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AIS HISTORY CONFERENCE

AIS HISTORY CONFERENCE. AUGUST 2009 MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY THE GULAGS Jan Brady, Head of HSIE, Arden Anglican School. GULAG. G lavno ë U pravlenie (Ispravitel’no-trudovykh [kolony]) Lag erei (Main Camp Administration) (of the Concentration [Labour] Camps). ALSO CAME TO MEAN.

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AIS HISTORY CONFERENCE

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  1. AIS HISTORY CONFERENCE AUGUST 2009 MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY THE GULAGS Jan Brady, Head of HSIE, Arden Anglican School Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  2. GULAG GlavnoëUpravlenie (Ispravitel’no-trudovykh [kolony]) Lagerei (Main Camp Administration) (of the Concentration [Labour] Camps) Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  3. ALSO CAME TO MEAN • More than just the later concentration camps (kontslager) • Also the labour camps (trudposelka) • Under the Bolsheviks, the first, special northern camps set up in the 1920s such as Solovetsky • The Gulags, or labour camps – of which there were many divisions • the punishment camps • the criminal camps • the political camps • the women’s camps • the children’s camps • the transit camps Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  4. AND the system of Soviet repression, the so-called ‘meat grinder’ Arrest  Interrogation  Incarceration  Transportation  Forced labour  Break-up of the family  Exile  Death Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  5. SOURCES Gulag: a History by Anne Applebaum The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- needs careful use. He was not imprisoned until after World War Two – beyond our study period The Great Terror: a reassessment by Robert Conquest Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia 1934-1941 by Robert W. Thurston The Unknown Gulag by Lynne Viola Everyday Stalinism by Sheila Fitzpatrick An Economic History of the USSR by Alec Nove Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  6. WHAT WERE THE GULAGS? • Penal labour camps as distinct from the criminal prisons • Under the control of the OGPU/NKVD • Processed about 20 million people in the 1920s -1940s • Eventually became an integral part of the economic structure of Stalinist Russia • Effectively the militarisation of labour (one of Trotsky’s suggestions for which he was exiled) Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  7. ALSO • A place where ‘political’ prisoners could contribute to society and be ‘rehabilitated’ • Isolated and, supposedly, self-sufficient • Often built by the first prisoners sent there who lived in ‘shalash’ or makeshift cabins made from the first fellings of trees, or dugouts ‘zemlianki’ Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  8. WHY ‘GULAG ARCHIPELAGO’? • First ‘planned for permanency’ OGPU Gulag established at Solovetsky Monastery • Slowly expanded to take in other islands of the archipelago • became the SYMBOL of the system • Soviets claimed the camp ‘system’ originated there Solzhenitsyn used this imagery for his book • the west gained a sound-bite Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  9. WHERE WERE THE GULAGS? White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal Solovetsky Kolyma River Kiev Basic map from - http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1277/1350612315_f3b856d3a0_o.jpg Perm Tashkent Vladivostok Ulan Bator Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  10. SOLOVETSKY MONASTERY TODAY http://www.daylife.com/photo/0dC92gG5cb85F Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  11. Perm 326 – Timber gettingSouthern Urals http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/perm36.php Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  12. Kolyma – North Western Siberia • North-eastern Siberia • Down to -50 degrees C • Work stopped at -25 degrees • Snow 9 months of the year • Frozen all year round • About 120 camps in an area four times the size of France • Gold mining mostly but also fur and timber getting • The camps held about 500 000 people but it is estimated that more than 2 million died in this area over a 15 year period – the ships just kept bringing them in http://www.videofact.com/polska/obozy/kolyma3opt.jpg Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  13. Mining at Kolyma gulaghistory.org/.../images/kolyma_detail.jpg Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  14. WESTERN SIBERIAN GULAG AFTER IT WAS ABANDONED http://images.onesite.com/blogs.telegraph.co.uk/user/paul_willis/gulag.jpg Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  15. First major building program of the Gulags • The White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal built between 1931 and 1933 • First major construction of the Gulag system • 100 000 prisoners constructed a 141 mile canal with hand tools in 20 months • Lauded as a great success