Gulag. Unknown gulag: are the ideas about Stalin's camps true? History of Stalin's Gulag collection of documents

Stalin's Gulag on German soil. Part 1.

When the Red Army, bearing incredible losses, entered Germany, the hatred and desire for revenge fueled by the Bolshevik ideologists were incredibly strong on the Soviet side. Thus, the writer I. Erenburg, on behalf of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, applied all his phenomenal ability to inciting fierce hatred towards the Germans: “We understood that the Germans are not people. From now on, the word "German" is the most terrible curse for us; If you killed one German, kill another - there is nothing more fun for us than German corpses

And the very first terrible reports from East Prussia occupied by the Red Army confirmed what the German population expected in the near future.

The Germans experienced the full horror of the arbitrariness of the Soviet soldiers: “Drunk, inflamed with hatred for the enemy, unbridled in their victorious euphoria, amazed at the meeting with civilization and the appearance of luxury attributes.

The further offensive of the Soviet troops to the West was accompanied by secret decisions of the Stalinist leadership to carry out a policy of terror in the occupied regions against the remaining Germans. By order of the People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR L. Beria dated April 18, 1945, it was ordered that the authorized NKVD of the USSR on the fronts organize the necessary number of prisons and camps "providing the clearing of the rear of the active units of the Red Army from enemy elements." The head of the "department of special camps in Germany" was appointed authorized by the NKVD of the USSR in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, deputy. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel-General I. Serov.

In general, 10 camps were created (Muhlberg, Buchenwald, Hohenschenhausen, Bautzen, Ketchendorf, Sachsenhausen, Torgau-Seidlitz, Fünfeichen, Torgau-Fort Zinna), in which Germans were placed without a court verdict: "Persons sent to a special camp in accordance with order No. 00315 NKVD of the USSR dated April 18, 1945, are confiscated in a special order, they are not charged and there are no investigative materials provided for by the Code of Criminal Procedure on them.

In addition to the special camps themselves, there were also numerous investigative prisons, nicknamed by the Germans as “GPU cellars”, located in confiscated public buildings or private houses, where, as a rule, the first interrogations and beatings took place, so terrible for those arrested. Who were the first prisoners of the NKVD special camps? The answer to this question is contained in the report of the commissioner of the NKVD at the 1st Belorussian Front I. Serov to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L. Beria: “when checking the settlements occupied by our units, it was found that in these settlements only an insignificant part of the population remained, mainly the elderly, women and children ... ". Therefore, almost the entire remaining population was detained and interned, and first of all, elderly members of the NSDAP, teenagers from the Hitler Youth and Jungvolk, district leaders, newspaper editors and other “suspicious elements”. As a result, until the beginning of 1946. In the Soviet zone of occupation, 29,000 people from among the German civilian population were arrested and placed in special camps, most of whom were over 45 years old and under 20 years old.

In all special camps, the regime was the same: the Soviet commandant's office led the camp, it was guarded by Soviet military personnel, to this was added complete isolation, hunger, poor sanitary conditions, diseases, as a rule, threatening death.

The high death rate in the camps was an issue that constantly arose before the Soviet military administration, as well as before the relatives of the prisoners. Judging by the official Soviet medical reports, only since November 1945. to March 1946, i.e. within 5 months, 7872 people died in special camps.

The reason for such a high mortality was the daily “ration” of the prisoners, which, according to the evidence that has come down to us, was something like this: “Once a day they gave food, but the stew was poured only to those who had dishes, and only to those who had a pan or pot , could take a portion of the stew for another ... Again the distribution of food ... watery stew and stale bread, green in places with mold. Again, we have to give up the stew, because no one has dishes.

In addition, Soviet camp personnel also stole food intended for prisoners to sell on the black market. Such facts, for example, are known from the order of the department of special camps in Germany on the theft of products in the Fünfeichen special camp: “instead of organizing the protection of art. Sergeant Leochko, Sergeant Rusanov and warder Private Adukovsky, with the help of two prisoners, stole 8 sacks of potatoes, took them to the nearest village and exchanged them for two bottles of vodka. As a result of this “order of things”, the number of deaths in special camps continued to grow catastrophically, and only in February 1947. the death rate reached 4280 people!

Even in the reports of camp informants who came to the operational departments, one can find about the reality of what is happening in the special camps: “A huge number of imprisoned Germans died in the Ketchendorf camp. When our comrades left for the infirmary and said goodbye to us, we knew for sure that they would not return. There was even a rumor in the camp that the Russians treated us in the infirmary with “shots” (injected poison)… We were fed pearl barley for several months. Our feet are swollen. We called this barley “white death”. Periodic checks of special camps by higher ranks of the NKVD also confirmed the inhuman realities of prison life: “Mortality in the camps in November increased compared to October ... A survey of these camps found that the premises were not fully prepared for winter, the window frames were not fitted and had gaps, errors in the windows they do not have glass, they are covered with plywood, the latter warped from dampness and cracks formed.

The vents in the barracks are not closed and cold air enters through the floor. The mattress pillowcases are not stuffed with straw, and if they are stuffed, then the straw has turned into chaff and dust from time to time. A certain percentage of the special contingent is not provided with uniforms for the winter, there is a special contingent that does not have underwear at all ... The sick special contingent is not sent from the barracks to the infirmary in time, as a result of late referral, the patients die on the second day after entering the infirmary. Medicines for the treatment of the special contingent, despite their availability in pharmacies, are not issued to patients ... There is no systematic control over the nutrition of the special contingent by the sanitary group, economic group and other services.

Stalin's Gulag on German soil. Part 2.

The high percentage of deaths was supplemented by the executions of Germans by the verdict of the tribunals operating in special camps, or even simply extrajudicial murders of prisoners. Here is an extract from the official investigation of the state of emergency in the Sachsenhausen special camp in April 1947: “Sergeant Zh. and Private O., in order to hide the escape of one arrested person, which occurred at the moment when they were dealing with outside German women, killed another.” Of course, the Chekists tried to hide such a high mortality rate, and the most savage solution was chosen, such as not to release the Germans from special camps who participated in the funeral and who knew better than others about the mortality of prisoners.

The further fate of special camps in Germany was decided at the highest government level of the USSR. The fact is that the existence of such places for the maintenance of internees by the end of the 40s. caused a sharp increase in German distrust of the Soviet occupation authorities. The noise around the special camps was bound to start sooner or later. So, the head of the Soviet Military Administration in Thuringia, I. Kolesnichenko, at the end of 1947. reported to Moscow: "A number of petitions from relatives, as well as various politicians and district organizations of the SED for the release of various imprisoned Germans, indicates that not only broad sections of the Germans, but also the progressive part of the German population are dissatisfied with the behavior of our security agencies ... ".

The existence of special camps has become a constant pretext for accusations against Soviet Union on the part of the international community in their inhuman treatment of internees. Moreover, by this time the Western Allied Powers had already checked all the arrested and interned Germans. Even the Prosecutor General of the USSR K. Gorshenin considered it necessary to specifically address V. Molotov on this issue as the first deputy of I. Stalin, and the chairman of the Information Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (Soviet foreign intelligence): “The special camps of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Union in Germany contain not more than 60,000 Germans who are prisoners of war, isolated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in a non-judicial manner and without the sanction of prosecutors. A significant number of Germans have been in detention since 1945.

Recently, the military prosecutor's offices began to receive en masse verbal and written statements from the Germans with requests to inform them why and for how long their relatives were imprisoned. The prosecutor's office is not competent and does not have the opportunity to respond to these statements. Meanwhile, the prolonged detention of such a large number of Germans, without trial or investigation, is used by some elements in various forms for anti-Soviet purposes ... ". June 30, 1948 The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the USSR decided to dissolve seven out of ten special camps and liberate a large number prisoners. Subsequently, a commission of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs was created to develop conditions for the further release of prisoners, and the transfer of persons subject to conviction under the jurisdiction of the East German authorities.

January 6, 1950 Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel-General S. Kruglov signed order No. 0022 on the final liquidation of special camps: "Release 15,038 Germans from camps ... Transfer 13,945 Germans to the German authorities (Ministry of Internal Affairs of the GDR) ... Transfer 649 Germans to the USSR Ministry of State Security, who fought the most active struggle against the Soviet Union to bring them to the Soviet court ... Liquidate the special camps of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen ... transfer the prison in Bautzen with all property under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the GDR ... Complete the liquidation of the camps and the transfer of the prison by March 16, 1950 ... ".

In 1990 GDR Minister of the Interior Peter-Michael Distel received from the government of the Soviet Union declassified information about the number of prisoners in the special camps of the Soviet zone of occupation. The minister introduced them to the participants of a press conference held on July 26 of the same year: “The total number of interned Germans is 122,671 people, the dead are 40,889 people, those sentenced to death are 736 people.” But independent researchers have a completely justified distrust of Soviet documents, in which statistical data on German prisoners may have been deliberately distorted.

). There were the following ITL:

Akmola camp for the wives of traitors to the Motherland (ALZHIR)
Namelesslag
Vorkutlag (Vorkuta ITL)
Dzhezkazganlag (Steplag)
Intalag
Kotlas ITL
Kraslag
Lokchimlag
Perm camps
Pechorlag
Pejheldorlag
Provlag
Svirlag
Sevzheldorlag
Siblag
Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON)
Taezhlag
Ustvymlag
Ukhtizhemlag

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

Gulag statistics

Until the end of the 1980s, official statistics on the Gulag were classified, and researchers could not access the archives, so 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 archives were opened, official figures became available, but the statistics of the Gulag are incomplete, and data from different sections often do not fit with each other.

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

Information on the death rate of 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 ITL. In ITL and places of detention (NTK, prisons). * Further in ITL and NTK. **** Without OL. (O. L. - special camps). Help prepared on the basis of 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 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 correctional labor colonies, of which about 1.3 million were for political reasons , through forced labor camps for 1937-1950. about two million people were convicted under political articles.

Thus, based on the given archival data of the OGPU-NKVD-MVD 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 national composition of 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%)
Turkmens - 9,352 (0.71%)
other nationalities - 8.06%.

According to the data given in the same work, on January 1, 1951, the number of prisoners in the 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 - 30029 (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 decree "On forced labor camps" was issued in the RSFSR. 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 with these same issues in part.

