Russian Prisons/Labor Camps
Russian Prison/Labor Camps Following the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Soviets dismantled the broad spy networks of the czarist secret police, the Okhrana, but the new government kept all essential functions of that organization in place, replacing the czarists with Bolsheviks and changing the name to Cheka. The official name of the organization was the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Criminal Offenses by Officials. The Russian people suffered as much under the oppressive Cheka as it had from the brutal Okhrana. The Cheka's main objective was to track down and liquidate all those who opposed Vladimir Lenin and the Communist state. In many respects, the Cheka proved to be even more terrible than the Okhrana. Its first director, Felix Dzerzhinsky, one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies, was utterly ruthless, a spymaster who unflinchingly ordered assassinations and mass murders. The Soviet system of forced labor camps was first established in 1919 under the Cheka. It was not until the early
The secret police remained the most powerful and feared Soviet institution throughout the Stalinist period. The Cheka's successor organization the NKVD controlled millions of people's lives. Stalin constantly increased the number of projects assigned to the NKVD, which led to an increasing reliance on the labor force the NKVD commanded. The GULAG, whose camps were located mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, made significant contributions to the Soviet economy in the period of Joseph Stalin. After Stalin died in 1953, the GULAG population was reduced significantly, and conditions for inmates somewhat improved. 1930s that the camp population reached significant numbers. With the advance of democratization, political prisoners and prisoners of conscience all but disappeared from the camps. Oftentimes the KGB conducts series of investigations dealing with one or two specific prisoners. The incredible duration of preliminary detention; the disgusting circumstances of prison life; the congregation of hundreds of prisoners into small and dirty chambers; the flagrant immorality of a corps of jailers who are practically omnipotent, whose whole function is to terrorize and oppress led to the deaths of thousands of prisoners and laborers. By 1934 the GULAG, or Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps had several million inmates. The KGB was all-powerful in that its operations included all foreign and domestic espionage. Throughout the history of Russian prison and labor camps thousands of KGB correspondents roamed the cells seeking someone willing to let information out and act as an inside man. Prisoners received inadequate food rations and insufficient clothing, which made it difficult to endure the severe weather and the long working hours; sometimes the inmates were physically abused by camp guards. The Gulag also served as a source of workers for economic projects independent of the NKVD, which contracted its prisoners out to various economic enterprises.
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