it was a failure http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work-src/images/belbaltlag.jpgBelbaltlag Camp on the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal, from a 1932 Russian Documentary incentraleurope.radio.cz/ice/article/66519 Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  16. WHITE SEA – BALTIC SEA CANAL • Linked Leningrad with Archangel by waterway • meant that it was possible to move by water from Archangel on the White Sea to Odessa on the Black Sea • No longer dependent on sailing south through the Baltic and around Norway and Finland • Psychologically important but a failure anyway Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  17. LIFE IN THE CAMPS • Men and women, ‘zeks’ , mostly lived in separate barracks • They were crowded, filthy, boring, full of sickness • Moved from camp to camp by rail in special prison vans – ‘Stolypin cars’ or vagonzaks • Solitary confinement used for recidivists – the isolator • Clothing limited to rags • Limited medical services • No work = no food = starvation = death • A return to serfdom • Zeks were not people but ‘enemies of the people’ Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  18. AN AVERAGE DAY OFTEN 7 DAYS A WEEK • Reveille – usually about 5.00 a.m. summer and winter • 10 minutes for breakfast – the best meal of the day • March out of camp for the work day • 5 minutes rest at the noon break • 5 minutes rest at supper • Sleep occupied the rest of the time To break the monotony there were, however, • Roll calls • Occasional medical inspections • Occasional delousing • Occasional Sundays off Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  19. Work and Food • Prisoners worked up to 14 hours per day even in the dark of winter • Usually the work was hard, physical labour – timber getting, mining • Food was limited, of poor quality and often rotten – meatless gruel, hard bread Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  20. More work http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/08/04/article-1041277-0228FD7800000578-542_468x286.jpg Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  21. LIVING CONDITIONS - MEN • Average life expectancy was one to two years • Disease was rife • Extreme violence, generated by the real criminals (‘urkas’) • had their own laws made the zeks’ lives miserable • treated the men as objects and gambled their lives, their clothes, their belongings between them often killing zeks without remorse or interference from the guards • Lived in barracks, 200 men on 50 bunks on bug-ridden mattresses Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  22. LIVING CONDITIONS - WOMEN http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/women.php Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  23. WOMEN IN THE GULAGS • Lived in crowded barracks the same as the men • Used and abused by male inmates and guards alike • Many took ‘camp husbands’ for protection • Expected to do the same hard labour as men • Pregnant women, ‘mamka’ were occasionally released but generally their babies were taken away from them at birth, put into special orphanages, ‘detdom’ and lost forever to their families • Those children were the ‘lucky’ ones. Most starved to death because the mothers had no milk • Many children became street urchins. ‘besprizornye’ literally, ‘without family support’ Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  24. THE GULAGS AND THE SYLLABUS Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  25. GULAGS AND THE SYLLABUS • Not just Stalin’s tool • Labour camps established in Siberia by the earliest Romanovs (katorgas) • most revolutionaries of note, whether Decembrist, Populist, Mensheviki, Bolsheviki or simply separatist, spent time in Tsarist labour camps in Siberia at one time or another • disaffected intellectuals and writers, such as Dostöevsky and Pushkin, were exiled to the camps Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  26. RELEVANCE? Can be used in almost every question set on the key features and issues! • Communism in theory and practice • Bolshevik consolidation of powerchanges in society • leadership conflict and differing visions for the USSR • Purpose and impact of collectivisation and industrialisation • Nature and impact of Stalinism • Aims and impact of Soviet foreign policy Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  27. Communism in theory and practice  • In theory – the recognition of the soviets as the supreme political authority and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (April Theses) • In practice – enemies, real or potential, from the soviets (Mensheviki), the Party and the proletariat were put into concentration camps around the country as part of the mass terror campaign beginning in 1918. • By 1921 there were already 84 new camps in 43 provinces Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  28. Bolshevik consolidation of power  • Communist Russia’s camps were created during the upheaval of the