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Forced Labor in the Soviet Union

Pre-Gulag Forced Labor of the Early Soviet Russia and Soviet Union

On April 4, 1912, a strike formed by the laborers of the Lena Gold Field Company turned violent when an army detachment open-fired on the crowd. In the reports that followed, a muddled version of events, essentially assuming the army and officials were justified in their actions, left many with questions surrounding the circumstances in which the violence occurred. Labor conditions of the years leading up to the event and the years following could be far from desirable, but in those years laborers maintained the legal right to strike which called for concern about the use of violence against those striking in the Lena Gold Field Company. In the years that followed, the government began taking rights and enforcing new policies of forced labor that gave less choice to laborers on not only their choice to work but where they would work as well. In July of 1918, the Russian Constitution implemented Obligatory Labor Service which was to begin immediately. Then, in 1919, the Russian Labor Code laid out the exemptions such as the elderly and pregnant women and the requirements of obligatory labor to include that workers would be given the choice to work in their trades, if the option was available. If the option was not available, workers would be required to accept the work that was available. Wages were fixed as of 1917 by the Supreme Counsel of Popular Economy and the work day was to be set to eight hours but a worker and the employer could agree upon overtime to be worked and conditions were laid out for Voluntary work, work that was done on Saturdays and Sundays. Women and children were the exception and specific conditions were laid out for them. At the end of 1919 and in early 1920, there was the introduction of the militarization of labor, supported by both Trotsky and Lenin. In the years to follow under the Stalin regime, laborers would see less and less freedoms in labor and the introduction of GULAG.

Introduction of the Gulag and Forced Labor within the Soviet Union

Gulags or Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerejare, are described as labor camps which were a police-run system of colonies and special settlements. The myth surrounding the Gulag was that these forced labor camps would reforge (perekovka) the Soviet citizen who could then become a foundation of the Soviet Society. The real function of the Soviet Gulag was the exploitation of human beings, which occurred by working the people to death or near death before discarding them. The release of thousands of prisoners yearly was not the result of a rehabilitative process, but a deliberate policy of jettisoning weakened, dying inmates who could no longer contribute to the positive ledger balance of the system.. Western intelligence estimates place the number of people in these Gulag's as high as 15 million in 1941. The Gulag system was a closed system, not discussed in wider Soviet society. There was little or no trafficking between inside and outside. The Gulag was a separate world with its own rules, habits, and culture. In the beginning the Gulag’s suffered a period of brutality, chaos and death, but then they began to function similar to a normal town, with camp commandants even requesting increased supplies and privileges for their charges.

Different categories of Gulags: It is estimated that for most of its existence, the Gulag system consisted of over 30,000 camps, divided into three categories according to the number of prisoners held. The largest camps consisted of more than 25,000 prisoners each, medium size camps held from 5,000 to 25,000 inmates, and the smallest, but most numerous labor camps operated with less than 5,000 people each.

Deaths within the Gulag system: According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953 (there is no archival data for the period 1919–1934). However, taking into account the likelihood of unreliable record keeping, and the fact that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death, non-state estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, estimates of gulag victims cited by Conquest, Solzhenitsyn and others ranged from 12 to 15 million. Post-1991 research by historians utilizing archival materials brought this range down considerably, with a probable figure being around 1.6 million.

Rehabilitation was not the purpose of the Gulag. The main purpose of the Gulag was punishment. Even after a person had performed their period of labor, determined by their crime, they would not be released back to their home area. When released the prisoners would not be allowed to return to their area of residence, instead they would be considered exiles and would live in the area in which they performed their period of punishment. Stalin viewed these people as enemies of the Party and wanted them dealt with as such.

The Kolkhoz System

Main article: Kolkhoz

With the rise of the Soviet Union, the old Russian farming system was transformed into something more in line with the Soviet ideals. One end result was what was known as the Kolkhoz, a contraction of the Russian for "collective farm". In the late 1920s, Stalin made a push to mandate collectivization, and in 1930, the Central Committee called for the collectivization of "the huge majority" of peasant farms". By 1932, 61% of peasant households belonged to Kolkhozes, although the transition was far from smooth--peasants actively resisted in a number of ways, including the slaughter of livestock. While this increased the available grain, as the animals did not need to be fed, it drastically reduced the amount of meat, dairy and leather from the countryside.

Kolkhozes were typically divided up into "brigades" of 15-30 households. Over time, these came to be more permanent, and, in the 1950's, they were re-organized into "complex brigades". Brigades were often themselves divided into "links" of a few people.

As opposed to Sovkhozes, or state-run farms, who employed salaried workers, the Kolkhoz workers were supposed to be paid by the day worked, although the actual rate of pay varied greatly in practice--cash was occasionally used, but more often payment was given in grain, and this only meagerly.

Foreign Forced Labor

In July 1937, when it appeared that war was imminent, Stalin ordered the removal of Germans from Soviet soil whom he claimed were working for the enemy.  An order by the NKVD also stated that German workers were agents of the Gestapo, sent to sabotage soviet efforts. Of the 68,000 arrests and 42,000 deaths that resulted, only a third were actually German; the remainder were of other nationalities.  Just a month later, the liquidation of Pols was also approved by the Politburo. In 1938, 11,000 people were arrested in Mongolia, most of them lamas. Many other nationalities were swept up in similar operations, including but not exclusive to: Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Greeks, Afghans, and Iranians. Those that were arrested were either shot or placed in the forced labor system. Americans that had come to the Soviet Union seeking work during the Great Depression found themselves pleading the American embassy for passports so that they could return to their home country. The embassy refused to issue new passports and the emigrants were arrested and sent to prison, Gulag camps, or executed.

The UPV camp system, separate from the Gulag, was established in 1939 to utilize POWs and foreign civilians for labor.  It eventually included several hundred camps and thousands of auxiliary camps which held millions of foreign prisoners during their years of operation. The camps weren’t uniform in the ways they treated and provided for prisoners but, in general, conditions were harsh and could be deadly.  Work days were usually 10-14 hours long and camps were often marked by unsafe work conditions, insufficient food and clothing, and limited access to medical care.

The Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Accords and so were not obligated to adhere to its stipulations concerning prisoners of war.  The Soviet Union retained POWs after other countries had released their prisoners, only beginning to do so after Stalin’s death in 1953.  The remainder of prisoners were released in 1956 to build diplomatic relations with West Germany.

Soviet Forced Labor Camps during World War II

Forced labor wasn't a new idea during World War II. Gulag's had been implemented after the October Revolution in 1917. Forced labor was instrumental for the Soviet Union, and during the time of industrialization it was a deemed necessary tool by the Bolsheviks, in order to rid the country of internal enemies while at the same time using that labor to help achieve a stronger socialist union, and that idea was no different during wartime. Forced labor was a way for the Soviet Union to imprison anyone for any reason, including, but not limited to, Germans, Polish, Asians, Muslim Soviets, as well as Jewish Soviets, or anyone who looked Jewish. The Soviet gulags are seen by many as a system very similar to Nazi concentration camps, though the people in Soviet gulags were not separated by nationality. During World War II some of these labor camps were turned into camps where prisoners of war were kept, and forced to work under horrible conditions, including only three days off a month. However, after the signing of the Polish-Soviet agreement, or the Sikorski-Mayski agreement, more than one million people were released, who then turned around and joined the Red Army.

Post-Soviet Era Forced Labor

I'll transfer my draft here soon...