After October 1917 and until 1934, general prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Republican People's Commissariats of Justice and were part of the system of the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Institutions.

On August 3, 1933, a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved, prescribing various aspects of the functioning of the ITL. In particular, the code prescribes the use of the labor of prisoners and legitimizes the practice of offsetting two days of shock work for three days of the term, which was widely used to motivate prisoners during the construction of the White Sea Canal.

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 again returned to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The next organizational change in the penitentiary system 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 Places of Confinement.

When the NKVD was divided into two independent people's commissariats - the NKVD and the NKGB - this department was renamed into prison administration NKVD. In 1954, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Prison Department 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 Places of Detention of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Gulag leadership

Heads of Department

The first leaders of the Gulag - Fedor Eichmans, Lazar Kogan, Matvey Berman, Israel Pliner - among other prominent Chekists died during the years of "great terror". In 1937-1938. they were arrested and soon shot.

Role in the economy

Already by the beginning of the 1930s, the labor of prisoners in the USSR was considered as an economic resource. A decree of the Council of People's Commissars in 1929 ordered the OGPU to organize new camps for receiving prisoners in remote areas of the country.

Even more clearly, the attitude of the authorities towards prisoners as an economic resource was expressed by Joseph Stalin, who spoke at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1938 and stated the following about the then-existing practice of early release of prisoners:

In the 1930s-50s, prisoners of the Gulag were building a number of large industrial and transport facilities:

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

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

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

Estimates of the overall economic efficiency of the Gulag system have not been made. 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 significantly exceeds the state farm." After the war, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Chernyshov wrote in a special note that it was simply necessary to transfer the GULAG to a system similar to the civilian economy. But despite the introduction of new incentives, a detailed study of tariff scales, production standards, the self-sufficiency of the Gulag could not be achieved; the labor productivity of prisoners was lower than that of civilian workers, and the cost of maintaining the system of camps and colonies increased.

After the death of Stalin and the 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 after that, the Gulag system was systematically curtailed and finally ceased to exist in 1960.

Conditions

Organization of camps

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

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

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

From here, 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 prisoners of each camp in the Gulag system, there was a standard system for recording prisoners on the basis of 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 occupied with work arising within the camp or camp administration. This, mainly administrative and managerial and maintenance personnel, was assigned 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 other non-working prisoners, respectively, were combined into group “G”. This group seemed to be the most heterogeneous: some of these prisoners only temporarily did not work due to external circumstances - because of their stay at the stage or in quarantine, because of the failure to provide work on the part of the camp administration, because of the intra-camp transfer of labor, etc. , - but it should also include "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 freelance workers was widely used (constituting 20-70% of group "A" (in different time and in different camps.

The norms for work were about 270-300 working days per year (in different ways in different camps and in different years excluding, of course, the years of the war). Working day - up to 10-12 hours maximum. In case of severe climatic conditions, work was canceled.

Nutritional norm No. 1 (basic) of a prisoner of the Gulag in 1948 (per 1 person per day in grams):

Bread 700 (800 for hard workers)
Wheat flour 10
Groats different 110
Pasta and vermicelli 10
Meat 20
Fish 60
Fats 13
Potatoes and vegetables 650
Sugar 17
Salt 20
Tea surrogate 2
Tomato puree 10
Pepper 0.1
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 mortality falls on colds and exhaustion; 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 the lack of fuel, as a result of which prisoners who have frozen in the open air do not warm up in cold barracks, which leads to influenza, pneumonia, and other colds

Until the end of the 1940s, when the conditions of detention improved somewhat, the death rate of prisoners in the Gulag camps exceeded the national average, and in some years (1942-43) reached 20% of the average number of prisoners. According to official documents, over 1.1 million people died in the GULAG during the years of its existence (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 on this moment these remarks are fragmentary and cannot be used to characterize her as a whole.

Offenses

At the moment, in connection with the discovery of official documentation and internal orders, previously inaccessible to historians, there are a number of materials confirming the repressions, moreover, carried out by virtue of decrees and resolutions of the executive and legislative authorities.

For example, by virtue of GKO Decree N 634 / ss of September 6, 1941, 170 political prisoners were executed in the Oryol prison of the GUGB. This decision was explained by the fact that the transfer of convicts from this prison was not possible. Most of those serving sentences in such cases were released or attributed to the retreating military units. The most dangerous prisoners were liquidated in a number of cases.

A noteworthy fact was the publication on March 5, 1948 of the so-called "additional decree of the thieves' law for prisoners", which determined the main provisions of the system of relations between privileged prisoners - "thieves", prisoners - "muzhiks" and some staff from among the prisoners:

This law caused very negative consequences for unprivileged prisoners in camps and prisons, as a result of which individual groups of "muzhiks" began to resist, organize protests against "thieves" and relevant laws, including acts of disobedience, raising uprisings, setting fires. In a number of institutions, control over the prisoners, which de facto belonged and was carried out by criminal groups of "thieves", was lost, the camp authorities turned directly to the highest authorities with a request to provide additionally the most authoritative "thieves" to restore order and restore control, which sometimes caused some loss management of places of deprivation of liberty, gave rise to criminal groups to control the very mechanism of serving sentences, dictating their terms of cooperation. .

The system of labor incentives in the Gulag

Prisoners who refused to work were subject to transfer to a penal regime, and "malicious objectors, by their actions corrupting 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, transfers 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, a less comfortable hut, etc.)

With regard to prisoners who observed the regime, who showed themselves well in production, who exceeded the established norm, the following incentives from the camp leadership could be applied:

declaration of gratitude before the ranks or in an order with entry in a personal file;
issuance of a bonus (in cash or in kind);
granting an extraordinary meeting;
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 head of the camp to provide the prisoner with the benefits provided for the Stakhanovites.

Prisoners who worked "Stakhanov's methods of labor" 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 cult corner and a radio;
special improved soldering;
a separate dining room or separate tables in a common dining room with priority service;
clothing allowance in the first place;
pre-emptive right to use the camp stall;
priority receipt of books, newspapers and magazines from the camp library;
a permanent club ticket to occupy the best place to watch films, art productions and literary evenings;
business trips to courses within the camp to obtain or improve the relevant qualifications (driver, tractor driver, machinist, etc.)

Similar incentive measures were taken for prisoners who had the rank of shock workers.

Along with this system of incentives, there were others, which consisted only of components that encouraged the high productivity of the prisoner's labor (and did not have a "punitive" component). One of them is connected with the practice of counting to the prisoner one working day worked out 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 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 the transfer to free residence in the BAM construction area until the end of the sentence. During the war years, releases 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 labor incentives in the camps was the differentiated payment of money to prisoners for the work they did. This money in administrative documents initially and until the end of the 1940s. referred to as "monetary incentive" or "monetary bonus". The concept of “salary” was also sometimes used, but officially this name was introduced only in 1950. Monetary bonuses were paid to prisoners “for all work performed in forced labor camps”, while prisoners could receive earned money in their hands in an amount not exceeding 150 rubles at a time. Money in excess of this amount was credited to their personal accounts and issued 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 the output norms by certain groups of workers ...” could cause a large increase in the amount actually paid, which, in turn, could lead to a disproportionate development of the bonus fund in relation to the implementation of the capital work plan. prisoners temporarily released from work due to illness and other reasons, during the time of release from work, wages were not accrued, but the cost of guaranteed food and clothing allowance was not deducted from them either. Activated disabled persons used in piecework were paid according to the piecework rates established for prisoners for the amount of work actually performed by them.

Survivor Memories

The famous Frost, the head of the Ukhta camps, declared that he did not need either cars or horses: “give more s / 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, leaving them to work easily 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," he enjoyed for the time being the glory of an energetic, enterprising figure. I saw Frost near the locomotive - the firstborn of the future movement, just unloaded from the pontoon IN HANDS. Frost vitiated in front of the retinue - it is necessary, they say, urgently, to part the pairs, so that immediately - before the laying of rails! - announce the neighborhood with a locomotive whistle. The order was immediately given: to drag water into the boiler and light the firebox!

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 detention center of the NKVD OTK for minors”, which approved the “Regulation on the detention center for minors”, ordering the placement in detention centers of adolescents aged 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 approval of the prosecutor, the period of detention in the isolation ward was limited to six months.

Starting from the middle of 1947, the terms of punishment for minors convicted of theft of state or public property were increased to 10-25 years. Even 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” abolished the possibility of reducing the sentence for minors aged 14-18 years, the regime was significantly tightened keeping children in places of detention.

In the secret monograph “The Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps and Colonies of the NKVD of the USSR” written in 1940, there is a separate chapter “Work with minors and neglected people”:

“In the GULAG system, work with juvenile delinquents and the neglected is organizationally isolated.
By decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of 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 for Internal Affairs, whose task is to organize reception centers, isolation wards and labor colonies for underage street children 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 homeless and neglected children through cultural, educational and industrial work with them and their further direction to work in industry and agriculture.

Reception centers carry out the process of removing homeless and neglected children from the streets, keep the children at their place for one month, and then, after establishing the necessary data about them and their parents, give them the appropriate further referral. The 162 reception centers operating in the GULAG system over the four and a half years of their work missed 952,834 teenagers, who were sent both to the children's institutions of the People's Commissariat of Education, the People's Commissariat of Education and the People's Commissariat of Education, 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 colonies there are juvenile offenders with one conviction, and in closed colonies, under special conditions, juvenile offenders from 12 to 18 years old are kept, with a large number of drives and several convictions.

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 old have been admitted through labor colonies, of which 68,927 were suing and 86,579 were not suing. Since the main task of the labor colonies of the NKVD is the re-education of children and instilling labor skills in them, production enterprises are organized in all labor colonies of the GULAG, in which all juvenile criminals work.

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

metalworking,

woodworking,

shoe production,

Knitwear production (in colonies for girls).

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

Clubs have been organized with corresponding amateur performance circles: musical, dramatic, choral, fine arts, technical, physical education and others. The educational and pedagogical staff of the juvenile colonies includes: 1,200 educators - mainly members of the Komsomol and party members, 800 teachers and 255 leaders of amateur art circles. In almost all the colonies, pioneer detachments and Komsomol organizations were organized from the ranks of pupils who had not been convicted. On March 1, 1940, there were 4,126 pioneers and 1,075 members of the Komsomol in the Gulag colonies.

