Forced labor in the Soviet Union

Forced labour was used extensively in the Soviet Union and the following categories may be distinguished.

Pre-Gulag forced labour of the early Soviet Russia and Soviet Union
Under the Bolshevik regime, the government began taking rights and enforcing new policies of forced labour that gave less choice to laborers on not only their choice to work but where they would work as well. In July 1918, the Russian Constitution implemented Obligatory Labour Service which was to begin immediately. Then, in 1919, the Russian Labor Code laid out the exemptions such as the elderly and pregnant women and the requirements of obligatory labour to include that workers would be given the choice to work in their trades, if the option was available.

If the option was not available, workers would be required to accept the work that was available. Wages were fixed as of 1917 by the Supreme Counsel of Popular Economy and the work day was to be set to eight hours but a worker and the employer could agree upon overtime to be worked and conditions were laid out for Voluntary work, work that was done on Saturdays and Sundays. Women and children were the exception and specific conditions were laid out for them. At the end of 1919 and in early 1920, there was the introduction of the militarisation of labour, promoted by Trotsky with the support of Lenin.

The Soviet Gulag system


Gulags or Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerej, are described as labor camps which were a police-run system of colonies and special settlements. The myth surrounding the Gulag was that these forced labor camps would reforge the Soviet citizen who could then become a foundation of the Soviet Society. The real function of the Soviet Gulag was the exploitation of human beings, which occurred by working the people to death or near death before discarding them.

Approximately 20% of the prisoners would be freed each year from the Gulags, but these were not rehabilitated criminals, they were usually prisoners who were too weak to perform duties any longer or were suffering from incurable diseases. The types of prisoners ranged from petty criminals to political prisoners. A 1993 study of the soviet archives revealed that between 14 and 18 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953. A further 10 - 11 million people were either deported or were already in the penal system at the time There are no accurate or official archive records prior to 1929.

The Gulag penal system was isolated to the point where there was little or no communication allowed between the different camps, and no mention of the camps were discussed in the wider Soviet society. This institution was a separate society with its own culture and its own rules. At the beginning there was rampant brutality and death, but later they began to normalize and operate like any other normal societal town or city. In most cases the camp commandant would act more like the mayor of the city and would even advocate for better conditions and increased supplies for the people under his control. According to the US Government, conditions were deadly:"In 1953, 1954, it was awful conditions in concentration camps. It is hard to explain how bad it was. . . . [S]uch bad food that when I came to the concentration camp, I have seen prisoners which have only bones and skin. Each day in our conentration camp, I do not remember a day when it was less than 20, 25 people--less than 35--which died from starvation."Different categories with the Gulags: The Gulag system consisted of over 30,000 camps which were broken down into three different categories dependent upon the number of prisoners held at that camp. A large camp normally held more than 25,000 prisoners each, a medium size camp held from 5,000 to 25,000 and the smallest camps held less than 5,000 prisoners each. These small camps were the most numerous of the labor camps. Within the penal system there were different types of camps: prisons, special prisons, special camps, corrective labor colonies, and special purpose camps such as the scientific prison institutes (sharashka), filtration camps and prisoner of war (POW) camps. Deaths within the Gulag system: Now that the Soviet archives are available for study, it has been determined that there were between 15 and 18 million people held prisoner under Stalin. There are no reliable records prior to this period. It is estimated that 1.6 million died within the Gulags, approximately 800,000 killed by the Soviet Secret Police, and another 1 million dying during the exile process after they had been released from the Gulag.

The official Party reason for the Gulags was rehabilitation, but this was not the real purpose. The prisoners within the Gualgs were forced labor which helped meet the goals of the Five Year Plan, as well as to provide labor for the State run projects such as the Moscow-Volga canal. There is no doubt the camps were meant to house criminals and misfits who were a danger to society, but what many people were guilty of is saying or doing the wrong thing and then becoming a political prisoner for years. Stalin viewed these kind of people as enemies of the Party and he wanted them dealt with as enemies.

The institution called Gulag was closed by the MVD order No 020 of January 25, 1960. Forced labor camps for political and criminal prisoners continued to exist. Political prisoners continued to be kept in one of the most famous camps Perm-36 until 1987 when it was closed.

Forced labour was instrumental for the Soviet Union, and during the time of industrialisation it was a deemed necessary tool by the Bolsheviks, in order to rid the country of internal enemies, while at the same time using that labour to help achieve a stronger socialist union, and that idea was no different during wartime.

The USSR implemented a series of “labor disciplinary measures” due to the lack of productivity of its labour force in the early 1930s. 1.8 million workers were sentenced to 6 months in forced labor with a quarter of their original pay, 3.3 million faced sanctions, and 60k were imprisoned for absentees in 1940 alone. The conditions of Soviet workers worsened in WW2 as 1.3 million were punished in 1942, and 1 million each were punished in subsequent 1943 and 1944 with the reduction of 25% of food rations. Further more, 460 thousand were imprisoned throughout these years.

Post-GULAG
After the dismantling of GULAG, forced labor still continued to be a form of punishment in the form of corrective labor camps and corrective labor colony. In 1987, the CIA estimated that 4.5 million Soviet citizens were engaged in forced labor, constituting 3% of total labor force, an increase from the 1977 estimate of 4 million.

Foreign forced labour
In July 1937, when it appeared that war was imminent, Stalin ordered the removal of Germans from Soviet soil on the grounds that they were working for the enemy. An order by the NKVD also stated that German workers were agents of the Gestapo, sent to sabotage Soviet efforts. Of the 68,000 arrests and 42,000 deaths that resulted, only a third were actually German; the remainder were of other nationalities.

Just a month later, the liquidation of Poles was also approved by the Politburo. In 1938, 11,000 people were arrested in Mongolia, most of them lamas. Many other nationalities were swept up in similar operations, including but not exclusive to: Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Greeks, Afghans, and Iranians. Those that were arrested were either shot or placed in the forced labour system. Americans that had come to the Soviet Union seeking work during the Great Depression found themselves pleading the American embassy for passports so that they could return to their home country. The embassy refused to issue new passports and the emigrants were arrested and sent to prison, Gulag camps, or executed.

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

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