. They are distinguished by their high moral standards and the firm strength of their convictions. Against the background of demoralization and mutual enmity prevalent in the camps, these people shine like beacons in the dark.

 

5. Middle or high state officials sentenced for various political offenses. Many belong to the Communist party. A large number are civil engineers and technicians convicted cheifly on suspicion of sabotage. This group is slightly better off than the rest of the politcal prisoners; they usually manage to get administrative post which ensure easier licing conditions.

6. People condemned for specific Soviet wartime crimes: collaboration with the enemy under the occupation; prisoners of war; men and women dragged to Germany and found guilty of voluntary ties with the enemy; and nationals of countries occupied at the end of the war.

From David Dallin's Forced Labor in Soviet Russia.

KOLYMA

Varlam Shalamov was a political prisoner who was arrested twice. His first arrest took place while he was in his early twenties and was arrested several years later and charged with "anti-Soviet Trotskyite activities." The first time, he was sent to Solovki and then to Kolyma.

Above is Solovki, where Shalamov spent his first sentence. _____________________________ Shalamov spent 17 years in Kolyma, pictured on the right

Kolyma was one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest network of labor camps. Conservative estimates calculate that 3 million people died in Kolyma. About 25-35 percent of the prisoners in Kolyma died each year.

Kolyma is located in northeastern Siberia. The environment is harsh year round. A prisoner's rhyme says:

Kolyma, Kolyma Chudnaya planeta Dvenadsat mesyatsov zima Ostalnoye leto.

Kolyma, Kolyma Wonderful planet Twelve months winter, the rest summer.

Winter temperatures drop to -90 degrees f. Waters are ice 9 months of the year and soil is frozen throughout. Insects, such as gadflies, appear in summer. Certain types are especially big and can sting through animal hide.

In addition to the environmental rigors of life in a place like Kolyma, the conditions of those living in the camps made harder an already difficult life. Mining was the sole operation in the Kolyma camps. Gold was discovered in 1910 and mining in the area began in 1927, however, laborers were free and the operation was worked on a very small scale. In the early 1930's mining began using forced labor and continued until well into the 1950's. Kolyma was a region comprised of about 120 full scale camps, 80 of which were dedicated to mining. One of the most tragic points about Kolyma was that "almost without exception" the prisoners held, many of whom ended up dead, were "entirely innocent."

Sources:
Conquest, Robert. Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps. Viking Press, New York, 1978.

Dallin, David J. Forced Labor in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. 1947. New Haven.