The History of the Gulag; From Collectivization to the Great Terror

by Oleg Khlevniuk; Translated by Vadim Staklo; Foreword by Robert Conquest; With editorial assistance and commentary by David J. Nordlander

• ISBN13: 9780300092844
• ISBN10: 0300092849
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-11-10
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

The human cost of the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system in which millions of people were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and social policy.Khlevniuk argues persuasively that the Stalinist penal camps created in the 1930s were essentially different from previous camps. He shows that political motivations and paranoia about potential enemies contributed no more to the expansion of the Gulag than the economic incentive of slave labor did. And he offers powerful evidence that the Great Terror was planned centrally and targeted against particular categories of the population. Khlevniuk makes a signal contribution to Soviet history with this exceptionally informed and balanced view of the Gulag.

Author Biography

Oleg V. Khlevniuk is senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Robert Conquest	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
List of Abbreviations	xv
Map of Gulag Sites, 1929-1941	xix
Introduction	1	(8)
CHAPTER 1. Origins of the Stalinist Gulag	9	(45)
The Peasant Zone
New Camps
Life in an Unfinished System
CHAPTER 2. Famine	54	(29)
Plans for Mass Purges
A Deadly Year
CHAPTER 3. Stabilization of the System	83	(57)
Kirov's Murder and the Creation of the NKVD
Camp Laws and Camp Reality
Colonies for Children
Old and Young in "Kulak Exile"
CHAPTER 4. The Great Terror	140	(46)
Plans
Mechanisms
Victims
Extermination Camps
CHAPTER 5. Beria's "Reforms"	186	(50)
The Legality of Torture
"New Order" in the Camps
The Fight Against "Wreckers" and "Spies"
The Case of the Krasnoiarsk Camp
CHAPTER 6. Mobilization and Repression	236	(51)
Supplying a Workforce
Camp Mobilization
The Erosion of "Kulak Exile"
The Fate of the New Special Settlers
CHAPTER 7. The Victims	287	(41)
The Character and Scale of the Stalinist Repression
Camps, Colonies, Prisons, and Special Settlements and Their Population
Conclusion: The Price of Terror	328	(17)
Brief Biographies	345	(24)
List of Selected Camps and Projects of the OGPU-NKVD	358	(6)
Excerpts from the Criminal Codes of the RSFSR and the Constitution of the USSR	364	(5)
Notes	369	(26)
Index of Documents	395	(8)
General Index	403