civil war • For the removal of ‘aristocrats, merchants, and other people defined as potential ‘enemies’ such as ‘vrediteli’ (wreckers) • As a way of organizing compulsory work duty to rehabilitate wealth capitalists whom Lenin labelled as ‘millionaire-saboteurs’ • As a place for the emerging ‘class enemies’ • Initially used the prisoner of war camps outside towns • Under the control of the Cheka and Felix Dzerzhinsky (Iron Felix) – the Red Terror – ‘the swift, wide-ranging, and unjust violence carried out by the state’ Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  29. Consolidation – Iron Felix and the Red Terror  • Organized, not ad hoc • Established after an attempt on Lenin’s life by Fanya Kaplan • Part of the Civil War but fought on the home front • Aimed at anyone deemed anti-Revolutionary • Expanded quickly • 21 camps in 1919 • 107 by the end of 1920 Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  30. Changes  • The ‘Red Terror’ imprisoned people not for what they had done (eg committed a crime) but for who they were! • Lenin believed that criminals were victims of society’s evils and that if he removed the bourgeois elements, the need for crime and, therefore, criminals, would disappear • Suddenly being bourgeoisie, a merchant, a landowner, industrialist or even a priest was dangerous • Only the proletariat, lowest ranked soldiers and sailors and the peasants were at the top of society and, of course, the Party Members – but no-one was safe Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  31. The red letters are ГЛУ or GPU for Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie or the Government Political Administration • In this poster of the 1920s the GPU strikes the counter-revolutionary saboteur on the head en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGPU Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  32. Leadership conflict and differing visions for the USSR • Exile was the weapon of choice for Stalin in his conflict with the other leaders after Lenin’s death • Stalin wanted them dead but was not prepared to take that risk • Exile was the solution • Old Bolsheviks, New Bolsheviks, Syndicalists, Unionists, members of the Politburo or the Central Committee – most ended up in exile • Trotsky the classic example Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  33. Purpose and impact of Collectivisation  • Dekulakisation – ‘the civil war in the rural areas … the first great crisis of the Stalin regime … the beginning of a whole new era of terror’ • Forced famine in Ukraine, North Caucausus and the Lower Volga – the breadbasket of Europe • The collective farm system was established • The Soviet Union was in charge of dissenting voices in conquered territories • This ‘Harvest of Sorrow’ resulted in over 1.8 mill people being deported to the Urals, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia and the Far East • These were the spetspereselentsy or ‘special settlers’ and were the first mass deportations of the Stalinist period. Their labour in extracting minerals helped industry develop Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  34. Purpose and impact of industrialisation • The USSR needed to modernize, and fast • 50 to 100 years behind the rest of the industrialized world • Could not meet a European military threat • Did not want to rely on imports any more • Had enormous resources but untapped • Needed an enormous workforce to mobilize resources Solution? Forced labour from the camps Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  35. Nature and impact of Stalinism  • Dekulakisation and The Harvest of Sorrow • Industrialisation and modernisation through forced labour • Dnieper Dam • Volga-Baltic Waterway • White Sea Canal • First round of Show Trials 1928-1933 • Trotskyites, Bukharinites, Tsarist sympathisers, Old Bolsheviks • First round of purges of the Party (‘chiski’ or cleansings) and the Military • the bourgeois specialists – Shakhty Show Trial • Sukhanov, • More than 11% of the Party and 5% of the Military cadres • The end of Trotsky Most ended up in some form of labour camp though many of the higher party officials were placed in better camps Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  36. Aims and impact of Soviet Foreign Policy  • To win at all costs but how could they do that with so many of their officers purged and in camps • Between 1937 and 1938 about 45% of the command and political staff of the army ‘disappeared’. Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  37. THE GULAGS • Best read for students – Applebaum • Much of Conquest based on Applebaum • New books – Thurston and Viola both extremely valuable • For Stalin’s view of the use of the Gulags see Simon Seabag Montefiore’s, Red Tsar Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

  38. ANY FOLLOW UP? Contact me at j.brady@arden.nsw.edu.au Or janbrady@ans.com.au Jan Brady, Arden, Gulags, March 2009

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