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

In 1939, the labor colonies of the GULAG for minors completed the production program for 169.778 thousand rubles, mainly for consumer goods. For the maintenance of the entire composition of juvenile delinquents, the GULAG system spent 60,501 thousand rubles in 1939, and the state subsidy to cover these costs amounted to approximately 15% of the total amount, and the rest of it was provided with proceeds from the production and economic activities of labor colonies . The main point that completes the entire process of re-education of juvenile delinquents 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 establishments and institutions"
25. GARF, f.9414, op.1, d.1155, l.26-27.
GARF, f.9401, op.1, file 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" // Slovo. 1990, No. 7. P. 23; archival

New sources, facts and conclusions

The history of the Gulag is without a doubt one of the areas of research that, within what can be described as " Soviet period» history of Russia, has undergone the most radical changes. Until the late 1980s, the hidden world Soviet camps revealed almost exclusively through the testimonies of former prisoners. These were mostly stories about experiences, which in some cases are samples of the literature of the high level. Since the beginning of the 1990s, a huge amount of materials from the state archives of the Russian Federation (State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF) has become available. With these materials last years worked numerous Russian and foreign historians. Which of them are the most important from the point of view of factual material? What are they limited to, what are their gaps? How do historians bring together the documents of the bureaucracy and the testimonies of prisoners into a single dialogue? What additional sources do they use?

To answer these questions, in this paper I will talk about my personal experience, which I acquired together with Russian colleagues as part of a large joint research project, about the materials of the history of Stalin's Gulag published in seven volumes.

eyewitness accounts

Before turning our attention to the most important facts thanks to which we discovered archival materials Let's first take a quick look at what the level of knowledge about this problem was like in the late 1980s. By that time, there were a large number of eyewitness accounts who survived the events described; some of them have rightly received literary recognition. In this regard, one can recall, for example, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "Kolyma Tales" by Varlam Shalamov, and "A Steep Route" (in German they were published in two volumes under the title "Routes of Life" and "Walking along the edge" ) Evgenia Ginzburg. Along with these "classics" there is also a huge number of more or less unnoticed descriptions left by those who themselves experienced the events of that time, the first of which date back to the mid-1920s. Among them are two amazingly accurate descriptions of "special camps" on the Solovetsky Islands. One of these stories has its origin in the Frenchman Raoul Duguet, the second - in the Georgian Sergei Malsagov, who fought as an officer on the side of the Whites.

Of course, these publications of earlier times are mostly smaller in volume, but in which the system of forced labor is presented on its widest scale. When in 1930/31 a number of mostly British newspapers began to report on mass deportations of "kulaks" to the camps, these topics also suddenly disappeared from the pages of the press after Hitler came to power in Germany, the great Moscow trials and purges in the Red Army. And as soon as the USSR joined the coalition of democracies in 1941 in the struggle against Nazi Germany, the "dark sides" of Stalinism were finally surrounded by a dense veil of silence.

The first historiographical publication about the Soviet camp system did not attract attention in the West. It was created by two Polish officers, who themselves went through the Gulag, and came out in 1945 on French in a small publishing house under the pseudonym Sylvester Mora and Pierre Zwerniak. The book was based mainly on the stories of Poles who survived and went through the camps, both civilians and soldiers, who were deported to Siberia in 1939/40, but were able to leave the USSR in the period 1942/43. The book contains highly accurate descriptions of the thirty-eight camp complex and includes a large number of maps showing the location of these Gulag camps.

The 1947 book Forced Labor in Soviet Russia by David Dallin and Boris Nikolaevsky received a completely different response during the onset of the Cold War. The authors managed to fix in the public consciousness of the West the figure of 15 million "slaves of forced labor". They came up with this figure by a very bold estimate of the total number based on partial data obtained from official Soviet documents.

Soon, the American Federation of Labor took up the cause. In the late 1940s, the United States repeatedly placed the topic "slave labor in the USSR" on the agenda of meetings of the UN Council on Economic and Social Affairs. Publications about Soviet penal camps continued to be published after Stalin's death, although their reception was increasingly confronted with political obstacles. So, in 1955, in connection with the "detente" of German-Soviet relations, a very important work on the camps was lost, which in the same year in Munich was translated into Russian by B.A. Yakovlev (under the pseudonym N.A. Troitsky)

Similarly, Paul Barton's The Concentration Camp Institute in Soviet Russia, four years later, received little attention ( L "Institution concentrationnaire en Russie sovietique), although this extensive work by that time was a full-scale study on this topic. Barton analyzed a whole series of secret Soviet documents, as well as eyewitness reports, primarily from former Polish camp prisoners, that were collected by the International Commission against the concentration camp regime. This commission was convened in 1950 by David Rousset, a French resistance fighter who survived a German concentration camp and who was sued by the communist weekly Les Lettres francaises for libel over his article about " Soviet system concentration camps", published in the newspaper Figaro on November 12, 1949. Based on the data of David Rousset, Paul Barton borrowed the concept of a concentration camp system (systeme concentrationnaire), which he considered justified for three reasons for Soviet camps:

1) such a significant part of the population of the country resides in the camps that, on the basis of its expansion, it alone represents a whole state within a state, and is not only part of the correctional system;

2) the isolation of prisoners is only one of the functions that is typical of the camps, but it plays a significant role in industrial production, as well as in the settlement of the uninhabited parts of the country;

3) Soviet camps also serve to keep the entire population in constant fear and terror.

In the 1960s and 1970s, only a few significant works about the Gulag appeared, and these were literary works: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Kolyma Tales (1978), and, of course, The Gulag Archipelago (1973 ). The publication of this essay caused the effect of an exploding bomb. This "experience of artistic research" is an attempt at historical and at the same time literary reconstruction. Solzhenitsyn's intention was diametrically opposed to the task set by Shalamov. “I am not a historian of the camps,” he remarked in his diary:

I write about the camp no more than Exupery about the sky or Melville about the sea.<...>The so-called camp theme is a very large theme, which will accommodate one hundred such writers as Solzhenitsyn, five such writers as Leo Tolstoy. And no one will be cramped.

Solzhenitsyn's work is based on hundreds of stories of the victims, collected by former convict Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which he supplemented with excerpts from confidential documents of the camp administration. .

From this monumental work on the history of the camp world, the main idea unambiguously follows: the institution of correctional camps from the very beginning becomes an integral part of the Soviet experiment that was started by Lenin. Here Solzhenitsyn is at odds with those who, such as David Rousset or Paul Barton, believed that the Soviet camp system began to take shape in the early 1930s, from the moment of Stalin's "Great Break" of forced collectivization, the "elimination of the kulaks" and the beginning terror.

The "Gulag Archipelago" fixed in the public consciousness of the West for a long period the fact of the existence of Soviet camps and to a great extent provoked the interest of historians in this topic. Solzhenitsyn's book provoked widespread debate about the significance and meaning of forced labor in the Soviet economy, although somewhat useless: too academic due to the complete inaccessibility of archival materials.

The debate prompted by economic historians also gave demographers and political scientists a reason to discuss the rather controversial number of prisoners in the camps, which Solzhenitsyn estimated by the end of the 1930s at twenty million. On the pages of narrowly professional magazines, such as Soviet Studies and Slavic Review, a bitter "war of numbers" raged, during which the "high" estimates of this number, given by Robert Conquest or Stephen Rosefield (from 15 to 20 million Gulag prisoners and many millions executed during the "Great Terror" of 1937/38), clashed with " low" given by Stephen Wheatcroft or Naum Yasny (between two and three million camp prisoners and "hundreds of thousands" of victims of the 1937/38 period). The high numbers were considered plausible by all known Soviet dissidents.

In fact, during this "war of numbers" it was about a broader issue than just the Gulag. It was part of a fundamental controversy between representatives of the "school of totalitarians" and the "school of revisionists", who were then engaged in research in the same areas. Soviet history. In the first half of the 1980s, the position in relation to the number of repressions - in relation to the scale of forced labor, the number of prisoners in the Gulag - was an indicator that indicated to which of the "Soviet clans" that deployed at that time, according to all the rules, the ongoing "intellectual civil war", leaned or belonged to this or that researcher.

Invasion of Perestroika

At the moment of the highest point of this confrontation, "Perestroika" began in the USSR. under the sign publicity subject Stalinist repressions started to spark interest again. Since the overthrow of Khrushchev in 1964, for more than twenty years, during the Brezhnev frosts, this topic has been "virgin". And then, between 1986 and 1989, a whole stream of stories and eyewitness accounts of that time poured in, documentaries and philosophical-historical-literary essays, a genre that in the Russian tradition is called journalism.

It is characteristic that all the authors belonged to the most significant publications, or thick magazines of that time, such as " New world”,“ Friendship of Peoples ”,“ Banner of October ”, or“ Spark ”, whose circulation reached the highest values.

The authors belonged to the generation sixties, which became a real intellectual phenomenon during the short Khrushchev thaw: journalists, publicists, screenwriters, sociologists, economists and historians - the latter, however, less often, since they were still often subject to pressure and the influence of official ideology. In this regard, they increasingly lost their influence on public opinion and, accordingly, the demand for their works also fell. Since the archives were still closed, the topic of "repressions under Stalin" was mostly covered by publicists in the genre of journalism, literature and eyewitness accounts. Most great importance had at that time the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, which was approved in the summer of 1989 by the Politburo of the Central Committee. After that, Western "classics" such as Robert Conquest and Martin Malia were also translated into Russian. Literally overnight, from both Western interpretations of the “phenomenon of the Soviet Union”, the concept of the “totalitarian model” was created and spread, according to which the number of victims of repressions increased more and more and crossed all conceivable thresholds: 30, 50, 70 million ... .

In this new environment of universal "repentance" was called to life the organization "Memorial", which gave a strong impetus to research into the history of repression and the Gulag, and also had and still has a huge impact on those who participate in these activities. In an atmosphere that favored the "rediscovery of the past", and especially the discovery of the "dark sides" of Stalinism, this organization faced an enormous increase in the number of its ranks. Already in 1989, hundreds of local associations, organizations and groups gathered under its auspices, owing their creation to people who took the history of their country to heart and who collected such scarce information about Stalin period, stories of surviving eyewitnesses, diary entries and documents - everything that was even remotely related to the history of persecution and camps. These groups and associations managed to erect more than a hundred monuments to the victims of Stalinism. Thanks to the perseverance of Memorial's historians, little by little some archives related to the history of repressions were opened. In 1989/90, Viktor Zemskov and Alexander Dugin gained access to the materials of the archives of the Main Directorate of Camps and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and published the first statistics on the number of prisoners in the camps, "special settlers" and those persons who were sentenced by courts specially created by the political police. This statistic indicated what had been termed "victim inflation" in previous years in journalism. In the future, these authors were ignored, criticized, and ridiculed. Moreover, none of them in their publications could add the relevant data from the archives to their notes, since archival documents were officially prohibited from open distribution and use. It took the collapse of the USSR and the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin for the huge archive fund of the Gulag, which was stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), to gradually become available. A new stage in the study of the Soviet camp system is now beginning.

The mountains of materials from the GULAG archives, which are kept in the funds of the GARF, constantly opened in the last fifteen years, represent only a very small part of the immense bureaucratic prose left over the decades by the “creativity” of the stupid and creeping organization of the GULAG management. Local camp archives, which were stored in sheds, barracks, or other rapidly decaying buildings, in many cases simply disappeared, as, unfortunately, the main part of the camp buildings also disappeared. In general, this is the reason for the constantly remaining very small number of monographs devoted to one or another camp complex. Thus, GULAG historians, on the one hand, are faced with significant gaps in the source base at the local level, and on the other, with a real “flood” of documents at the central levels, engendered by what I call a truly "bureaucratic reporting culture".

Challenges and problems of historiography

In fact, archive materials related to the Gulag represent in a concentrated form the problems that all researchers dealing with the problems of the history of Soviet society face: due to the small amount of sources that owe their origin to the interested parties themselves, Gulag historians face the danger , which Andrea Graziosi generally stated for the field of historical research related to the USSR:

To investigate the life of Soviet citizens only on the basis of stories that were concocted by various kinds of bureaucrats, whose task it was to intercept such stories and keep them under control.

To illustrate, it suffices to cite one figure: already in 1950, the number of GULAG employees subordinate to the center increased to 133,000, and they dealt with nothing but materials devoted to position on the ground This inexhaustible "bureaucratic prose" provides historians with material of varying quality. The historian needs to take a critical look at the "exemplary stories" that regularly came from the highest "organs" of the Gulag to the competent ministry (internal affairs), and distinguish them from internal documents that circulated at lower administrative levels, and which, as a rule, were more frank and informative. One example: in the second half of 1941, the war leads to an imbalance in the entire organization of the Gulag. The chaotic redeployment of hundreds of thousands of prisoners, arrested and imprisoned persons from the western parts of the USSR exacerbates the problem of overcrowding in the camps in the eastern parts of the country. Norms of food rations are no longer respected, mortality is increasing dramatically. In his long report on balance sheets, this genuine hymn to the Gulag during the Great Patriotic War, which sends Beria on August 17, 1944, Nasedkin, chief of the Main Directorate of Camps, the high mortality rates among prisoners (which in 1942 and 1943 reached about twenty percent) dress in the following piquant euphemism:

Already during the first year of the war, the physical profile of prisoners changed, namely in the direction of a decrease in labor productivity.

But, fortunately, hundreds of documents are available to researchers of the history of society, in which the camp authorities describe the true picture on the ground. So, the head of the Aktobe camps writes on October 22, 1941 to higher authorities:

We are witnessing an explosive increase in mortality among prisoners (…) This phenomenon is due to the miserable state of the food supply, which, among other things, causes numerous cases of scabies and pellagra. Prisoners do not receive their prescribed food supply. In this regard, they even eat the roots. On October 20, the brigade of prisoner Shubakin boiled a stray dog killed by prisoners.

In order to understand the reality of the Gulag from the inside, it is important - and today it is still possible - to reconstruct, on the one hand, the "chain" of reports that circulated from the bottom to the very top of the administration, and, on the other hand, to compare different types of internal documents. From this point of view, regular on-site inspections are especially revealing, as are the shorthand records of meetings of the GULAG administration staff. In the future, it would be of particular interest to compare documents and materials sourced from the General Directorate of Camps with sources provided by other law enforcement agencies, especially the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor's Office. In light of all these documents and their study, our knowledge of the Gulag has become more significant.

Data and statistics facts

The first important problem that the historian encounters in his work is the one that has given rise to so much debate, namely, the problem of statistical data. From the facts available in the public domain, it follows that at the moment higher development During the Gulag in the early 1950s, approximately 2.5 million people were kept in the camps, and in the late 1930s, just under two million.

These include "special settlers" (or simply labor settlers), who for the most part were expelled collectively on the basis of a simple administrative decree and were forcibly placed in special settlements that were subordinate to the central governing bodies of the Gulag. In 1939 their number was approximately 1.2 million, and in 1953 - 2.7 million.

The discovery of the archives made it finally possible to understand the various "spheres" of activity of the GULAG universe and to clarify the various categories of its victims who found themselves on the edges and edges of this universe. In this regard, there was incredible confusion in the writings before 1990. There are a number of works on the topic, until then little studied, concerning the world of "special settlers" and "labor migrants", the world of people "neither this nor that", who fell into an intermediate position between freedom and camp imprisonment, and which were the most remarkable units Soviet repressive system. Due to mass deportations, they are represented by various social and ethnic groups subjected to the most common forms of forced labor.

Of course, these figures, linked to a certain period of time, are static, and must be supplemented, for credibility, by data on the inflow due to the arrival of a new contingent and the outflow in connection with the release. In contrast to how it is described in the main part of the memoirs - the authors of which in most cases are intellectuals or members of the party, who, as a rule, were sentenced to very long terms of imprisonment and, in addition, due to absolute arbitrariness, shortly before the end of a long term received a new sentence and term, - data and figures obtained from the archives of the Gulag (as well as materials from the archives of the Ministry of Justice), reveal a high degree of fluctuation. In different years, twenty to forty percent of prisoners were released. Confinement in the camps was also not necessarily identical with a death sentence. The high fluctuation is, to a certain extent, the reason for the great uncertainty regarding the determination of the total number of prisoners in the camps. The figure of twenty million is based, to a large extent, not on calculations related to a specific point in time in the history of the Gulag; it is a figure that is arrived at - with a deviation of several million - by adding up the number of arrivals in the camps over a period of about twenty years, namely from 1930 to 1953.

Contrary to this broader understanding, most of the prisoners in the camps do not belong to the category of "political" who received their sentences on the basis of sentences of special courts in connection with the infamous article 58 of part 14 of Soviet criminal law for "counter-revolutionary activities." Rather, on the contrary, the number of such prisoners fluctuated from year to year, in other words: depending on the internal contradictions of the Stalinist regime and their aggravation, it fluctuated between twenty and thirty percent.

But the other prisoners were by no means all criminals in the generally accepted sense of the word. The most detailed data from the Ministry of Justice and the prosecutor's office indicate that the majority of those sentenced to camps violated one of the countless repressive laws that extended to almost all areas of life. Thus, countless minor offenses were classified as criminal acts. “Ordinary” citizens were punished for “ordinary” actions: “the one who, due to hunger, left a couple of spikelets in the harvested collective farm fields, “damaged public property”; “speculated” by selling scarce goods in order to somehow get away from his miserable existence; "left his job" the one who tried to resist the increasingly ruthless norms of output in production; The “passport regime” was violated by those who left their place of residence in search of work or housing. The historian and president of Memorial, Arseniy Roginsky, correctly noted that these “ordinary” prisoners, who were not sentenced under Article 58, were in no way “criminal elements”, but were victims of political repressions, who, for the most insignificant actions and social offenses were incommensurable in punitive force of punishment. In the light of the facts currently available, it is possible to clarify and establish the various types of sentences handed down in different years by different instances (special bodies of the NKVD, military courts, ordinary courts), as well as the appropriate measure of punishment in connection with a particular article, and, finally, the corresponding groups of victims of these processes. Thus, from the continuum of Stalinist repressions, certain most significant points can be distinguished:

To date, studies have also been carried out in relation to the sociological and ethnic affiliation of prisoners. Their result was a picture of the "camp community" as a mold of Soviet society in terms of sociological and ethnic parameters. The lowest strata of society (collective farmers and workers) were, undoubtedly, quantitatively the most noticeable groups, and only the number of intellectuals, academicians and persons who were designated in the jargon of the governing bodies as former raised with ease. Also, the division according to nationality corresponded - at least until the second half of the 1940s - percentage various representatives of the "great family of peoples of the USSR". As soon as in 1945/46. a large number of prisoners began to arrive from the Baltic countries and western Ukraine, from among those who resisted the Soviet occupation, this balance was disturbed.

In order to linger on the statistics that have been so controversial for many years, we also need to note another important point that archival materials have also clarified somewhat - the death rate. The most recent studies give an average mortality rate ranging from about four percent between 1931 and 1953. (time period for which central statistics provide information). The headquarters of the camps registered 1,700,000 deaths during those twenty-three years; the mortality rate fluctuated greatly depending on the year and the location of the camp. The most difficult phase was the war years. In 1942 and also in 1943 every fifth prisoner died. In total, one million people in the Gulag died during the war from exhaustion and starvation.

In the same period of time, one million prisoners were also released ahead of schedule - in order to be enrolled directly from the camps in combat units at the front. Other terrible years were: 1933, the year of the great crop shortage in Ukraine, when every seventh prisoner of the Gulag died; and 1938, when the huge influx of victims of the "Great Terror" disrupted the entire camp supply system: then one out of every ten people died.

Beginning in 1946, these figures began to decline significantly: the authorities counted the entire number of missing labor throughout the country. From this point on, the prisoners were exploited more "rationally"; as a consequence, the annual mortality rate fluctuated in the late 1940s and early 1950s between 0.5 and 1.2 percent; in the time leading up to the war, the death rate fluctuated between three and seven percent a year.

The chances of survival varied greatly depending on the location of the camp. This is where statistics and eyewitness accounts converge. The average death rate in some agricultural production camp in the Kazakh region of Karaganda was fifteen times lower than in the worst camps in Kolyma.

Before we finish this important chapter of Gulag statistics, another question arises: what can a historian say to those who question these figures and facts? First of all, once again admit that there are shortcomings in the study. Thus, every researcher familiar with the Gulag archives, during his work, could encounter countless errors in accounting reports, as well as fundamental miscalculations (confusion in the number of prisoners and working days, monthly and annual norms), which can be explained by low the level of education of the managerial staff who filled out page after page with rows of figures for reports on the "status of profit and loss" in the camps. However, despite such individual errors, at present, by correcting documents originating from various government bodies (Justice, Prosecutor's Office, Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Directorate of Camps), it is possible to restore statistical series, which, as a rule, lead to more reliable results. At the same time, a certain "error factor" remains, which Varlam Shalamov perfectly illustrated in his story Sherry - Brandy, dedicated to the death in the camp of Osip Mandelstam. The poet is dying, dying, dead - for sure, he is no longer alive, but he dies two days before his "official" death.

But they wrote him off two days later - his inventive neighbors managed to get bread for a dead man for two days when distributing bread; the dead man raised his hand like a puppet. Therefore, he died before the date of his death - an important detail for his future biographers.

Gulag Analysis: Systematic Evidence

The first very "positivist" phase of the new approach to the Gulag as an object of historical research, in the course of which such evidence was restored as macrofacts and data on the number of prisoners, on the categories of sentences passed, on the average length of sentences, mortality, the social structure of prisoners, led to 1998 to the completion of the encyclopedic work, which was published by the historians of "Memorial" Arseniy Roginsky and Nikita Okhotkin: "Correctional Labor Camps of the USSR, 1923-1960"

For the first time in this book, a list of all forced labor camps is presented and brief characteristics more than 500 camp institutions - glavkov and camp guide) with specific guidelines, namely:

Designation and historical outline of the correctional institution or camp;
Status (special camp, labor camp, labor camp territorial office, camp branch);
The period of existence of the institution;
Location;
Types of activity – main and auxiliary farms;
The main number of prisoners, established on the basis of monthly recorded data from the supply and accounting department;
Brief biographies of camp leaders;
Location of camp archives.

This camp encyclopedia shows how ridiculously insignificant in the early 1990s. there were collected data and information about the camps. The world of camps itself manifested itself as a gigantic iceberg, whose hidden extent was so difficult to comprehend, as this iceberg constantly changed its shape: many camps that were assigned tasks for logging, mining or work in progress (railroads, canals, street construction), constantly and simultaneously changed their places of deployment; they were often designated by simple numbers (Stroika 513, Stroyka 624, etc.) and were subject to constant administrative and economic restructuring. These facts of extreme changes and the destruction of the camp archives make it impossible to carry out separate studies on many camps.

Therefore, historians in the second phase, starting in 2000, began to consider the camp world rather thematically. This is also facilitated by the aforementioned seven-volume history of the Stalinist Gulag, which by now is a full-scale publication of documents from the Soviet world of camps from 1930 to 1953. This thematic approach analyzes the Gulag system as a whole and under various aspects: as a place of repression, as a system of forced labor, as a gigantic governance structure that formed a true “state within a state”, as a society with its own codes and internal conflicts, with its own social characteristics and everyday life. We have already mentioned the GULAG as a place of repressions and suppression and we do not want to return to this again. It would be worth recalling once again only briefly that one of the new aspects in conducting such studies is the attempt, through a detailed analysis of the various campaigns of persecution conducted by the Stalinist regime, to better understand and quantify the various flows of prisoners who, over a quarter of a century, supplied camps and "special settlements" with increasing amount of human material.

It goes without saying that such work requires a constant comparison of the Gulag archives with other sources: with the already mentioned archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor's Office and the Supreme Court, but also with the flows of correspondence within the political leadership on matters of criminal law or with the reports and reports that the Minister of the Interior (as well as Molotov and Beria) provided Stalin.

Gulag as an economic system

An important area of research concerns the economic dimension of forced labor. Despite the extreme complexity of the conjuncture indicators used in internal camp statistics, despite also the extensive so-called bullshit, distorting the picture of falsification of balance sheets and forgery, in a number of research work managed to give a reliable assessment of the contribution that forced labor made to the economy of the Stalinist Soviet Union. And since the number of inmates in the camps for the most part has to be adjusted downwards, the same applies to economic importance forced labor. Today it must be assumed that its contribution to industrial production and energy production has never exceeded eight to ten percent (and this applies to both value creation and capital investment).

Of course, there are big differences across industries. At its peak, in the early 1950s, the Gulag supplied one hundred percent of the demand for platinum and diamonds, ninety percent of silver, and thirty-five percent of non-ferrous metals such as nickel; they also include twelve percent of the need for coal and wood. Also, in the development and development of minerals in the uninhabited areas of the country, where a free man would hardly dare to go of his own free will, forced labor was given a higher importance, and the function of repressive politics always went out first plan. When carrying out mass repressions, it was never about economic, but about political goals. An analysis of the internal documentation of the Gulag clearly indicates that during the periods 1937/38, 1940/41, and 1947/48, when the scale of political persecution increased and the number of prisoners increased, this did not in any way lead to an increase in productivity, but as On the contrary, each time ended in a huge disorganization. Such sharp "tides" of the number of the camp population in the late 1940s and early 1950s. contributed significantly to the forced labor crisis. This is clearly indicated by the archival materials of the GULAG bureaucracy. These crises have more causes: they include a large influx of prisoners in the period 1945/46, the emergence of a new category of them - opponents of the regime from the Baltic countries and Ukraine; another reason is the massive increase in the number of criminals in the camps, when the warring crime families fought among themselves; and, finally, in the ever-increasing number of collective refusals to work (strikes).

All this led to a drop in labor productivity. In order to raise it, bonuses and insignificant remuneration for work in the form of wages were introduced, and higher food rations for those who managed to meet the production rate. However, this program failed when confronted with the reality of the camp system: the infrastructure was getting old and worn out; the reserves of easily mined minerals were rapidly depleted. Extravagant projects invented by the upper echelons of power ended in an inevitable fiasco. Huge camp complexes turned out to be structural point vision difficult to reform; the ridiculously large "salary" could not be an incentive for prisoners when they organized themselves into warring gangs - which, among other things, led to the need to have more security and management personnel (almost 300,000 people). Inspections carried out in 1951/52 in the most significant camp complexes, reflected the hopeless situation in which the management found itself in the face of ever-falling profitability. They concluded that the cost of maintaining and protecting one prisoner was higher than the wages provided, which were received by civilian workers at the same construction site. And their productivity was higher.

At the initiative of the Main Directorate of Camps, the camp authorities released the prisoners ahead of schedule, on the condition that they remain working in the same place. In 1951, Mamulov, one of Beria's deputies, even proposed a radical reform of the camp system: 75 percent of the prisoners were to be released and, as "special settlers", forcibly attached to one place (without the right to move), working at those large state enterprises that were engaged in extraction of natural resources in the most severe climatic and natural parts of the country. This Gulag crisis of the early 1950s sheds new light on the wave of amnesties after Stalin's death: the reasons for them were not only purely political, but also - and even more than anything - economic in nature.

Thus, economic considerations in studying the Gulag as a system of forced labor allow a better understanding of the internal logic of the mode of production that was established in the early 1930s. Overall, we can now better appreciate the economic costs of forced labor, which has cost the lives of some two million people and brutally exploited millions of adults every year, forced to work hard at low-productivity and often unnecessary jobs.

GULAG as a bureaucratic-repressive system

It is also about the system of repression and the economic system as a whole. The Gulag must also be studied from the point of view of the history of administration and its aspects, as a gigantic bureaucratic machine of the “administrative-command system” that took hold in the early 1930s. The relentless restructuring of this huge Gulag apparatus points to the controlling hand of the center, and also to the fact that each time the hopes associated with each such restructuring were dashed in the face of endless burgeoning and ineffective governance structures that were increasingly difficult to control and which, despite to the specific location where these structures were located were always too far from the center. Hence this constant striving to improve reporting, the paper mountain of which currently forms the basis of archival materials, which makes it possible to study the history of the Gulag not only from the point of view of the victims of this system, but also from the point of view of the criminals themselves: security and management personnel, camp authorities and commanders. sections and districts of the NKVD, and, finally, functionaries from the Main Directorate of Camps. In the early 1950s their number reached approximately 300,000 (of which approximately two thirds were security personnel and one third were technical personnel and managers). As part of this biographical research related to NKVD functionaries, Nikita Petrov explores in the second volume of the history of the Gulag the world of armed "vokhrovtsy" (military guards)

The archives of the Gulag provide rich material about the security service, which was assembled from a very diverse circle of people: from former forcibly settled prisoners; from the former prisoners of war who returned to their homeland, who in the filtration camps were reorganized into VOKhR, often by no means of their own free will; of young recruits of the Red Army who were unfit for active service in the army or awaiting trial. This was a highly criminogenic, corrupt and violent environment, whose study makes sense in order to better understand the ever-changing boundaries between the "inside" and "outside" worlds.

As for the nomenclature of the Ministry of the Interior and the secret police, their personal documents closed to access. In this regard, any fundamental research on functionaries state security or the Gulag are absent. However, thanks to the participation and patience of a group of eminent historians close to Memorial, we now have a reference book that traces the professional and political development of six hundred leading NKVD functionaries between 1934 and 1941. .

The second volume, covering the period from 1941 to 1953, is now in preparation. The first volume shows that forty-five percent of those who in 1930 held high posts in 1937-1939. were destroyed; those who survived the "great purge" remained in power until the mid-1950s. and died, as a rule, with a good pension, in the period from 1960 to 1980 - the years of their death in their own bed. And only a small minority, even less than one percent of these NKVD cadres, were subjected to administrative punishment after Stalin's death - they were sent ahead of schedule to resignation. A somewhat different picture emerges if one traces exclusively the nomenclature of the Gulag. Its employees survived the period 1937-1939. in more: for example, in the group studied and reflected in the collection of documents "GULAG, 1917-1960", only twenty percent of these leading functionaries lost their lives. The reason for this must, of course, be sought in the fact that the GULAG nomenklatura was supervised to a lesser extent, and protected to a greater extent: there was no such fierce struggle for power in its ranks; moreover, in times of upheaval, they retained their remoteness from the centers of power and had relative protection within certain circles of the camp leadership. This twenty percent also includes ten percent of those who died during the war and postwar period, which means that seventy percent of those who were vested with the main powers in the Gulag outlived Stalin, and often for many years. Born mostly between 1900 and 1910, more than a third of them survived into the 1970s, and about ten percent even into the 1980s. They also took advantage of the privileges that were due to pensioners who were part of the nomenklatura. None of them, who survived until the end of the USSR, was held accountable.

History of everyday life in the Gulag

And finally, we can now study the Gulag as well as history Everyday life, as a kind of specific society that discovers its own rules of life, laws, codes of conduct. In this regard, naturally, memories of the experience, eyewitness accounts and literary works are the most important source for the historian. On the contrary, too many and so varied data and documents provided by the bureaucracy pose huge problems related to interpretation. There are two types of sources associated with the structures of the Gulag administration that are of great importance to the historian of everyday life.

One of them is the stream of reports, certificates and special reports (as various types of reports are called), which in their vast numbers report "violations of regulations" that impede the smooth flow of camp life. These messages and reports inform higher authorities about various incidents (various minor incidents, stoppages of work, escape attempts, fights among prisoners or groups of prisoners). It's impossible to say exactly which tip of the iceberg they represent. How often and in detail these documents were created depends directly on the regular inspections and verification campaigns carried out by the central authorities, during which the "rhythm" was the same as during all the political campaigns of the Stalin era: after any first impetuous, exhausting, but short in time phase, the check quickly subsided - until the next campaign.

The other is the extremely petty and captious instructions and circulars of the central authorities, which were supposed to regulate all aspects of the life of prisoners. These texts of instructions, which bear a strong imprint of the true “aesthetics” of planning, often lack a connection with reality: tens of thousands of pages that relate to labor standards, or food rations, “supplying” prisoners with inventory or “non-monetary allowance” ( allowance, another notable bureaucratic neologism that is difficult to translate). With regard to food alone, there were at least fifteen “basic norms”, which were also divided into “subnorms” depending on the type of camp and the work carried out in it, and, in addition, they could change many times during the year (depending on the time of the year); even the slightest change in the norm in the documents - when it came to food - also meant the signature of the chief of the Gulag, the minister of internal affairs and his deputy. Here is an example of the verbatim text of such a circular:

Circular number 130-035 of January 28, 1944
"On Increasing the Salt Ration in Cooking for Prisoners"
To improve the quality of food preparation for prisoners, increase the average ration from the 15 grams per day currently provided to 18 grams. Chernyshev, Deputy People's Commissar Internal Affairs.

If this document provides an explanation, then, of course, it is not about the taste of balanda, that sticky, watery stew that was given to convicts. And one more example, a document written by the same Chernyshev dated December 21, 1949:

In order to avoid the ingress of a foreign body when baking bread, gluten-containing types of flour No. 1 and No. 2 should be systematically sifted through a metal sieve (wire) No. 10 and 12, flour types No. 1 and 2 - through a sieve No. 16 and 24.

Just as carefully, a historian studying the Gulag must sift through a lot of bureaucratic data and information in order to find a grain of truth. The works left by the "cultural and educational department", mostly "demonstrative prose", offer the historian little value. What conclusions and conclusions should he draw from the countless flattering reports and reports that report on 195,706 lectures given only during the period of 1949, and which were listened to by 92 percent of the prisoners, and which also include 570,762 political conversations and 7,395,751 "oral readings of newspapers", from which the Gulag prisoners could not avoid?

And yet there are aspects of everyday life about which we can obtain information from official sources - about problems that the authorities were sufficiently concerned about, including in order to launch an investigation? What groups were created among the prisoners? What role did the underground organizations play, especially the Baltic and Ukrainian "nationalists"? What contacts existed between the camp administration and criminal gangs? What conflicts took place between the "criminal authorities" (thieves in law) of various criminal clans? And what typical clashes happened between different ethnic groups: Ukrainians and Russians, or Russians and “Muslims” (especially Tatars, but also Chechens)? To obtain such information, the administration of the Gulag used a large number of provocateurs and informers, whom it recruited from among the prisoners. They included between eight and ten percent of the prisoners. However, so many funds were used that in January 1952 a meeting of the chief functionaries of the camp administration was held in Moscow, who had to admit that

The camp management, which has so far been able to exploit conflicts and strife between different groups of prisoners, may lose control of internal processes.

To these aspects of everyday life in the camps in the post-war period, which were little known until now, a large number of new elements are added in the sixth volume of the History of the Stalinist Gulag, published by Vladimir Kozlov.

In her exemplary work on the Nazi camp system, Olga Wormser-Migot writes:

This theme should hardly be approached only statically, as if it were frozen in its ideally typical structures without any influence of temporal factors.

The same applies primarily to the phenomenon of the Soviet camp system, whose development stretched over a period of time three times longer than the existence of the Nazi system of Nazi camps, and which has undergone changes over the decades, developing along with the system of criminal law and the political system, during the period from 1918 to 1920 representing something different than what appeared in the 1930s or early 1950s. The main part of the research work on this topic concerns the period 1929-1953; and yet the discovery of the archives (of which the materials are in the public domain for the most part until the mid-sixties) also shed some light on the topic "Gulag before the Gulag", as well as on the "Gulag after the Gulag", although there are still fewer works published on this topic. .

The wider our knowledge of the Soviet camp system becomes, the clearer it becomes that 1929 marks the "Great Break" not only in the history of industrialization and forced collectivization, but also in the evolution of the policy of criminal prosecution and the system of punishment. In connection with the development of Soviet society, one can state a certain gap between the Leninist and Stalinist phases - an even greater degree of violence, no compromises, no hesitation in the face of obstacles, no concessions on controversial issues. And if one can consider the Civil War as the "matrix" of Stalinism, then one cannot, nevertheless, find a direct connection between the "concentration camps" already mentioned in the works of Lenin in 1918 and the Stalinist camps of the 1930s. Concentration camps 1918-1921 are in the tradition of internment camps, as they were created during the First World War in many countries to hold prisoners of war, refugees or displaced persons.

What was new for the Bolsheviks was the deliberate internment of certain groups of the population as “hostages” “until the end of the Civil War”: “class aliens” and, accordingly, “socially dangerous elements” and those classified as them, “nobles”, “kulaks”, “White Guards”, and also foreigners. This kind of preventive internment, as a purely administrative act carried out by the political police, was part of the entire set of repressive measures that the new authorities used against "class enemies".

At the same time, the Bolshevik government was experimenting with another type of camp, "reformation by labor" camps, as places of detention, which were to appear for ordinary, judicially sentenced. In this regard, we return again to the end of the 19th century, when there was a lively debate among lawyers about the beneficial role of "redemption through work", about the use of prisoners for economic purposes, about the corresponding advantages of hard labor and prison. In the chaos of the Civil War, of course, not only the organization of "correction camps" was carried out, according to the decree of April 15, 1919, since there was not enough organization and time; increasingly in the period 1918-1921. "hostages from the bourgeoisie", sentenced criminals, family members of peasant "bandits"-rebels were isolated in the same institutions. The largest camps arose in the Tambov province, where in the summer of 1921 there was peasant uprising under the name "Antonovshchina".

The difference between "concentration" and "correction camps" was, however, pure fiction. In 1922, the instruction to send the sentenced to labor camps instead of prisons actually came into force. The internment camps were dissolved, with the exception of some "special camps" (special purpose camps), which held under arrest those sentenced by the "courts" of the then OGPU secret police: "counter-revolutionaries", political opponents and ordinary criminals whose crimes (counterfeiting, banditry) affected direct interests of the state. So, in the camp complex of the Solovetsky Islands, more than ten thousand people were kept under arrest. From this camp center, forced labor eventually evolved into an extensive system after the Politburo of the Central Committee on June 27, 1929 approved the decisive reform of criminal law, according to which persons who were supposed to serve a prison sentence of more than three years, were to be transferred to "corrective labor camps", the management of which was under the jurisdiction of the OGPU.

As for the gradual dissolution of the Gulag after Stalin's death, new facts and information have emerged that have been collected thanks to a number of studies. Already in March-April 1953, things came to a fundamental restructuring. First, the General Directorate of the Camps was transferred to the Ministry of Justice and the economic departments of the relevant civilian ministries. March 27 Soviet government carried out a partial amnesty, thanks to which almost half of the prisoners of the camps (1,200,000 out of 2,500,000 people) were released within the next three months. These were predominantly petty offenders whose sentences were less than five years.

The expected but not carried out release of the “politicals” led, starting in the summer of 1953, to a wave of work stoppages, unrest and uprisings, which peaked in May-June 1954 during the uprising in Kengir (a settlement among the camps located in the steppes). These events hastened the creation of commissions that were supposed to check the cases of "political" prisoners. Within two years (from the beginning of 1954 to the beginning of 1956), the number of "political" in the Gulag decreased from 467,000 to 114,000 people, that is, by seventy-five percent. At the beginning of 1956, for the first time in twenty years, the total number of prisoners was less than a million people. The 20th Congress of the CPSU, held in February 1956, was not, therefore, - as it is usually considered - a decisive moment in the release of the prisoners of the Gulag, and the dissolution of the "special settlements", rather, on the contrary, the main part of the "political" was released earlier.

Since the collapse of the USSR, the number of those under arrest and held in correctional colonies has been constantly growing, and in the Russian Federation alone, whose population is now much smaller than in the Stalinist USSR, it has crossed the one million mark. Particularly severe sentences and a high level of socially motivated crime undoubtedly reflect the significant social and national contradictions that leave their mark on the entire post-Soviet space. But all this is also a legacy of a still so near past: a past that was marked by the suppression and oppression of all sections and strata of society, and also, and above all, by the presence for many decades of an extensive system of camps, which was not equal anywhere in the 20th century. , and in which, during Stalin's time - just one generation ago - every sixth adult citizen of the country was kept.

The supporters of the Soviet Union are embittered people. They will never admit they are wrong. A. I. Solzhenitsyn infuriates them especially. How much dirt was poured on him! However, gradually, opening up archival materials and documents, I am more and more convinced that Solzhenitsyn was not only a writer, a fighter for the truth, but also a historian. In 2004-2005 a fundamental work was published, with the support of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, "History Stalinist Gulag" in 7 volumes. Almost all archival documents on this topic are collected there. The head of this work is the director of the GARF, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Sergei Vladimirovich Mironenko. So, in this Work (this is a kind of breakthrough in modern historical science) it is stated that in 1930-1952. about 800 thousand people were shot; about20 million people; at least 6 million were special settlers(“fists”, deported peoples, etc.). In the year of Stalin's death (1953), the total number of prisoners in the camps was 2,481,247 people, and the number of special settlers, exiles, exiles and deportees who were in special settlements and under the supervision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was 2,826,419 people.

And here is what Solzhenitsyn wrote: “It can be assumed that

what simultaneously there were no more than twelve million in the camps * (By materials Nikolaevsky and Dalin in the camps were considered from 15 to 20 million prisoners.”) (some went into the ground, the Machine dragged new ones). And no more than half of them were political. Six million? Well, it's a small country Sweden or Greece, many people know each other there.”

Solzhenitsyn, of course, could not know the exact figures. He was a prisoner! His view: this is a view of history from the other side, not from the side of power. He believed that 20 million were imprisoned at the same time, but knowing that all convicts tend to exaggerate, he referred to the materials of Dalin and Nikolayevsky, where exactly those figures are confirmed, which were later confirmed in the History of the Stalinist Gulag. That is, contrary to his own opinion, Solzhenitsyn decided to clarify his data in order not to suppress the reader with his authority, to help him comprehend himself, referring to authoritative researchers. Solzhenitsyn wrote that “in prisons, in general, they tend to exaggerate the number of prisoners, and when in fact onlytwelve to fifteen million people, prisonerswere sure that theytwenty or even thirty million". That is, 15 million for Solzhenitsyn is a very real figure, but it turned out thatprisonerswere closer to the truth. In any case, here Alexander Isaevich was at his best.

Now let's talk about politics. As already noted, A. I. Solzhenitsyn named the figure in6 million. According to the latest data, for counter-revolutionary crimes under article 58 of the Criminal Code,5533570 HumanConsidering that the data is constantly updated, I think the argument that Solzhenitsyn was right or wrong in these figures is meaningless. “But even this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminal cases were still de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal articles, 778 thousand were convicted of embezzlement of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - by Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - by Decree of June 7, 1947). August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized leaving the place of work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s - early 40s. there were usually about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 50s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (they almost disappeared by the 1950s). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed under political articles. One and a half to two percent of the prisoners were serving a camp term for violating the passport regime. Convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the population of the Gulag was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with a special role persecution of "nesuns" in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts over the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and given that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately threefold compared with 1934 and one and a half times compared with 1936, then there may be reason to assume that at least two-thirds of the victims of repression among the plunderers of socialist property were at least two-thirds.

Especially for skeptics who are not convinced about the figure of 6 million people. Here is a quote (I apologize in advance for its large volume, in justification, we note that this quote is very important according to the statistics we cite): “Statistics were kept by different departments, and today it is not easy to make ends meet. Thus, the Certificate of the Special Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the number of those arrested and convicted by the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB of the USSR, compiled by Colonel Pavlov on December 11, 1953 (hereinafter - Pavlov's certificate), gives the following figures: for the period 1937-1938. 1,575,000 people were arrested by these bodies, of which 1,372,000 were for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 1,345,000 were convicted, including 682,000 sentenced to capital punishment. Similar figures for 1930-1936. amounted to 2,256 thousand, 1,379 thousand, 1,391 thousand and 40 thousand people. In total, for the period from 1921 to 1938. 4,836,000 people were arrested, 3,342,000 of them for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 2,945,000 were convicted, including 745,000 sentenced to death. From 1939 to mid-1953, 1,115,000 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, of which 54,000 were sentenced to death. In total, in 1921-1953. 4,060,000 were convicted under political articles, including 799,000 sentenced to death.

However, these data relate only to those convicted by the system of "extraordinary" bodies, and not to the entire repressive apparatus as a whole. So, this does not include those convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals of various kinds (not only the army, navy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also railway and water transport, as well as camp courts). For example, a very large discrepancy between the number of arrests and the number of those convicted is due not only to the fact that some of the arrested were released, but also to the fact that some of them died under torture, while others were transferred to ordinary courts. As far as I know, there are no data to judge the relationship between these categories. The statistics of arrests of the NKVD were better than the statistics of sentences.

Let us also pay attention to the fact that in the “Rudenko reference”, quoted by V.N. Zemskov, the data on the number of those convicted and executed by the verdicts of all types of courts turn out to be lower than the data of Pavlov’s certificate only on “emergency” justice, although Pavlov’s certificate was supposedly only one of the documents used in Rudenko’s certificate. The reasons for such discrepancies are unknown. However, on the original of Pavlov's certificate, stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), to the figure 2,945 thousand (the number of convicts for 1921-1938), a note was made by an unknown hand in pencil: “30% angle. = 1062". "Injection." They are, of course, criminals. Why 30% of 2,945 thousand amounted to 1,062 thousand, one can only guess. Probably, the postscript reflected some stage of "data processing", and in the direction of underestimation. It is obvious that the figure of 30% was not derived empirically based on a generalization of the initial data, but represents either an “expert assessment” given by a high rank, or an estimated “by eye” equivalent of the figure (1,062 thousand), by which the specified rank considered it necessary to reduce reference data. Where such an expert assessment could come from is unknown. Perhaps it reflected the ideologeme widespread among high officials, according to which criminals were actually condemned “for politics” in our country.

With regard to the reliability of statistical materials, the number of those convicted by "extraordinary" bodies in 1937-1938. is generally confirmed by the research conducted by Memorial. However, there are cases when the regional departments of the NKVD exceeded the "limits" allocated to them by Moscow for convictions and executions, sometimes having time to get a sanction, and sometimes not having time. In the latter case, they risked getting into trouble and therefore might not show the results of excessive diligence in their reports. According to a rough estimate, such "unrevealed" cases could be 10-12% of the total number of convicts. However, it should be noted that the statistics do not reflect repeated convictions, so these factors could well be approximately balanced.

The number of those repressed in addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB can be judged by the statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. ("Babukhin's reference"). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand to imprisonment. person to corrective labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted for military crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted under political articles (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Robbers of socialist and personal property - including an unknown number of "non-bearers" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% accounted for "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well be in the nature of repressions - for the unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases a year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to the authorities (several thousand cases a year), violation of the feudal passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group was made up of punishments for unauthorized leaving work - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest to fines or labor labor. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually reached the camps.

So, 1,074,000 convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by military tribunals and ordinary courts. True, if we add up the figures of the Department of Judicial Statistics of the Supreme Court of the USSR (“Khlebnikov’s certificate”) and the Office of Military Tribunals (“Maximov’s certificate”) for the same period, we get 1,104 thousand (952 thousand convicted by military tribunals and 152 thousand - ordinary courts), but this, of course, is not a very significant discrepancy. In addition, Khlebnikov's certificate contains an indication of another 23,000 convicts in 1937-1939. Taking this into account, the total sum of Khlebnikov's and Maksimov's certificates gives 1,127,000. However, the materials of the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of the USSR allow us to speak (if we summarize different tables) either about 199,000, or about 211,000 convicted by ordinary courts for counter-revolutionary crimes for 1940–1955 and, respectively, about 325 or 337 thousand for 1937-1955, but even this does not change the order of the numbers.

The available data do not allow us to determine exactly how many of them were sentenced to death. Ordinary courts in all categories of cases handed down death sentences relatively rarely (as a rule, several hundred cases a year, only for 1941 and 1942 we are talking about several thousand). Even long terms of imprisonment in large numbers (on average 40-50 thousand per year) appear only after 1947, when the death penalty was briefly abolished and penalties for theft of socialist property were toughened. There is no record of military tribunals, but presumably in political cases they were more likely to resort to harsh punishments.

These data show that to 4,060 thousand convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by the organs of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB for 1921-1953. one should add either 1,074 thousand convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals for 1940-1955. according to Babukhin’s certificate, or 1,127 thousand convicted by military tribunals and ordinary courts (the aggregate result of Khlebnikov’s and Maksimov’s certificates), or 952 thousand convicted for these crimes by military tribunals for 1940-1956. plus 325 (or 337) thousand convicted by ordinary courts for 1937-1956. (according to the statistical collection of the Supreme Court). This gives respectively 5,134 thousand, 5,187 thousand, 5,277 thousand or 5,290 thousand.

However, ordinary courts and military tribunals did not sit idly by until 1937 and 1940, respectively. So, there were mass arrests, for example, during the period of collectivization. Cited in the “History of the Stalinist Gulag” (vol. 1, pp. 608-645) and in the “History of the Gulag” by O.V. Khlevniuk (pp. 288-291 and 307-319) statistical data collected in the mid-50s. do not concern (with the exception of data on those repressed by the organs of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB) this period. Meanwhile, O.V. Khlevnyuk refers to a document stored in the GARF, which indicates (with a reservation about incomplete data) the number of those convicted by ordinary courts of the RSFSR in 1930-1932. - 3,400 thousand people. For the USSR as a whole, according to Khlevniuk (p. 303), the corresponding figure could be at least 5 million. This gives approximately 1.7 million per year, which is in no way inferior to the average annual result of the courts of general jurisdiction of the 40s and early 50s gg. (2 million per year - but population growth should be taken into account).

Probably, the number of those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the entire period from 1921 to 1956 hardly many less than 6 million » .

Regarding Solzhenitsyn's assertion that no more than half were political, we note that this is also beyond criticism. And here Solzhenitsyn excels.

Let's pick up one more quote from The Gulag Archipelago: Yes, Vladimir Ilyich could not help but think about the future punitive system, still peacefully sitting with his friend Zinoviev among the fragrant Razliv hayfields, buzzing bumblebees. Back then, he calculated and reassured us that “the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of yesterday’s hired

the work of slaves is so comparatively easy, simple and natural that it will cost much less blood ... it will cost humanity much less ”than the previous suppression of the majority by the minority ** (V. I. Lenin. Full. sobr. op. T. 35, p. 90)

And how much did this “comparatively light” internal suppression cost us from the beginning of the October Revolution? According to the calculations of the emigrated professor of statistics I.A. Kurganov, from 1917 to 1959 without military losses, only from terrorist annihilation, suppression, famine, increased mortality in the camps, and including a deficit from a low birth rate - it cost us ... 66.7 million people (without this deficit - 55 million). Sixty-six million! Fifty five!Of course, we cannot vouch for Professor Kurganov's figures., but we do not have official ones. As soon as the official ones are published, specialists will be able to compare them critically. (Several studies have already appeared using hidden and tattered Soviet statistics, but the terrible masses of the ruined are still flooding in.)

NotDespite the fact that Solzhenitsyn did not vouch for these figures, modern research confirms the text of the Archipelago»: « Total number of terror victims over the years Soviet power can thus be approximately estimated at 50-55 million people. The vast majority of them, of course, account for the period up to 1953. Therefore, if the former chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov, with whom V.N. Zemskov, not too much (only 30%, towards underestimation, of course) distorted the data on the number of those arrested during the Great Terror, then in the general assessment of the scale of repressions A.I. Solzhenitsyn was, alas, closer to the truth.. The demographic method also proves this."Historian" (as he calls himself) I. Pykhalov cites the following quotes:Press conference in Paris, April 10, 1975

— You name 50-60 million dead Russians, is it only in the camps, or including military losses?
- More than 60 million dead - these are only internal losses of the USSR. No, I don't mean war, internal losses.

(Solzhenitsyn A. Journalism. Articles and speeches. Paris, 1989. C.180 of the second pagination)

But Professor Kurganov indirectly calculated that from 1917 to 1959 only from internal war of the Soviet regime against its people, that is, from its destruction by famine, collectivization, exile of the peasants to destruction, prisons, camps, simple executions - only from this we died, along with our civil war, 66 million people.

(Ibid. C.323 of the second pagination)

BBC radio interview. Cavendish, February 1979

He [meaning the emigrant professor and journalist Yanov. - I.P.] does not even reproach the communist regime for the destruction of 60 million people. (Ibid. C.365 of the second pagination)

I have not yet verified these data, and there are doubts that they are authentic. At least, apart from Pykhalov and other Stalinists, no one else refers to such documents. I can assume that the quotes are falsified. However, even if not, it doesn't really change anything. We have shown above that all calculations of 50-60 million are indeed confirmed by both archival and demographic sources.

The formation of Gulag networks began in 1917. It is known that Stalin was a great admirer of this type of camps. The Gulag system was not just a zone where prisoners served their sentences, it was the main engine of the economy of that era. All the grandiose construction projects of the 1930s and 1940s were carried out by the hands of prisoners. During the existence of the Gulag, many categories of the population visited there: from murderers and bandits, to scientists and former members of the government, whom Stalin suspected of treason.

How did the Gulag appear?

Most of the information about the Gulag refers to the late twenties and early 30s of the twentieth century. In fact, this system began to emerge immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. The Red Terror program provided for the isolation of objectionable classes of society in special camps. The first inhabitants of the camps were former landowners, manufacturers and representatives of the wealthy bourgeoisie. At first, the camps were not led by Stalin, as is commonly believed, but by Lenin and Trotsky.

When the camps filled with prisoners, they were handed over to the Cheka, under the leadership of Dzerzhinsky, who introduced the practice of using prisoner labor to restore the country's ruined economy. By the end of the revolution, through the efforts of the "iron" Felix, the number of camps increased from 21 to 122.

In 1919, a system was already in place that was destined to become the basis of the Gulag. The war years led to complete lawlessness, which was happening in the territories of the camps. In the same year, the Northern camps were created in the Arkhangelsk province.

Creation of the Solovetsky Gulag

In 1923, the famous "Solovki" were created. In order not to build barracks for prisoners, an ancient monastery was included in their territory. The famous Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp was the main symbol of the Gulag system in the 1920s. The project for this camp was proposed by Unshlikht (one of the leaders of the GPU), who was shot in 1938.

Soon the number of prisoners in Solovki expanded to 12,000 people. The conditions of detention were so harsh that during the entire existence of the camp, according to official statistics, more than 7,000 people died. During the famine of 1933, more than half of that number died.

Despite the reigning cruelty and mortality in the Solovetsky camps, they tried to hide information about this from the public. When the famous Soviet writer Gorky, who was considered an honest and ideological revolutionary, arrived in the archipelago in 1929, the camp management tried to hide all the unsightly aspects of the life of prisoners. The hopes of the inhabitants of the camp that famous writer will tell the public about the inhuman conditions of their detention, did not come true. The authorities threatened all those who let it out with severe punishment.

Gorky was amazed at how labor turns criminals into law-abiding citizens. Only in the children's colony did one boy tell the writer the whole truth about the regime of the camps. After the writer left, this boy was shot.

For what offense could they send to the Gulag

More and more workers were required for new global construction projects. The investigators were given the task to accuse as many innocent people as possible. Denunciations in this case were a panacea. Many uneducated proletarians seized the opportunity to get rid of objectionable neighbors. There were standard charges that could be applied to almost anyone:

Stalin was an inviolable person, therefore, any words that discredited the leader were subject to severe punishment;
Negative attitude towards collective farms;
Negative attitude towards bank government securities (loans);
Sympathy for counter-revolutionaries (especially Trotsky);
Admiration for the West, especially the USA.

In addition, any use of Soviet newspapers, especially those with portraits of leaders, was punishable by a term of 10 years. It was enough to wrap breakfast in a newspaper with the image of the leader, and any vigilant work comrade could hand over the “enemy of the people”.

The development of camps in the 30s of the 20th century

The Gulag camp system reached its peak in the 1930s. Visiting the museum of the history of the Gulag, you can see what horrors happened in the camps during these years. In the corrective labor code of the RSFS, work in camps was legally approved. Stalin constantly forced to carry out powerful campaigns to convince the citizens of the USSR that only enemies of the people are kept in the camps, and the Gulag is the only humane way to rehabilitate them.

In 1931, the largest construction project of the times of the USSR began - the construction of the White Sea Canal. This construction was presented to the public as a great achievement of the Soviet people. An interesting fact is that the press spoke positively about the criminals involved in the construction of BAMA. At the same time, the merits of tens of thousands of political prisoners were hushed up.

Often the criminals cooperated with the administration of the camps, representing another lever for the demoralization of political prisoners. Laudatory odes to thieves and bandits who made "Stakhanovite" norms at the construction site were constantly heard in the Soviet press. In fact, the criminals forced ordinary political prisoners to work for themselves, cruelly and demonstratively cracking down on the recalcitrant. Attempts by former military personnel to restore order in the camp environment were suppressed by the camp administration. Appearing leaders were shot or set on them by seasoned criminals (a whole system of incentives was developed for them for reprisals against political ones).

Hunger strikes were the only available way for political prisoners to protest. If solitary acts did not lead to anything good, except for a new wave of bullying, then mass hunger strikes were considered counter-revolutionary activities. The instigators were quickly identified and shot.

Skilled labor in the camp

The main problem of the Gulags was the huge shortage of skilled workers and engineers. Complex construction tasks had to be solved by high-level specialists. In the 1930s, the entire technical stratum consisted of people who studied and worked while still under tsarist rule. Naturally, it was not difficult to accuse them of anti-Soviet activities. The administration of the camps sent lists to the investigators, which specialists were required for large-scale construction projects.

The position of the technical intelligentsia in the camps was practically no different from the position of other prisoners. For honest and hard work, they could only hope that they would not be subjected to bullying.

The most fortunate were the specialists who worked in closed secret laboratories on the territory of the camps. There were no criminals there, and the conditions of detention of such prisoners were very different from the generally accepted ones. The most famous scientist who went through the Gulag is Sergei Korolev, who became the originator of the Soviet era of space exploration. For his merits, he was rehabilitated and released along with his team of scientists.

All large-scale pre-war construction projects were completed with the help of the slave labor of convicts. After the war, the need for this labor force only increased, as many workers were required to restore the industry.

Even before the war, Stalin abolished the parole system for shock work, which led to demotivation of prisoners. Previously, for hard work and exemplary behavior, they could hope for a reduction in the term of imprisonment. After the abolition of the system, the profitability of the camps fell sharply. Despite all the atrocities The administration could not force people to do quality work, especially since poor rations and unsanitary conditions in the camps undermined people's health.

Women in the Gulag

The wives of traitors to the motherland were kept in "ALZHIR" - the Akmola camp of the Gulag. For refusing “friendship” with representatives of the administration, one could easily get an “increase” in time or, even worse, a “ticket” to a male colony, from where they rarely returned.

ALZHIR was founded in 1938. The first women who got there were the wives of Trotskyists. Often, along with their wives, other members of the family of prisoners, their sisters, children and other relatives also ended up in the camps.

The only method of women's protest was the constant petitions and complaints that they wrote to various authorities. Most of the complaints did not reach the addressee, but the authorities mercilessly cracked down on the complainants.

Children in Stalin's camps

In the 1930s, all homeless children were placed in Gulag camps. Although the first children's labor camps appeared as early as 1918, after April 7, 1935, when a decree was signed on measures to combat juvenile delinquency, this became widespread. Usually children had to be kept separately, often they were together with adult criminals.

All punishments were applied to teenagers, including execution. Often, 14-16-year-old teenagers were shot only because they were the children of the repressed and "imbued with counter-revolutionary ideas."

Museum of Gulag History

The Gulag History Museum is a unique complex that has no analogues in the world. It presents reconstructions of individual fragments of the camp, as well as a huge collection of artistic and literary works created by former prisoners of the camps.

A huge archive of photographs, documents and things of the inhabitants of the camp allows visitors to appreciate all the horrors that happened on the territory of the camps.

Liquidation of the Gulag

After Stalin's death in 1953, the gradual liquidation of the Gulag system began. A few months later, an amnesty was announced, after which the population of the camps was halved. Sensing the relaxation of the system, the prisoners began mass riots, seeking further amnesties. A huge role in the elimination of the system was played by Khrushchev, who sharply condemned Stalin's personality cult.

The last head of the main department of labor camps, Kholodov, was transferred to the reserve in 1960. His departure marked the end of the Gulag era.

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